From the Trinidad Express Wednesday, February 10th 2010
AS Caricom continues to keep hope alive for earthquake-shattered Haiti, one challenge that certainly requires urgent diplomatic initiatives is to get France to honour its moral obligation to repaying the debt incurred by its financial demands for Haitian independence…
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Note from Webmaster: we invite you to support Rickey Singh’s call for the Caribbean Community to take “urgent diplomatic initiatives is to get France to honour its moral obligation to repaying the debt incurred by its financial demands for Haitian independence” by indicating this in the space provided for comments below. Please leave your full name, country, and insitutional affiliation if possible.
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I support the call for reparations to be paid to Haiti by France.
I urge our CARICOM leaders to take urgent diplomatic initiatives to ensure that France honours its moral obligations to repaying the debt incurred by its financial demands for Haitian independence.
Patricia Khan
Trinidad and Tobago
I fully support the call for monies extracted from Haiti from France by intimidation and coercion for over a hundred years to be returned.
I support this call as well.
Anila W.
Newport Beach
CA
.I support the call for reparations to be paid to Haiti by France. I
urge our CARICOM leaders to take urgent diplomatic initiatives to ensure
that France honours its moral obligations to repaying the debt incurred
by its financial demands for Haitian independence.
I fully support Rickey’s call. CARICOM should speak with one strong, united voice on this matter; and should seek the political and diplomatic support of the African Union, the ALBA countries, the Union of South American States (UNASUR)and the Group of 77 and China in the United Nations; to rectify this grave historical injustice meted out to the people of Haiti as the price of exercising their inalienable right to freedom.
Norman Girvan
University of the West Indies
St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
I support Rickey’s call for France to repay the debt it extorted from the Haitian people. CARICOM leaders are obliged to take the lead, and take whatever strong, political, diplomatic action is required to make this happen.
Judith
I’ve supported the call for France to pay Haiti reaparations since we wrote the Caribbean Women’s Statement after the 2004 coup against President Aristide and so I fully support the demand that CARICOM call on France to repay the money it extorted from Haiti. Reparations now!
Karen de Souza
National Coordinator, Red Thread, Guyana
I fully support this call.
I support the call for debt forgiveness by France as well as the repayment of France’s debt to Haiti. Money helps but the healing required can only partly be bought. France and other former colonial powers should be asked by CARICOM to compensate in word and deed for the considerable ills caused by their past and current colonial actions in Haiti and elsewhere.
Lawrence Lachmansingh
Guyanese in Sierra Leone
I identify with and endorse Norman Girvan’s comments.
Thanks Rickey for taking this important step.
Desmond Trotman
Working People’s Alliance
Guyana
I support fully the call for the payment of reparations by France to Haiti.
I identify with and endorse Norman Girvan’s comments.
Thanks Rickey for taking this important step. Your call enjoys mine and the WPA’s full support
Desmond Trotman
Working People’s Alliance
Guyana
I fully support the call by Rickey Singh and urge CARICOM to act on it with all expedition.
I am 150% behind Ricky Singh’s call for CARICOM and other entities, regional and international to push for France to repay the tremendous debt it owes to Haiti. USD 21 billion all the way, every cent should be returned. It is downright shameful and outrageous that the French Government should have to be reminded that reparations are due, just and necessary.
Taitu Heron
Women’s Media Watch
Kingston, Jamaica
I support the call for reparations to Haiti by France. But what about the other North Atlantic nations (America, Britain, Holland, Portugal, Spain) who offered solidarity to France in their continued de facto enslavement of the Haitians? Don’t they also have a moral responsibitity in the matter?
CARICOM must stand and be counted on this issue. In 2004 CPDC called on our HoGs to maintain a principled stand in favour of Haiti.
CPDC as part of the Caribbean Caucus at the World Conference Against Racism called on France to repay the money extorted from Haiti. We fully support a renewed call to return Haiti’s assets to its people.
CPDC has also, together with a broad coalition of civil society organisations called on the World Bank, IMF, G8 to cancel all debts levied on Haiti. We renew the call for CARICOM to support these actions.
