On Monday, the United Nations General Assembly held a meeting on the occasion of the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, whose theme this year was : "Victory over Slavery: Haiti and Beyond". The Assembly had as special guest Ms. Michaëlle Jean, UNESCO Special Envoy for Haiti, a member of the project "The Slave Route" (2014-2015). The famous Haitian singer Emeline Michel closed the session by two songs in Creole and French.

Denis Régis Representative of Haiti to the United Nations, recalled that seven years ago, the General Assembly had designated 25 March the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. He paid tribute to the sacrifices made by many, including great thinkers, politicians and ordinary citizens, who had rejected terror and domination to denounce the enormous dehumanizing enterprise of slavery and the slave trade. Noting that the United Nations had decided to associate itself closely with his country in commemorating the occasion this year, he said Haiti was proud of its achievement 210 years ago. Acknowledging the contributions made by the first resistance fighters and those who had picked up the "torch", he called them anonymous heroes whose efforts had culminated in their triumph over their oppressors. Haiti had told the world that the system based on slavery was no longer valid, providing great momentum to the eventual abolition of slavery by France and then by the United States, he continued. Its revolution had contributed to the advent of a new moral order based on human dignity, he said, stressing that that contribution must be better known and better recognized.

In his speech Michäelle Jean said she had been born among the victims of the slave trade who had been dispossessed of everything — name, language, culture, home and dignity. She was a daughter of the 25 to 30 million people deported and sold like beasts of burden. "The Atlantic is a graveyard," she said, noting that for every survivor, an estimated five people had died, thousands of them from disease and the difficult sea crossing.

She said 2014 marked the 210th anniversary of the founding of Haiti, a country sometimes betrayed by its own people, and by both human and natural disaster. "Haiti bends, but does not break," she declared. It sought to be reborn, to exit from poverty and to break from the aid dependency that had undermined its sovereignty and for which it had paid a dear price.

The representative of Cuba said her country was a melting pot of Spanish, African and Asian, as well as indigenous cultures. "We see the consequences of the transatlantic slave trade," notably in the colonial plantations that had resulted from it. Yet, Cuban traditions had emerged from African predecessors, who had brought with them wisdom and the spirit of rebellion against injustice. Cuba supported the payment of reparations for the genocide and crimes against humanity committed during the transatlantic slave trade.

HL/ HaitiLibre