Europe must face its sin and pay the price

ATHE EDITOR, Sir:

MBASSADOR MALGORZATA Wasilewska, head of the European Union delegation, must be commended for bringing to public notice in the national newspaper the extent of Europe’s munificence to Jamaica over the past 43 years.

One thing is missing from the ambassador’s counting of the goodies, an acknowledgement that the gifts are not made or accepted as charitable donations to however worthy the cause. Rather, there needs to be an admission that the gesture is made as part of the reparation for the wickedness of the past, intended to restore the full dignity of the Jamaica people and to ease the conscience of the donor.

Voluntary beneficence that can end any time is not an atonement for slavery; it ignores the moral and ethical responsibility for the crime against humanity and is no blessing for either the giver or the taker.

Seeking the economic independence of the people as final justice from Europe is not only a Jamaican problem, it involves the entire Caribbean where chattel slavery enriched Europe.

FINAL SOLUTION NOT ADDRESSED

The ambassador may not have been fully briefed, not knowing the intransigence of individual states of Europe (including Britain before Brexit) over an apology to the people of the Caribbean for more than 450 years of enslavement and colonialism. The forcible transportation of individuals en masse from their homes to perpetual enslavement in a strange land, working for the wealth of Europe, deprived of family, religion and the protection of law for their freedom, has never been comprehensively addressed for a final solution.

The CARICOM Prime Ministerial Subcommittee on Reparations wrote to all heads of government for European states that were involved in the slave trade, including the United Kingdom, reminding them of UN General Assembly Resolution of December 23, 2013, indicating the need for recognition, justice and development for the people of African descent. Prime Minister David Cameron responded: “The British government does not believe that reparations are the answer.” Others who deigned to respond gave a similar brush-off.

Reparatory justice for the people of the Caribbean is long overdue. This can be achieved by a treaty between the nations of Europe and the individual independent nations of the Caribbean, recognising the obligation to remedy the wrongs of slavery in a meaningful way for the economic liberation of the Caribbean – even if this will take longer than the period for repayment of the loan to compensate the plantation owners for loss of their slaves.

FRANK PHIPPS, QC

Reparation Activist