23071: Esser: Call for Reparations From France Unlikely to Die (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser <torx@joimail.com>

Inter Press Service News Agency
http://www.ipsnews.net

August 28, 2004


Call for Reparations From France Unlikely to Die
by Dionne Jackson Miller

KINGSTON, Aug 28 (IPS) - Whether Jean-Bertrand Aristide ever returns
to the homeland he left under such controversial circumstances, his
call for France to make reparations to his troubled Caribbean nation
of Haiti is as important as ever and must not be allowed to die, say
observers.

Some analysts believe that France's refusal to support the deployment
of an international peacekeeping force to Haiti until after the
president's departure earlier this year was linked to Aristide's
unpopular -- in Paris -- demand for reparations.

The United Nations Security Council, of which France is a permanent
member, rejected a Feb. 26 appeal from the Caribbean Community
(CARICOM) for international peacekeeping forces to be sent into its
member state Haiti, but voted unanimously to send in troops three
days later, just hours after Aristide's controversial resignation.

The former president is now in exile in South Africa, and maintains
that he was forced out of his country by U.S. officials. A
Washington-backed transitional government now rules Haiti, without
the participation of members of Aristide's Lavalas Family Party.

"I believe that (the call for reparations) could have something to do
with it, because they (France) were definitely not happy about it,
and made some very hostile comments," Myrtha Desulme, chairperson of
the Haiti-Jamaica Exchange Committee, told IPS.

"(But) I believe that he did have grounds for that demand, because
that is what started the downfall of Haiti," she says.

In 2003, Aristide demanded that France pay Haiti over 21 billion U.S.
dollars, what he said was the equivalent in today's money of the 90
million gold francs Haiti was forced to pay Paris after winning its
freedom from France as the hemisphere's first independent black
nation 200 years ago.

Historians say that the massive toll that France exacted on Haiti
played a large part in the Caribbean country's subsequent descent
into stark poverty and under-development.

How closely the reparations issue influenced French actions in the
days leading up to Aristide's departure from Haiti is debatable.

French professor and commentator on Haitian issues at New York
University, Michael Dash, says the call is unlikely to have been the
major factor.

"This demand certainly did not endear him (Aristide) to the French,
but their recent actions in Haiti may have more to do with attempting
to form some kind of alliance with the U.S. after the falling out
over Iraq," he told IPS.

France refused to back Washington's call for support in the U.N.
Security Council as it prepared an invasion of Iraq last year.

But the Haitian crisis has clearly pulled the two countries closer
after a chill in relations over the U.S.-led invasion of the Middle
Eastern nation.

With Aristide gone, will the demand for reparations also die?

Desulme, a Haitian now living in Jamaica, is not sure. "Geopolitics
is a matter of how much muscle you can flex and now Haiti has no
muscle to flex. It's in such a devastated state that it's a
reconstruction process that's needed, and they have no muscle to
demand (reparations)," she says.

But the issue, adds Desulme, must be kept alive, by advocates inside
Haiti or via its friends outside.

"Haiti has suffered massive injustices. Now, if the word
'reparations' is what is making the French balk, then they can call
it whatever they like, but they have an obligation to rebuild Haiti
because they built their wealth from it, and then ruined it."

"They should continue to ask for reparations even if they don't get
it. I think it's a massive injustice that was done and the world
needs to know that," she adds.

Dash says the issue is unlikely to fade away.

"Aristide got a lot of support for this demand both inside and
outside of Haiti. The reality is that he in particular was unlikely
to receive a cent from the French. A successor could however ask
(more diplomatically), that some gesture be made by the French to
compensate for what Haiti has suffered.

"The French, it is true, do not like to face up to their slave-owning
colonial past. But we live in an age when reparations of all kinds
are being asked for, and this one is a documented sum of money paid
to a colonial power to compensate for loss of property, and which
plunged Haiti into decades of debt," Dash says.

Interim Haitian President Gerard Latortue in April called Aristide's
demand for reparations "illegal" and "ridiculous." His government is
scheduled to be replaced by elections in 2005.

One avenue to help Haiti could be through development of the
country's crippled infrastructure, says Desulme.

"The French have a moral duty to put into Haiti the equivalent of
what was paid," she says. "They could put that amount into
infrastructure in the country, like roads and water."

"The international community will have to come in and do that,
whether they call it reparations or not."

United Nations peacekeepers -- led by Brazil -- have now taken over
in Haiti from the U.S.-led multinational force that occupied the
country after Aristide's exit. But neither force has been successful
in disarming the various criminal factions operating in the nation,
including the rebels whose uprising provoked the president's ouster.

Journalist and reparations activist Barbara Blake Hannah says the
Haitian reparations issue touches the entire Caribbean.

"Haiti is part of the same 'slave boat' we all suffered in, and is
part of the reparations issue -- if only because they have set a
precedent by paying it to France," Blake Hannah told IPS.

Coordinator of the Jamaica Reparations Movement, Blake Hannah says
there has been little action in that arena recently, as the
organisation waits for the government to fulfil a promise to hold a
national round-table to discuss restitution from former colonial
power the United Kingdom.

In the meantime, demands for reparations have been growing globally.

The Bunyoro-Kitara kingdom, in western Uganda, home to a population
of about one million people, has announced it will seek three
trillion pounds (5.5 trillion dollars) from London in reparations for
atrocities alleged to have been committed during the era of British
colonialism, reported Agence France Presse earlier this year.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has also called on the United
States and England to honour reparation claims.

The U.S. movement received a setback in January, when a Chicago judge
dismissed a lawsuit against 18 companies said to have profited from
slavery. 'USA Today' quoted U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle as
saying the plaintiffs were "trying to assert the legal rights of
their ancestors" without proving they had suffered injury.

Norgle also said the courts do not have the constitutional authority
to decide the question of reparations for slavery, and that the issue
should be dealt with by the U.S. Congress, while noting that the
statute of limitations had run out on crimes committed during
slavery, which ended in the United States in 1865.

These events are unfolding against the backdrop of U.N. celebrations
of 2004 as the International Year for the Commemoration of Slavery
and the Slave Trade, and the celebration of the Haitian bicentennial,
an event entirely overshadowed by the dramatic events that led to
Aristide's outster.

Dash says the overall impact on the commemoration depends on the
expectations in which it was organised.

"If it was the raising of racial self-esteem or some such folly they
will no doubt be disappointed. But Haiti is not just a racial symbol.
It's a real Caribbean country going through a long and violent
post-Duvalierist transition," he said referring to Francois and
Jean-Claude Duvalier, father and son dictators who ruled Haiti from
1957 to 1986, and are accused of massive corruption and numerous
incidents of human rights violations during their tenure.

"Celebrations must necessarily take in the reality of the struggle to
establish a new social and political order in that country," adds
Dash.

But Blake Hannah, a member of Jamaica's organising committee for the
bicentennial observances, says that far from diminishing the
significance of the year of commemoration, the upheavals in Haiti
have deepened its import.

"Haiti is a beacon in the issues of slavery, rebellion and
abolition," she says.

"Jamaicans have had their eyes opened on our slave history by Haiti.
Jamaicans have bonded with their slave past as never before. It's
such an ironic coincidence that it has taken another revolution to
bring history into focus again. Whatever the outcome in Haiti,
slavery is again in our focus."
.