[News] Haiti - None Dare Call It Genocide

[Anti-Imperialist News]

None Dare Call It Genocide by JOHN MAXWELL
http://www.haitisolidarity.net/article.php?id=255

COMMON SENSE
JOHN MAXWELL
Sunday, June 29, 2008

It may come as a surprise to many more Europeans 
than to American white people that a great many 
intelligent and sophisticated people of African 
ancestry are convinced that there are important 
classes of whites who are conspiring to wipe them off the face of the Earth.

This may be the most pervasive conspiracy theory 
of all because it is made more credible by an 
impressive history of genocidal attacks on black 
people and other non-whites. Advocates for 
'Indians' of the Amazon say the natives believe 
they are threatened not simply by greedy ranchers 
and gold miners but by missionaries from the 
United States, hoping to clear oil-rich areas of 
the indigenous populations as in Darfur. In 
Bolivia, for example, the recent attempt by some 
provinces to disaffiliate themselves from the 
rest of the state is seen as a kind of 
proto-genocide aimed at separating the richest 
land from control by the majority Indian populations.

The slave trade was itself a genocidal operation 
as well as a plutocratic enterprise, and there 
are those who say that the damage done by the 
slave trade has been grievously underestimated, 
in order to deprecate the importance of Africans 
and their civilisations and therefore their worth in the world.

King Leopold's 'civilising' assault on the 
Congolese, described by him as a charitable 
endeavour comparable in intent to the Red Cross, 
was able to kill 10 million Congolese in 20 
years, suggesting that the toll of the slave trade may have been
grossly underestimated.

In South Africa, the 50-year Apartheid regime was 
not only explicitly anti-African, but in its 
terminal stages was frantically developing 
biocidal agents to eliminate and exterminate 
black people all over the world. Dr Wouter 
Basson, a cardiologist, was the lead scientist in 
the attempt to sanitise the world for white 
people. He still practises medicine in South Africa.

The United States has always had a bad reputation 
in race matters. Although a black Barbadian, 
Crispus Attucks was the first American military 
casualty of the Revolutionary war, and blacks 
from Haiti, including the later Emperor of Haiti 
Henri Cristophe, fought for American 
Independence, blacks were infamously defined as 
only three-fifths human when the new state 
proclaimed its freedom and independence.

It was probably no surprise that 20 years later 
the new state of Haiti proclaimed its own 
independence, that the Haitians, having fought 
for freedom over three centuries, thought it so 
precious that they implemented the first 
universal declaration of human rights, valuing 
every human being, male and female, adult and 
child, as essentially entitled to the same rights.

Ever since then the Americans and the Haitians 
have been at odds over freedom and human rights 
and the United States has felt able, whenever it 
chose, to 'intervene' to put the Haitians in their proper place.

There is not enough time to detail the various 
methods used to pacify the restless natives of 
Haiti, including dive-bombing peasants in the 
1920s, installing a cruel and corrupt army in the 
1930s and watching paternally as the army and the 
elite, empowered by the US, wreaked their 
sadistic and oppressive will on the Haitian people.

Having tolerated and fostered the wicked Duvalier 
dictatorships for 30 years, the US and its elite 
clients were not about to let democracy loose on the Haitian people.

And when the Haitians decided to reclaim their 
freedom under the leadership of Jean Bertrand 
Aristide, the Americans first sabotaged and then 
aborted the Haitians' dreams of democracy, first 
by blackmail and then at gunpoint.

ROCK STONE A' RIVER BOTTAM

If the Americans had left the Haitians to their 
own devices they would probably be just as poor 
but a lot less miserable.When Jean Bertrand 
Aristide took office in Haiti in 1990 it was with 
the enthusiastic approval of the Haitian people, 
who saw in him the man of their dreams of 
emancipation, the little black priest who knew 
them and what they wanted to do. The Duvaliers 
and their successor military rulers allowed the 
parasitic elite, Haitian/American businessmen and 
other foreigners with 'dual citizenship' to rape 
and pillage Haiti. Aristide meant to build 
paradise on the dung-heap their oppressors had 
created. That was not the American/elite plan.

They threw him out after a few months but 
relented under pressure to accept him back in 
1994 to serve out the few months left of his 
term. When he campaigned again for re-election 
after the Preval interregnum (Haitian presidents 
are limited to one term) the Americans directed 
by the International Republic Institute and US 
AID poured millions into Haiti to set up 
anti-Aristide movements. It didn't work, but they 
continued with campaigns of lies, slander and 
political doublespeak designed to discredit him 
internationally, if not in Haiti.

