Tuesday, October 29, 2013

The Caribbean Community Claims Formal Slavery Compensation



The Caribbean Community says an apology is not enough and every nation in the Caribbean is forming a national reparations commission to develop their cases. These Islands are claiming reparations for over 400 years of colonization and their leaders have already presented their cases to the United Nations .
France, Britain, and Netherlands are being asked to compensate for the damages that came as a result of the Atlantic Slave Trade, which they took part in. Britain exported 3 million slaves and even though the compensation that the Caribbean is claiming hasn’t been revealed, I think the British government might pay reparations worth hundreds of billions of pounds. When the British government abolished slave trade in these Islands, they compensated slave owners by giving them €240 billion. As a matter of fact, one would have expected the slaves to be compensated for their sufferings.  
It has taken European countries a long time to express their apologies (some have not apologized yet), and none of them seems ready to compensate their colonies. Slave trade “impaired [Caribbean’s and other colonies] development options,” and I believe reparations would enable these countries to eradicate some of the problems they are facing today, which originated from colonialism and slave trade.

                                                          Slave Trade Routes
                                               image adopted from google.com

No comments:

Post a Comment