A group of international academics and authors has written to President Nicolas Sarkozy calling on France to reimburse (tilbagebetale) the crushing “independence debt” it imposed on Haiti nearly 200 years ago.
The open letter to the French head of State says the debt, now worth more than 17 billion euro, would cover the rebuilding of the country after a devastating earthquake that killed more than 250.000 people seven months ago.
Its signatories – including Noam Chomsky, the American linguist, Naomi Klein, the Canadian author and activist, Cornel West, the African-American author and civil rights activist, and several renowned French philosophers – say that if France repays the money it would be a solution to the shortfall in international donations promised following the earthquake.
Despite pledges at an international donors’ conference in March of aid totalling 3,4 billion British Pounds, only five countries – Brazil, Norway, Australia, Colombia and Estonia (Estland) – have sent aid amounting to about 325 million Pounds
The letter, published in the French newspaper Libération, says the debt was “patently illegitimate … and illegal”.
The debt dates back to when Haiti, then St Dominique, was France’s most profitable colony thanks to slavery. In 1791 the slaves revolted, and in 1804, after defeating Napoleon’s forces, they founded the world’s first independent black republic.
But after independence, French slave owners demanded compensation.
In 1825 the French monarch Charles X demanded Haiti pay an “independence debt” of 150 million gold francs; 10 times the fledgling nation’s annual revenue. The original sum was reduced but Haiti still paid 90 million gold francs – about 17 billion euro today – to France.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
