KINGSTON, Jamaica - Britain's Queen Elizabeth ``has taken note'' of Jamaican Rastafarians' request for slavery reparations and resettlement in Africa and will get back to them, the queen's secretary said in a letter. When the queen visited Jamaica last month, several members of the religious sect handed her a letter seeking compensation for the treatment of enslaved blacks brought from Africa to work the Jamaican sugar plantations during British colonial rule. The Rastafarians also asked for monetary assistance in settling in their spiritual home, Ethiopia.
They received a short letter signed by Kay Brock, assistant private secretary at Buckingham Palace, Jamaica's public defender, Howard Hamilton, said Wednesday. ``The query from several mansions of the Rastafarian faith have been laid before Her Majesty, who has taken note of their content. A fuller response would be sent in due course,'' the letter read. Hamilton was asked by several Rastafarians to help them obtain reparations from Britain, which they have pursued since the 1960s. Members of the minority religious sect worship the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie. Hamilton, a senior attorney-at-law, said there could be justification in the claims, considering that groups in other countries had been compensated for enslavement and other crimes committed against them during slavery and up to the Second World War. Slavery was abolished in Jamaica in the early 1800s and the former British colony became independent in 1961. It remains a member of the Commonwealth, with Queen Elizabeth as head of state.