[News] STOP THE U.S. OCCUPATION OF HAITI! RESTORE PRESIDENT ARISTIDE!

[News at freedomarchives.org]

February 29, 2004

International Action Center Condemns U.S. gunboat diplomacy in Haiti
STOP THE U.S. OCCUPATION OF HAITI! RESTORE PRESIDENT ARISTIDE!
EMERGENCY DEMONSTRATIONS PLANNED NATIONWIDE

Emergency Demonstration:

San Francisco, Monday, March 1, 5pm, Powell & Market

The International Action Center condemns the forcible overthrow of the 
government of Haiti and the removal of popularly elected President 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide by the U.S. and French military. We demand that 
President Aristide be allowed to return and that the U.S. withdraw its 
occupation troops, agents and terrorist mercenary forces from Haiti's soil.

The departure of President Aristide was far from a voluntary decision for 
the "good of the country," as George Bush's mouthpiece in Haiti, Ambassador 
James Foley, maintains. No one in the Bush regime cares about what?s good 
for Haiti. If they did, they would not have tortured the Haitian people 
with years of economic sanctions. They would not have armed and paid the 
mercenary death squads that are terrorizing northern Haiti, murdering 
political opponents and threatening to turn Port-au-Prince into a killing 
field.
President Aristide left Haiti under the guns of a U.S. Naval task force and 
thousands of U.S. Marines, with Marine helicopters hovering over the 
presidential palace and U.S.-armed mercenaries surrounding the capital. 
Haiti's capital is now under U.S. military occupation.

With conflicting reports coming out of Haiti, it?s becoming increasingly 
clear that the President was kidnapped. The corporate-owned U.S. news media 
have been dishonest in the reporting of events, claiming the revolt against 
President Aristide was a spontaneous uprising, in the midst of which 
hundreds of heavily armed, well-trained commandos just happened to materialize.

The U.S. government has a long and bloody history of overthrowing popular 
governments in Latin America and the Caribbean. It has used both CIA covert 
operations and direct invasions. To name just a few - Guatemala in 1954, 
Cuba in 1959, Jamaica in the 1970s, Chile in 1973 and Nicaragua in 1992, 
Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989. U.S. troops marched into Haiti in 1888, 
1898, 1891 and occupied Haiti directly from 1914 to 1934. The objective has 
always been the same: to keep the wealth of Latin America and the Caribbean 
flowing into the vaults of Wall Street banks while the people who produce 
it remain poor.

In 1914 the U.S. Marine Corps seized all of Haiti's gold reserves and 
carted them off to the United States. Both France and the U.S. owe Haiti 
reparations. The leader of the resistance to the 1915 invasion, Charlemagne 
Peralte, was murdered by U.S. troops, tied to a door almost fully naked and 
put on display. U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler later 
confessed, "I made Haiti a safe place for the First National City Bank boys 
to collect revenues in."
The forced removal of President Aristide, who tried to resist some of the 
dictates of the International Monetary Fund, marks a blatant return to that 
era of open colonialism and gunboat diplomacy. The banker-politicians and 
generals in Washington would like to restore that regime not only in Haiti 
but also throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Haiti is their testing 
ground. They must be stopped!

Today we call on freedom-loving people everywhere to rally to the cause of 
the Haitian people and their elected government.

No to U.S. occupation! No to mercenary death squads! Restore the elected 
government of Haiti! U.S. and France, hands off! Reparations for Haiti!

Emergency Demonstration:

San Francisco, Monday, March 1, 5pm, Powell & Market


International Action Center
39 West 14th St, #206, New York, NY, 10011
212-633-6646 www.iacenter.org



The Freedom Archives
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