The photo “UNIFA Event for Restitution” is credit: UNIFA

The calls from Haiti have echoed around the world: “France, Pay Your Debt To Haiti!”

Demonstrators from Haiti to France to San Francisco, London, Belize, and Jamaica have demanded that France pay for the ransom it extracted from Haiti 200 years ago as the price for its independence and for the “crime” of freeing itself from slavery.

On January 1, 1804, after a successful revolution, the Haitian people emancipated themselves from slavery and colonialism, becoming the first nation in the world to permanently ban slavery. The Haitian flag– adopted by revolutionaries on May 18, 1803– now flew freely.

The newly independent Haitian government offered asylum to anyone of African descent who escaped slavery, as well as people of indigenous origin. In his landmark 2016 article, “Our Debt to Haiti”, Caribbean scholar and historian Sir Hilary Beckles wrote of how Haiti welcomed Africans who escaped slavery in Jamaica:

“All of us in Jamaica, more than any other people, owe the greatest political and civic debt to Haiti… This year is the 200th anniversary of the grand, epic landing of ‘sail-away’ Jamaicans in Haiti – the first black Jamaicans to be declared free and citizens of Haiti by the personal intervention of a president…This is what happened exactly 200 years ago. Jamaica is bursting at the seams with 300,000 enslaved Africans. Haiti is the only true land of the free and the brave, having defeated in battle the enslavers of France, Britain, and Spain before becoming, in 1804, the first free state in the Western world. President Dessalines enshrined within the 1805 national constitution the most humane and politically powerful provision: any enslaved person of African descent who arrives on the shores of Haiti is automatically freed and a citizen of Haiti.”

Moreover, the Haitian government offered material support to freedom fighters and liberation movements throughout the Americas, including Simon Bolivar, on the condition that they abolish slavery should they come to power. The revolutionary leadership that Haiti provided in the global fight against white supremacy has been consistently acknowledged by Black revolutionaries in the US, including the late Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), as seen in this powerful speech. Haiti’s international solidarity also extended to struggles within Europe, with Haiti becoming the first nation to officially recognize Greece’s fight for independence in 1822.

Confronted by a real challenge to........

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