15912: (Hermantin) Miami-Herald-Haitians demand France pay $21 billion restitution (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Sun, Jun. 15, 2003

Haitians demand France pay $21 billion restitution
By CAROL J. WILLIAMS
Los Angeles Times Service

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- France owes Haiti exactly $21,685,135,571.48, the
government figures -- not counting interest, penalties or consideration of
the suffering and indignity inflicted by slavery and colonization.

Paris swiftly rejected the demand for restitution when Haiti raised the
issue in April, on the 200th anniversary of the death of Toussaint
L'Ouverture. A revered figure here, L'Ouverture led fellow slaves to throw
off their French colonial oppressors.

Haiti is making a bicentennial spectacle of refusing to take no for an
answer. In one of the most colorful campaigns to galvanize Haitians in
years, the country is awash in banners, bumper stickers, television ads and
radio broadcasts demanding payback.

And anyone reading newspapers aligned with President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide's government, or listening to state-sponsored broadcasts, would
think a check for the staggering sum was all but in the mail.

Some inside Aristide's circle say the campaign will continue.

''It's serious, and it's going to intensify,'' says Michelle Karshan, a
foreign media liaison for Aristide. ``It's not something Haiti came up with
by itself. It came up in the context of the summit on race in South Africa.
The French leadership itself has acknowledged that slavery was a crime
against humanity.''

Port-au-Prince originally raised its claim on April 7, 200 years after
revolutionary hero L'Ouverture died a captive in a French prison. Seven
months later, Haitian slaves defeated French forces and proclaimed the
world's first independent black republic in November 1803.

France recognized Haiti's statehood 35 years later, after the country began
paying 90 million francs in gold to compensate French landowners driven out
by the revolution.

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin replied to the April appeal
with the observation that Paris and the rest of the 15-nation European Union
have given Haiti more than $2 billion in aid in recent years. The French
contend that Haiti's biggest problems are rooted in the present, not the
past.

Undeterred, Haitian Foreign Minister Joseph Philippe Antonio told Radio
Solidarity in a recent interview that the French are showing ''a certain
embarrassment'' in deflecting the restitution claim with reference to aid
projects.

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