Protesters from the Jubilee Debt Campaign Photo: Jubilee Debt Campaign
History lessons to be learned
Leaders could learn from the past in handling the Greek debt crisis
History is repeating itself as the Greek debt crisis mirrors the debt scandals that have affected parts of Africa. That was the message from the Jubilee Debt Campaign as they urged Europe’s leaders to learn the lessons of the past.
The organisation, which developed out of Jubilee 2000, was set up to work for a debt jubilee in the global south. Now they say that the same principles must be applied in Europe. At a demonstration last weekend, at the Greek Embassy in London, they criticised ‘unaccountable international institutions demanding a pound of the people’s flesh in exchange for bailing out banks and rewarding speculators’.
They said that a debt jubilee in Europe would involve transparent debt audits, steep and democratic write-down of debts, regulation of financial institutions and social control of banking.
‘This package only bail-outs the banks,’ said Jonathan Stevenson of the Jubilee Debt Campaign. ‘Proposals on the table at the moment suggest that Greece will not even see most of this money – it will be paid to the “creditors” through a separate account.’
