[News] Oakland - Saturday, March 2nd - Haiti Report Back

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*Haiti Report Back

Saturday, March 2, 2019 at 3 PM – 5 PM

*
*East Side Arts Alliance 
<https://www.facebook.com/EastSideArtsAlliance/?eid=ARB-OgwAqvIijZxkhZSG3qo4Hv1TUu-UgasxuA2kTTKIEI6cvLdVpWZSgLj9RLpWyIIqgYitqMWzQp_S>* 

*2277 International Blvd, Oakland
*

Join Haiti Action Committee to hear an eyewitness report about the 
unstoppable fight of Haiti's people for liberty and justice. Since 
February 7th, which was the anniversary of Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s 1991 
inauguration as Haiti’s first democratically elected president, hundreds 
of thousands of Haitians have been demonstrating in the streets of 
cities and towns throughout the country. When thousands are in the 
streets in Europe, we see live coverage. Not so with Haiti. The U.S. and 
the Haitian elite are afraid of the mobilization of the poor. Silence 
and disinformation are weapons of empire to marginalize the struggle of 
the Haitian people.

Chanting, “we are hungry, we can’t take it anymore,” protesters demand 
that the totally corrupt and fraudulently (s)elected president, Jovenel 
Moise, resign immediately. Police and para-military forces have killed 
at least 12 people, with many more wounded. Protests have come in waves 
ever since Moise was announced the winner of the sham electoral process 
in late 2017. Moise refuses to step down, and ominously threatens to 
“clean up the country.” Similar threats by government officials in the 
past have been followed by police killings. One such instance was the 
November 2018 state-sponsored massacre in the La Saline neighborhood of 
Port-au-Prince, during which Haitian police working with weaponized 
gangs ruthlessly murdered more than 77 men, women and children. Numerous 
rapes brutalized young women and further traumatized the entire community.

Oil supplied to Haiti through PetroCaribe, Venezuela’s Bolivarian 
Revolution project, lies at the heart of the protests. Through 
Petrocaribe, Venezuela sells oil at a discounted rate to a country out 
of solidarity, with the expectation that the oil will be sold at market 
rate and the profit used for economic development of the country. In 
Haiti, a new report by a government watchdog group documents $4.2 
BILLION of this profit has disappeared, unaccounted for. The report 
lists a number of companies that have received the money, two owned by 
Moise, with no accounting for how it was spent. Meanwhile, teachers have 
not been paid for months, and sanitation services are nil. High 
inflation makes even the basics unaffordable for many people. Haitians 
throughout the country demand to know what happened to the money, while 
police and members of Moise’s PHTK Party attack demonstrators with 
impunity, reminiscent of the Duvalier ton-ton macoutes death squads.

Even if the mass demonstrations force Moise to leave, the international 
corporatocracy and the Haitian elites will try to force a caretaker 
government to do their bidding, rather than one that supports the 
demands of the demonstrators, so this will be a protracted struggle.

https://www.facebook.com/events/2476235042405754/
-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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