Pain and freedom: 200th anniversary of slave uprising casts light on troubled present

TWO hundred years ago, following a slave uprising, Haiti threw off the yoke of bondage to become a free black state and a haven for escaped African slaves. This was a decisive moment in the eventual abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. The anniversary is marked this year, the International Year for the Commemoration of the Struggle Against Slavery. But Haiti enters its bicentennial as the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere.