The ambassador of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) to Barbados, David Commissiong, denied that the Caribbean island is going to present a demand of repair against the family of actor Benedict Cumberbatch for damages committed by their ancestors related to the slave trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
“Till the date neither CARICOM nor Barbados have officially submitted a claim for reparations against a European family,” said Commissiong, according to the newspaper Barbados Today.
In this sense, he specified that “clearly, the reason is that it is much easier to establish a claim for reparations against a legal entity such as a national government or a company what against a family“.
For this reason, the Caricom ambassador to Barbados recalled that in 2016 Caricom, and by extension Barbados, filed a claim for reparation against six Western European governments – including the Government of the United Kingdom – for the damages that Barbados and the other nations of the Community suffered.
These statements come after various international media claimed that Cumberbatch, known for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes and for being the protagonist of ’12 Years a Slave’, could have to take charge and repair the damages committed by their ancestors related to slavery.
According to British media reports, the Barbados government planned to sue the descendants of cotton and sugar plantation ownersamong which are the actor’s family, for the slave trade.
However, the Commissiong assured that the Barbados National Task Force on Reparations believes that the historical facts relating to the Drax family are clearer in supporting a claim for reparations than against the Cumberbatch family.
On November 30, Barbados celebrated the first anniversary of its change of status from a constitutional monarchy to a republic, thus disassociating himself from the British Crown completelysince the Caribbean island had been linked to it despite the fact that it ceased to be a British colony in 1966.
Source: Lasexta
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