WHEN the world is mired in more than 30 substantial conflicts, such as those in Sudan and Ukraine, it’s easy to forget some of the other fights taking place.

One of those is the continuing battle for justice over the transatlantic slave trade and its continuing impact on the lives of people of African descent.

Nowhere is this more starkly demonstrated than in the Caribbean island of Haiti.

Haiti continues to be the victim of international collective punishment for daring to be the world’s first black-led republic and the first independent Caribbean state after it threw off the yoke of French colonial rule and slavery in 1824.

This victory came at a crippling cost for Haiti. The country was forced to pay compensation of 150 million French francs to their former slave owners as part of the cost of their freedom. This amounted to 30 times Haiti’s annual revenue.

Estimates put Haiti’s payments at the equivalent of what is now $560 million to France over seven decades, with the true economic cost to Haiti put at an astounding $115 billion.

So slave owners who made a fortune from the free labour that produced sugar, indigo, cotton and coffee, made the descendants of those slaves pay them even greater riches while Haiti became the most impoverished nation in the western hemisphere.

These forced repayments contributed greatly to the woes still being experienced in Haiti today.

Haiti was forced to borrow heavily from international banks which, of course, charged extremely high interest rates on the debt.

Although the debt owed was later reduced to 90m francs in 1838, by 1900 some 80 per cent of Haiti’s government spending was on debt repayment.

This scandalous ransom was not fully repaid by the Haitians until 1947.

Not surprisingly there have been many demands for France to repay the money back to Haiti and to make reparations for slavery itself.

In 2004, the Haitian government demanded that the French give back the millions they had paid to the former slave masters. 

Not surprisingly, as with most other calls by people of African descent for repayments relating to slavery, the former oppressors have failed to come up with the cash or even any proposals that might remotely start to address the issue.

The disgusting notion that slave owners should be compensated for their “lost property” is, of course, not new. 

The same process took place in Britain when slave owners, and not the enslaved, were paid money.

A then incredible £20m package for British slave owners was agreed for that very purpose through the Slave Compensation Act of 1837.  Some 40,000 direct payments were paid to British slavers. Overall the British “slavery debt” was not repaid until as recently as 2015.

But back in Haiti they have the constant spectre of the United States looming large. As far as the US is concerned, Haiti, just under 2,000 miles away, falls within its “backyard” or its political and military sphere of influence.

The US has continually interfered in the domestic affairs of Haiti and clearly regards it as its right to do so.

Amid all the current talk of sovereignty relating to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it is worth remembering that in 1915 the US invaded sovereign Haiti because it believed unrest in the country was endangering its financial investments.

US troops stayed in Haiti until 1934 but effectively remained in political and financial control until after World War II, in 1947.

After the overthrow of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991, US president Bill Clinton sent 20,000 troops back to the island in 1994 to “restore democracy” — or rather control — at the point of a gun.

President Aristide was ousted again in 2004 which led to thousands of US marines being sent back to the island and the involvement of a so-called United Nations “stabilisation” force that was only withdrawn in 2017.

The former French ambassador to Haiti, Thierry Burkhard, admitted to the New York Times that France and the US were behind the 2004 ousting of Aristide from power. 

Burkhard said that one of the benefits of removing Aristide was putting an end to his campaign demanding France pay financial reparations to Haiti.

In July 2021, president Jovenel Moise was assassinated by unidentified gunmen in the capital Port-au-Prince, with many on the island suggesting that the US may have been involved — directly or indirectly.

Critics have accused prime minister-designate Ariel Henry of collusion with political allies on the island and the US in the assassination of Moise.

A general election has been promised for this year but this seems a very remote prospect as the economy has all but collapsed and gangs across the island have moved in to fill the vacuum.

Port-au-Prince is the centre of a horrific turf war in which there have been kidnappings, rapes as well as countless civilian deaths.

Gangs have operated in tandem with politicians to intimidate rivals and deliver votes with their activities financed partly through the international drugs trade.

It is clear that the economic and political turmoil has made a huge contribution towards the inability of Haiti to withstand the seemingly endless stream of devastating natural disasters that plague the country.

After the 2010 earthquake all but destroyed Haiti, scholars and journalists wrote a letter to the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, demanding that France pay Haiti back. 

Sarkozy, like all French presidents, refused to even engage with the idea.

A collapsed economy, caused, as I have argued, by the West, gang violence or natural disasters are not excuses that should allow for the military intervention into Haiti.

Aid and advice are, of course, very welcome. But none of that should be an excuse to further entrench colonial control of Haiti through the usual stringent conditions applied by the World Bank or International Monetary Fund through their structural adjustment packages.

These packages, largely benefiting US transnational corporations, would simply allow the West to wield power over the Haitians in a manner that would be difficult to distinguish from the old-style colonial rule. 

We must keep the issue of reparations on the table for Haiti as well as the principle of non-intervention in this sovereign country. After all, what’s good for Ukraine must be good for Haiti.

But if the rich nations of the world want to help right the wrongs done to Haiti in the past by the French, the US and their collaborators, perhaps the most effective policy right now would be to accept more Haitian refugees. 

This wouldn’t only be a humane policy that would improve their lives and that of their families. 

It might also mean expatriates being able to send money back home to Haiti to help stimulate the ailing economy of the country.