August 2, 2024 Anna Ramdass
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley says the Caribbean Community (Caricom) has taken a decision to “forcefully” speak to the Commonwealth on the issue of reparations when they meet in Samoa in October.
The Prime Minister returned from the Caricom Heads of Government Meeting in Grenada on Tuesday.
Speaking outside the Treasury Building, Port of Spain, yesterday, where the capital city came alive with festivities to celebrate African Emancipation Day, Rowley noted that The University of the West Indies (The UWI) vice-chancellor Sir Hilary Beckles has been leading the “intellectual arguments” on behalf of Caricom with respect to reparations.
Rowley said Dr Martin Luther King Jr had said the arc to freedom bends towards justice.
“We here gathered are on that arc; we genuinely believe that it will bend to a point in a day when justice would be recognised by all and it will be handed to those who deserve it,” he said.
“When we meet in Samoa, the Caribbean leaders took a decision this week to very forcefully speak to the Commonwealth as one voice, and there is one particular country with a new King (the UK’s King Charles) and a Labour government with an outstanding mandate, and we look forward to the reaction in October,” said Rowley.
“Because I believe that until respect of people becomes acknowledged by those who hold authority, African people will continue to be viewed as second and third-class, and we will continue to have to fight for freedom and respect,” he added.
He emphasised the need for focus on respect, starting from respecting ancestors who were there when the hardships were meted out and survived it for the future of their progeny.
“Today, we need to respect their effort as we respect ourselves because out of that respect would come a desire to be the best that we can be against advice that we are worth nothing, or that we are limited in what we can achieve or that we are less in what we anticipate,” he said.
“Let us take pride in our ancestry, let us not be afraid to proclaim our Africanness, especially in today’s world where Africa is rising and rising to meet us, let us not be found wanting,” he said.
Executive chair of the Emancipation Support Committee Zakiya Uzoma-Wadada said the celebration of African emancipation in T&T was a national celebration because the freedom of Africans from enslavement was a gain for all humanity.
“None of us would have wanted to live in a world where a major ethnic group would have been enslaved,” she said.
Trinidad and Tobago, she said, has to become the mecca for the celebration worldwide.
She noted that this country was the first independent state to declare African Emancipation Day a holiday.
Also in attendance were Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Amery Browne, Youth Development Minister Foster Cummings, Tourism Minister Randall Mitchell, Energy Minister Stuart Young and Port of Spain Mayor Chinua Alleyne, among others.
According to The UWI, in July 2013, Caribbean leaders at the 34th Caricom Summit agreed to pursue reparations from Britain, based on representation made by Beckles.
Two months later, at its first reparations summit in September 2013, Caricom identified Sir Hilary to lead its Caricom Reparations Commission (CRC) as chairman.
Under his leadership, the CRC has taken the reparations discourse across the globe—to the British House of Lords and the US Congress, and to universities in Europe, North America and Africa.
Source: Trinidad Daily Express
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