September 2000 Call to Action News

Sri Lanka Forum: Globalization looks worse to the Third World

The April Forum for African and Asian Spirituality convened by Fr. Tissa Balasuriya in Sri Lanka (ChurchWatch, May), and attended by CTA's Don Wedd, has now published its product via the Internet: a profoundly challenging paper on "Rebuilding Global Justice in the 21st Century." Written from the Third World perspective of the social scientists, theologians and pastors who came from five continents to participate, it is far more critical of today's globalized capitalism than most First World analyses, even by so-called progressives. Here are some shorthand highlights that will whet your appetite to obtain and read the original:

The poor nations of the South (Asia, Africa, Latin America) actually owe nothing to the rich North (the U.S. and Europe), but are owed huge compensation. From 1500 on:

• White Europeans helped themselves to silver and gold, committed genocide on 80 percent of the so-called Indians in the Americas, enslaved and transported from 15 to 25 million black Africans as cheap labor for the mines and plantations, and extinguished native societies — and their economies — on both sides of the Atlantic.

• Papal bulls accompanied the Portuguese and the Spanish colonizers, giving them rights to monopolize trade and enslave local populations.

After 1800:
• European nations put down local rebellions, killing millions all over Asia and Africa. Huge populations were forced to emigrate — Indians to Malaysia or Sri Lanka, Malays to Indonesia, etc.

• Colonial masters seized control of land, ignoring ethnic differences as they superimposed their own political boundaries (sowing seeds of conflicts that continue today, e.g., in the Horn of Africa).

• Land that once grew food for native people was seized to grow export crops like coffee and cotton.

In the 20th century and today:
• Colonies attaining their political freedom have became neo-colonies economically. National economies in the Southern hemisphere have been taken over by multinational corporations based in the North.

• Capital flowing from the South to the North is three or four times the amount moving from North to South.

• In one year (1999), debt service alone saw the South remit $200 billion to the North. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund force nations in the South to make "structural adjustments" — i.e., to divert money from social programs to debt repayment.

• Social resistance in the South is beaten down, not only by "low intensity wars" financed by the North (mostly the U.S.), but also by military

repression of peasant, labor and student movements. (The U.S. Army School of the Americas trains the military for Latin America. See story on back page.) At any given time in the South, some 30 wars or international conflicts are raging.

• Endemic poverty and conflict push the poor to migrate to the more affluent nations of the North and West. But there the developed nations turn economic refugees back at the borders. People of color — non-European stock — have to remain where they are.

• This is global apartheid — the most permanent effect of European expansion since 1492. But in the North it is not taken seriously even by scholars and religious leaders, nor by the U.N., which operates on the assumption that the present world order is just.

A post-capitalist solution

Gandhi said there is enough wealth in the world to meet everyone's need, but not everyone's greed. The capitalist system not only needs reform; it needs to be replaced by a system that really provides for the needs of all humankind. Resistance must be global. Demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle this spring are first steps.

In the meantime, the compensation the North owes the South for 500 years of land grabs, plunder, slavery, genocide and usurious loans is incalculable. But justice demands it, and in the Third World the calls for reparation are growing. Cancellation of external debt (sought by Jubilee 2000: story on page 3) is just a beginning. So-called debt to the North is illegitimate, and besides, it has been repaid many times over. Material compensation to the South should take the form of a tax on international financial transactions, a solidarity tax on economic growth, a maximum income limit, etc.

A Global People's Tribunal

Even more importantly, moral compensation demands that the world's collective consciousness keep alive the memory of the horrendous atrocities the South has suffered. There should be truth commissions, and bilateral fact-finding by both the former colonies and their former colonizers. (It can start with specific cases like Zimbabwe, where research has already occurred.) Public hearings should lead to charges at regional tribunals, and finally at a Global Tribunal that might bring cases to the International Court of Justice.

The Sri Lanka paper helps First World CTAers to understand the perspective of Third World speakers who will address CTA Conference 2000: like Sr. Ivone Gebara of Brazil, Sr. Anne Nasimiyu of Kenya, Bishop Julio Xavier Labayen of the Philippines, and Chung Hyun-Kyung of Korea. The full text is available on CTA's website — www.cta-usa.org — under "international church reform." Or send $3 to the CTA office for a copy.