Will King Charles III acknowledge atrocities of slavery at coronation? Former colonies seek it

As Britain prepares to officially crown its first monarch over 70 years in a lavish ceremony Saturday, some citizens in its former and current territories are calling on King Charles III to publicly acknowledge the United Kingdom’s role in the atrocities against enslaved Africans and its oppression of indigenous people.

The push for what has been called reparative justice, including an apology for slavery, comes as several British descendants of slaveowners, including a cousin of the monarch, also call on the U.K. to atone over its involvement in the slave trade and as yet another former colony, Belize, signals its intentions to sever ties with the royal family.

In 2021 Barbados dropped Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state, and shortly after Jamaica Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced plans to cut ties and become a republic. In March, Holness, who won’t be attending Saturday’s coronation at Westminster Abbey, unveiled a 14-member Constitutional Reform Committee that will be guiding the Caribbean nation through its transition.

Marlene Malahoo Forte, the minister of Legal and Constitutional Affairs who is co-chair of the committee, said on radio this week that the move from a constitutional monarchy to a republic is to “make sure that whoever ultimately exercises the highest authority in Jamaica is a Jamaican person, loyal to no other country but Jamaica.”

Now as Charles prepares to preside — even if only in ceremonial fashion — over a small number of realms than his late mother did, he is facing increased calls to repair relations and acknowledge the past.

“There is no honor in this crown. It is tainted with the blood of indigenous nations on which he now sits upon,” Rawiri Waititi, co-leader of the Te Pāti Māori (Māori Party) in New Zealand said. “The harm caused by the crown is now inter-generational and irreparable.”

Waititi, speaking at a press conference by Zoom on Thursday, is among several activists representing a dozen countries where the British monarch is head of state. They came together ahead of Saturday’s coronation to express their dismay over Britain’s refusal to apologize for slavery and compensate its former colonies.

Britain abolished slavery in 1833, freeing more than 800,000 enslaved Africans in its colonies in Africa and the Caribbean. But under the Slavery Compensation Act of 1837, the formerly enslaved themselves received nothing. Former slave owners, however, were compensated for their loss of human property.

The advocates on Thursday’s call, hailed from Antigua and Barbuda, New Zealand, Australia, The Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

They have begun a Change.org petition demanding that King Charles III “formally apologize for acts of genocide and colonization by the royal family.” By late Friday afternoon, the petition had already amassed more than 2,000 of the 2,500 signatures it seeks. The petition also asks for the return of cultural treasure and artifacts that were stolen and are currently housed in European museums and institutions.

Terry Teegee of Canada, who was on the call, said the coronation presents a historical opportunity for King Charles to reset the relationships with the indigenous people within the commonwealth and acknowledge “this long terrible history of genocide, genocide that we’ve all experienced within many of our respective countries.”

Teegee said he and others want to compel “the king to state that he wants to be on the right side of history; to repatriate our ancient artifacts, to repatriate our people, to denounce the old doctrines and … perhaps repatriations to our indigenous people in our respective countries.”

Niambi Hall Campbell-Dean, chair of the Bahamas National Reparations Committee, said the horrors began with the transAtlantic slave trade and continued with the underdevelopment of colonization.

“And although we will celebrate our 50th year of independence in July, the vestiges of this history continue to display its dire consequences,” she said.

Invoking the words of the late Bahamian musician and playwright Tony “Exuma” McKay, she said: “We demand that King Charles, now, ‘pay me for my blood in the water; pay me for my son and my daughter; pay me for my brothers and sisters; pay me for all of my dead; pay me for the blood that you shed; pay me what you owe me. I come to collect everything that you owe me.’ Reparations now.”

Rosalea Hamilton, who is co-chair of the Jamaica-based Advocates Network and helped organized the conference, said that the group’s work, which focuses on governance and human rights, is steeped in the institutional legacies of slavery and colonization.

“We grapple today with gender-base violence and child abuse. Legacies of decades of inhumane treatment, of our people. We inherited an unequal education system... poverty, landlessness, 20% of our population living in squatting communities. We still struggle today with rights to our beach because of colonial laws.

“A number of issues are coming to a head as we move toward a republic,” added Hamilton, a huge advocate for cutting ties with the monarch and one of the organizers of the press conference.

Hamilton noted that the people of the Caribbean, as well as those in indigenous communities across the globe, have a shared experience of exploitation and crimes against humanity.

Last month, British Labour Party politicians Clive Lewis and Dawn Butler called on the U.K. to enter “meaningful negotiations” with the realm’s former Caribbean colonies and pay reparations to mitigate the impact of slavery.

However, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has dismissed the calls for an apology. He addressed the issue last week after he was challenged by Labour Party lawmaker Bell Ribeiro-Addy. Ribeiro-Addy, whose parents are from Ghana, said that it had been 23 years since the late British politician Bernie Grant asked for an apology over slavery. Since then, she said, former prime ministers and heads of state had “only ever expressed sorrow or deep regret.”

“There has been no acknowledgment of the wealth that has been amassed or the fact that our country took out the largest loan it ever has, to pay off the slave owners, and not the enslaved,” Ribeiro-Addy said.

Sunak, whose parents are from India, another former British colony, responded that “trying to unpick our history is not the right way forward.”

Following Sunak’s declaration, Belize Prime Minister Johnny Briceño announced that his Central American nation, which is part of the 15-member Caribbean Community bloc known as CARICOM, will “quite likely” cut ties to the United Kingdom and become a republic. Briceño has a constitutional commission which is providing feedback on a number of reforms, including becoming a republic.

In an interview with The Guardian, Briceño said the British government has a moral responsibility to apologize for slavery and that Sunak has “should have a better appreciation” for the need to do so given his ancestry.

“When you read and hear about the plundering that took place in the land of his ancestors,” Briceño said, “I do believe that he should have offered an apology.”