Kingstown, March 12 (RHC) -– Dozens of Caribbean states have agreed to launch a legal action against European countries involved in slave trade of the 17th and 18th centuries, Press TV news channel reported.
At a closed-door meeting in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines on Monday, fifteen heads of government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) approved a plan to seek reparations from former slave-owning states of Europe.
According to the 10-point plan, countries such as Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands are required to make a formal apology for a range of issues spawned by the Middle Passage, slavery, genocide, and racial apartheid.
The plan says that the victims of Europeans’ crimes against humanity and their descendants have a legal right to justice that could be in the form of a compensation program and debt cancellation.
“Over ten million Africans were stolen from their homes and forcefully transported to the Caribbean as the enslaved chattels and property of Europeans. The transatlantic slave trade is the largest forced migration in human history and has no parallel in terms of man’s inhumanity to man,” the plan adds.
The Caribbean Community also decided to organize an international conference on the issue and to invite the nations that profited from the slave trade to attend.
