Legal

On 1 June 2017, the Comité international des peuples noirs (CIPN) submitted a legal claim against the French state concerning their involvement in a crime against humanity: slavery. The District Court in Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, will render its judgement on 7 September 2017. The trial against the French state before the District Court in Basse-Terre, to provide reparations for slavery as a crime against humanity, took place on Thursday 1 June 2017.

In 2014, the le Conseil Représentatif des Associations Noires (CRAN) lodged a complaint against the State and several French companies Spie, Spie Batignolles and SPIES’ Clayax Acquisition holding) for crimes against humanity in the "Congo-Ocean" case.

All of these companies are from the Batignolles Society, which received a grant from the State in 1920, and used forced labour to dig the railway connecting Brazzaville to Pointe Noire in the 1920s. According to official figures, 17,000 people lost their life there, but the death toll probably amounts to more than 100,000 people.

On the 10th of May 2013, the Conseil Représentatif des Associations Noires (CRAN) (Representative Council of Black Associations) lodged a complaint against the Caisse des dépôts for having benefited from the slave trade.

In 1804, France had required a financial tribute from Haiti to compensate settlers in return for its independence. Louis-Georges Tin, president of the CRAN, estimates that the sum paid by Haiti between 1825 and 1946 amounts to 21 billion of dollars.

In 2014, the Conseil Représentatif des Associations Noires (CRAN) filed a complaint against the French government for a "revision and reparation", 70 years after the massacre of dozens of African infantrymen in 1944 in Thiaroye, near Dakar.

This conference on reparations for slavery, co-organized by the Association Racines and the Association Guadeloupéenne pour la recherche en histoire du droit et des institutions d’outre-mer (GREHDIOM) under the patronage of the UNESCO, was held on 16-17 of December 2006 at the Cité des Métiers in the Abymes, Guadeloupe. Numerous discussions and debates were had around the question of reparations and the Taubira law.

In 2005, the Mouvement International pour les Réparations (MIR) in collaboration with Conseil Mondial de la Diaspora Pan-Africaine submitted a summons for the French State to appear before the Crown Court in Fort-de-France (Martinique).

A botched police intervention on 17 October 2013 in Garges-lès-Gonesse (a commune in the northern suburbs of Paris) resulted in the family in question lodging a complaint with the General Inspectorate of the National Police (Inspection générale de la police nationale, IGPN) for physical violence and racial discrimination they experienced at the hands of the police. The Saounaré family also wrote letters to the interior and justice ministers outling their grievances.