Jamaica petitions King Charles III to refer slavery reparations questions to Privy Council Jamaica filed a formal petition asking King Charles III to refer questions about Britain's responsibility for the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The move, endorsed by the Caribbean Community, seeks to turn the reparations campaign into a legal battle. Jamaica formally petitioned King Charles III on Monday, Sept. 7, 2026, asking that questions about British responsibility for the trans-Atlantic slave trade be referred to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Culture Minister Olivia Grange has said the move is designed to expand the Caribbean reparations campaign from the political arena into the legal realm. Olivia Grange, Jamaica's minister of culture, gender, entertainment and sport, attended a church service in south London on Sunday, Sept. 6, 2026, the first in a series of events planned around the filing. Before the service, Grange told The Associated Press: 'In relation to the wrongs that were done, we want answers.' She added: 'Once we get those answers, then our attorneys, our lawyers, will determine what the next move is. ' Although the petition is formally addressed to Charles, the king has no personal say in whether it will be heard. He acts on the advice of the British government. Buckingham Palace said Monday that it had been working with Jamaica's governor-general, the king's representative on the island, to ensure the petition was properly lodged.King Charles has not endorsed reparations, but he has repeatedly expressed a personal commitment to addressing the historic wrongs of slavery. In a 2024 speech to leaders of the Commonwealth, the voluntary association of countries that succeeded the British Empire, Charles said: 'The most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate.' He added: '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. ' The British government has rejected demands for an apology or reparations while describing slavery as 'abhorrent. ' It abstained when the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution in March endorsing reparations as a 'concrete step' toward addressing the wrongs of slavery.Britain's U.N. representative, James Kariuki, said the U.K. sees no duty to compensate for historical acts that were lawful at the time. That position rests on the principle that the law governing an event is the law of the era when it happened. James Kariuki told the United Nations: 'There is equally no duty to provide reparation for historical acts that were not, at the time those acts were committed, violations of international law.' The filing was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the day in 1781 when the Liverpool-registered ship Zong set sail from West Africa with 442 enslaved Africans on board. When water supplies ran low on the way to Jamaica, the crew threw 132 men, women and children overboard. They calculated that an insurance claim for the lost 'property' would be more profitable than selling weakened and dehydrated captives at a reduced price.Publicity about the Zong massacre helped fuel the campaign to end slavery in the British Empire. Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, but the enslavement of human beings was not outlawed until Aug. 1, 1834. Jamaica is a leader in the campaign to get Britain and other European nations to apologize and pay reparations, both for the enslavement of individuals and for the continuing impact on their descendants.Jamaica says the Caribbean Community, which includes 23 states from the Bahamas to Guyana, endorsed the petition. Prime Minister Andrew Holness has announced plans to sever ties with the British crown and make Jamaica a republic. The petition asks three main questions.First, was the forced transport and enslavement of African people to Jamaica illegal because it was contrary to English common law? Second, were the forced transport and enslavement of African people crimes against humanity for which the United Kingdom bears responsibility?Third, does the United Kingdom have an obligation to 'provide a remedy' to the people of Jamaica for the forced transport and enslavement of their ancestors? The legal route has old imperial roots. The right to petition the crown about the administration of justice goes back to the Norman conquest of England in 1066, when the king was regarded as the 'fountain of justice throughout his Dominions,' according to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.Jamaica's petition is based on an 1833 law that made the committee the highest court for civil and criminal appeals in the British Empire. After World War II, when the Empire became the Commonwealth of independent nations, the committee retained that role for countries that maintain their legal ties to the United Kingdom.Craig Prescott, an expert on constitutional law and the monarchy at Royal Holloway, University of London, called the move 'quite clever' because it uses an obscure constitutional procedure to address a major issue in Jamaican society. He expects the petition to be referred to the Judicial Committee, where a panel of U.K. Supreme Court justices will review it. Prescott said the justices are usually very cautious about granting such petitions because they sidestep standard legal procedures.Prescott said: 'I think, at the very least, the board will look at this with a skeptical eye, not because of questions of whether slavery is wrong or right or otherwise, but just this is a very peculiar legal procedure that is sort of just one on the statute books that rears its head from time to time. '