Sir Hilary calls for reparations for hurricane ravaged islands

Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, on Saturday made a case for reparations for Caribbean islands that were devastated by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in September.

Hurricane Irma was the first category five storm to hit this region, causing widespread damage on the islands of Anguilla, Barbuda, Cuba, the British and US Virgin Islands and St Maarten. Hurricane Maria struck two weeks later, decimating Dominica and Puerto Rico.

Addressing the Vice Chancellor’s forum dubbed Irma and Maria: Relief, Reconstruction and Reparations, Sir Hilary argued that European economies were built by wealth created in Caribbean colonies, but whatever relief will be provided to the affected countries “is going to be a fraction of what was extracted from this region over 300-400 years”.

He supported calls by Sir Richard Branson for a Marshall plan for the Caribbean, based on the United States programme to assist in the reconstruction of the economies of European countries following World War II. However, he noted that similar calls have been made for such a development concept to be applied to the region over the past eight decades.

“So in the last 80 years, Caribbean peoples have been calling on the British state to develop a Marshall plan for this region that they are entitled to. In the 40s and in the 50s, the 20 years before independence, the labour movements, the anti-colonial movements were talking about these islands deserving a development plan, that they cannot go into their independence without a development strategy, funded by those who had extracted the wealth from this region in the first place,” Sir Hilary said.

He told the audience of academics, students and disaster management officials at the Usain Bolt Sports Complex that the Caribbean cannot imagine its future without a grasp of history, and that these are conversations that citizens need to have as they seek to rebuild from the disasters.

“We are in the midst of a historical construction; we are in the midst of our historical journey. It’s a moment in time, there’s a lot of history that we have to speak about and we need to understand that this is not a God-given situation. This is a historically made situation that can be unmade by those who have made it.”

Sir Hilary was particularly critical of the European leaders who visited the region in the wake of the disasters.

“We saw a French president flying into the Caribbean for a photo op. We saw a British foreign minister flying into the Caribbean for a photo op. And we saw an American president flying into the Caribbean for photo ops . . .