KINGSTON, Jamaica— The Trust Fund for victims of the 1963 Coral Gardens incident has now been established.

According to the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, portfolio minister Olivia Grange, signed the document on Thursday to officially establish the Rastafari Coral Gardens Trust.

The ministry said the Trust will be managed by the Administrator General of Jamaica.

Prime Minister, Andrew Holness during an official apology to victims of the 1963 incident, in April 2017, gave a commitment to the establishment of the Trust.

“I come humbly, as representative of this Administration, to take steps to right a wrong. We acknowledge that for 56 years, you — our Rastafari brothers and sisters — have lived with the physical, psychological and emotional scars of that incident at Coral Gardens and the atrocities you experienced over the years. We also know that you feel that successive governments have let you down by not sufciently acknowledging what you have been through. We are taking steps to change that,” Grange said during the ceremony.

Grange, who also has responsibility for Reparations, said she hoped that the establishment of the Trust would help make amends for what happened in 1963 and assist in repairing the relationship between Rastafarians in Jamaica and their government.

In 2018, the ministry transferred $12.7 million to the Administrator General to establish the Trust Fund.

The Public Defender had proposed a Trust Fund of no less than J$10 million.

Brother Fray, who’s been a Rastafarian for more than 60 years, on Thursday said he was happy that the survivors of the Coral Gardens incident were finally getting justice.

He prayed that “Jah, Ras Tafari, would bless us all and keep us together as one people; and unite our hearts in truth and in righteousness, in love and in purity.”

Secretary of the Rastafari Coral Gardens Benevolent Society, Sister Pamela Williams, hailed Thursday’s signing ceremony as the culmination of decades of activism by Rastafarian groups for redress.

“We’re very grateful for this moment where we’re signing the document to establish the Trust Fund from which the compensation will be paid to the survivors; it’s a big moment,” said Williams.

Rodje Malcolm, Director of Jamaicans for Justice, which represented the Rastafari Coral Gardens Benevolent Society in the discussions with the ministry regarding the Trust, described the signing ceremony as “a historic moment of acceptance on the part of the State by the present government that what happened in 1963 and afterwards was a gross violation of human rights that should never have occurred… it took 54 years for a government to say that we accept that we did something wrong.”

Grange said the government was committed to a programme of reconciliation with the Rastafari community.