Randall Robinson (1941-2023) on Haiti's Unbroken Agony, from U.S. Coups to Haiti's "Debt" to France

We continue to remember the lawyer and human rights activist Randall Robinson, the founder of the racial justice group TransAfrica, who died last week at age 81. Robinson was a leader in the U.S. movement against South African apartheid and was a prominent critic of U.S. policy in Haiti, including the U.S.-backed coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Democracy Now! spoke to Robinson in 2007 about that episode and how foreign powers have interfered in Haiti throughout the country’s history, beginning with the slave revolt against France that established Haiti as the first free republic in the Americas in 1804. “The Haitians believed that anybody who was enslaved anywhere had a home and a refuge in Haiti. Anybody seeking freedom had a sympathetic ear in Haiti. But because of that, the United States and France and the other Western governments, even the Vatican, made them pay for so terribly long,” said Robinson, who had just published the book An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President.