Since they couldn't move his people they hit on a 
brilliant idea. They would make it impossible for him to govern.

The prevalence of disease and malnutrition is 
staggering in Haiti. The country is plagued by 
the highest HIV rates in the hemisphere, 
representing nearly 60 per cent of the known HIV 
infections in the Caribbean. Tuberculosis remains 
endemic and is a significant cause of mortality. 
Malaria-nearly non-existent in many other 
Caribbean countries-remains a deadly problem in 
Haiti. Even simple prevention measures, such as 
childhood vaccination for tuberculosis, are woefully lacking.

Water-related diseases are also rampant 
throughout Haiti. For example, in 1999, 
infectious diarrhoea was found to be the second 
leading cause of death in Haiti. The World Health 
Organisation (WHO) estimates that 88 per cent of 
diarrhoea cases in the world result from the 
combination of unsafe drinking water, inadequate 
sanitation, and improper hygiene. In the same 
1999 study, gastro-intestinal infection was the 
leading cause of under-five mortality in Haiti.

'WATER IS LIFE'

If Haiti could manage to bring clean water to the 
people, that alone would revolutionise the 
country. It would be a powerful means of raising 
health standards generally and preventing 
epidemic infant deaths. It would, by itself, be a new dawn of freedom.

The Inter American Development Bank agreed, and 
in 1998 said it would lend Haiti some money to 
set up modern water supplies in two cities for a 
start. To get these loans Haiti cleaned up its 
debts to the international financial institutions 
and got ready for some progress.

They are still waiting. The water supplies, 
intended to reduce disease and infant mortality 
were repeatedly blocked by the United States and 
its accomplices. The George Bush administration 
intervened illegally to stop the IDB distributing 
the pittance, and the other members of the Bank 
including France and Canada went along with the 
fraud. And countries like Jamaica, Trinidad and 
the rest of the hemisphere, caved in like terrified pimps and said not a word.

Meanwhile Aristide was getting help from Cuba to 
build a medical school; Dr Paul Farmer's 
Boston-based Partners in Health was 
revolutionising the management and treatment of 
HIV/AIDS which had been decimating Haiti, and 
Aristide built more schools in three years than 
had been built in Haiti for the past 200.

He had to go.

Worthies such as the Jamaican-descended Colin 
Powell swallowed the propaganda of the elite and 
their fascist North American friends. Luigi 
Einaudi, the American deputy secretary General of 
the Organisation of American states, was heard to 
say that all that was wrong with Haiti was that 
Haitians were running the place.
They would soon fix that.

Some of the most fantastic lies began to be 
spread about Aristide. He was a devil worshipper, 
a dictator, a hater of democracy, a tyrant, a 
terrorist, a murderer. And one fine morning in 
2004, almost exactly 200 years after the world's 
first declaration of human rights on the soil of 
Haiti, the American ambassador came to President 
Aristide with a message. You'd better leave old 
chap, or there are people here with some coffins for you and your wife.

So, the dream was over. Aristide was gone. And, 
best of all, the poor, disease-ridden Haitians 
would not get their water supplies, would have to 
forget that they were human beings deserving of 
rights and respect, and would still be dipping water from gutters and puddles.

There is a report out this last week which 
chronicles this bestial farce in excruciatingly 
painful detail. It is published by a coalition of 
NGOs: the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Centre for 
Human Rights, the Centre for Human Rights and 
Global Justice and its affiliate the 
International Human Rights Clinic at New York 
University's School of Law, and Partners in 
Health, now the largest health care providers in 
Haiti with its sister organisation in Haiti, 
Zanmi Lasante, treating almost two million 
patients last year, building houses and treating 
malnutrition as well as AIDS and TB and the 
report is in English but is called in Haitian 
creole Wòch nan Soley : The Denial of the Right to Water in Haiti.

Woch nan soley may be loosely translated into 
Jamaican Creole as "Rock stone a ribba bottam neva know sun hot."

It is an irresistible true story of some of the 
most depraved mischief ever visited upon any 
people anywhere by another people. It may be 
downloaded from the web at the websites of any of 
the authors. Partners in Health may be found at 
<http://www.pih.org/>www.pih.org. The RFK Centre 
at 
<http://www.rfkmemorial.org/>www.rfkmemorial.org 
and the Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice at chrgj.org
Read it and weep with rage.

Copyright© 2008 John Maxwell
<mailto:jankunnu at gmail.com>jankunnu at gmail.com




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20080630/f29f3578/attachment.htm>