Historian and reparations advocate Dr. Claudius Fergus says that reparatory justice remains central to the unfinished project of Emancipation, arguing that the descendants of enslaved Africans continue to bear the consequences of crimes that enriched European nations.
Speaking at the Emancipation celebrations at the Queen’s Park Savannah on Saturday afternoon, he said the abolition of slavery was won through African resistance and that the struggle for justice must continue through reparations.
Dr. Fergus argued that reparations are not a matter of charity but of justice owed to victims and their descendants.
“We, the reparationists of the region, insist and demand, we do not beg, we demand that the criminal European governments that initiated, legislated, and militarily defended these crimes must pay reparations to the contemporary victims and their descendants who continue to suffer from these multiple harms of these crimes.”
He also called on the United Nations to take concrete action, suggesting the establishment of a special international tribunal if former colonial powers refuse to negotiate reparations with CARICOM.
Dr. Fergus also rejected the notion that freedom was willingly granted by Britain, contending that mass resistance and repeated uprisings by enslaved Africans forced abolition onto the political agenda.
“And when the news reached Britain, you know news was slow to travel in those days, in the early period of 1832 immediately, there was a great panic and a call for the immediate and unconditional Emancipation of Africans. So that a bill was brought to the parliament, passed in 1833 for slavery to be abolished in 1834.”