by Kim
Ives
On May 16
and 17, the London-based Pan-Afrikan Society Community Forum (PASCF)
will address the European Parliament on the issue of reparations
for slavery and colonialism.
Oxalando
Efuntola-Smith, Executive Director of Communications of the
PASCF, will make the case for reparations before the Parliament.
“We see the
case of Haiti as central to the argument for reparations,” Omowale Ru Pert-em-Hru, PASCF’s Executive Director of
Operations, told Haïti Liberté.
For their
presentation before the European Parliament, the PASCF requsted
supporting letters from other organizations in the UK and around
the world.
Below we
present the letters submitted by the Office of International
Lawyers (BAI) and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in
Haiti (IJDH), as well as that from Haïti Liberté.
Right One of History’s
Greatest Wrongs Restitute Haiti’s Independence Debt
Haïti Liberté’s
Statement for the European Parliament
In Support of Pan-Afrikan
Society Community Forum (PASCF)
Haiti’s current economic
crisis and political turmoil have their roots in the “odious
debt” of 150 million gold francs (later reduced to 90 million)
which France imposed on the newborn republic with gunboats in
1825.
The sum was
supposed to compensate French planters for their losses of
slaves and property during Haiti’s 1791-1804 revolution, which
gave birth to the world’s first slavery-free, and hence truly
free, republic. It is the only case in world history where the
victor of a major war paid the loser reparations.
In fact, French
colonial losses were only an estimated 100 million gold francs,
if one stoops to placing monetary value on human slaves.
This extortion,
perhaps more than any other 19th century agreement,
laid bare the hypocrisy of France’s1789 Declaration of the
Rights of Man, modeled on the 1776 American Declaration of
Independence, which proclaimed: “Men are born free and remain
free and equal in rights.” The U.S., which assumed the debt in
1922, proved itself equally insincere in respecting this
fundamental democratic principle for which it claims paternity.
It took Haiti
122 years, until 1947, to pay off both the original ransom to
France and the tens of millions more in interest payments
borrowed from French banks to meet the deadlines.
In 2003, Haiti
became the world’s first former colony to demand reparations (in
the form of debt restitution) from a former colonial power. Then
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s government conservatively
calculated the value of the restitution due at some $21.7
billion. Although the French parliament had unanimously approved
a law recognizing the slave trade as a crime against humanity in
2001, just two years later France responded to Haiti’s petition
with fury. It angrily rejected the lawsuit and joined with
Washington in brazenly fomenting a coup d’état against Aristide,
who was ousted on Feb. 29, 2004.
For the past
nine years since then, the U.S. and France have orchestrated the
deployment of some 9,000 United Nations troops to militarily
occupy Haiti, a mission which costs about $850 million annually.
Known as MINUSTAH, the force has been responsible for massacres,
rapes, and, most tragically, the October 2010 importation of
cholera, which has now killed some 8,500 people and sickened
close to 700,000 others. It is now the world’s worst cholera
epidemic, and the UN refused in April to pay reparations to
cholera victims who petitioned for it in November 2011.
Europeans and
North Americans regularly dismiss demands for reparations,
saying the crimes of slavery and colonialism were committed by
their ancestors. If we accept the logic that responsibility for
these crimes does not belong to the current generation, then we
must also conclude that the great wealth reaped from those
crimes – which facilitated Europe’s and North America’s
primitive accumulation of capital and world dominance today –
should also not belong to the descendants of slave-owners and
colonists.
Why couldn’t
and shouldn’t the billions now spent on policing, intimidating,
and repressing the Haitian people be invested in the Haitian
police, agriculture, education, and healthcare? This is what
most Haitians ask today.
Europe should
support, not the sending of UN troops, but the restitution for
Haiti’s Independence Debt and just reparations for the crimes of
slavery and colonialism. This would allow the Haitian people to
rebuild their country as they see fit, not according to the
blue-prints drawn up by multinational banks and foundations
based in the former colonial and slave-owning nations. In short,
restitution would allow self-determination.
Restitution of Haiti’s
Independence Debt
Statement of the BAI and
IJDH for the European Parliament
In Support of Pan-Afrikan
Society Community Forum (PASCF)
The restitution of the
independence debt imposed on Haiti by France in 1825 is the one
fair and lasting solution to Haiti’s grinding poverty. The debt
dwarfs current aid commitments and its payment would allow
Haitians to develop their economy without the attached strings
that keep poor countries dependent on international aid.
Haiti won its
independence from France in 1804, through a bloody 12-year war,
becoming the second independent country in the Americas and the
only nation in history born of a successful slave revolt. But
world powers forced Haiti to pay a second price for entrance
into the international community. They refused to recognize
Haiti’s independence, while French warships remained off its
coasts, threatening to invade and reinstitute slavery.
After 21 years
of resisting, Haiti capitulated to France‘s terms: in exchange
for diplomatic recognition, Haiti’s government agreed to
compensate French plantation owners for their loss of
“property,” including the freed slaves; compensation to be paid
with a loan from a designated French bank. The debt was ten
times Haiti‘s total 1825 revenue and twice what the United
States paid France in 1803 for the Louisiana Purchase, which
contained seventy-four times more land.
The debt was a
crushing burden on Haiti’s economy. The government was forced to
redirect all economic activity to repay it. A huge percentage of
government revenues—80 percent in some years—went to debt
service, at the expense of investment in education, healthcare
and infrastructure. The tax code and other laws channeled
private and public enterprise to export crops such as tropical
hardwoods and sugar which brought in foreign currency for the
bank but left the mountainsides barren, the soil depleted and
the population hungry.
Haiti did not
pay off the independence debt until 1947. Over a century after
the global slave trade was eliminated as the evil it was,
Haitians were still paying their ancestors’ masters for their
freedom. After the debt was paid, Haitians were left with a
chronically undeveloped economy, rampant poverty, and a spent
land — today relatively minor environmental stresses like
tropical storms cause catastrophic damage in vulnerable Haiti.
Economic
instability has engendered political instability. Haitians have
endured more than 30 coups since 1825, and most of the resulting
rulers have been malignant dictatorships. It has also engendered
outsized vulnerability to natural disasters, as Haiti’s January
2010 earthquake demonstrated.
The
independence debt was not only immoral and onerous, it was also
illegal. In 1825 aggression and oppression did not violate
international law, but the reintroduction of slavery — the
threat underlying the debt agreement — did. It had been banned
by three treaties that France had signed by 1815.
If the
international community really wants to help Haiti, repayment of
the independence debt will be at the top of the agenda, not off
the table. A just repayment of the independence debt, by
contrast, would allow Haiti to develop the way today’s wealthy
countries did — based on national priorities set inside the
country. It would also right a historical wrong, and set a
strong example of a powerful country respecting the rule of law
with respect to a less powerful country.
Sincerely,
Mario Joseph, Av.
Managing Attorney
Bureau des Avocats
Internationaux
Brian Concannon Jr., Esq.
Director
Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti
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