Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda Hon Gaston Browne has emphasised that financial reparations were the best way for colonisers to make amends for the wrongs they had committed. The Prime Minister was speaking at the opening of a symposium titled “Western Banking, Colonialism and Reparations” at the Jolly Beach Hotel in Antigua and Barbuda on Thursday.
The CARICOM Secretariat and CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC), in collaboration with the Centre for Reparation Research (CRR) and the Antigua & Barbuda Reparations Support Commission, are hosting the symposium.
In his keynote address, Prime Minister Browne emphasised that financial settlement was a critical component to the Region’s reparatory claim to achieve justice and restore equity.
He said that there was no need to be intimidated to make a financial claim to complement any “in kind” settlement that may be offered, and added that the Europeans used an inhumane and brutal extractive economic model to control the Caribbean, as a zone of wealth creation to fund their development. He said that they presided over the brutal genocide, resulting in the death of millions of Africans, and created a system of slavery and colonialism. He explained that it was a system of wealth creation that involved the use of three million, unpaid and underpaid African workers for four hundred years.
Climate resilience
Speaking to climate resilience of the Community, Prime Minister Browne said that the request for finance to support mitigation, adaptation and resilience in small states, such as Antigua and Barbuda against the ravages of climate change, was not begging for…
