THE House of Rastafari will stage a march and rally today in Nassau to raise public awareness on the importance of Emancipation Day and to renew the call for reparations.

The march will leave the Southern Government Grounds at 11am via Cockburn Street and Market Street and return to the Grounds, where a rally will be held with speakers and performers from the Rastafari, Pan African and wider community.

“The purpose is to sensitise the public of the paramount significance Emancipation Day has as a partial global African liberation milestone and catalyst to the continued march for total freedom, redemption, social justice and equality,” a statement from the House of Rastafari, an umbrella organisation for all Rastafari groups in the Bahamas,

read yesterday.

“Emancipation Day marks the end of chattel slavery in the British colonies, which was the most gruesome atrocity ever committed against humanity,” the group said.

The British Parliament passed the Act for the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 but was not effected for 30 years.never came into effect until August 1, 1838. The Bahamas celebrates Emancipation Day on August 4.

“As our people are given proverbial band-aids for these serious wounds and foreign aid as a smoke screen, we in the House of Rastafari call for total freedom, redemption and international repatriation with global reparations now,” the statement read.

“Reparations is not a call for welfare and handouts, which is another smoke screen to diminish our claim. Reparation is to holistically repair the wounds and damages inflicted to one group of people by another. Reparations has two dynamics, internal and external. The internal is what we can do for ourselves, for example African Restorative Justice, and the external is what we are entitled to from those who inflicted the wounds and damages by virtue of international law, eg United Nations Declaration Of Human Rights.

“We will be marching and rallying in solidarity with our brothers and our sisters in England, Jamaica, America, Trinidad, St Lucia and a host of other countries too numerous to mention,” the group said.