A just released study on the Transatlantic Chattel Slavery (TCS) contends that Europe and the US easily owe today’s descents trillions of dollars in reparations payments and it actually puts a figure of how much some individual nations are owed.
Unveiled at a University of the West Indies Mona Jamaica campus on Thursday, former World Court Judge Patrick Robinson picked out 31 countries where that brutal form of slavery was practiced and which should automatically qualify for trillions in reparations payments. Robinson said those claiming payments will have to establish harm suffered by enslavers and that it resulted from wrongful conduct of those involved in chattel slavery.
“The advisory committee’s position is that it is the descendants of the enslaved Africans who should be the beneficiaries of the reparations that are due,” Judge Robinson said. Others who attended and participated in the presentation included former Jamaica Prime Minister PJ Patterson, Professor Verne Shepherd, widely regarded as one of the Caribbean’s leading reparations advocates and Professor Coleman Bazelon, co-leader of the Battle Group.
The study determined that Britain owes 14 countries in this part of the world a total of $24 trillion of which Jamaica should get $9.5 trillion, while Spain should be made to cough up an estimated $17 trillion. Jamaica stands to collect $102 billion from this sum.
The study had also looked at chatten slavery and the role the US played back then, noting that its bill is $26 trillion for enslaving Africans from 1776 to 1865, while France owes at least four countries in the Caribbean $9 trillion. Identifying individual European countries, the group came up with a tab for Portugal for $20 trillion owed mostly to Brazil where the largest group of Blacks live outside of Nigeria. Individually, Brazil was also singled out for its part. The sum proffered is $4 trillion from the period 1822 to 1888.
And strangely enough, The Dutch which the Caribbean Reparations Commission recently labeled as the cruelest slave masters and the pioneers of the slave trade, is down for only $5 trillion, $3 trillion of which should be paid to Suriname and $52 billion to neighboring Guyana, according to coverage in the Gleaner newspaper. “The aggregate sum of reparations to be paid by all former slave-owning states totals US$107.8 trillion. Total harm estimated from enslavement is between US$100 trillion and US$131 trillion,” the paper stated.
PJ Patterson also spoke at the presentation, suggesting that “the time has come” to get the legal framework for any court challenges in order as it relates to class action lawsuits.
“Yes, we need a full and encompassing apology, but that alone cannot suffice for the anguish, pain, and inequities of the black experience world-wide throughout the ages. We demand monetary compensation, as Bob Marley said, for being ‘stolen from Africa’ and not mere words, but substantial sums of money to remove the conditions of poverty and punitive deprivation to which we have been condemned throughout the Americas and the Caribbean,” he said.
