[News] Haiti: 20 Years After the Coup
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Sun Mar 3 15:06:01 EST 2024
*Haiti: 20 Years After the Coup*
<https://blackagendareport.com/haiti-20-years-after-coup>
*
* <https://blackagendareport.com/haiti-20-years-after-coup>
Jemima Pierre, BAR Editor and Columnist
<https://blackagendareport.com/author/Jemima Pierre, BAR Editor and
Columnist>
28 Feb 2024
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20 Years After the
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Army in Haiti
<https://blackagendareport.com/sites/default/files/2024-02/JEMIMA%20HAITI%20ARTICLE.png>
//Jemima Pierre’s presentation at a forum to commemorate the
US-France-Canada-sponsored 2004 coup d’état in Haiti. The forum was
hosted by the Center for Caribbean Studies at the University of Toronto
on February 26, 2024.//
My comments today focus on the general refusal to acknowledge that since
2004, Haiti has been under a foreign occupation initiated by a
U.S./France/Canada-led coup d’état, and adopted and managed by the
machinery of the United Nations. The simple facts of both the coup and
the violence of the international legal mechanisms used against Haiti
and its people have been shamefully ignored. What enables the refusal to
acknowledge the occupation of Haiti? I demonstrate that it is both how
the occupation was established, and how it is administered that obscures
the occupation’s existence. I also argue that the 2004 coup d’état –
planned and enabled by the United States, France, and Canada – has been
one of the most consequential events in Haiti’s history. It is singular
in its significance, not only for the history of Haiti, but also in how
it signifies a key victory for U.S. and western imperialism. In the
global struggle for decolonization, we ignore Haiti’s plight at our peril.
I want to memorialize the 2004 coup d’état by presenting a partial
timeline of its history. I hope my reconstruction of this timeline can
serve to freeze, if only for a moment, Haiti’s history in place,
allowing us to assess and understand Haiti’s complex, volatile, and
changing status in the context of a swirling set of international
neocolonial and imperial forces. I wish to also demonstrate how
consistent the imperial assault on Haitian people and Haitian
sovereignty has been, and still remains.
*/A partial timeline. An Archive*/*
*January 31–February 1, 2003*
It is dubbed the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti,” and the objective is to
decide the future of Haiti’s governance. The liberal Canadian
administration of Jean Chretien organizes a two-day conference at Meech
Lake (a government resort near Ottawa). The conference is attended by
Denis Paradis, Secretary of State of Canada for Latin America, Africa,
and La Francophonie; representatives of the OAS; members from the
European Economic Commission (EEC); French Minister for Cooperation,
Pierre-Andre Wiltzer; two high-ranking officials sent by US Secretary of
State Colin Powell; and Maria Da Silva from El Salvador.
No Haitian government officials are invited.
*March 15, 2003*
Journalist Michel Vastel publishes one of the only reports on the
“Ottawa Initiative on
Haiti<https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/31/remembering-the-overthrow-of-haitis-jean-bertrand-aristide/>”
in /l’Actualite,/ a magazine in Quebec. Vastel writes that the real
goal of the meeting was to plan for regime change; the discussions
included “the possibility of Aristide’s departure, the need for a
potential trusteeship over Haiti”
**April 7, 2003**
On the bicentennial anniversary of the death of Toussaint Louverture,
Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide announces he will ask France to
pay back the “independence indemnity.” (The indemnity is the payment of
one hundred fifty million gold francs that France demanded from Haiti in
1825, under the threat of military invasion). Aristide states that the
indemnity of ninety million gold francs (adjusting for inflation and
interest) is equivalent to today’s $21,685,135,571.48. He declares that
France “extorted this money from Haiti by force and . . . should give it
back to us so that we can build primary schools, primary healthcare,
water systems and roads.”
In response to Aristide’s call for reparations, French President,
Jacques Chirac, in the summer of 2003, responded with a threat:
Before bringing up claims of this nature… authorities of
Haiti the need to be very vigilant about…the nature of
their actions and their regime (Hallward 2004)
**14 November 2003**
Secret
cable:<https://canada-haiti.ca/content/wikileaked-cables-reveal-obsessive-far-reaching-us-campaign-get-aristide-out-haiti-and-kee-0> the
Vatican’s Caribbean Affairs Office Director Giorgio Lingua, approaches
U.S. embassy officials to ask for further international pressure on
Haiti. Lingua states that the problem is “the presence – in fact the
omnipresence – of Aristide.”
