NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER SAYS DEBT IS 'MASSIVE VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS”

Enforced repayment of foreign debt is a "massive and systematic violation of human rights" according to Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980 for his human rights work against South American military dictatorships.

Esquivel has taken the debt issue as his new human rights campaign. He told the founding conference of Jubilee 2000 Latin America in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, 25-27 January that "the foreign debt is the determinant factor in the disorder of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is a murderous project that has been imposed on us," he said.

Other speakers also stressed that debt kills. The archbishop of Honduras, Monsenor Oscar Andres Rodriguez, called the foreign debt "a tombstone pressing down on us". Monsenor Rodriguez felt so strongly about the debt issue that he flew by small plane from a meeting with the Pope in Mexico to attend the conference, and flew immediately back to Mexico for further meetings with the Pope.

It is no longer a question of how and why the debt was contracted, both said. "We cannot ask that the debt be repaid if it requires unsupportable sacrifices," Rodrigues said - noting that the Pope has backed this view, even during his visit to Mexico. "We must put aside purely economic criteria and look for solutions to these human problems. We cannot have a world run solely by the logic of profit."

Both also argued that the debt in Latin America was, as Esquivel said, "contracted in large measure by private companies and banks and then was taken over by the government when these private firms could not pay, so now it is being repaid by ordinary people."

Esquivel argues that the massive debt service payments cause such suffering that they violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 50th anniversary of which is being celebrated this year. He said that "external debt is an eternal debt, and is a tribute as was demanded in colonial era." He called on the world to think back to that era, and calculate the "social and ecological debt" which is owed by the industrialised countries from that era, and is vastly more than the present foreign debt.

"It is literally a problem of life and death. The foreign debt should be cancelled or we should not pay," Esquivel said.

Both were speaking in support of the launch of the Jubilee 2000 Latin American Campaign, which has drawn 135 people from 26 countries to Teguicigalpa.

Esquivel's comments follow statements of support for debt cancellation by Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize Winner for Economics. Sen won the Nobel prize in October for his groundbreaking research on economic mechanisms underlying famine and poverty.