Photo credit: The independent
A Jamaican delegation to the United Kingdom has said it will file a petition addressed to King Charles III to seek legal guidance on the question of slavery reparations.
Al Jazeera reports that this is the first time a British Commonwealth state will use this legal route “for the cause of reparatory justice”, the Jamaican delegation said, as the vist to London kicks off Monday.
Jamaica’s Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport said its minister, Olivia Grange, will lead the delegation “to advance Jamaica’s push for reparations for the African ancestors who suffered under hundreds of years of enslavement”.
The ministry added that it will meet the British Museum to discuss “the repatriation of cultural artefacts taken from Jamaica”.
The petition will ask the king, Jamaica’s head of state, to answer three questions on the transatlantic slave trade to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the Caribbean Island’s highest court of appeal based in London.
Under the Judicial Committee Act of 1833, the UK monarch has the authority to refer legal matters to the court for an advisory opinion.
The questions include: whether the enslavement of Africans in Jamaica was legal under English common law, whether it violated international law, and whether the UK has a legal obligation to provide a remedy for the harm caused by slavery.
The Palace acknowledged the king’s constitutional role in the petition as Jamaica’s head of state but said he had no role in deciding the substance of the claim.
The Jamaican government estimates that the country is owed about 10 billion pounds, but the UK has repeatedly refused to pay for historical slavery.