**January 1, 2004**
People in Haiti as well as Haitians worldwide celebrate the two
hundredth anniversary of the country’s revolutionary founding. South
African President Thabo Mbeki and his foreign minister, Nkosazana
Dlamini Zuma, are among the guests of honor at the country's
Bicentennial celebrations. In his
speech<https://dirco1.azurewebsites.net/docs/speeches/2004/mbek0102.htm>
to the crowd, Mbeki says:
We celebrate the heroic deeds of these Africans who
single-mindedly struggled for their freedom and inspired
many of us to understand that none but ourselves can
defeat those who subject us to tyranny, oppression and
exploitation. We celebrate the Haitian Revolution because
it dealt a deadly blow to the slave traders who had
scoured the coasts of West and East Africa for slaves and
ruined the lives of millions of Africans.
It must be noted that no other African or Caribbean head of state
attended the celebrations.
**Late January – Early February 2004**
There are protests of several groups against President Aristide. The
protests are widely covered by the Western media. There are also
numerous and much larger rallies (and counter-rallies) by supporters of
the Aristide government, with the largest one occurring on February 7,
2004 (Farmer 2004; Hallward 2007; Podur 2012; Sprague 2012). The Western
media barely mention the rallies in support of the government.
During Aristide’s first and second terms, the government created enemies
both to the left and to the right of the political spectrum. Leftist
groups “condemned the Fanmi Lavalas [the political party founded by
Aristide] for its cooperation with structural adjustment and accused it
of becoming ‘anti-populaire” (Hallward 2004). At the same time, Fanmi
Lavalas has always been—and remains—the largest and most popular
political voting bloc in the country (Hallward 2007; Sprague 2012).
The major forces on the political right are the traditional Haitian
elite (businesspeople and intellectuals) and the various institutions of
the US government, particularly the international non-governmental
institutions (NGOs) it supports through funding agencies such as the US
Agency for International Development (USAID).
A fifteen-party anti-Aristide coalition was formed. Known as
“Convergence<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/387/>” it includes
almost every faction of the Haitian dominant class. Despite anemic
support from the voting, they were able to converge around three million
dollars-a-year in funding in from the International Republican
Institute, a Republican party backed arm of the National Endowment for
Democracy.
Haitian American political scientist Robert Fatton explains that “among
the Haitian elite, hatred for Aristide was absolutely incredible, an
obsession” (Hallward 2004). Thus, it was members of this right wing
“convergence” that had funded, over the ten years of Aristide’s tenure
as president, a growing armed resistance.
One of the leaders of this armed resistance was Guy Philippe, a former
member of the Haitian military who was incorporated into the new
National Police Force when Aristide dissolved the military in 1995.
Phillip later moved to the Dominican Republic, where he gathered
ammunition to stage attacks on the Aristide government. This group was
initially trained by agents in the Dominican Republic and later by US
special forces. And, between 2001 and February 2004, the paramilitary
group had been staging incursions into the countryside – rural towns
ill-equipped to deal with armed invasions. By the late 2003m their
attacks had intensified. Some analysts claim that this was possible
because of the foreign infusion of cash and military-grade arms (Sprague
2012).
**February 22, 2004**
A BBC headline
reads<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/%203511829.stm> “Haiti rebels
capture key city,” with a report that around two hundred fighters
entered the port city of Cap Haitian, seized control of the airport,
attacked, looted, and set fire to four police stations, and set free
hundreds of prisoners.
**February 23, 2004**
Fifty US Marines land in Haiti, purportedly to protect US interests,
property, and the lives of its citizens.18 Around the same time, there
are news reports of the United States, France, and Canada asking
democratically elected President Aristide to step down.
**February 25, 2004**
French Foreign Affairs Minister, Dominique Villepin, sends a formal
statement<https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/516107?ln=en> to other
members of the UN Security Council asking the UN to prepare for regime
change in Haiti through two things: 1) “The immediate establishment of a
civilian peacekeeping force. This international force would be
responsible for guaranteeing the return to public order;” 2) preparing a
presidential election in Haiti by establishing an electoral commission
and organizing international observer missions.”
**February 26, 2004**
As the threat looms of an armed attack on Haiti’s government by the
small band of US-sponsored Haitian paramilitary soldiers (led by Guy
Philippe), CARICOM (the organization representing the fifteen-nation
Caribbean community) appeals to the United Nations Security Council for
the help of international peacekeeping forces to protect the Haitian
presidency—and Haitian sovereignty. France, a permanent member of the
Security Council, flatly rejects this call.
