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Montevideo, November 21st 2024 - 17:40 UTC

 

 

Trouble ahead at Samoa Commonwealth summit; Caribbean nations demanding £200bn billion from UK for slave trade

Monday, October 14th 2024 - 08:25 UTC
Full article 5 comments

Trouble ahead for King Charles and PM Keir Starmer when they attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Samoa on October 21st. A group of fifteen Caribbean governments have unanimously decided to demand an incredible £200 billion from the UK in compensation for its role in the slave trade, according to reports in the British media. Read full article

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  • Pugol-H

    3.7 trillion, is that all, pffff.

    Except no one alive today is responsible for what happened 200 years ago.

    The money countries have today is from people today not 200 years ago.

    This is little more than a scam.

    Having said that, money for ‘holistic repair’ should be paid to communities to try and correct in today imbalance which still exist from that time, which we do have a responsibility to fix.

    But not ‘reparations’ for countries which simply can’t balance their books and seek to blame their current self-inflicted woes on a colonial period which ended over 60 years ago.

    Like the song says, ‘Money for nothing and a King for free’.

    Oct 14th, 2024 - 03:47 pm - Link - Report abuse 0
  • Livepeanuts

    Black kings and Moslems fought the British to keep slave trading. Today the black Africans still make slaves, slavery is legal for the Moslems TODAY!
    Many of the reparation advocates descend from slave traders and slave makers.
    Jamaica had black slave owners! First slave owner in USA was himself black!
    If the lucky people of the Caribbean want money they should think of working for it. Like Hong Kong and Singapore! Lying around doing nothing and trying to invent a way of getting the money for nothing of other people is “con”!
    Is Africa going to pay reparations for the white slaves which Africans took from Northern Europe? More white slaves were taken than all the black ones which were taken to the North of America (Dr. Thomas Sowell)

    Oct 14th, 2024 - 05:33 pm - Link - Report abuse +1
  • Islander1

    Well, Britain could equally say she is owed by these nations £200billion for all the ships and men the Royal Navy lost in battles, tropical diseases-some of which took out entire crews during the Decades in the 1800s when Britain was alone in the World in fighting to stop slavery and transportation across the Atlantic .

    Yes today at least 10 nations openly practise slavery - and about half of them are black African ones .
    Are the descendants of the King of the main area of Nigeria who made a fortune out of selling people his men rounded up from the other tribes in western nigeria and nearby and selling them to the slave ships?

    It was indeed a terrible thing, but it was a different world with different standards and beliefs 200-300 years ago.

    Oh and in the early days Britain was not alone- most of the European nations of the day were also involved in that despicable trade - don,t see any criticism on them yet- and many of them tried to carry on and fought the Royal Navy anti slavery ships!

    Oct 15th, 2024 - 12:55 am - Link - Report abuse +1
  • Pugol-H

    Livepeanuts
    Slaves taken from west Africa were all bought by Europeans on the coast, from African tribes. Trading posts being located on Islands or peninsulas, with salt water around them as a defence against mosquitos, Europeans did not survive inland.

    During the Atlantic Slave Trade, an estimated 12.5 million slaves were transported to the Americas, an estimated 10.7 million arrived, they kept comprehensive and accurate figures of their losses. The biggest recipient being Brazil.

    Britain is estimated to be responsible for approx. 3.1 million being shipped and 2.7 million arrived.

    The Atlantic Slave Trade was likely the costliest in human life of all long-distance global migrations.

    Islander1
    That was the Fulani Sultanate of Sokotu, which took over from the Hausa Bakwai Kaliphates.

    At the time of the Emancipation Proclamation in the US, the country with the largest slave population in the world was in the US, some 6 million people.

    The country with the second largest slave population in the world was the Sultanate of Sokotu, with some 2 million slaves.

    Whilst I reject any idea of ‘reparations’ for somethings we are not responsible for like slavery, I strongly support money for the ‘holistic repair’ of communities in today, the effects of slavery are still with us and that is our responsibility to fix.

    A friend of mine put it, ‘for 300 years we were bred like farm animals to work in the fields, kept in squalor and ignorance, our languages and culture whitewashed out of us and taught just enough European to understand what we were supposed to do’.

    ‘Then just because someone waves a piece of paper in your face, which you can’t read, tells you your free, a word with no meaning to you, that doesn’t mean that the next year we were all living in the Burbs with our kids going to college’.

    Oct 15th, 2024 - 03:25 pm - Link - Report abuse +1
  • Don Alberto

    £3.7 trillion?
    A one-way ticket home to Africa is indicated.

    Oct 17th, 2024 - 08:21 am - Link - Report abuse 0

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