by Chris Black
Europe’s history of slave-trading constituted a “crime against humanity” and inflicted “untold suffering” on millions, EU leaders announced on Tuesday in a statement that also referenced a 10-point reparations plan.
The reparations plan mentioned in the summit statement was drafted by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in 2014 and demands that European governments apologize formally and issue financial, sociocultural, and even psychological reparations. “Persistent racial victimization of the descendants of slavery and genocide” is “the root cause of their suffering today,” it explains, calling this “the primary cause of development failure in the Caribbean.”
In addition to canceling the debts of the descendants of victims of slavery on an individual and national level, that declaration calls on EU member governments to finance an “indigenous peoples development program,” cultural and public health institutions for their former colonial properties, literacy programs, and the modernization of Caribbean industries.
The plan stresses the need to reinforce ties with the African communities from which slaves were “stolen” for labor on Caribbean plantations, even calling for repatriation of any descendants of slaves who wish to return to Africa.
