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Oliver Ressler
235.000.000.000 / 777.000.000.000.000
Intervention at the main station in Zurich, eBoard, 2006
During the exibition a new piece made for the electronic billboard of the Zurich main train station as media will be shown. The piece displays the foreign debts of Africa in relation to the damages which where caused by colonialism and slavery on this continent. If it is possible to elicit the foreign debts of Africa, which were tripled between 1980 and 2000, out of the World Banks databanks (235 billions dollars for the ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’ 2004), then the calculations of the damages caused by colonialism and slavery represent a disparate and much more difficult undertaking.
At the occasion of the UN World Conference against Racism in Durban in 2001 the African World Reparations and Repatriations Truth Commission brought forward a calculation based on comprehensive research and announced the sum of 777 trillion dollars. The claims of the African states were calculated using the reparation numbers of Germany for the victims of the Nazi-Regime as a point of reference. Out of fear of amend claims the Western countries deny any responsibility for colonialism and its aftermath and decline a guilt confession.
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