Caribbean nations are demanding a staggering $33 trillion from Europeans as a ‘formal apology’ for their role in the Transatlantic slave trade, with ‘Caricom,’ an economic and political union representing 15 West Indian countries, establishing a ten-point plan to conduct negotiations.
The plan will request a formal apology, repatriation to Africa for “those persons who wish to return,” education and healthcare funding, transfers of technology, and debt cancellation, among other things.
The report has calculated that Great Britain owes the largest amount at $19.6 trillion – more than six times the country’s annual GDP – followed by France at $6.3 trillion, then Spain at $6.3 trillion. Jamaica alone demands $9.5 trillion.
“We need a figure to begin with, a negotiating figure,” argued vice-chairwoman of Caricom, Verene Shepherd, who added: “The crime is huge. The responsibility for what happened is huge.”
Caricom first established a reparations commission in 2013, regularly writing and contacting former colonial powers about receiving reparations. Yet, it “didn’t get a positive response” from the countries, according to vice-chairwoman Shepherd.
Proponents of slavery reparations neglect to mention that Great Britain took out one of the largest loans in human history to emancipate those enslaved throughout the Caribbean in the 1830s. The British also dedicated major naval resources to patrolling the Atlantic to enforce the abolition of the Transatlantic slave trade through the early- to mid-nineteenth century, capturing and releasing an estimated 200,000 people at the cost of thousands of British lives.
