[News] Ramsey Clark Statement on Haiti

[News at freedomarchives.org]

International Action Center
Founded by Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark
39 W. 14th St., NY, NY, 10011 212-633-6646, www.iacenter.org

A Message from Ramsey Clark
March 1, 2004

The Bush administration has worked towards the removal of President 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide from office for three years. It has enforced a 
unilateral embargo and cut off humanitarian aid to the poorest country in 
the hemisphere. It has sought to undermine support for President Aristide 
while supporting his opposition. It has waged a relentless propaganda 
campaign to force him out of office. It has supported calls for elections 
in violation of the constitution and laws of Haiti.

Most recently the U.S. has forced regime change by armed aggression 
supporting former Haitian military officers, FRAPH leaders and criminal 
elements who entered Haiti with heavy firepower. Though only hundreds in 
number they easily captured Cap Haitien, Gonaives, Hinche and Les Cayes, 
killing the police who were untrained in warfare, or in defending against 
commando units, armed only with pistols.

This small force could never have entered Haiti if President Aristide, a 
man of peace, had not abolished the Haitian army, a praiseworthy act. 
Unfortunately, this left the country defenseless against armed aggression.

The international organizations, CARICOM, OAS and the UN should have acted 
to protect the democratically elected government of Haiti. After Costa Rica 
abolished its army, President Somoza (who U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt 
called "our SOB") of Nicaragua, twice threatened invasions of Costa Rica, 
only to be stopped, once by the OAS and once by Venezuela.

The U.S. consistently acted to force President Aristide to leave Haiti, 
abandon his constitutional duties, repudiate democratic processes and 
desert his people to the tender mercies of the Old Regime. The army, the 
paramilitary FRAPH, criminal gangs and the old oligarchy that supported 
Duvalier terrorism against the Haitian people with U.S. support for 30 
years. When in 1986 Baby Doc Duvalier was forced to leave, his repressive 
forces no longer able to contain the anger of the people, it was in a U.S. 
Air Force plane to the French Riviera with millions of dollars wrung from 
the sweat of the poor people of Haiti.

President Aristide consistently refused to leave his people, to resign, to 
subvert Haitian democracy and constitutional government under enormous 
pressure from the Bush Administration. He was under that enormous pressure 
for months as violence was again threatening his presidency as it did in 
1991, nine months into his first term as the first democratically elected 
president of Haiti, the first and only country in which a successful slave 
rebellion took place. That revolution was begun by Toussaint Louverteur in 
1791 and ended under Jean-Jacques Dessalines and others who defeated 
Napoleon's legions, 20,000 strong, and win independence for Haiti in 1804.
In his autobiography published in exile in 1992 first in France, Aristide 
wrote, "In Haiti, we are watching the ascent of a rebellious people who are 
revolting against slavery. I am only the reflection, an echo of that 
movement?they are the principal actors. I simply try to exist in their 
dimension, to show love and non-violence, through and beyond all the 
difficulties of life, as the only thing that will enable us to go forward."

President Aristide listed in the final chapter of his autobiography, "The 
Ten Commandments of Democracy in Haiti," first spoken by him before the 
General Assembly of the United Nations in September 1991. The commandments 
of President Aristide, the political faith of a priest, scholar and person 
of, by and for the poor, included: liberty; democracy; fidelity to human 
rights; the right to eat and to work; defense of the Haitian diaspora; no 
to violence; fidelity to the human being ― and the highest form of 
wealth ― fidelity to Haitian culture; everyone around the same table.

This is the man President Bush has deposed.

If the Bush administration policy of unilateral wars of aggression, 
violations of international law and the U.S. Constitution and regime change 
is to be stopped before the U.S. loses its last friend and creates a wave 
of terrorism that will engulf the planet for years, the U.S. Congress must 
investigate: 1. The role of the U.S. in forcing President Aristide from 
Haiti 2. The support the Bush administration gave in training, financing 
and arming the aggression against Haiti 3. The acts the Bush administration 
took to destabilize social order in Haiti, to support the old army, the 
FRAPH and the wealthy oligarchies 4. The role the U.S. played in President 
Aristide's sudden departure from Haiti, contrary to all his public 
statements, and his transport to a distant country 5. Any explanation the 
Bush administration has for its failure to demand the former military, 
FRAPH and other violent groups lay down their arms, arms the U.S. provided, 
until the eve of the president's coerced departure 6. Why Washington placed 
every pressure at its disposal to force the democratically elected 
President of Haiti to surrender his constitutional powers
7. Why President Aristide was kidnapped in fact, even as Toussaint 
Louverture was kidnapped to imprisonment in France in 1803 and Philippine 
President Emilio Aguinaldo was kidnapped by U.S. soldiers to end the 
Philippine-American War in 1901?

The Western Hemisphere cannot be a safe or happy place until U.S. military 
and economic intervention and regime change end, justice for all is 
assured, reparations for past offenses to Haiti are paid and until 
President Aristide returns for Haiti to serve his people.

Ramsey Clark
March 1, 2004

----------------------------------------------
New Book: Haiti A Slave Revolution is a powerful anthology. Fredrick 
Douglas, Edwidge Danticat, Mumia Abu Jamal, Ramsey Clark, Ben Dupuy, Maude 
LeBlanc, Paul Laraque and others document 200 years of U.S. interventions, 
blockades, invasions and occupations against the first successful slave 
revolution in history. 250 pages, photo section, index.
Order from www.leftbooks.com
Read chapters from the book at: www.iacenter.org/haiti/index.htm




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