Ralph Gonsalves says Kamla Persad-Bissessar gave him full support when he pushed to place reparatory justice for slavery and native genocide firmly on the CARICOM agenda in 2013.<\/p>\n
Gonsalves recalled travelling to Port of Spain with documents he had prepared on the issue and discussing the initiative with Persad-Bissessar while she chaired CARICOM.<\/p>\n
According to Gonsalves, Persad-Bissessar told him she supported the initiative \u201c100%\u201d. He said her backing mattered because, as CARICOM chair, she could have delayed the matter or kept it off the agenda, potentially creating disagreement among regional leaders.<\/p>\n
CARICOM records from July 2013 confirm that Heads of Government unanimously supported action on reparations and agreed to establish national reparations committees and a regional commission structure. Persad-Bissessar, then Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and CARICOM chair, described progress on the issue as a positive outcome. CARICOM +1<\/p>\n
Gonsalves said he worked closely with historian Professor Sir Hilary Beckles in preparing the issue for regional consideration, while stressing that support for reparations extended well beyond him personally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gonsalves says Kamla Persad-Bissessar strongly supported putting reparations on the CARICOM regional agenda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-trinidad-and-tobago"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}