On that same day, the Guardian (UK) newspaper runs a celebratory
article<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/feb/27/sibyllabrodzinsky1> on
Guy Philippe entitled, “A Family Man and a Fan of [G. W.] Bush” and
describes him as having received instruction from French troops and the
US secret service at a military school in Ecuador.
**February 27, 2004**
CARICOM quietly negotiates with some friendly nations to provide arms,
ammunition, and riot control gear for the underequipped Haitian National
Police to protect President Aristide.20 (Of note: One of Aristide’s
first moves when he returned in 1994 was to disband Haiti’s army and to
establish a civilian police force.21) The Republic of South Africa,
whose President Thabo Mbeki had just attended Haiti’s bicentennial
celebrations, agrees to
send<https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/haiti/weapons.htm> one hundred
fifty R1 rifles, five thousand bullets, two hundred smoke grenades, and
two hundred bullet-proof vests to re-supply Haiti’s embattled police.
**February 28, 2004**
The George W. Bush Administration issues a
statement<https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/wha/rls/30043.htm> from the
White House on Haiti that reads in part:
This long-simmering crisis is largely of Mr. Aristide’s
making. . . His own actions have called into question his
fitness to continue to govern Haiti.
**February 28–29, 2004**
In the early morning hours of February 29, 2004, US Deputy ambassador to
Haiti, Luis Moreno, accompanied by 12 heavily armed US commandos come to
the home of President Jean Bertrand Aristide (in the Tabarre
neighborhood of Port-au-Prince) and order the democratically elected
Haitian president and his family into a car for a ride to the Toussaint
Louverture International Airport. The Aristide family and a close aide
are directed onto an unmarked US jet, and President Aristide is flown
out of Haiti and away from power. (This would be two hundred years and
twenty-six days after the defiant founding of the Republic of Haiti.)
At the very moment that Aristide is taken out of the country by US
Marines, a Haiti-bound Boeing 747 filled with South African military
equipment<https://blackcommentator.com/105/105_pina.html> refuels on a
tarmac in Kingston, Jamaica, less than three hundred miles away.
That same early morning, after the Aristides are escorted to the
airport, Haiti’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre is
picked up by US ambassador to Haiti, James Foley, and driven to the
Haitian Prime Minister’s house in preparation for his ascension to
power. Haiti’s Prime Minister, Yvon Neptune, would later report,
however, that he did not have a say—nor did he participate, as dictated
by Haitian
law<https://canada-haiti.ca/content/haitis-coup-and-constitution>—in the
swearing in of Haiti’s US-installed new interim president.
By this time,
2000<https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/21/the-military-occupation-of-haiti/> US,
French, and Canadian soldiers were already on the ground in Haiti.
**February 29, 2004**
CARICOM chairperson and Prime Minister of Jamaica, P.J. Patterson,
releases a
statement<https://jis.gov.jm/speeches/statement-by-prime-minister-of-jamaica-and-chairman-of-caricom-on-the-haitian-crisis/>:
The removal of President Aristide in these circumstances
sets a dangerous precedent for democratically elected
governments anywhere and everywhere, as it promotes the
removal of duly elected persons from office by the power
of rebel forces. . .
In the meantime, at the behest of permanent members the United States
and France, the UN Security Council suspends its normal 24-hour pre-vote
consultation and pushed through passes a resolution that authorizes “the
immediate deployment of Multinational Interim Force for a period of
three months to help to secure and stabilize the capital,
Port-au-Prince, and elsewhere in the country” (Hallward 2004).
UN 1529 (2004), is under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Unlike a Chapter
VI resolution, which refers to peacekeeping missions where the parties
in conflict give their consent to the presence of foreign forces, a
Chapter VII resolution demands no such consent. (It must be noted that
Haiti is the only place in the world that was not embroiled by civil war
that received a Chapter VII deployment, where UN forces are allowed to
use military force to “pacify” the population). The UN Security Council
resolution also officially recognizes the swearing-in of Haiti’s Head of
Supreme Court, Boniface Alexandre, as acting President of Haiti.
Alexandre’s first act as interim President is to submit an official
request to the United Nations Security Council to send multinational
military forces to restore law and order in the country. Unlike the
earlier request by CARICOM for the United Nations to send support for
Aristide, Alexandre’s request is immediately approved by the Security
Council.
