In his visit to Jamaica, Prime Minister David Cameron announced a 25 million pounds ($37.8 million dollars) project to build a massive prison on the island in order to transfer UK-based Jamaican nationals there, BBC reported Tuesday.
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“I believe this money could help to unleash trade across the region with new roads, new bridges, and new port infrastructure to help speed up freight movements”, he told the Jamaica Gleaner following bilateral talks with Jamaican PM Portia Simpson-Miller.
Cameron did not address the reparations issue when he responded to Simpson-Miller’s comment.
“On the issue of slavery, slavery is abhorrent, and as we remember the past we should also remember the extraordinary work that Britain did to wipe slavery off the face of our planet”, Cameron said in Jamaica following talks with Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.
He is due to address Jamaica’s Parliament.
Jamaican politicians from across the aisle referred to the issue of reparations in their speeches to Mr Cameron.
Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe are scheduled to visit Jamaica this week.
In a cutting letter to the PM, Beckles reminded Cameron of his family’s own involvement in Jamaican slavery.
Member of the National Commission on Reparations, Bert Samuels said: “His [Cameron’s] lineage has been traced and his forefathers were slave-owners and benefited from slavery…”
Britain has never accepted the case for any compensation payments.
“Not only would this be the right thing to do, it is perhaps his duty to speak out against the homophobia that Britain imposed on Jamaica in the nineteenth century, when it sent out “fire and brimstone” Christian missionaries who promoted anti-LGBT prejudice in the name of religion”.
The Prisoner Transfer Agreement was concluded after years of negotiations as Prime Minister David Cameron made the first visit by a UK Prime Minister to Jamaica in 14 years. “He wants to look at the future and how can the United Kingdom play a part now in stronger growing economies in the Caribbean”, the Guardian quoted the official as saying.
But critics complained his own ancestor, the MP Sir James Duff, won the equivalent of £3m compensation for losing his slaves in 1834 when the trade was banned.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he would be ready to apologise for the slave trade – but left open the question of paying money.
He added: ‘I don’t think reparations are the answer’.
Jamaica and the rest of the The British Caribbean has been calling on Downing Street to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves for a few time now. He received £106,769, which would be £80 million today.
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“We should be doing all we can to try and right the wrongs of the past – improve trade facilities and arrangements, improve support for Jamaica”.
