A charity dedicated to tackling racism has expressed “deep disappointment” in comments made by a UK Government minister on reparations over the island’s legacy of enslavement.

Citizens Uprooting Racism in Bermuda also called for discussions on the subject to “move beyond sorrow”.

It cited the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting as a forum where the UK can open a “serious, good-faith conversation” with the Caribbean and the Overseas Territories, including Bermuda, on a framework for reparatory justice.

During a visit to the island this week, Uma Kumaran, British Minister of State, rejected the idea of reparatory justice after it was put to her by The Royal Gazette in the wake of her participation in signing the historic Hamilton II Declaration at Government House.

Curb stated: “Britain says it sees Bermuda as a partner. Partners do not tell each other that the past is closed when its debts were only settled in 2015, and when even the Church of England has accepted that those debts are not yet paid.”

Although Ms Kumaran said Britain was aware of the “painful history” of slavery, the charity said awareness did not amount to justice.

“Acknowledgement without repair is simply a more polished form of refusal,” Curb said, adding that Ms Kumaran’s comment was nothing new.

It said successive UK prime ministers have stated their positions on the issue but noted that the Royal Family made contradictory remarks on the issue.

Curb highlighted that in Barbados in 2021, the then Prince of Wales called slavery an appalling atrocity that for ever stains Britain’s history.

It said in Kingston, Jamaica in 2022, Prince William also expressed his profound sorrow on the subject when he said: “Slavery was abhorrent, and it should never have happened.”

Curb said it welcomed such words but noted: “If something is abhorrent, should never have happened and for ever stains a nation’s history, then that nation owes more than sorrow.”

The charity said Bermuda was part of a system in which “millions of Africans were seized, shipped in chains and worked to death in the Americas”.

It added: “Families were sold apart. Men, women and children were branded, flogged and treated in law as property.

“Britain was not a bystander. It was a leading slave-trading nation, and its ports, banks, insurers and industries grew rich on the trade and on slave-grown sugar and cotton.”

The charity said under the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, Britain paid £20 million, about 40 per cent of its national budget, to compensate slave owners for the loss of their “property”.

Slave owners in Bermuda were among those paid, while the enslaved “received nothing”.

“Instead, they had to keep working almost for nothing for years to come. Essentially, they paid for their own freedom.”

Curb noted a recent ceremony at Warwick where the free and enslaved Black Bermudians buried at a site opposite St Mary the Virgin Church were honoured.

At the event, the Right Reverend Nicholas Dill, Anglican Bishop of Bermuda he said the legacy of slavery did not end in 1834.

Curb said it continued through segregation and “still shows itself today in inequality, multigenerational trauma, prejudice, imbalance and bias”.

The charity said reparatory justice was not a demand for a cheque, adding that Caricom’s Reparations Commission’s Ten-Point Plan called for a full formal apology, debt relief, investment in public health and education, cultural restitution and technology transfer to address slavery’s lasting damage.

“Whatever form repair takes, it must be acceptable to the descendants of the enslaved, decided with them through genuine dialogue, not imposed or dismissed from London.”