KINGSTON, Jamaica. The CARICOM Reparations Commission has branded next month’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua and Barbuda the reparations CHOGM, insisting the issue must take top priority as King Charles III begins a Caribbean visit that will also take him to Guyana and The Bahamas.
Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, chair of the commission, told a press conference last week that the region and its governments are mobilised and there is no other way to describe the summit. CHOGM runs from November 1 to 4 in St John’s, and the King, as head of the Commonwealth, will address the opening ceremony on November 3, accompanied by Queen Camilla.
Buckingham Palace has said the King will not shy away from what he has called the darkest days of Britain’s past. Commonwealth Secretary General Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey said last week that a formal apology from the King “wouldn’t hurt”.
Dorbrene O’Marde, chairman of the Antigua and Barbuda Reparations Support Commission, said no specific reparations activities are scheduled within CHOGM itself, but he hopes side events will take up the issue. Correspondence has been sent to the King asking him to address the slave trade, he said, arguing that apologies by the Church of England and Church of Scotland should be matched by the British government and the monarch.
— LRTVS News Desk
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