Sobers assures T&T not leaving Commonwealth

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

The Gov­ern­ment has no in­ten­tion of with­draw­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go from the Com­mon­wealth de­spite Britain’s po­si­tion on repa­ra­tions for slav­ery, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers has said.

Sobers was re­spond­ing yes­ter­day to a sug­ges­tion by Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies lec­tur­er and his­to­ri­an Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh that Trinidad and To­ba­go con­sid­er leav­ing the Com­mon­wealth as a show of dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the British Gov­ern­ment’s re­fusal to sup­port fi­nan­cial repa­ra­tions for its role in the transat­lantic slave trade.

“I am quite cer­tain that Trinidad and To­ba­go has no in­ten­tion of pulling out of the Com­mon­wealth. The Com­mon­wealth is an ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly, just as we are part of Cari­com and part of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS). To pull out of the Com­mon­wealth, no, that’s not some­thing that we would con­sid­er at all,” Sobers said on the side­lines of the Trinidad and To­ba­go-Eu­ro­pean Union Part­ner­ship Di­a­logue at the Hilton Trinidad in St Ann’s.

Teelucks­ingh had al­so sug­gest­ed that Caribbean coun­tries con­sid­er with­draw­ing from the Com­mon­wealth, im­pos­ing visa re­stric­tions and ap­ply­ing eco­nom­ic pres­sure, in­clud­ing trade mea­sures, against coun­tries un­will­ing to pay repa­ra­tions.

How­ev­er, Sobers said Trinidad and To­ba­go would con­tin­ue to pur­sue di­a­logue and diplo­ma­cy.

“I think di­a­logue is al­ways the first ap­proach when deal­ing with sit­u­a­tions like that, and that is the ap­proach that Trinidad and To­ba­go will adopt. If there’s an is­sue that we need to rec­ti­fy, we will have a dis­cus­sion on it and try and see how best we can get it re­solved,” he said.

Sobers al­so ad­dressed con­cerns over the Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to re­con­sti­tute the Na­tion­al Repa­ra­tions Com­mit­tee more than a year af­ter it was dis­band­ed. He said the Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to re-es­tab­lish­ing the body but wants to en­sure the right peo­ple are ap­point­ed.

“The com­mit­ment still stands. And as I in­di­cat­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, we will do it in due course. We want to make sure that we get the right per­sons on the com­mit­tee, and we will have them ap­point­ed at the most ap­pro­pri­ate time,” he said.

The com­mit­tee’s re-es­tab­lish­ment has been ad­vo­cat­ed by the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee and his­to­ri­an Dr Claudius Fer­gus, among oth­ers.

Sobers re­turned from An­tigua and Bar­bu­da on Thurs­day night af­ter rep­re­sent­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM), where repa­ra­tions fea­tured promi­nent­ly on the agen­da in the pres­ence of King Charles III.

The is­sue gained re­newed at­ten­tion fol­low­ing the Unit­ed King­dom’s in­di­ca­tion that it was will­ing to dis­cuss an apol­o­gy for its role in the transat­lantic slave trade, while stop­ping short of sup­port­ing fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion.

Sobers de­scribed Britain’s po­si­tion as an im­por­tant de­vel­op­ment.

“It was a first clear step by the UK in com­ing out to in­di­cate some­thing on this top­ic of repa­ra­tions, which I think all coun­tries who par­tic­i­pat­ed in dis­cus­sions with the UK felt very hap­py about. And Trinidad and To­ba­go felt the same way as well,” he said.

How­ev­er, the ques­tion of how Caribbean coun­tries should pur­sue repara­to­ry jus­tice, par­tic­u­lar­ly fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion, re­mains a sub­ject of de­bate across the re­gion.

Mean­while, Sobers said Trinidad and To­ba­go is con­tin­u­ing ef­forts to have the Unit­ed King­dom re­con­sid­er visa re­stric­tions im­posed on its na­tion­als near­ly two years ago.

He con­firmed that dis­cus­sions had tak­en place with se­nior British of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing the UK For­eign Sec­re­tary and Prime Min­is­ter, but de­clined to pro­vide de­tails be­cause of the on­go­ing na­ture of the talks.

“The mat­ter is an on­go­ing one. I wouldn’t want to com­ment on where we are at right now, but there have been things that we have been ap­proached to do, and we are in the process of get­ting them done,” he said.

The UK in­tro­duced a visa re­quire­ment for Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als on March 13, 2025, end­ing their pre­vi­ous ac­cess to the Elec­tron­ic Trav­el Au­tho­ri­sa­tion (ETA) sys­tem.

British au­thor­i­ties said the mea­sure was nec­es­sary to ad­dress abuse of the ETA pro­gramme and pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of the coun­try’s im­mi­gra­tion sys­tem.