Following is the full text of a Statement by the Saint Lucia National Reparations Committee (NRC) on Nigel Farage’s threat to ban visas for citizens of nations demanding Reparations from Britain
The Saint Lucia National Reparations Committee (NRC) condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the declaration by UK politician Nigel Farage, that, should his UK Reform party win the next General Elections, it will refuse to grant entry visas to citizens from countries demanding Reparations from Britain and Europe for Slavery and Native Genocide.
Farage and his previous UK Independence Party (UKIP) having started Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU), has championed anti-immigration sentiments throughout his political career.
Now, he wants to impose entry bans on the descendants of People of Africa, The Caribbean and The Commonwealth, whose governments are justly demanding what’s owed to them.
But while Farage continues to stoke flames of racism and exclusion against immigrants, he would do well to remember that he and other members of the UK’s ruling political class nearly-all have deep family roots in Trans-Atlantic Slavery, now belatedly adjudged by the United Nations (UN) as the World’s Worst Crime Against Humanity.
In 2015, when then UK Prime Minister David Cameron visited Jamaica and said London was only prepared to fund construction of prisons to house Jamaicans to be deported from the UK, it was also disclosed that his family had owned over-500 enslaved Africans on the island.
It was also revealed that the £20 Million paid by Britain as Reparations to UK’s enslavers when Slavery was Abolished in 1834, was only finally paid in 2015 – including with taxes from UK citizens of African Descent.
Farage’s latest statement should both enrage and further encourage People of African Descent across The Caribbean and The Commonwealth, to deepen the quest by Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and press, even-harder, for payment Britain’s Black Debt, as Reparatory Justice, to its former West Indian colonies.
Reparations for Slavery and Native Genocide are long overdue, and time has long come for the UK and Europe to pay.