Prince William and Kate Middleton, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, are touring three Caribbean nations this week—Belize, Jamaica, and the Bahamas—ostensibly to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee; but these three nations still maintain the Queen as head of state and the Monarchy wants to keep it that way, especially since Barbados has just had the audacity to dump the old hag and become a republic. Jamaica is rumored to be considering following Barbados’s lead. Aside from Barbados, Dominica, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago are also republics.
It has not been smooth sailing for the royal pair. In Belize, a visit to a cocoa farm had to be canceled when local villagers protested the visit, angry that they were told to let the royal couple use their football field as a landing spot for their helicopter and to cooperate and make the visit “look good.” Then, villagers from the indigenous Mayan village of Indian Creek also staged a protest, demanding that “Prince William leave our land.” It turns out that, since 2020, Prince Willy has been patron of Flora and Fauna International (FFI), a “conservation charity,” which has been in dispute with the local Q’eqehi Maya people over rights to 12,000 acres of land.
FFI claims that it buys up land to “protect the wildlife,” and supports protecting the rights of local indigenous people. Not mentioned is the fact that FFI was founded in 1903 as the “Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire,” one of Britain’s leading imperial institutions, of which the genocidal World Wildlife Fund and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature were spinoffs. So villagers carried signs reading “colonial policy of theft continues with Prince,” and “not your land, not your decision.”
Things didn’t go much better in Jamaica, where the couple arrived for a two-day visit today. Sputnik News reported that to welcome them, over 100 prominent Jamaicans signed an open letter saying “we will not participate in your Platinum Jubilee,” adding, “you, who may one day lead the British monarchy, are direct beneficiaries of the wealth accumulated by the Royal family over centuries, including that stemming from the trafficking and enslavement of Africans. You, therefore, have the unique opportunity to redefine the relationship between the British monarchy and the people of Jamaica. If you choose to do so, we urge you to start with an apology and recognition of the need for atonement and reparations.”
A human rights coalition, the Advocates Network, had already organized a demonstration in front of the British High Commissioner building before William and Kate arrived. Protesters carried signs saying, “Princes and princesses belong in fairytales…not in Jamaica,” and “apologize,” for slavery and human rights abuses. According to the Daily Mail, one of the organizers, Opal Adisa, charged that ‘Kate and William are beneficiaries, so they are, in fact, complicit because they are positioned to benefit specifically from our ancestors, and we’re not benefitting from our ancestors.…The fact that our government is spending money to help provide security and finance for the duke and duchess, who are wealthy, is outrageous, it’s criminal.”
https://sputniknews.com/20220322/prince-william-kate-middletons-jamaica-visit-may-be-marred-by-calls-for-atonement—reparations-1094079797.html
