Caribbean Nations Seek Apologies and Reparations for Slavery

Fourteen Caribbean countries that were central to the sustainment of the transatlantic slave trade are seeking reparations for centuries of injustice and cruelty. 

The countries are seeking reparations from former colonial powers Britain, France and the Netherlands. The nations plan on compiling an inventory of the damage they suffered, and then demanding and apology and reparations from their former colonial oppressors, according to the The New York Times. 

The countries have hired a firm of London lawyers to present their case, which this year won compensation from Britain for Kenyans who were tortured under British colonial rule in the 1950s. 

Britain outlawed its slave trade in 1807, but its long legacy persists, especially in the collective consciousnesses of its former colonized countries. In 2006, former British prime minster Tony Blair expressed his "deep sorrow" over the slave trade, and this July, Dutch social affairs minister Lodewijk Asscher made a similar statement.

Britain has compensated individuals over the abolition of the slave trade once before--but to the slave owners, not the victims. 

Britain transported more than 3 million Africans across the Atlantic ocean, and historians estimate that in the Victorian era, between one-fifth and one-sixth of all wealthy British citizens acquired at least some of their wealth from the slave economy.

Yet, the topic of countries' past atrocities is a controversial one. Turkey will not take particular responsibility for the mass deaths of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, and will not call it genocide. It wasn't until 1995 that France's president at the time, Jacques Chirac, apologized for crimes against the Jews under the Vichy government. The current French president, François Hollande, said last year that France's treatment of former colony Algeria was "brutal and unfair," but did not apologize. 

Hollande's predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, offered an aid and debt-cancellation package to Haiti in 2010 due to the deep "wounds of colonization." In 1997, Tony Blair described the potato famine in Ireland in the late 1840s as "something that still causes pain as we reflect on it today." Yet, none offered an official apology. 

Other countries, such as Germany, publicly apologized for its horrific war crimes. Former chancellor Willy Brandt got down his knees at the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970, apologizing for the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II. He also paid reparations for Nazi crimes. 

Caribbean nations argue that they are still affected by their cruel pasts, the Times reports. 

"Our constant search and struggle for development resources is linked directly to the historical inability of our nations to accumulate wealth from the efforts of our peoples during slavery and colonialism," said Baldwin Spencer, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, in July this year. He said that reparations should be made in an effort to repair the damage done by centuries of slavery and racism. 

Martyn Day, the senior partner at Leigh Day, the London law firm acting on behalf of the Caribbean countries, said that a court case could start next year at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, a tribunal that oversees legal disputes among nations. 

"What happened in the Caribbean and West Africa was so egregious we feel that bringing a case in the I.C.J. would have a decent chance of success," Mr. Day said. "The fact that you were subjugating a whole class of people in a massively discriminatory way has no parallel," he added.

Day said that some of the Caribbean nations have begun evaluating the lasting damage, such as limited educational and economic opportunities and health and dietary problems. 

Some critics have said that it doesn't make sense for the former imperial powers to retroactively address wrongs that date back many centuries, and that Caribbean countries already receive development aid. 

Some believe it to be a futile effort, especially considering that there aren't any living victims of slavery. Roger O'Keefe, deputy director of the Lauterpacht Center for International Law at Cambridge University, said that "there is not the slightest chance that this case will get anywhere," describing it as "an international legal fantasy."

"Reparation may be awarded only for what was internationally unlawful when it was done," Dr. O'Keefe said, "and slavery and the slave trade were not internationally unlawful at the time the colonial powers engaged in them."

Lawyers for the Caribbean nations said that their best bet may be a negotiated settlement, achieved through social and political pressure. "We are saying that, ultimately, historical claims have been resolved politically - although I think we will have a good claim in the I.C.J.," Mr. Day said.

British foreign secretary William Hauge has said that while Britain "condemns" slavery," he said, "we do not see reparations as the answer."