The Bush administration, through Donald Rumsfeld, initiates “Operation
Secure
Tomorrow<https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/haiti04.htm>,” a
force of about one thousand extra US Marines that arrive in Haiti within
the day. Canadian, French, and Chilean troops are expected to arrive the
next morning.
CARICOM formally
protests<https://archive.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/haiti/2004/0315consultation.htm> to
the UN and the United States about the conditions under which Aristide
left office, while expressing concern about “the arrival of
approximately 1,000 US soldiers in Haiti just a few hours after the
leader’s departure.”
**March 1, 2004**
President Aristide and family descend from the US military plane in
Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. They had spent
countless hours on the plane. From Haiti, the unmarked (except for a US
flag insignia) plane had landed on the island of Antigua and remained on
the tarmac for hours. During this time, Antiguan government officials
were not made aware of the plane’s passengers, and the Aristides were
not allowed to move from their seats on the plane or raise the window
blinds (Farmer 2004).
**March 1, 2004**
It’s early morning in Washington, D.C. I wake up and turn on the radio
to local Pacifica Radio affiliate station, WPFW, 89.3 FM. The news show,
//Democracy Now!//, has just come on with an “Exclusive Breaking
News<https://www.democracynow.org/2004/3/1/exclusive_breaking_news_br_president_aristide>”
report: US Congresswoman and chairperson of the Congressional Black
Caucus, Maxine Waters, is speaking live. She says that she has just
finished speaking to President Aristide by phone:
He’s anxious for me to get the message out so people will
understand. He is in the Central Republic of Africa at a
place called the Palace of the Renaissance, and he’s not
sure if that’s a house or a hotel or what it is, and he is
surrounded by military. It’s like in jail, he said. He
said that he was kidnapped; he said that he was forced to
leave Haiti. He said that the American Embassy sent the
diplomats and they ordered him to leave…But one thing that
was very clear and he said it over and over again, that he
was kidnapped, that the coup was completed by the
Americans that they forced him out. . .
Later in its full broadcast, //Democracy Now!//’s Amy Goodman speaks
live to Randall Robinson, African American lawyer, activist, and founder
of the prominent TransAfrica Forum.
Robinson also relays his recent conversation with President Aristide:
The president called me on a cell phone that was slipped
to him by someone—he has no land line out to the world and
no number at which he can be reached…The president asked
me to tell the world that it is a coup, that they have
been kidnapped. That they have been abducted. He did not
resign.
**March 4, 2004**
The Jamaica Observer
reports<https://archive.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/186-haiti/34351.html> an
Associated Press story, “CARICOM calls for UN probe of Aristide’s ouster”:
Caribbean leaders yesterday called for a United
Nations-led investigation into Sunday’s ouster of
Jean-Bertrand Aristide from the Haitian presidency…CARICOM
. . . felt betrayed by the United States, France and
Canada . . . [and] were further angered that these
countries refused to support a UN-peacekeeping force for
Haiti after the rebels took over several towns and cities,
but yet pushed through the authorizing resolution at the
Security Council only hours after Aristide’s departure.
**March 5, 2004**
In addition to the US troops, around 2000, a new contingent of foreign
troops<https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/haiti04.htm> arrives
in Haiti. There are five hundred French troops, one hundred sixty
Chilean troops, one hundred Canadian troops, and “assorted
other**nationals.”
**March 9, 2004**
Breaking with the Haitian constitution, the so-called International
Community—that is, the United States, France, and Canada—sets up a
“Council of
Sages<https://www.wral.com/story/haiti-fast-facts/17004096/>,” made up
to choose a new prime minister. Gerard Latortue, a UN bureaucrat, and
business consultant who had been living in the United States the past
thirty years (and was still living in the United States at the time),
was selected as prime minister and appointed head of the new Haitian
government.
**March 12, 2004**
Gerard Latortue is sworn in as Haiti’s provisional prime minister.
Latortue’s administration is immediately recognized by the United
Nations, the United States, Canada, and the European Union.
Several governments—Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Venezuela, and Cuba—as
well as the African Union do not recognize his administration.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
declares<https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/04/heartache-haiti/>:
My government does not recognize the one government placed
by the United States in Haiti and we call on the other
countries of the continent, as the Caribbean Community and
Common Market (CARICOM) has already done, to pronounce this.
It is important to note that one of Latortue’s early acts in office is
to drop the reparations
claim<https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/haiti/reparations.htm> made
by the Aristide government for the $21 billion restitution from France.
