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Regional secretary with the National Education Union
The West still traps the global South in debt
For all the talk of the rise of the developing world and the decline of the West’s malignant power over it, we still haven’t seen a ‘can’t pay, won’t pay’ rebellion over ballooning Third World debt, writes ROGER McKENZIE
MPs and local mayors join protesters outside St Paul’s Cathedral, where 20,000 chain letters were presented, calling for the cancellation of Third World debt, March 1999

RICH European powers stole more than 20 million people out of Africa, shackled and enslaved them to transport them across the Atlantic, worked them to the bone and then underdeveloped the African continent through colonisation.

They then expected African nations to pay them back for the “privilege” of being exploited.

Any talk of reparations for the evils of slavery and colonialism is waved away with one dismissive hand while the other one is stretched out in the expectation that African nations pay back, with massive interest, the debt they have taken out to try to get their people out of the soul-destroying poverty that many are trapped in.

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