The Danger Inherent In The Reparation Debate..

Slavery was abol­ished in Jamaica in 1834, since then our nation has strug­gled with pover­ty despite the indomitable spir­it of our peo­ple. This is due large­ly to forces from with­in even though our small nation is vul­ner­a­ble to out­side forces as all small depen­dent nation are.
Jamaica is blessed with almost ide­al con­di­tions for Agriculture .
The Natural beau­ty of Jamaica makes our Island a mag­net for vis­i­tors who can­not wait to soak up the warmth of the Jamaican sun, relax in the warm caribbean waters and enjoy our great food and music.
Additionally our peo­ple are known for their warmth and kind­ness par­tic­u­lar­ly to vis­i­tors to our shores.

 beautiful Jamaica.
beau­ti­ful Jamaica.

No one knows exact­ly how many African peo­ple died on the jour­ney from the west coast of Africa, through the mid­dle pas­sage to the west­ern world.
Some esti­mates vary from a few mil­lions to 100,000,000 people.
No one knows exact­ly how many died as a result of mal­treat­ment by slavers.
What we do know is that slav­ery was hor­ri­ble , oner­ous and a blythe on all humanity.
Africans are not the only peo­ple to have been enslaved through­out his­to­ry . Africans may have been the lat­est peo­ple to be sub­ject­ed to the degrad­ing, indig­ni­ty of slavery.

Today there are mount­ing demands by many in the Caricom com­mu­ni­ty as well as in Jamaica for those Britain to pay repa­ra­tions to the region for slavery.
Committees have been set up with­in Caricom and indeed in Jamaica to press for reparations.
It’s incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to argue with the legit­i­ma­cy of those claims.
After Slavery some plan­ta­tion own­ers were actu­al­ly com­pen­sat­ed for the loss of their human prop­er­ty. Despite this the con­ver­sa­tion sur­round­ing the need for Britain to pay repa­ra­tions to the Islands of the west Indies have not gained any traction.
The fact is that the Caribbean has no means of enforc­ing it’s demands for those repa­ra­tions. So the effort amounts to pre­cious lit­tle more than spit­ting in the sky.
We all know what hap­pens when we do that..

Recent com­ments by British Prime Minister David Cameron who offered to assist Jamaica in build­ing a new prison to the tune of (£25m)twenty five mil­lion pounds, did not inspire confidence.
Neither was the Jamaican Prime Minister able to move the ball dur­ing Cameron’s vis­it to the Island this week.
The pur­pose of the prison accord­ing to David Cameron is to end the stand­off between Jamaica and Britain on the sub­ject of the trans­fer of Jamaican pris­on­ers back to Jamaica.
The British prime Minister said it is “absolute­ly right” that for­eign crim­i­nals were prop­er­ly pun­ished but not at the expense of the “hard-work­ing British taxpayer”.
It’s not as if the argu­ments for repa­ra­tions are not jus­ti­fied and indeed legit­i­mate, how­ev­er in light of exist­ing con­di­tions the prag­mat­ic thing to do is make the point and move on.
Failing which we run the risk of cre­at­ing an entire gen­er­a­tion of Jamaicans who will spend their lives think­ing that some­how they will some­day be enriched by repa­ra­tions paid out to them by Britain for hun­dreds of years of slav­ery.
Legitimate though the demands are , we can do expo­nen­tial­ly more harm by dwelling on this than if we make our point and move on .

David Cameron was greeted by an honour guard and national anthems at the airport in Kingston
David Cameron was greet­ed by an hon­our guard and nation­al anthems at the air­port in Kingston

The first order of busi­ness is that England can­not afford it.
Secondly we have no means of enforc­ing our demands, so they will not con­sid­er it.
One per­son dis­cussing the issue refers to wait­ing for repa­ra­tions as “fool’s gold”.

I agree with that assess­ment it is a dis­trac­tion which allows local and region­al politi­cians to divert atten­tion from their acts of cor­rup­tion , tar­di­ness and incom­pe­tence. 
The British Prime Minister said the rea­son they are will­ing to help build the prison is to elim­i­nate cost of hous­ing Jamaican crim­i­nals at British tax­pay­ers expense.
That pol­i­cy deci­sion is dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to reparations.
Not only are they unwill­ing to pay repa­ra­tions they are unwill­ing to house crim­i­nals who com­mit crimes in their coun­try. They are quite pre­pared to dump Jamaican nation­als liv­ing in England back on the Island.

In light of those real­i­ties it is in Jamaica’s best inter­est and indeed the wider Caribbean to ensure that those elect­ed to lead do not con­tin­ue to steal and waste scarce pub­lic resources.
The com­mit­tees set up to exam­ine this dis­trac­tion would be bet­ter used toward ensur­ing that Politicians can­not con­tin­ue to steal tens of mil­lions of dol­lars while polit­i­cal oper­a­tives with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dis­tort the process until they are even­tu­al­ly set free on the rare occa­sion one is prosecuted.
The last thing Jamaica needs is anoth­er get rich quick diver­sion to enslave the minds of young peo­ple. Too many are already trapped in the men­tal prison of Lottery scams, Robbery and mur­der as a way of life.

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