We must demand reparations/restoration for Haiti without compromise. This goes without debate. Furthermore any debt owed by Haiti must be relieved now. We must force this movement lest our ancestors hold thier head in shame at our lack of courage and morality.
Chief Alaagba Egunwale F. Amusan
Egbe Egunfewa
I fully support the call for France to repay the 150 million Francs, the debt write off by the G7 countries is just a drop in the ocean. The Haitians fought for their freedom and won, France backed by America conspired to keep them a mendicant state.
Gerogetown, Guyana
We are in full support of this call!
Joel Simpson
Co-Chairperson
SASOD - Guyana
France and its allies in the suppressionist war against Haiti must repay this historic debt. By the same token, other European powers who colonised the Caribbean and decimated the indigenous peoples; who joined with local collaborators and forcefully relocated Africans to the Americas where they were subjected to the most degrading form of enslavement, must also respond to the call for reparation.
I fully support the call by Ricky Singh that Caricom call on France to repay the money it stole from Haiti, NOW.
The effects of France’s bullying are still being felt. Time has not erased that wound but rather made it worse. France must pay reparations in both cash and kind if it is to be considered a civilised nation.
I give my full support to the call for France to right the wrong that was done to Haiti for more than one hundred years. CARICOM, with a united voice, should prick the conscience of the French by making a very strong demand for reparations.
Deon Abrams
WPA
Guyana
I fully support this…..it is morally depraved for France to continue to refuse to repay the money it illegally extorted from and forced the Haitian people to pay them. I also call on the United States which aided and abetted with the French to extort money from the Haitian Republic to pay interest upon said money.
I support this call.
I applaud this call by Ricky Singh to prevail upon CARICOM, in the name of all of us, to call on France to pay full reparations to Haiti for the money it extorted from it in the past. It is a great suggestion and initiative. I support the call for reparations.
I fully support Rickey’s call for France to repay its debt to Haiti NOW. I’d like to see the ecumenical movement more proactive in this campaign for reparation and restoration of Haiti.
I fully support this call. Only sorry it was such a tragedy to spark this. All the love and support to the people of Haiti.
I fully support this , and would like to the elected leader of Haiti to be reinstated.
I support the call for CARICOM to be united in a call for France to pay reparations to Haiti. This is long overdue and provides an opportunity for France to finally do what is right
Hi Ricky
This is a positve move. I support the call 100%.
I support this call!
International lobbying and solidarity on this matter is very important. CARICOM must take the lead and push for France to repay with interest the monies they took from Haiti. I support this position without reservation.
Cipriani College of Labour & Cooperative Studies (lecturer) & IIR UWI (Student)
T&T
I fully support the call for France to pay reparations to Haiti. It is the moral and correct path for a country which labels itself as progressive and democratic.
I fully support the request that France reimburse Haiti for the illegally and forcefully extracted payments from Haiti after its independence.
Stephanie Seguino
University of Vermont
Long live the Haitian Revolution!
The Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration support our Brother Rickey Singh’s call for the Governments of the Caribbean to take urgent action to demand that France honour its moral obligation and pay reparation to the Haitian People. Our organisation also calls the USA to pay reparation to the Haitian People for all of the economic and political demands that force Haiti in to poverty and to becoming the poorest nation in the Americas.
The Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration also call on the Progressive Movement in the Region to hold a Meeting of Solidarity with Haiti.
David Denny
General Secretary
Hand backs, not hand outs. I support this attempt to right the wrongs of history.
Long live the Haitian Revolution!
The Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration support Brother Rickey Singh’s call for the Governments of the Caribbean to take urgent action to demand that France honour its moral obligation and to pay reparation to the Haitian People. Our organisation also calls on the USA to pay reparation to the Haitian People for all of the economic and political demands that force Haiti in to poverty and to become the poorest nation in the Americas.
The Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration also call on the Progressive Movement in the Region to hold a Meeting of Solidarity with Haiti.
David Denny
General Secretary
I support the call. Further, CARICOM should convene a special conference on Haiti, in Haiti, out of which should emerge an agreed vision and a plan as to what Haiti should look like on January 11, 2015.
