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Jamaica is preparing to ask Queen Elizabeth to compensate all of its citizens for reparations for slavery.
The Caribbean nation’s government is to ask Her Majesty for billions of pounds in compensation, but critics say British taxpayers have already paid to free slaves.
Merchants made their fortunes as slave traders in Jamaica after it became a British colony in 1707.
Many Jamaicans are the descendants of slaves who suffered under the oppressive regime.
The country gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1962 but retained the Queen as head of state.
And now Jamaica wants compensation as the country’s Minister of Culture announced the move to its House of Representatives.
Olivia ‘Babsy’ Grange said: “We are particularly pleased to report that we have taken further steps in our progress in the search for restorative justice for the victims and descendants of the transatlantic slave trade.
“The petition must be presented to the Queen of the United Kingdom and / or the Government of the United Kingdom.”
She said the Jamaica National Council for Reparation fully supported the petition and ministers agreed that: “The attorney general’s office should weigh the merits of the petition in the event that the Jamaican government becomes involved in the petition. petition and that it would be the responsibility of the Attorney General’s office to file the petition on behalf of the Jamaican people. “
David Cameron was called upon to pay billions of pounds in slavery reparations during his visit to the former settlement in 2015. That year, taxpayers finally paid off the debt of slave owners when the practice was abolished in 1833.
Thomas Mace-Archer-Mills, historian and founder of the British Monarchists Society, said: “Britain has already paid its share and more – the price of freedom for Jamaican slaves.
“There must come a day when individuals, peoples and nations today must take responsibility for themselves, their own actions and situations, and stop blaming the centuries-old dead and the stories. less tasty from the past. “
He added: “Britain, through the acts of slavery in the 1800s, actually got into debt by buying the freedom of slaves throughout the empire.
“Back then, the British government paid £ 20 million, the equivalent of around £ 17 billion today – to compensate slave owners for lost capital associated with the liberation of slaves.
“This payment represented 40% of the government budget and required many obligations on slave owners to enforce the law.”
More than 20,000 people signed an online petition calling on the UK government to compensate “all descendants of the Caribbean and Africa” last December.
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