Reparative justice, whereby communities are compensated for losses caused by the slavery or the Holocaust, is morally fair
Justice requires a good memory, one that is both accurate and not self-servingly selective. But whether it is well-served by a long memory is more contentious. We know that many still pay the price for sins previous generations never paid for. But most agree with the Biblical principle of Ezekiel 18:20 that: “The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.” How does justice square the demands of redress and the innocence of the only people left who can meet them?
Recently, the trend seems to be for societies and organisations to accept more responsibility for actions done by long-gone leaders and functionaries. Glasgow University has just completed a two-year review of how it benefited from the slave trade and as a result has committed to a “reparative justice programme”. The Dutch national railway company, Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), has decided to pay compensation to survivors and relatives of those it transported to Nazi death camps, earning itself £2.2m in today’s money. South Korea’s supreme court has also ordered Mitsubishi to compensate its citizens forced to work in the Japanese company’s factories during the second world war.
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