[News] Help restore democracy to Haiti!

[Anti-Imperialist News]

From: haiti action <action.haiti at gmail.com>

Take a step towards restoring democracy to Haiti: 
say YES TO ARISTIDE'S IMMEDIATE RETURN!

Call President Obama (202-456-1111) and Secretary 
of State Clinton (202-647-4000), as well as your 
member of Congress (202-224-3121 and insist that 
the US stop interfering with President Aristide's 
right to return to Haiti immediately.

Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, 
exiled in South Africa since the 2004 coup 
d'etat, was recently issued a passport, but the 
US State Department has openly stated that he 
should not return to Haiti before the March 20 
run-off for November’s fraudulent presidential 
election. That's why it's imperative that we keep 
up the pressure.  Please make these three phone calls today!

In his recent Miami-Herald Opinion piece, Ira Kurzban said:

“The ball is now in South Africa’s court. Even 
though Aristide has every right to return under 
Haitian and international law, documents recently 
revealed by Wikileaks show that the U.S. and the 
Brazilian governments have pressured the South 
African government to keep Aristide there. The 
United States imposes its will, as the most 
powerful nation on Earth, to keep in distant 
exile the deposed president of one of the 
weakest. Former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, 
meanwhile, walks free, gives press conferences 
and makes ceremonial visits around Haiti.

The return of Duvalier – accompanied by former 
death squad leader Louis Jodel Chamblain as his 
security chief – to Haiti last month revealed the 
stark double standard in U.S.-Haitian relations, 
one that harkens back to a shameful era, when the 
U.S. government propped up the brutal Duvalier 
regimes for decades. The danger is not only from 
his impunity, but from the threat of a 
re-legitimization of Duvalierism. Haiti now 
stands on the verge of a precipice; an extreme 
right-wing political turn – one that openly 
favors the rich and despises the poor – lies below.

The U.S. government is not a neutral spectator to 
this situation – this is clear from 
Obama-administration statements more opposed to 
the idea of Aristide’s return than to Duvalier’s 
ongoing presence. Even worse, the United States 
has been pressuring the Haitian authorities into 
arbitrarily allowing kompa singer Michel Martelly 
(who is known to have supported Duvalier in the 
past, and who got the support of just 4.5 percent 
of registered voters) to proceed to an elections 
run-off against former first lady Mirlande 
Manigat (who received 6.4 percent support from registered voters).”

Emphasis added. Read the 
<http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/02/14/2066861/in-defense-of-aristide.html>entire 
article

See 
<http://www.haitisolidarity.net/article.php?id=498>On 
My Return to Haiti by Jean-Bertrand Aristide

See 
<http://www.haitisolidarity.net/article.php?id=503>Haiti: 
Annul the Elections, stop the Duvalier 
Restoration, Return President Aristide by Charlie Hinton




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