Region owed compensation of $40 billion – PM

If the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines has its way, the British government would be made to pay this country upwards of half a billion dollars.{{more}}

Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, at last week’s National Heroes Day ceremony, repeated the call for reparations from the British, for genocide against the Garifuna people, and reparations for slavery.

Doing some rough calculations, he showed that St Vincent and the Grenadines and the rest of the English speaking Caribbean should be compensated with more than EC$40 billion dollars.

Giving some historical background, Gonslaves noted that the British claim to this country, and subsequent genocide and deportation of the indigenous people, should not be allowed without financial restitution.

“When the British came here, they were not invited by the Garifuna, they didn’t come here and take this place through conquest.

“It was owned by the Calinago, the original people who came up from the Orinoco, and the mixture between them and African, runaways from Barbados, and those who had been shipwrecked off Bequia, and they interbred and had the Garifuna.

“And that is why the fight took place, because if you come to my country waving a piece of paper and say all the land is yours, I will fight you so that you don’t take away my land, and that led to the death of Chatoyer right here.

“And I will tell you this, that by 1800, after the defeat of Chatoyer and the Garifuna by superior arms, they left the Garifuna on the worst 238 acres of land in the whole country what we call Carib Country.

“Now you take the land alone, imagine the price of 90,000 acres of land. If they even value it then for 100 pounds an acre, look at it: multiply 90,000 by 100 and then multiply that by five dollars, which is what the pound is valued at, you are talking about 500 million eastern Caribbean for the land….

“And then what value are you going to put on people’s lives? That’s a number which we are going to talk about.”

If that wasn’t enough, Gonsalves said that it must be taken into account, that at the time of emancipation, 20 million pounds were given to slave owners as compensation for their slaves.

He said that a recent study shows that this amount has now been valued at approximately 829 times more, which is 16.58 billion pounds.

“They say that just over half of that amount is for the English speaking Caribbean…. So if you take even half of that, forgetting for the moment the institution of slavery itself… you are talking about 8.25 billion pounds for the English speaking Caribbean, and you multiply that by roughly five, you will see that you are talking about over 40 odd billion Eastern Caribbean dollars, and that is just the compensation.”

The prime minister said that he does not expect the matter of reparations to be handled in the law courts, but called on the people in the region to raise their political voices.

Gonsalves said that his call for reparations is not a sign of malice or hatred for the British, but there are some questions which must be settled.

“I may not succeed during my lifetime, I’m hoping that I do, but I have to talk about it here, I got to talk about it at the United Nations as I have done and you know I talk about it at every independence in the presence of the British representatives.

“I have no problem with them, we have good relations, but there are some historical wrongs which must be righted….

He said that a reparations committee for St Vincent and the Grenadines will be named shortly.

Professor Hilary Beckles of the University of the West Indies has recently published a book making a case for reparations for the Caribbean by the United Kingsdom. (JJ)