[News] Haiti: "The Truth Speaks for Itself"

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*Haiti: “The Truth Speaks for Itself”*
*by Robert Roth, Haiti Action Committee*

On December 16th, 2022, Fanmi Lavalas – the people’s party of Haiti – 
released a statement commemorating the 32nd anniversary of the first 
democratic election in Haiti’s history.  In that election, the Haitian 
people chose Jean-Bertrand Aristide as their president, only to see 
their historic victory overturned seven months later as the result of a 
bloody U.S.-orchestrated coup d’etat. Drawing on the lessons of that 
period, the Lavalas statement connected the events of 1990-1991 with the 
crisis facing Haitian society today:

/“The truth speaks for itself: If there had not been a coup d’etat, 
today many of the beautiful dreams of the Haitian people would have 
already materialized.  With justice, transparency, participation, there 
would be food for everyone, housing for everyone, schools for all and 
health care for all.”
“32 years after the victory of December 16, 1990, we are witnessing how 
the anti-democratic forces have failed. They have failed because the 
country has become a hell on earth. Everywhere is kidnapping, 
insecurity, misery, hunger, excessive cost of living, corruption, 
economic crimes, political crimes in a hell that is called a country.”/

Today, the situation in the country could not be more dire. The 
unelected and illegitimate /de/ /facto/ prime minister Ariel Henry 
remains in power despite continuous mass protests demanding his ouster.  
Henry was hand-picked  by the U.S. and its allies in the so-called Core 
Group of foreign occupiers that exercises colonial control over Haiti. 
Like the series of U.S.-imposed governments that have infected Haiti 
since the 2004 coup against the second Aristide administration, the 
Henry government has proven to be a disaster for the Haitian people. 
Following the dictates of the IMF and its structural adjustment 
policies, the Henry regime removed government subsidies on fuel prices, 
resulting in dramatic hikes in the cost of gas, food and other basic 
necessities. 
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/14/haiti-sees-more-protests-as-fuel-price-hike-worsens-public-anger>  
In response, Haitians took to the streets by the tens of thousands in a 
series of militant and powerful protests.

With collapsing infrastructure and a defunded health care system, Haiti 
is once again confronting a cholera epidemic. Food insecurity now 
threatens nearly 5 million people, including 2.4 million children, in a 
country of 12 million. Government-supported paramilitary groups continue 
to terrorize opposition neighborhoods, with kidnappings at an all time 
high.
These crises have their roots in the 2004 coup and the subsequent 
imposition of foreign occupation, coordinated through the United 
Nations.  And yet, without a trace of irony, the same foreign powers and 
corrupt rulers responsible for this situation are now asking Haitians to 
believe that more intervention and more elite anti-democratic rule will 
somehow change all of this.

Fearful that the Henry regime is on its last legs, the U.S. and the U.N. 
have been lobbying other countries, including Canada, Mexico and the 
CARICOM nations, to become the face of yet another round of military 
intervention to insure that Haiti’s popular movement is kept from 
power.  In a sign of things to come, the Canadian government, which was 
a key organizer of the 2004 coup d’etat, has just sent warships to 
patrol off the coast of Haiti 
<https://www.blackagendareport.com/canada-send-navy-ships-haiti-trudeau-announces-caricom-summit>. 
Speaking to a reporter from NPR, one Haitian activist made clear the 
anti-intervention sentiments of so many as he recounted the track record 
of the UN occupation that descended on Haiti in the wake of the 2004 
coup: "All they brought was kidnappings and rape and cholera," he said. 
"If the U.N. sends troops to Haiti, the fighting will get even more 
intense 
<https://www.npr.org/2022/11/04/1131254613/haiti-sanctions-foreign-intervention-protests-gangs-cholera>."

Trotting out the familiar argument that “gang warfare” is the root of 
Haiti’s problem, the U.S. and Canada are also ramping up funding and 
training for Haiti’s notorious and corrupt national police force, 
including sending tactical and armored vehicles 
<https://mronline.org/2022/10/20/haitians-intensify-protests-against-foreign-military-intervention-while-us-seeks-authorization-for-international-mission/>.  
The same militarized policing that has produced a wave of murders of 
unarmed Black people in the United States will continue to be exported 
to Haiti to bolster an already brutally repressive police force.

