11 August, 2009 — Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
There was a time, not so long ago, when popes, kings and queens enriched themselves and built vast empires on the profits made with the sweat and blood of kidnapped men, women and children loaded on ships, stacked like sardines and reduced to slavery on plantations of coffee, sugar, cotton, cocoa, all over the Americas[1]. From the 1444 Portuguese attacks against the coast of Africa, followed by the 1452 papal bull of pope Nicholas V[2] which invited Christians to attack and enslave non-Christians, to the faithful year of 1791, millions of human beings had already been kidnapped, terrorized, thrown to sharks in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Immediately upon arrival on the islands or the mainland, they were worked to death, tortured, eaten alive by dogs that were especially trained to feed on African flesh or they were blown to pieces with ignited gun powder shoved into their sexual parts by British, Spanish, French and Portuguese colonizers. It has been estimated that the population of Africa in the mid 19th century would have been 50 million instead of 25 million had this catastrophe known as the MAAFA not taken place[3].