Grange pushes reparations agenda

Jamaica used Tuesday's observation of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination as a platform to call for reparations from Britain and an end to racial discrimination globally.

Culture Minister Olivia Grange, in a statement delivered by Laleta Davis, chair of the National Council on Reparation, said the country will be pushing for reparatory justice to repair the damages brought about by slavery.

"Today, Jamaica stands resolute that the unfair and unfortunate racial profiling and harassment of our ancestors must be treated with. They need to repair the damage occasioned by the enslavement and colonialism of our people. We affirm reparations now," the statement read.

Grange said Africans were among the most "brutally devalued [and] vilified on the basis of their race", through the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

She reasoned that the "horrible atrocity" of capturing, trafficking and transplanting persons into slavery on plantations in Jamaica, the Caribbean and the Americas, has been responsible for the entrenchment of racism and racial discrimination.

The minister said that despite global efforts over the years to rectify these issues, "countless human beings continue, to the present day, to be victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance".

"There is need for a more dynamic [proactive] and restorative agenda for the elimination of racial discrimination," she said.