Slaveholders, not slaves, compensated for slavery

BRIDGETOWN - The Executive Committee of the Evangelical Association of the Caribbean (EAC) endorses the call from Caribbean Heads of Governments for the payment of reparations for the brutal enslavement of Africans in the Caribbean prior to 1834. EAC particularly notes statements made by Prime Ministers Hon. Dr. Ralph Gonsalves (St. Vincent), Most Hon. Portia Simpson-Miller (Jamaica), Rt. Hon. Owen Arthur (Barbados), Hon. Dr. Denzil Douglas (St. Kitts/Nevis), Hon. Roosevelt Skerritt (Dominica), and Hon. Dr. Keith Mitchell (Grenada).
 
Research has revealed that on the abolition of slavery the British Government paid £20,000,000.00 sterling to the plantation owners in Jamaica, British Guiana (now Guyana), Barbados, Trinidad, Grenada, St. Vincent, Antigua, St. Lucia, St. Kitts, Dominica, Tobago, Nevis, Bahamas, Montserrat, British Honduras (now Belize), the Virgin Islands, and Bermuda. The amount paid to the plantation owners in Barbados was £1,719,980.00 sterling. A local chartered accountant has calculated that £1,719,980.00 paid to plantation owners in Barbados prior to 1840 would be conservatively worth in today’s currency in excess of £5 billion sterling.

Nothing was ever paid to the slaves as compensation for their having been forcibly removed from their homeland, transported across the Atlantic Ocean to another land, and forced – often in a most brutal manner – to work the sugar cane plantations.
 
This is for us a justice issue as it seems manifestly unjust that the plantation owners should be paid compensation for the loss of their slave “property” at emancipation but the slaves themselves, or their descendants, have never received compensation for having been enslaved.
 
EAC has formally petitioned H. M. Queen Elizabeth II on this matter. The full petition and Her Majesty’s response can be seen at http://www.caribevangelical.org/pdfs/PetitionQEII.pdf. (If that web address does not work for you please go to www.caribeavngelical.org and then click on “Programmes,” then click on “Advocacy” and the petition is the first document in the list of documents on that web page).
 
EAC has also formally requested that the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) take up the matter of reparations on the global stage.