Prince William and Kate Middleton are on a Caribbean tour of Belize, Jamaica, and The Bahamas to celebrate the Queen’s platinum jubilee to celebrate 70 years of service. There’s only one small thing to understand: Not everyone is as excited as the queen. The Advocates Network in Jamaica penned an open letter to William and Middleton before they arrived, saying that they would not be celebrating with them (via Town & Country).
“We see no reason to celebrate 70 years of the ascension of your grandmother to the British throne,” the group said in the letter, according to The Independent. “During her 70 years on the throne, your grandmother has done nothing to redress and atone for the suffering of our ancestors that took place during her reign and/or during the entire period of British trafficking of Africans, enslavement, indentureship and colonialization.”
At the time of publication, William and Middleton have not acknowledged the letter but they have felt the backlash. On their previous stop in Belize, one of their events were cancelled because the residents and the local Q’eqehi Maya people did not want their helicopter to land on their soil. “We don’t want them to land on our land, that’s the message that we want to send,” Indian Creek village chair Sebastian Shol told the Daily Mail.
Needless to say, this is one problem that won’t be going away soon.
