16288: Karshan: UWI prof. calls for reparations, including for Haiti (Jamaica Daily Gleaner) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: MKarshan@aol.com

Jamaican DAILY GLEANER article on an address by Professor Verene Shepherd,
Chair of the History Committee of the Jamaica Reparations Movement (JaRM).
 _________________________________________________
>
> UWI professor renews appeal for reparations
> published: Saturday | August 2, 2003
>
> By Erica James-King, Staff Reporter
>
> WESTERN BUREAU:
>
> THE ISLAND'S academia is renewing calls for reparation to Jamaica and
> other countries in the African Diaspora and Africa for the wrongs
> meted out to blacks during slavery.
>
> This time around, Verene Shepherd, Professor of Social History at the
> University of the West Indies (UWI), is underscoring the need for
> Jamaicans to join the reparation movement.
>
> "I urge you to join the Jamaica reparations movement and add your
> voices to those who are calling for an act of reparation, because it
> is the right thing to do," declared Professor Shepherd while giving
> the keynote address at the annual 'Emancipation Lecture' at Calvary
> Baptist Church in Montego Bay, St. James, on Sunday night.
>
> Batting for citizens to become more proactive in advocating that the
> former colonial powers grant compensation and restitution for the
> socio-economic imbalances resulting from slavery, Professor Shepherd
> stressed that pressure should be brought to bear on Government to get
> it to take a bold stand in the reparation lobby effort.
>
> "Let us press our Government to come up with a national plan, so that
> we can present a unified front to those whose ancestors trespassed
> against us," Professor Shepherd insisted.
>
> MORE THAN CEREMONIAL OBSERVANCES
>
> The UWI official is cautioning citizens that responsibility to
> themselves requires more than ceremonial observances highlighting
> freedom from slavery, as "what we need from them (colonials) is a
> willingness to pay reparation not necessarily in cash... but in kind,
> if only as a mark of reconciliation."
>
> Turning to the matter of Haiti, the Professor said Jamaica should
> support its eastern neighbour in its bid to get restitution from
> France, its former colonial master.
>
> BACKING THE CALL FOR COMPENSATION
>
> Noting that when Haiti gained its freedom from France, it had to pay
> $90 million in gold francs to that country, which is equivalent to
> some US$21.7 billion dollars today, she said that Jamaica should back
> the call by Haitian President, Jean Bertrande Aristide, for France to
> return the money as a form of compensation for the atrocities of
> slavery.
>
> Meanwhile, Professor Shep-herd is appealing to Jamaica to reassess
> its attitudes towards Haiti and the people of that nation. Stating
> that this island should never forget that Haiti helped Jamaicans in
> the struggle for freedom, the senior lecturer recalled that
> by "harbouring those who reached her shores after 1791 and refusing
> to return any Jamaicans" to the slave system, Haiti aided Jamaica's
> resistance to oppression.
>