September 8, 2006

HAITI: JUSTICE FOR HAITI

In this article, Anthony Phillips and Brian Concannon re-articulate the
argument that France owes Haiti over $21 billion as restitution for the
"independence debt" imposed on Haiti by threat of invasion and conquer in
the 1800s.

France - supported by the then slave-state USA - imposed this debt because
former Haitians slaves [of African descent] fought against and defeated
their racist, French slave masters.

The imposition by France of this debt is akin to a group of torturers and
rapists imposing a debt on their victims who forced them to stop raping and
torturing them.

Not only should France pay $21 billion as restitution, it should pay
reparations for centuries of the crime of slavery!

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JUSTICE FOR HAITI
By Anthony Phillips and Brian Concannon, September 01, 2006

[Anthony Phillips works with the Institute for Justice and Democracy
in Haiti (IJDH). Human rights lawyer Brian Concannon Jr. directs the IJDH.
For more information, how to support human rights work in Haiti, etc.,
contact: brianhaiti@aol.com, and go to: www.ijdh.org]

A meeting of international diplomats and financiers in Port-au-Prince this
summer ended up with a commitment of $750 million in foreign aid to Haiti
over the coming year. This generosity will build badly needed roads,
schools and hospitals, which will make a real difference to ordinary
Haitians-the poorest people in the Americas-in the short-term.

But what Haiti really needs to permanently end centuries of misery is not
the world's charity, but its justice.

The July donors' meeting refused to discuss the one fair and lasting
solution to Haiti's grinding poverty: restitution of the independence debt
imposed by France in 1825. The debt - calculated at $21 billion in current
dollars - dwarfs current aid commitments and its payment would allow
Haitians to develop their economy without the attached strings that keep
poor countries dependant 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.

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.

Haiti has a new democratic government, and an opportunity to make a clean
break from the past. The $750 million that the international community has
promised towards this transition is a lot of money, but it is less than a
year's interest on the $21 billion dollars that France owes Haiti.

Moreover, if the past is any guide, not all of the promised money will
arrive, and much of it will come with strings attached - loan repayments,
import tariff reductions, privatization of government services, etc. - that
will perpetuate Haiti's dependence on international help.

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 good neighbor policies for a global neighborhood.

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