yesterday August 23rd, the *ONESXM Association* joins people across Africa, the Caribbean and the world in observing the *International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition*.

On the night of 22–23 August 1791, enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue — today the Republic of Haiti — rose against slavery and colonial oppression. That uprising became the beginning of the Haitian Revolution and helped shake the foundations of the transatlantic system of enslavement.

While the commonly used historical term is the “slave trade,” ONESXM believes we must also be conscious of the language we use. These were not commodities being traded. They were human beings — kidnapped, trafficked, transported, sold and exploited through a brutal international system of human trafficking and chattel enslavement.*

For St. Martin, remembrance must also mean confronting our own history.

Our island was colonized and exploited by European powers and today remains divided between the *Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Republic of France. The consequences of slavery and colonialism did not disappear with abolition. They remain visible in our economic structures, institutions, cultural displacement and the continuing denial of full self-determination to our people.

We remember the enslaved not simply as victims, but as people who resisted.

Their struggle reminds us that freedom was not handed down by colonial powers. It was demanded, fought for and won.

ONESXM believes remembrance must be accompanied by reparatory justice, reparations and genuine decolonization. Our people must have the right to determine their own destiny, including through the island-wide referendum ONESXM continues to call for:

Should St. Martin become an independent country — YES or NO?

From *Haiti to St. Martin, from Africa throughout the Caribbean*, we honor our ancestors by remembering their suffering, recognizing their resistance and continuing the unfinished work of freedom.

They were not cargo.

They were not commodities.

They were people.

We remember.

We resist.

We reclaim.