Jamaica plans to seek billions of pounds in reparations from the UK as compensation for the Atlantic slave trade.
Olivia Grange, the culture minister in Jamaica, said a petition will be sent directly to the Queen by the attorney general to begin the action.
She said Jamaica was a center of the global slave trade, with the Spanish, then the British, forcibly transporting Africans to work on plantations of sugar cane, bananas and other crops, Reuters reports.
“We are hoping for reparatory justice in all forms that one would expect if they are to really ensure that we get justice from injustices to repair the damages that our ancestors experienced,” Grange told Reuters in an interview at the weekend, adding her voice to a global drive on the subject.
“Reparations — where would the money come from? Does it come from all the other races except the black taxpayers? What percentage of black must you be to receive reparation? Do you go to 23andMe or DNA test to determine the percentage of blackness?” https://t.co/Odr16xqNkR
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) February 18, 2021
“Our African ancestors were forcibly removed from their home and suffered unparalleled atrocities in Africa to carry out forced labour to the benefit of the British Empire,” she added. “Redress is well overdue.”
An estimated 600,000 Africans were shipped to toil in Jamaica, according to the National Library of Jamaica.
The Caribbean island nation was a British colony from 1655 until 1962.
Grange has not given a figure being sought however fellow politician Mike Henry said the petition is worth some £7.6bn.
Henry told Reuters: “I am asking for the same amount of money to be paid to the slaves that was paid to the slave owners. I am doing this because I have fought against this all my life, against chattel slavery which has dehumanised human life.”
Jamaica’s action came as the U.N. human rights chief demanded comprehensive reparations be made to compensate countries that have suffered what she called the deadly legacies of slavery, colonial rule and racial discrimination.
U.N. Rights Chief Demands Reparations for ‘Slavery, Colonial Rule, and Racism’ https://t.co/bDaNttpwCM
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 12, 2021
As Breitbart News reported, former Chilean Socialist President Michelle Bachelet presented the U.N. Human Rights Council with a study Monday she hopes will change the definition of racism.
It comes after her intervention last month calling on the world to immediately dismantle systemic racism against people of African descent and “make amends” to the oppressed while groups like Black Lives Matter should receive “funding, public recognition and support.”
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