On the sidelines of the Francophonie summit, former Haitian President Edgar Leblanc Fils launched a violent indictment against France, demanding that it pay in hard currency the price of its hard-won freedom.
Organized on October 4 and 5, 2024 in Villers-Cotterêts, where King François I signed a decree in 1539 imposing French as the administrative and legal language throughout the Kingdom of France, the 19th Francophonie Summit was marked by the noted absence of Edgar Leblanc Fils, now ex-leader of the Presidential Council of Haiti (April-October 2024).
An icy wind is currently blowing between Paris and Port-au-Prince. A month earlier, during the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Edgard Leblanc Fils, then still in office, had publicly challenged Paris by recalling the exorbitant price that the island had to pay to free itself from the chains of slavery. Affirming that his country has been “ the great victim of a historical injustice which delayed its development “, he launched into a brief history lesson, explaining that Haiti had ” was forced in 1825 to pay a colossal debt to France, the colonizing country, in exchange for recognition of its independence “. In his speech, he did not hesitate to demand reimbursement from Paris of this “ ransom[…], form of punishment[…], which has stifled the economic and social potential of the black people of Haiti for generations ».
The sequel
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