France's President Nicolas Sarkozy during a visit to Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, after the earthquake in January. Photograph: Francois Mori/AFP/Getty Images
A group of international academics and authors has written to Nicolas Sarkozy calling on France to reimburse the crushing "independence debt" it imposed on Haiti nearly 200 years ago.
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The open letter to the French president says the debt, now worth more than €17bn (£14bn), would cover the rebuilding of the country after a devastating earthquake that killed more than 250,000 people seven months ago.
Its signatories - including Noam Chomsky, the American linguist, Naomi Klein, the Canadian author and activist, Cornel West, the African-American author and civil rights activist, and several renowned French philosophers - say that if France repays the money it would be a solution to the shortfall in international donations promised following the earthquake.
Despite pledges at an international donors' conference in March of aid totalling £3.4bn, only five countries - Brazil, Norway, Australia, Colombia and Estonia - have sent aid amounting to about £325m.
The letter, published in the French newspaper Libération today says the debt was "patently illegitimate ... and illegal".
The debt dates back to when Haiti, then St Dominique, was France's most profitable colony thanks to slavery. In 1791 the slaves revolted, and in 1804, after defeating Napoleon's forces, they founded the world's first independent black republic.
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SOURCE: Guardian CO.UK - Kim Willsher