This is an opportunity for France to finally right its historic moral shame in regard to Haiti. I support the call for France to repay Haiti.
I support this call.
Ricky Singh’s reiteration of President Jean Bertrand Aristide prior call for USD 21 billion in reparations by France (rather than the E58 million euro in debt cancellation) is just and urgent. Indeed as Singh says, all voice of moral and intellectual force must unite to make France feel the shame of its historical debt and act to pay it. Forward!
David Brookbank
Spokane, Washington, USA
From a legal point of view, there is adequate justification for Haiti’s claim for reparations. The Haitian people are no less deserving than the Jews after the Holocaust and the issue of timebars are just as surmountable if there is the political will and good faith. I therefore support the call to ask CARICOM to lend moral and political legitimacy to Haiti’s claim for Reparations, and if needs be, provide legal assistance.
Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine
Faculty of Law
UWI
I fully support this call, and hope that France will take real steps to compensate Haiti for the many painful legacies of its colonial past.
Gavin Fridell
Assistant Professor
Trent University
Finally, some sense! I fully support this call.
It is time for ” the Unfinished Revolution ” to flower. France should pay reparation fully in every respect. So Haiti can rebuild and fulfill its destiny in the region for which it has been ever an inspiration.
I SUPPORT RICKY SINGH’S CALL ENTIRELY.
Attibon Legba !!! Open the Door ! Attibon Legba !
marina ama omowale maxwell Ph.D
Trinidad /Caribbean.
The French Revolution invoked - Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternite - and the Haitian Struggle for independence embodied those ideals. France would do well to reflect upon the fact that the indemnity imposed uon Haiti after independence was an effort to repudiate those revolutionary ideals and their contribution to human visions of progress. The repayment of that indemnity to Haiti would signal that France wishes to live up to those ideals as a source of inspiration for global society in the contemporary context.
I fully support Rickey Singh’s call, and as a CARICOM citizen I demand that the issue be given priority of discussion now by CARICOM. If all say that Haiti is in need of money, to support the reconstruction, then I call on the Barbados Government and other CARICOM governments to demand the most obvious monies available - monies belonging to Haitians that was extorted by the state of France up to the twentieth century.
Margaret D. (Kawamuinyo) Gill
Fully support
I fully support this call for CARICOM to tell France to repay it’s debt to Hati.
I support Rickey Singh’s call fully and completely plus the acrued interest. In fact France’s own action has laid the basis and provided the legal justification for Haitians to make their own case for reparation. I agree with the view that the matter should be approached from a CARICOM level.
I support calling upon CARICOM to use all means within its power to urge France to restitute to the Haitian people the ludicrous and enormous, so-called ‘indemnity’ demanded and received from Haiti in the 19th century in return for formal French recognition of the independent Haitian state.
This French act has in reality been nothing else than a historical disgrace, for two centuries already, to the French republic itself. Restitution, while long overdue, would perhaps now seem timely, as the earthquake that devastated Haiti in January 2010 has called upon everyone’s sense of shared humanity and has moved the entire global community to help Haiti recover and reconstruct.
It would suit the French republic to act in true conformity with its principles of ‘liberté, egalité, fraternité’ and finally rectify its preposterous, disgraceful and unjust 19th-century misdeed(s) against the great nation of Haiti.
Peter Jordens
Curaçao
I support the call for reparations to be paid to Haiti by France.
I strongly urge our CARICOM leaders to take immediate action to move France to honor its moral obligations to repaying the debt incurred by its financial demands for Haitian independence.
France Must pay!
I support all the arguments already made by my colleagues.
Liisa L. North, Professor, Emerita, York Unviersity and Adjunct Professor, Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences-Ecuador (FLACSO-Ecuador)
REPARATION for Haiti Now is a call for Justice! I stand in full solidarity with this call by Rickey Singh and with the Caribbean Women’s Statement of 2004. Time for France to pay its long standing debt to Haiti and for the rest of its allies to cancel all other debts. This is the only genuine action to guaratee Haiti’s recovery! Enough grandstanding. Time to pay back Haiti.
