Debt to Haiti Survives Censorship
by
CRIME
According to the web directory, the imitation French foreign ministry website broadcasting a fake announcement that France would pay Haiti 21 billion USD in reparations was mysteriously "deleted" last Friday from the ".fr" domain, which is controlled by the French government.
"It is most unfortunate that the Quay d'Orsay has been so ungrateful, and frankly, uncooperative, with our bold initiative to improve the French government's reputation in Haiti," remarked Laurence Fabre, a spokesperson for the Committee for the Reimbursement of the Indemnity Money Extorted from Haiti (CRIME), the group behind the hoax.
The site was recreated by its authors over the weekend at diplomatiegov.info, and CRIME has issued the following explanation of the hoax: The French government has stated that it is considering legal recourse against us.
This is very fitting, as it is our concern with crimes that led us to make this false announcement. We are the Committee for the Reimbursement of the Indemnity Money Extorted from Haiti (in French, le Comité pour le Remboursement Immédiat des Montants Envolés d'Haïti, and in both languages spelling CRIME).
But is a spoof website such a grave crime? Particularly when compared to what the French have done in Haiti, including:
-The forcible capture, commerce, brutalization, torture, murder and enslavement of millions of Africans over more than two centuries
-Expropriating 90 million gold francs from Haiti as an indemnity for lost French slave-trade profits following Haiti's independence, and saddling Haitians with an illegitimate debt that Haiti paid France for 122 years
-Actively helping to overthrow Haiti's democratically elected president , Jean-Bertrand Aristide, on February 29, 2004 in large measure because he had the temerity to demand that France reimburse Haiti the "independence debt" with interest amounting to about $21 billion. This was the first time a former slave colony officially requested reparations from a former colonial and slave-owning nation.
- Promising to Haiti through pledged contributions to UN agencies, NGOS and the Red Cross some $180 million, but six months later, not one centime has been delivered to Haiti, according to the UN's humanitarian aid tracking site Relief Web. Meanwhile the French secretary of state for overseas development traveled via private jet to a conference on aid for Haiti at a cost of $143,000.
We leave it to the court of world public opinion to judge: Who are the real criminals?
--CRIME
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The Lede - The New York Times News Blog
July 16, 2010, 3:05 pm
Faux French Foreign Ministry Explains Prank
By Robert Mackey
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/faux-french-foreign-ministry-explains-prank/
Updated | 3:53 p.m. The Lede has received a statement from Laurence Fabre, who identified herself as a spokeswoman for the group behind an elaborate hoax, in which someone impersonating a French government official announced this week that France would reimburse Haiti money it was forced to pay in exchange for its independence in the 19th century.