Just this past week, the people of Bele - a Lavalas stronghold that has 
been under constant attack for the past three years - have had to defend 
themselves against a paramilitary assault by the G-9 federation headed 
by Jimmy Cherizier, otherwise known as Barbecue.  According to 
eyewitness reports, over 60 people were killed and more than 50 others 
disappeared.  Similar to the Lasalin Massacre in 2018, community 
residents reported seeing three police armored personnel carriers 
shooting residents, burning homes and transporting G-9 members.  All of 
this was accompanied by a deafening silence from the Henry regime. These 
crimes took place one day after a CARICOM delegation visited Haiti, 
promising increased support for the Haitian National Police.

As his government teeters on the brink, Ariel Henry has rolled out his 
own hand-picked transitional council, which would supposedly organize 
elections in 2024. Orchestrated by the U.S. State Department, this plan 
keeps  in power the same dictatorship that has created the terror now 
engulfing Haiti. In the name of “transition”, it maintains the same 
system in place, setting up the foundation for more stolen elections and 
the further destruction of civil society. Fanmi Lavalas and other 
opposition parties have rejected the phony transition promoted by the 
Henry government and its imperial backers, with Lavalas calling for an 
authentic popular transition:

/“The transition that the Haitian people want cannot take us from bad to 
worse. No. The transition that the Haitian people want is a complete 
break with this system of corruption to put an end to this ever-boiling 
cauldron of misery.” /

Adding fuel to the fire, the Biden Administration has just announced a 
new, draconian anti-migrant plan 
<https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/21/biden-trump-migration-policy-asylum-00083873> 
to be instituted when Title 42, Trump’s Covid-19 era vehicle used to 
block refugees from seeking asylum, comes to an end on May 11. Biden’s 
plan would summarily deport any migrant who comes across the Mexican 
border without hearing any claims for asylum. Haitians are a primary 
target of the new directive, which Immigrant rights advocates have 
condemned as “Trumpism without Trump.” Even a former Biden White House 
official, Andrea Flores, denounced the move, stating that, “the Biden 
Administration has resurrected a transit ban that normalizes the white 
nationalist belief that asylum seekers from certain countries are less 
deserving of humanitarian protections. 
<https://twitter.com/Arosaflores/status/1628125864096370726?cxt=HHwWzMC4sZz2oZgtAAAA>” 
More than 25,000 Haitians have been deported since Biden took office and 
those numbers will surely swell. As the U.S. stokes the flames in Haiti, 
it will have the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard standing ready to 
make sure that Haitians cannot flee the fire.

Nineteen years after the February 29, 2004 coup that overthrew 
democratic and progressive governance in Haiti, the Haitian popular 
movement remains powerful and dynamic. As the people of Haiti deepen 
their fight to end this oppressive system, the U.S. is orchestrating a 
new series of maneuvers to keep it squarely in place.  The crisis is 
sharpening and the stakes could not be higher.

*Support the popular movement in Haiti.*
*Demand an end to U.S. funding for the Haitian National Police and 
military.
Demand an end to the Biden Administration’s unconscionable attacks on 
refugees.*

For more information, please visit our website at: 
www.haitisolidarity.net <http://www.haitisolidarity.net>
and our facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/HaitiActionCommittee/

Robert Roth is an educator and a co-founder of Haiti Action Committee

-- 
Haiti Action Committee
PO Box 2040
Berkeley,CA 94702
Website <https://haitisolidarity.net>
YouTube <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjujXAgb681TkRNdEo1hh5Q>
Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/HaitiActionCommittee>
Twitter <https://twitter.com/HaitiAction1>

Celebrating 30 years of solidarity with the anti-colonial grassroots 
struggle for dignity, democracy and self-determination of the Haitian 
people!

<https://haitisolidarity.net/donate/>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230314/46907091/attachment.htm>