Last Friday, a Commonwealth ally summit devolved into a heated discussion about the history of slavery and empire, prompting calls for Britain’s King Charles to repent about his nation’s colonial past.
At a meeting in Samoa, leaders from the 56-nation Commonwealth, which is primarily composed of former British colonies, sought to demonstrate the bloc’s continued relevance.
But history has overshadowed Charles III’s first summit as king rather than coming together to address urgent issues like climate change.
Many countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific want Britain and other European powers to at least make political atonement or provide monetary compensation for slavery.
They specifically want this summit to commit to a conversation about reparatory justice, an issue that Britain’s financially strapped government has attempted to stifle.
Philip Davis, the prime minister of the Bahamas, told AFP that it was essential to have a discussion about the past.
“The time has come to have a real dialogue about how we address these historical wrongs,” he said.
“Reparatory justice is not an easy conversation, but it’s an important one,” Davis added.
“The horrors of slavery left a deep, generational wound in our communities, and the fight for justice and reparatory justice is far from over”.
Apologies have also been demanded of the British royal family, who profited from the slave trade for decades.
However, the monarch’s request that summit participants “reject the language of division” on Friday fell far short of that.
“I understand, from listening to people across the Commonwealth, how the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate,” he said.
“None of us can change the past. But we can commit, with all our hearts to learning its lessons and to finding creative ways to right inequalities that endure.”
