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A global perspective on today’s historic debate in the US congress on slavery and reparations has just been given by Sir Hilary Beckles, who is the chairman of the reparations commission for Caricom, the union of Caribbean countries.

Speaking at a post-congressional event organised by the ACLU at the Metropolitan AME church in Washington, Beckles said that the reparations movement was starting to bear fruit around the world. Commissions like his own in Caricom have formed and opened negotiations in Columbia, Costa Rica and Venezuela as well as the European Union and several West African countries from where slaves originally came.

Beckles said that reparations was about making amends for nothing less than genocide. In his native Barbados, 600,000 slaves were imported to work in the sugar plantations but at the point of emancipation only 84,000 people of African descent remained. “What else can you call that other than genocide?”

The historian said that the 21st century would be the century of reparations. “It took us 300 years to fight to end slavery. It took us a further 100 years to get civil rights written into law. It may take us all of the 21st century to do this, but we will not stop because slavery is not done until reparations are paid.”