Jamaica Petitions King Charles Over Slavery Reparations | RJR News

Jamaica has taken its campaign for reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade directly to Britain’s King Charles III.

The Government on Monday petitioned the King to refer a series of questions concerning the enslavement of Africans in Jamaica and Britain’s responsibility for damages, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

The Committee serves as the highest court for Jamaica and several other former British colonies.

The petition does not mean the King himself will decide whether the matter goes before the Judicial Committee.

King Charles is expected to act on the advice of the British Government.

Culture Minister Olivia Grange says Jamaica wants answers on the historical wrongs committed against Africans under British slavery.

She says, once those answers are obtained, Jamaica’s legal team will determine the next step.

The petition was filed to coincide with the anniversary of the departure of the slave ship Zong from West Africa in 1781.

The ship was carrying 442 enslaved Africans when its crew threw 132 men, women and children overboard after water supplies ran low off the coast of St. Elizabeth in Jamaica.

The incident became known as the Zong massacre and helped fuel the campaign that eventually led to the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807 and slavery in 1834.

Jamaica and the wider Caribbean Community have endorsed the petition.

While King Charles has expressed a personal commitment to addressing the historic wrongs of slavery, the British Government has so far rejected calls for an apology or reparations.

Britain has also argued that there was no international legal obligation to provide reparations for acts that were not considered violations of international law at the time they were committed.