Security & Strategic Review - June 2022

*** ANTI-COLONIALISM PLAYS INTO BVI CRISIS. Recent visits by British royal family members to the Caribbean have been marked by a sudden drive towards republican status for territories that still have Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. Barbados made the move in November 2021, and others are indicating their intention to follow suit. Those that may do so include Belize, The Bahamas, Jamaica, Grenada, Antigua & Barbuda, and St Kitts & Nevis. In addition, the royal visits, by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and by the Earl and Countess of Wessex, also promoted renewed calls for reparations from the UK for its part in the slave trade. All of this has served to complicate the UK’s response to the arrest on 28 April in the US of Andrew Fahie, the premier of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), on drug-trafficking charges. Fahie’s arrest was followed a day later by the publication of a report from a Commission of Inquiry (COI) into corruption and the abuse of authority in the BVI.

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