Above: Port of Spain (CJ Photo)
By the Caribbean Journal staff
Trinidad and Tobago is setting up a national committee on reparations for slavery, the government announced last week.
In a statement, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar expressed “delight” on the formation of a committee, saying that St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves was making a call for all Caribbean islands to establish such a committee.
In October, a group of 14 Caribbean countries announced a plan to sue European nations for compensation for hundreds of years of slavery during the colonial period, with a focus on the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands.
The government said that the committee’s work programme would include public consultations, presentations, media interviews, film exhibitions and a web site with a social media component.
Its objectives would include drafting a “detailed brief” on the “cost of the damages and current manifestations of such damages on indigenous people,” and the establishment of the “moral, ethical and legal case” for the payment of reparations.