REPARATIONS MUST continue to be a focal point of international dialogue.
That is the view of Minister of Culture Stephen Lashley, who spoke to the issue at yesterday’s launch of the Season Of Emancipation which ends in late August.
He said the issue was critical to the work towards full emancipation and that the Government of Barbados had taken a leading role in that regard with the establishment of a task force.
Additionally, Lashley said reparations would have been Barbados’ agenda through the work at the United Nations.
“I would have been part of that work when I addressed the United Nations several years ago, and I spoke of Barbados’ seriousness in relation to reparations and what it meant for us.”
Noting that it was not just about money, the minister said varying views had been expressed in Barbados on the subject over the years. He added discussion would be part of the continuum to take Barbados and the region forward.
“We’ve seen in other areas of the world where issues of this kind have come to the fore, that once they are addressed and discussed and resolved, we have a better inter-reaction and relationship that evolved from that. I don’t believe that we need to be ashamed of this discussion and the discourse on reparation. I happen to believe that Barbados and the other countries of the Caribbean who would have emerged from slavery. . . . Within the context of our history we really enjoy new democracies.
“But many of the issues that we are faced with today are very much intertwined with what would have happened with the slavery experience. The transatlantic slave trade would have literally robbed the descendants of Africans of a vital lot and there is need to have discussion and resolve to move forward.”
Lashley said the Caribbean Heads of Government took the right decision in elevating the issue in terms of a regional task force, whose agenda is to have discussion and to seek to move the issue of reparations forward. (YB)
