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The Bahamas proclaim UK’s King Charles III as new head of state

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The Bahamas proclaimed United Kingdom’s (UK) King Charles as its new head of state during a formal ceremony at Parliament Square in the Bahamian capital, Nassau, on Sunday.

Charles, age 73, automatically became king of the United Kingdom and the head of state of 14 other realms, including the Bahamas, when his mother, Queen Elizabeth, died on Thursday at age 96.

The accession of King Charles to the British throne has stirred renewed calls from politicians and activists for former colonies in the Caribbean to remove the monarch as their head of state and for Britain to pay slavery reparations.

Earlier this year, some Commonwealth leaders expressed unease at a summit in Kigali, Rwanda, about the passage of leadership of the 56-nation club from Elizabeth to Charles.

And an eight-day tour in March by now heir-to-the-throne Prince William and his wife, Kate, to Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas was marked by calls for reparation payments and an apology for slavery.

More than 10 million Africans were shackled into the Atlantic slave trade by European nations between the 15th and 19th centuries.

Those who survived the brutal voyage were forced to labor on plantations in the Caribbean and the Americas.

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