International Day of African Resistance Against Enslavement
George Bassiou: Early leader of the Haitan Revolution
In 1998, the UN’s body for education, science and culture, UNESCO, instituted the 23rd of August as International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. This day was picked as it was the day that enslaved Africans decided to liberate themselves on what was one of the most fierce enslavement conditions on the planet.
Today is the the 220th Anniversary of the enslaved African revolt on the French colony of Saint Domingue which started the Haitian Revolution. Led by Toussaint L’Ouverture in 1804 Haiti was declared an independent free Black republic, the first of its kind in the Western hemisphere, in doing so they had to defeat not only their French colonial masters but also the Spanish army, and the British army. It was the only revolt against enslavement that was victorious.
Help Haiti
According to the latest estimates, the earthquake could have caused 100,000 deaths in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.
The home of the world’s first and only successful slave revolt and the Western hemisphere’s first post-colonial black nation, Haiti was still struggling to recover from the four hurricanes that hit it in 2008 when around 1,000 people died and 800,000 were left homeless. Reports state that most of those who have escaped with their lives have spent their first night without any shelter, some even sleeping amongst dead bodies and this is likely to continue, whilst hundreds or possibly thousands are buried alive underneath the devastation.
This disaster is not only shocking in scale but especially shocking because of the inability of Haiti to help itself. Haitians have been struggling with chronic unemployment affecting 75% of the population, 70% without adequate access to sanitation; 78% of the population live on a meagre $2 a day (the so-called absolute poverty threshold). All this plus coups and civil wars have brought intermittent political stability since 1990.
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Two hundred years on; Haiti still waits for liberation
By Neil Griffiths / @_griff
Historically crippled by international debts, the middle of the twentieth century saw the IMF force Haiti (then occupied by America) to open its market to imported, highly subsidised U.S rice and sugar.
The productive country once known as ‘The Jewel of the Antilles’ was subsequently awash with cheap American grown goods. Some even reported U.S rice dumped on the shores, free to anyone who wanted it. The undermining effect on local infrastructure was deliberate, profound and lasting.
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