A British minister whose portfolio includes the Caribbean, angered many in the regional community in the past week when he flippantly declared that London would oppose any efforts by governments to make the UK pay for the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade.
Mark Simmonds was less than an hour into a visit to Jamaica when he dismissed moves by governments in recent months to make a coordinated and concerted pitch to Britain and other former slave-owning European nations to have them compensate countries for centuries of slavery and its lingering effects to this day.
Instead of meeting regional demands for cash and other forms of reparations, Simmonds says the UK is focusing more on assisting Jamaica and other countries to revitalize and improve their economies rather than meeting reparation demands.
His rather blunt announcement comes in the midst of efforts by the 15-nation Caribbean Community to formally approach countries like the UK, France, The Netherlands and others to now pay for making millions of people of African origin work on sugar, tobacco, coffee and other plantations under inhumane conditions and without a single cent in wages or salaries. Simmonds is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Overseas Territories Minister.
Leaders who met in Trinidad earlier this year decided to throw the weight of governments behind decades of efforts by the Rastafarian Movement, lawyers and civil society activists to make Europe pay for the world worst holocaust.
National focal point committees have been established in most of the member states and even politically conservative Bahamian authorities have dubbed the efforts as a just and righteous cause. They plan to throw the weight of the cabinet behind efforts.
The minister’s remarks on his first visit to Jamaica have angered some like Jamaican legislator Mike Henry who said it “was an insult to the Caribbean. Reparations should be addressed,” he said.
Addressing a press conference minutes after his arrival, Simmonds sought to deal with the issue immediately saying Europe has no ability to pay reparations to the region.
“Do I think that we are in a position where we can financially offer compensation for an event two, three, four hundred years ago? No, I don’t. I made our position clear. We believe slavery was abhorrent and modern-day slavery is occurring and we need to work together to eradicate it totally, and that is the United Nation’s position. Clearly slavery was abhorrent; slavery still is abhorrent, and we all need to work together to ensure that we eradicate it in totality wherever it exists. And I think we’ve got to focus on where our commonalities agree and I think that is eradicating slavery as it exists today.”