Slavery: Britain, Spain others to be sued for reparations

                        

A coalition of Caribbean leaders will meet today in St. Vincent to discuss a landmark legal claim for reparations over slavery- that could run into the hundreds of billions of pounds.

Caricom, a group of 12 former British colonies together with the former French colony Haiti and the Dutch-held Suriname, believes Europe should pay for a range of issues spawned by slavery, from poverty and illiteracy to ill health.

But is says the UK in particular should pay the most even though it was the first to abolish slavery in 1833.

The case has been prepared by a British law firm that recently won almost £20million compensation for hundreds of Kenyans tortured by the British colonial government during the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s.

Today’s claim, which also targets Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, comes at a pertinent time for the issue of slavery – just a week after Steve McQueen’s epic 12 Years A Slave won the Oscar for Best Picture in Los Angeles.

‘Over ten million Africans were stolen from their homes and forcefully transported to the Caribbean as the enslaved chattels and property of Europeans,’ the claim says. ‘The transatlantic slave trade is the largest forced migration in human history and has no parallel in terms of man’s inhumanity to man.’

It continues: ‘This trade in enchained bodies was a highly successful commercial business for the nations of Europe.

‘The lives of millions of men, women and children were destroyed in the search of profit. Over ten million Africans were imported into the Caribbean during the 400 years of slavery.
‘At the end of slavery in the late 19th century, less than two million remained. The chronic health condition of Caribbean blacks constitutes the greatest financial risk to sustainability in the region.’

Caricom has not specified how much money they are seeking but senior officials have pointed out that Britain paid slave owners £20 million when it abolished slavery in 1834. That sum would be the equivalent of £200 billion today.

Winner of Nigeria’s 1993 presidential election, Chief Moshood Abiola also campaigned for reparations in the 80s and early 90s to be paid to African nations for decades of slavery.