Guyana Reparations Committee Chairman Dr Eric Phillips yesterday sought to make a case for 15,000 square miles of Guyana’s lands to be given to the descendants of enslaved Africans as reparations.
The basis of Phillips’ argument during his appearance before the ancestral lands commission of inquiry was that the enslaved Africans had toiled to make Guyana an economically-viable state and, making reference to the Amerindians’ receipt of 13.8% of land through the Amerindian Act of 2006, he asserted that that legislation formed a precedent for the payment of reparations.
“During enslavement for over 200 years, the tortured, murdered, raped, brutalised Africans built Guyana. No other group and I repeat, no other group—Amerindians, Indians, Portugese, or Chinese—did 1/1000th of what Africans have done; probably [not] one millionth of what they’ve done because we died, 473, 000, and they didn’t,” Phillips stated.