Naomi Klein (The Nation, March 2010) has written a remarkably powerful and concise article on the history of Haiti---500 years of political and economic oppression, 500 years of genocide, slavery, debt slavery, neocolonialism. She essentially calls for repentance, restitution and repair; or in other words, a Nehemiah 5 paradigm of Jubilee justice.
We, the West, owe Haiti; we should pay our debt and cancel Haiti's unjust debt. Klein discusses The Slavery Debt, The Dictatorship Debt and the Climate Debt.
After Haitian slaves gained their freedom in 1804, they were forced into debt slavery in 1825. "The young nation was shackled to a debt that would take 122 years to pay off." Justice would have required France to pay millions to Haitian slaves for their 100 years of free labor.
With the U.S. support, the Duvalier dictatorships (1957-1986) "misappropriated more than 500,000,000 from public monies."
And the West is primarily responsible for climate change. Haiti is quite vulnerable to the negative impact of climate change.
"Each payment to a foreign creditor was money not spent on a road, a school, an electrical line. And that same illegitimate debt empowered the IMF and World Bank to attach onerous conditions to each new loan, requiring Haiti to deregulate its economy and slash its public sector still further. Failure to comply was met with a punishing aid embargo from 2001 to '04, the death knell to Haiti's public sphere."
No comments:
Post a Comment