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Slavery has been around in Haiti since its discovery, when Christopher Columbus first
landed there. Since then, slaves were known to receive the most brutal and inhumane treatment
in the world. Slaves that would work from dawn to dusk in the French sugar plantations.
With a treatment so harsh that most slaves that worked in these plantations would opt
to kill themselves, or were tortured to death. These slaves were whipped, burned, buried
alive, mutilated, ***, and it was even legal for their owners to kill them. The owners
found that it was cheeper to bring in new slaves from Africa, than to improve the working
conditions of these slaves. In result, slaves would die very quickly, and new slaves were
brought in from Africa to replace them. The plantation owners were heavily dependent on
these slaves. In such way that the slave population was 15x bigger than the white population in
Haiti. By 1789, there were more than half a million slaves and only 30,000 whites. However,
all of this would supposedly change after the slave revolt led by Toussaint L'Ouverture.
Between the years of 1791 and 1801, Toussaint led the slaves to a revolution that would
eventually become the only successful slave revolt in human history and Haiti became the
first country to abolish slavery in the west. However, most people think that it ended there.
But, the truth is that there are more slaves today worldwide than in any other time in
history. In Haiti itself, it is estimated that there are 250,000 children are part of
the restavek system. Restaveks are children that are often given away or sold by poor
families in ordered to survive. These children are removed from their parents and sent to
live with other families where they are treated as slaves. We are not talking about child
labor, we are talking about real slavery, the same type of slavery that also occured
back in the 1700s. Children, that are forced to work, against their will, for long hours
in plantations or in domestic labor. Where they are often abused by their owners, and
denied any form of education or right to basic health. This is a reality today in Haiti,
a country that was formed by freed slaves and that yet has slaves today. The worst part
is that slavery became something common in Haiti. One out of three homes in Port-au-Prince,
the capital of Haiti, has a child living in restavek. This is mainly due to the fact that
Haiti is, unfortunately, one of the poorest countries in the west, and slavery ends up
going unpunished, even though it has been illegal for hundreds of years. The poverty
of the government doesn't have the capacity to fight this case. Millions of dollars have
already been donated to Haiti, but it isn't enough. The problem is that there is very
few awareness of this issue in our society. We interviewed more than 30 people asking
them if they thought slavery was abolished. 23 out of the 30 people we interviewed answered
'yes'. Knowledge is power, and everybody needs to know what is going on in Haiti, so slavery
can be abolished once and for all. Slavery isn't something that people will just have
to learn to live with. It has been abolished for hundreds of years, and it shouldn't be
a problem now. By simply sharing this video and spreading it out to the world, you are
already making a huge difference. Increase awareness so that more people will join this
cause. The more people know about this, the better. Make donations, because there are
children out there that are being sold into slavery by their families because they are
too poor to raise them. Donate in the internet by sites such as: 'freetheslaves.net', 'notforsalecampaign.org',
'abolishslavery.org', and many other organizations that are also in the fight against it. Slavery
is wrong, and it shouldn't go unpunished. Share this video, donate, spread it out to
the world, so you can also be a part of abolishing slavery.