Vanda Radzik, GUYANA.
The call for reparations should begin with France and extend to a full cancellation of their foreign debt. Also as part of the Caricom agenda a reforestation programme for Haiti linking with international partners including the Green Belt Movement and Wangaari Maathi who expressed an interest in this and had (to the best of my knowledge) began some preliminary work with local groups. Guyanese environmental NGOs are interested in this action as well.
We should establish a Caricom Action Agenda to 2015 for Haiti and link it to the MDGs in order to widen commitment starting with Rickey’s call.
Jocelyn
I fully support this call. We should also call for grants and not loans to Haiti. Naomi Klein’s website reports that recent statements from the IMF are tending in the direction of loans, which will exacerbate the crushing debt burden faced.
I am in full support, and the time is certainly now. I believe that this effort to really complete the Haitian revolution could be the catalyst for a real Caribbean Integration starting with us the citizens, and we must push ahead with it and be prepared to circumvent any red tape and traditional blockades that may arise. It is the stepping stone to Verene Shepherd’s point, further and full reparations for the Caribbean because all of this has stalled over the years (1958-2010) as we made the elementary mistake of expecting that our political representatives would have undertaken this task - the task of shaping the Caribbean into a cohesive world power, which I see as the most effective necessary strategy to catapult us forward as our own particular type of highly developed independent countries. What we are, are elements of this world power and it is mostly Caribbean people who don’t know this. Ask anybody else about us.
As we mobilize support through this and other excellent mediums I would like to throw in some additional proposals for us to look at to get some action :
* a formal petition/demand to P.J. Patterson’s Haiti committee
* the same to Caricom. The Irvine Reid idea of a special conference on Haiti is excellent.
* the same to President Sarkozy and the French government
* the same to President Obama, The UN, The International Court of Justice
* we should make a presentation to Caricom and come away with a timetable for action & implementation of the proposals
* we must incorporate the Caribbean diaspora & Africa in the effort
* we must incorporate the church many of its leaders have responded to me to say that “the church has done these things which you accuse us of not doing and not being relevant to today’s society”
Later, we could look at the reparations programme in Jamaica and Africa for example which seems to have stalled. We could ask if individual efforts at reparations would likely be more successful than one combined or integrated approach and there is the historic blockade of Cuba. However Haiti is now and demands undivided attention to send the message around the world to force France, Canada and the US to act.
I fully support this call for reparations by France to Haiti. It is more than time for France and the rest of the world to turn all of this outpouring of pity for Haiti into the tangible return of its due. Opportunity for South/South cooperation in support of this urgent call.
I fully support this initiative.
I, too, think it is obscene for the IFIs to be giving loans to Haiti at this time. Grants are needed, not loans.
patsy lewis
Of course Norman you had it all in your earlier response let me flatter myself and say great minds think alike. Judy Wedderburn’s response about the region is in a mess confirms just about everything. I left out the IMF and its current proposals for Haiti but I am sure we will find a solution. I would also like us to look at additions to a communication strategy. I believe that at least five of us Talk show hosts in JA are ready, willing and able to contribute to the programme once we have an idea of what we want
France and the U.S.A. owes Haiti and Must pay. We also call for the immediate return of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.
I support the call for repayment of this ‘debt’. Over the period of say, 10 years, $21B would go a long way to helping build/rebuild the nation state of Haiti.
I support the call for reparations to Haiti from France fully.
I fully support this call. In addition I suggest that organisations, not only individuals, seek members’ support to send in group endorsements.
This is an injustice of historic proportions that must be repaired by France. Congratulations to Ricky Singh for pushing for it and to Caricom for raising it.
I fully support this call .
I am Private Black Jamaica Defence force .
I support the call for reparations to be paid to Haiti by France and other calls for justice for Haiti and it’s people as articulated on this forum.
Great suggestion! I too am in full support.
I support this call. The Haiti tragedy is creating a new consensus on the issue of Reparation. Historical wrongs, even though they were committed 185 years ago or more, have present day consequences. France was enriched, Haiti remains impoverished. So too with the slave trade. A response from France would be a powerful start to the process of reconciliation between Europe and the Caribbean.
