PAY UP, FRANCE!

Haiti was promised $ 5 billion in aid after the earthquake that recently devastated that country. Its needs are three times that, and it has received only 10% of the amount promised, or around a half-billion.

Various activists including Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein, described as ‘leftists’ by those on the right (politically that is, who are typically wrong morally and legally) have written to the government of France asking it to repay the some 90 million francs that were extorted illegally under military threat by France as ‘reparations’ for losses suffered by French landlords during the slave revolution of 1791-1804. In today’s terms that amounts to $17 billion which dovetails nicely with Haiti’s needs.

These activists have only moral authority and public conscience to push the French to accept responsibility and liability. The French government will no doubt receive support from other imperial or neo-imperial governments including the UK and the US. After all, the UK would not want to be pressured into paying back ‘reparations’ it extorted from China during the infamous opium wars, which should really be called opium war-crimes. Nor would the US want to have to compensate the various countries it has invaded, bombed or devastated.

In his recent visit to India, British PM David Cameron responded to a query about the return of the Kohinoor plundered (stolen) from India along with countless other priceless gems, artifacts and other art objects during the Raj by saying the return of such objects would lead to an emptying of British museums. The same logic has been used to deny the return of the so-called ‘Elgin’ marbles to Greece. This is like a Mafioso living in a house full of stolen property justifying keeping the ‘hot’ material since he could not live in an empty house.

The term ‘global justice’ has now entered the lexicon. France has an opportunity to demonstrate if there is any chance of it succeeding.