21494: erzilidanto: Haiti makes its case for reparations (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Erzilidanto@aol.com


http://www.sfbayview.com/012804/haitimakesitscase012804.shtml

Haiti makes its case for reparations

The meter is running at $34 per second

by J. Damu

You’ve got to hand it to Haiti. Not only was it the world’s first country of
enslaved workers to stand up and demand their freedom and independence; now
they are the world’s first country to stand up to their former slavery-era
master, France, and demand the return of its stolen wealth. Everyone say “Amen.”

Haiti’s president and other government officials claim their country was held
up at gunpoint in broad daylight in 1825 and now they want the admitted
thief, France, to replace the stolen wealth to the tune of $21.7 billion. This,
despite massive attempts, well documented elsewhere, by the United States and
world lending institutions to destabilize and overthrow the democratically
elected government of Jean Bertrand Aristide.

Government officials also say, due to forced efforts to hand over its wealth
in a timely manner to France, the coerced payments so distorted and stunted
the economy, Haiti feels the effects to this day. They also say, due to those
efforts, Haiti became saddled with a form of class oppression that resembles
racism.

In a soon to be published booklet provided to a U.S. reporter by the foreign
press liaison to President Jean Bertrand Aristide, Haitian government
officials dissect the 1825 “agreement” that initially forced Haiti to pay to France
150 million francs in exchange for liberty.

The booklet, like Haiti’s restitution claim, is based largely on the research
of Dr. Francis St. Hubert, a member of the government’s Haiti Restitution
Commission.

“I did most of my research in New York at the Columbia University Library and
the Schomburg Center,” Dr. Hubert said by phone from Port-au-Prince.

“We are pursuing this case from three different angles. We are doing
publicity and educational campaigns, we are pursuing our claims through the diplomatic
community, and we are preparing a legal case,” he said.

“Haiti’s claim is not really for reparations for slavery,” said Ira Kurzban,
Miami immigration attorney and Haiti’s chief counsel in the U.S., “but for
restitution specifically that happened in 1825. It is based on the French
government’s efforts to extract 150 million French francs (which is equal to $21
billion today) from an economy the French knew couldn’t afford it, through the
use of force. This is impermissible under international law.”

“I can’t tell you how we plan to proceed legally,” he said by telephone. The
Haitians will make their own announcement when they are ready, he said.

According to the booklet, which will soon be published under the name of the
Haiti Restitution Commission, following the 1804 revolution that expelled
France, Haiti was divided into two districts, northern and southern, but was
re-united following the death of Henri Christophe in 1820. Under the new president,
Jean Pierre Boyer, diplomatic notes began to be exchanged with various French
functionaries on the diplomatic recognition of Haiti.

Finally in 1825, France, which was being encouraged by former plantation
owners to invade Haiti and re-enslave the Blacks, issued the Royal Ordinance of
1825, which called for the massive indemnity payments. In addition to the 150
million franc payment, France decreed that French ships and commercial goods
entering and leaving Haiti would be discounted at 50 percent, thereby further
weakening Haiti’s ability to pay.

According to French officials at the time, the terms of the edict were
non-negotiable. And to impress the seriousness of the situation upon the Haitians,
France delivered the demands by 12 warships armed with 500 canons.

The 150-million-franc indemnity was based on profits earned by the colonists,
according to a memorandum prepared by their lawyers. In 1789, Saint Domingue
- all of Haiti and Santo Domingo - exported 150 million francs worth of
products to France. In 1823 Haitian exports to France totaled 8.5 million francs,
exports to England totaled 8.4 million francs, and exports to the United States
totaled 13.1 million francs, for a total of 30 million francs.

The lawyers then claimed that one half of the 30 million francs went toward
the costs of production, leaving 15 million francs as profit. The 15 million
franc balance was multiplied by 10 (10 years of lost revenues for the French
colonists due to the war for liberation), which coincidentally totals 150 million
francs, the value of exports in 1789.