I fully support Rickey Singh’s call for CARICOM leaders to urge, with one resolute voice, France to do right and repay Haiti the debt it incurred by the indemnity that that former slave making colonial power imposed on the Haitian people, for freeing themselves from enslavement and colonial bondage.Thanks much Rickey, for your initiative.
Lecturer,UWI,Mona Campus
Jamaica
Pay Haiti today!
Caricom you have missed many opportunities to support Haiti. Ede ayiti Caricom!!! Don’t let this one pass.
There is nothing to discuss France…you owe Haiti, pay up.
I fully support Rickey’s call for France to repay the funds extracted from Haiti, especially now. The only issue for negotiation is the rate of interest to be applied.
I fully support the call by Ricky Singh that France must repay the money it stole from Haiti, NOW
Dra. Tania García
Investigadora
Cuba
This is more than a moral obligation. France and indeed the other countries that supported the trade blockade against Haiti have a duty to pay reparations. Of course France is culprit number one and must therefore lead the way.
Action on reparations for Haiti are long overdue. Reforestation of Haiti, support for agriculture are among immediate reparations. Others no less important include recognition of Haiti’s traditional religion as worthy of the respect given to all other religions.
Reparations for Haiti from France and the USA are long overdue. In addition to reforestation of Haiti, the development of agriculture there must be a public recognition of Haiti’s traditional religion as a world view as valid as any other.
Yes the debt has to be repaid.
I agree with Rickey Singh, France has a moral obligation to repay its debt to Haiti and should do so now while the country is experiencing grave financial difficulties.
[...] the debt incurred by its financial demands for Haitian independence” . Go to the link above (http://www.normangirvan.info/rickey-singh-caricom-france-repay-debt-to-haiti/ )and indicate your support in the space provided for comments. Please leave your full name, [...]
France should practice a higher moral order by repaying the exorbitant sum it extracted from Haiti, making a mockery of its hard-won struggle for freedom and independence. I fully support reparations from France to Haiti.
I fully support Ricky Singh’s call on France to repay its debt to Haiti.
I am in full support of the call by Ricky Singh for France to repay the debt the Regis Debay Commission Report preferred to jettison in 2004, under the pretext that it was “legally unfounded” and “that this action would open a “Pandora’s box”. Let us not forget the context for this claim - the 7.0 magnitide earthquake that has claimed the live of over 200,000 and has left millions homeless.In rebuilding Haiti we might take heed of the powerful implications of the parable of the man who built his house on the sand. For thousands of poor Haitians who lost their lives due to the shoddily constructed homes and public buildings, that could not withstand the magnitude 7.0 shaking that ruptured part of the fault segment near Port au Prince, the tragedy lies in the fact that this should not have been so. The capital city is built on sediments, not bedrock. Haiti being the ‘poorest’ country in the Western Hemisphere lacks a reasonable building code that could have required reinforcement of structures to resist shaking. And the country “has almost no enforcement” of what code it has. According to the seismologist William Mcann, the magnitude 7.5 that ruptured part of the fault segment near Port au Prince over 200 years ago was about 5 times more powerful than the one that struck near Port au Prince on 12 January.
In transcending the dehistoricized and dehumanized represenation of Haiti in the media, like Kanye West back in 2005, we ought to do damage to this rendering of Haiti that glosses over the decades of pariahdom of its people. We should remind our youth that we should not be duped by the celebrity philanthropy, we have seen mobilised in response to the Haiti earthquake, that invites us all to search for the hero inside ourselves, whilst narcissistically eyeing up the man in the mirror. On the contrary, we might pause for thought, and ask further piercing questions, such as why it has taken an earthquake for us to respond to the suffering of Haiti’s people. Are we in the developed world so seduced by our ability to do good, in the face of the adversity of the ‘underdeveloped other’, that we would believe, Haitians should express gratitude for being the object of our pity? Why defer Haiti’s restoration, with more of the same medicine,in response to the earthquake? We should include the caveat in rebuilding Haiti from the bottom up - JUSTICE FOR HAITI NOW!