The Guyana Reparations Committee (GRC) will be holding its first reparations outreach conference at Linden on May 3 and the event will be a part of the Reparations Village that complements the Linden Town Week, according to a press release.
The demand for reparations according to GRC comes after the African Holocaust or Maafa, as referred to by many. “This is a crime against humanity and is recognised as such by the United Nations (UN), scholars, and historians who have documented the primary and overwhelming culpability of European nations for enslavement in Europe, in the Americas and elsewhere,” the release said.
GRC went on to state that legal battles regarding reparations for the European enslavement of Africans are being waged throughout the United States of America, Jamaica, Brazil, South Africa, the Virgin Islands, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Martinique, Canada, Namibia and Barbados.
According to GRC, the UN declared the International Decade of People of African Decent to commence from 2015 which will afford yet another opportunity to expand the reparations movement for the longest unpunished crime against humanity – the European Enslavement of African People.
It was also stated that the Caribbean Community (Caricom) is currently making preparations to legally appropriate reparations for its territories from their former European colonizers. GRC said reparation affects everyone due to history of enslavement in the Caribbean.
GRC said in September 2013, 14 Caribbean nations filed a lawsuit against the governments of United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands for financial compensation for what the plaintiffs say is the “lingering legacy” of the Atlantic Slave trade.
GRC went on to say that in 1999, the African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission, which consists of representatives from several African nations, also called for Western Europe and the Americas, beneficiaries of slave trade and colonialism, to pay reparations.
GRC said it now follows the engaging debate and legal case over the issue of reparations.