To make matters worse for Haiti, the French anticipated and planned for Haiti
to secure a loan to pay the first installment on the indemnity. Haiti was
forced to borrow the 30 million francs from a French bank that then deducted the
management fees from the face value of the loan and charged interest rates so
exorbitant that after payment was completed, Haiti was still 6 million francs
short.

The 150-million-franc indemnity represented France’s annual budget and 10
years of revenue for Haiti. One study estimates the indemnity was 55 million more
francs than was needed to restore the 793 sugar plantations, 3,117 coffee
estates and 3,906 indigo, cotton and other crop plantations destroyed during the
war for independence.

By contrast, when it became clear France would no longer be in a position to
capitalize on further westward expansion in the Western hemisphere, they
agreed to sell the Louisiana Territory, an area 74 times the surface area of Haiti,
to the U.S. for just 60 million francs, less than half the Haitian indemnity.

Even though France later lowered the indemnity payment to 90 million francs,
the cycle of forcing Haiti to borrow from French banks to make the payments
chained the Black nation to perpetual poverty. Haiti did not finish paying her
indemnity debt until 1947!

According to the Haitian government’s reparations booklet, the immediate
consequence of the debt payment on the Haitian population was greater misery. The
first thing President Boyer did to help pay the debt was to increase from 12
to 16 percent all tariffs on imports to offset the French discount.

The next step Boyer took was to declare the indemnity to be a national debt
to be paid by all the citizens of Haiti. Then he immediately brought into being
the Rural Code.

By Haitian First Lady Mildred Aristide’s account in her book, “Child
Domestic Service in Haiti and its Historical Underpinnings,” the Rural Code laid the
basis for the legal apartheid between rural and urban society in Haiti. With
the Rural Code, the economically dominant class of merchants, government
officials and military officers who lived in the cities legally established
themselves as Haiti’s ruling class.

Under the Rural Code agricultural workers were chained to the land and
allowed little or no opportunity to move from place to place. Socializing was made
illegal after midnight, and the Haitian farmer who did not own property was
obligated to sign a three-, six- or nine-year labor contract with a large
property owner. The code also banned small-scale commerce, so that agricultural
workers would produce crops strictly for export.

The Haitian Rural Code was all embracing, governing the lives not only of
farmers but of children as well.

The Rural Code was specifically designed to regulate rural life in order to
more efficiently produce export crops with which to pay the indemnity. The
taxes levied on production were also used predominantly to pay the indemnity and
not to build schools nor to provide other social services to the generators of
this great wealth, the peasants.

Leading Haitian activists in the U.S. claim that between 1804 and 1990, when
President Aristide was first elected, a grand total of 32 high schools were
built in Haiti, all within urban settings. Since then, more than 200 have been
built, they say, most in the countryside.

To this day, the discrimination between rural and urban areas takes the form
of color discrimination by light-skinned Blacks toward darker-skinned Blacks,
and it remains intense.

St. Hubert and the national bank compute the exact amount Haiti is demanding
from France as $21,685,135,571.48, at 5 percent annual interest.

“France is getting off easy,” St. Hubert told a U.S. newspaper. If Haiti
charged 7.5 percent interest on the money, “France would owe $4 trillion today
and much more tomorrow.

“The French can debate whether they want to pay as long as they like,” he
said, “ but at 5 percent interest, it will cost them $34 per second.”

For more information about Haiti or to learn what you can do to support
Haiti, call the Haiti Action Committee at (510) 483-7481, write them at HAC, P.O.
Box 2218, Berkeley CA 94702 or visit their website at www.haitiaction.org.

J. Damu is the acting western regional representative for N’COBRA, National
Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. Email him at
jdamu@sbcglobal.net.

*****
"Men anpil chaj pa lou"  is Kreyol for - "Many hands make light a heavy load."
To volunteer with the Haitian Leadership Networks'  7 "men anpil chaj pa
lou"campaigns to restore Haiti's independence and rule of law, please contact: The
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, at: Erzilidanto@aol.com. See,
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/haitianlawyers.html ;
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/concerns.html
or the Haitiaction.net
********

To unsubscribe, contact Erzilidanto@aol.com