Prime Minister of Barbados Says Her Country is Owed $4.9 Trillion in Slavery Reparations

Mia Mottley (left) with some old guy

No joke: I’d rather give the money to Barbados than Jews in the Ukraine and Israel.

It’s not an option to spend the money on our own people, so give it to Barbados. At least they’re probably friendly and good natured, and won’t use the money to murder innocent people.

The Guardian:

King Charles’s comment that the “time has come” to acknowledge the enduring impact of slavery has been welcomed by the prime minister of Barbados as she spoke in London about the need for reparations.

Mia Mottley said Barbados was owed $4.9tn (£3.9tn) by slave-owning nations, noting that conversations over how this debt should be repaid would “be difficult and will take time”, she said on Wednesday evening.

“We’re not expecting that the reparatory damages will be paid in a year, or two, or five because the extraction of wealth and the damages took place over centuries. But we are demanding that we be seen and that we are heard,” she said.

Mottley met David Cameron on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.

“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said.

During a speech at the London School of Economics’ International Inequalities Institute, she repeatedly commended King Charles’s apparent willingness to confront slavery. Her belief in the king’s openness to discussion stems from a speech he gave in June 2022 at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Rwanda.

The king spoke of his “personal sorrow at the suffering of so many”, and how he continues to “deepen [his] understanding of slavery’s enduring impact”. He added: “To forge a common future, that benefits all our citizens, we too must find new ways to acknowledge our past … This is a conversation whose time has come.” The speech made no reference to financial reparations.

Since becoming prime minister in 2018, Mottley has become a powerful voice globally on the legacy of colonialism and has helped transform the call for reparations into a mainstream political issue.

Citing calculations made in a report by the Brattle Group, which factors in the wealth and GDP amassed by countries that enslaved African people, she set out that the UK owes $24tn in reparations to 14 countries affected by transatlantic slavery, Spain owes $17.1tn, France owes $9.2tn and the Netherlands owes $4.86tn.

“These numbers, if taken out of context, can appear to be staggering. But in relation to the total wealth accumulated over a period of time, the numbers are actually minuscule,” said Mottley.

Addressing the historical legacy of slavery would allow the global community to “move on in strength rather than languishing in the shadows of a disgraceful history”, she said.

Mottley said the call for reparations had gained urgency in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

“For the first time the world recognised that we could no longer ignore the trauma of four centuries of enslavement and barbarism and of denying people their humanity,” she added. “I want to salute the king for having the courage to understand that this is a conversation whose time has come.”

Thomas Massie should introduce a bill to forward all money intended for Israel to Barbados.

Let’s just see how people react.

Let’s see if it’s really all about “social justice.”