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Reform UK, a right-wing political party in the United Kingdom (UK), has threatened to impose visa restrictions on countries that are demanding repatriations from the UK for its role in the transatlantic slave trade.
Zia Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesperson, who spoke with the Daily Telegraph, described the call for reparations as “insulting”.
According to Yusuf, the UK has issued over three million visas to citizens of the countries who are demanding compensation for the transatlantic slave trade. He added that the UK has made “huge sacrifices to be the first major power to outlaw slavery and enforce this prohibition”, and the countries that are demanding these repatriations are ignoring the UK’s sacrifices.
Yusuf named Nigeria, Ghana, and Jamaica as countries demanding reforms and threatened to respond by “immediately halting the issuance of new visas to their nationals” if the party wins future elections.
“The United Kingdom is not an ATM for ethnic grievances of the past, and we will no longer tolerate being ridiculed on the world stage. While countries like Jamaica, Nigeria and Ghana ramp up their demands for reparations, the Westminster establishment has rewarded them. Enough is enough,” said Yusuf.
The transatlantic slave trade is considered a gut-wrenching part of African history. Over 10 million Africans were forcefully transported across the Atlantic Ocean by seven European countries, including the UK, to work on plantations and factories.
According to historians, the transatlantic slave trade was an era of grave human rights abuses where the slaves suffered racism and endured torture and abuse from white slave owners.
Many historians have also linked the slave trade to the impoverishment and underdevelopment of many African countries whose citizens were victims of the slave trade. According to them, the wealth and resources acquired from the enslavement of Africans were used to develop and industrialise European countries at the expense of many African countries.
Ghana’s president, John Dramani Mahama, proposed and championed a landmark resolution at the United Nations to name the transatlantic slave trade as the gravest crime in human history.
A total of 123 countries voted in support of the resolution, while 3 countries, including the United States and Israel, voted against, and the UK and 51 other countries abstained from the vote.
