The Saint Lucia National Reparations Committee (NRC) is pleased with the Rastafari community’s two protests to welcome the Royal Couple on the first day of their official visit to the island.
Despite no public announcement of the programme for the official Royal Saint Lucia Visit (Wednesday and Thursday April 27 and 28), the Nyabinghi House organized a protest Wednesday morning at the entrance to the Fond Doux Plantation Estate in Soufriere, where the Royal Couple had breakfast.
The NRC also hails the second Rasta-led protest held later that day at the entrance to Government House, Official Residence of the Governor General, where another unannounced Royal engagement also took place.
The second protest was led by the Iyanola Council of Advancement of Rastafari (ICAR), the island’s national body.
The NRC is very pleased too, that interactions between the placard-bearing and chanting protesters and the officers of the Royal St. Lucia Police Force (RSLPF) were cordial, mutually respectful and incident-free.
The NRC decided it would concentrate on related mass public education activities during and after the Royal Visit, but its individual member-entities were free to decide how to respond to the presence of the Royal Couple celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee on the island.
The ICAR is a founding-member of the NRC, on which the Caribbean Rastafari Organization (CRO) is also represented, both since the committee’s formation in 2013.
Meanwhile, the NRC also welcomes the CRO as a new Associate Member of the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC), following a decision by the CARICOM Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Reparations (PMSC) to invite representatives of Rastafari, Indigenous Peoples and Youth to join the national committees and be represented on the CRC.