(Trinidad Guardian) Minister of Foreign and Caricom Affairs Dr Amery Browne has called for the removal of what he called “imperial arrogance” from discussion on repatriations.
Browne made the comment while speaking to Commonwealth leaders yesterday in Apia, Samoa, at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).
He was accompanied by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and UK High Commissioner Vishnu Dhanpaul.
A media release from the Ministry of Foreign and Caricom Affairs said Browne responded to comments from UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who had indicated that the issue of reparations and an official apology should not be on CHOGM’s agenda.
“There should be no place for anything resembling imperial arrogance at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting,” Browne told those gathered at the Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Commonwealth.
He reminded the delegates that this “is our Commonwealth.”
Browne’s address also focused on the ongoing negative impacts of chattel slavery, colonialism and genocide committed against native peoples, and the role of regional and multilateral organisations for acknowledgement, apology and meaningful justice to be realised.
The call for repatriations has been growing in recent years.
During a tour of eight Caribbean countries in 2022, the Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, stopped short of apologising for slavery, calling it “abhorrent.”
Following that tour, Rowley said it was time for the UK to pay, financially, for its wrongs.
“Tonight, I want to say to Prince William, having said that, I believe you. But I believe you more if you do what you must now do, which is the offer of reparation to the people who were wronged,” Rowley said as he addressed a PNM celebration in commemoration of Spiritual Baptist Shouter Liberation Day in March that year.
Last year Cabinet appointed the National Committee on Reparations to pursue reparations for Native genocide and African enslavement from all European colonisers.
The committee’s plan for retribution includes receiving a formal apology, debt cancellation, as well as the elimination of public monuments and signage that celebrate those who, it said, benefited from colonial crimes.
