African bishop says debt slavery must end

Cardinal Bernard Agré, Archbishop Emeritus of Abidjan Ivory Coast:

Like many organized countries, the young nations of Africa, South America, etc...had to call on international banks and other financial bodies to realize the many projects on the way to their development. Very often the inept directors were not careful enough. They fell into the traps of those that the people in the know call “financial assassins,” the jackals ordered by severed organisms in the markets of ruses aimed at enriching international financial organizations deftly supported by their states or other instances drowning in the plot of silence and lies.

The staggering profits go to the financial assassins, to the multinationals as well as to some powerful nationals who act as screens with the foreign negotiators. Thus the majority of nationals continue to drown in poverty and the frustrations it generates.

The “financial assassins” bearers of plethoric financing manage with their local partners so that large loans using the system of complex interest can never be reimbursed quickly or entirely. The contracts of execution and maintenance are regularly assigned, under the form of monopoly, to the loaners nationals.

The beneficiary countries mortgage their natural resources. The inhabitants, from generation to generation, are locked in, prisoners for many long years.

To reimburse these always threatening inexhaustible debts, like the sword of Damocles over the heads of the states, the “service of the debt” weighs heavily on the national budget, in the order of 40 to 50 percent of the Gross National Product.

Thus tied up, the country has trouble breathing; it must tighten their belts to investments, the necessary costs for education, health, and general development.

This debt further becomes a political screen to not fulfil legitimate requests, with their parade of frustrations, social problems, etc... The national debt appears like a sickness programmed by specialists worthy of courts who judge crimes against humanity, evil conspiring to suppress entire populations. John Perkins (Al Terre Editions) described the underpinnings of international aid very well: never effective in terms of lasting development.

The key problem today is the desire, the will to abolish all slavery.

Upright generations, young boys and girls in certain developed countries and those in countries of the Third World, have become conscious that to change the world, its myths and its ghosts, is a realistic project and is possible. Some NGOs emerge to protect the material environment and defend the rights of oppressed peoples.

For the Church, light of the world, to play her prophetic role she should concretely commit herself in this fight with a view to finding the truth.

The experts have known for years that most of the debts have been effectively reimbursed. To purely and simply suppress them is no longer an act of charity but one of justice.

Thus today’s Synod should have the ability to take into consideration this problem of annulling the debts that weigh too heavily on the population.

For this not to be a merely sentimental, my proposition would be for an international commission made up of experts from the high finances, notified pastors, men and women of the North and South to take the dossier. This Commission would be entrusted with the triple mission:

1. To study the feasibility of the operation because it is obvious that all, everywhere is not the same.

2. To take all possible steps to not fall into the same situation again.

3. To solidly watch over the transparent use of sums, saved to be used effectively for all the elements of the entire social pyramid: rural and city. To avoid falling again into this juicy manna of the century, beneficial for both local and foreign peoples.