Latortue described Aristide’s call for economic reparations as “foolish”
and “illegal” (Robinson 2007, 254).
**April 30, 2004**
After receiving a report by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the
situation in Haiti is a “threat to international peace and security in
the region,” the United Nations Security Council passes and unanimously
adopts Resolution 1542.53 This resolution establishes the United Nations
Stabilization Force in Haiti (MINUSTAH
<https://www.blackagendareport.com/content/fools-and-sycophants-haiti%E2%80%99s-presidential-selection?page=1> is
the acronym of the French translation).
The military component is said to be responsible for maintaining the
mission’s primary mandate of “enforcing security in Haiti.” The civilian
leadership of MINUSTAH is made up of a team of three “counsels” of the
UN Secretary-General: men from Guatemala, the United States, and Canada.
(At the same time, the resolution also establishes a “Core Group” that
includes leaders of mission as well as “international financial
institutions and other major stakeholders, in order to facilitate the
implementation of MINUSTAH’s mandate.”
The Core Group would ultimately consist of representatives from the
United States, France, Canada, Brazil, the European Union, and the
OAS.). The Security Council decides to send an 8,300- strong UN
Stabilization Force from June 1, 2004.
The military component has 6,700 troops from 167 countries including
Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, Jordan, France, South Korea, and the United
States and police from forty-one countries including Argentina,
Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Russia, and Spain. The government of
Brazilian President Lula Ingacio da Silva provides the military
leadership of these troops.
MINUSTAH will not be subject to Haitian laws.
**June 1, 2004**
MINUSTAH begins its official mandate in Haiti. It is the first security
mission in the region to be led by Brazilian and Chilean militaries, and
almost entirely composed of Latin American forces, particularly from
Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Uruguay.
**August 2, 2006**
A secret
cable<https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06PORTAUPRINCE1407_a.html> to
Washington, sent by US Ambassador to Haiti Janet A. Sanderson reports on
a high-level meeting of top US and UN officials in Haiti that occurred
on July 25th. Under the heading, “Aristide Movement Must Be Stopped,”
Sanderson relays that Guatemalan Edmond Mulet, UN Joint Secretary
General for MINUSTAH, “urges US legal action against Aristide to prevent
the former president from gaining more traction with the Haitian
population and returning to Haiti.”
Kim Ives and Anzel Herz (2011), in their “Wikileaks and
Haiti<https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/wikileaks-haiti-aristide-files/>”
series for the Nation magazine, report that, “at Mulet’s request, UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan urges South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki
‘to ensure that Aristide remains in South Africa.”
**November 2007**
One hundred fourteen members of the 950-member Sri Lanka contingent in
MINUSTAH are accused of sexual misconduct and abuse of Haitian women and
girls<https://infotel.ca/newsitem/cb-un-peacekeepers-child-sex-ring/cp131761702>.
Not one of these soldiers is charged with a crime.
**January 12, 2010**
4:53:09 PM, local time in Haiti<https://thepublicarchive.com/?p=5305>. A
7.0 magnitude earthquake hits. Its epicenter is near the town of
Leogane, sixteen miles west of Port-au-Prince. The southern cities and
towns crumble. An estimated three hundred thousand people perish. A
million and a half are left homeless.
**November 28, 2010**
The first round of presidential election in Haiti takes place. The
timing of the elections was difficult. The earthquake posed many
challenges, the most serious of which are the millions of people who are
displaced and disenfranchised. The United States, France, and Canada,
however, insist that the Haitian government hold elections and provide
$29 million in logistical support. When elections are set, the
Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), Haiti’s electoral authority, bans
“Fanmi Lavalas,” the political party founded out of the social movement
that elected Aristide, and the largest and most popular party in the
country.
Michel Martelly, the entertainer turned presidential contender under the
new political party, PHTK, comes in third place, but not into the
decisive second round.
A study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research
demonstrated<https://cepr.net/report/haitis-fatally-flawed-election/> that,
out of all registered voters, 71% did not vote, and the ultimate runoff
candidates received less than 11% of the votes combined.
In between the first- and second-round elections of 2010–11, Hillary
Clinton
travels<https://cepr.net/clinton-e-mails-point-to-us-intervention-in-2010-haiti-elections/> from
the Middle East (at the height of the Arab Spring) to Haiti to demand
the removal of Jude Celestin from second place so that the second round
would be a contest between the United States’ preferred candidates
Martelly and Mirlande Manigat. Despite protests from the Haitian
government, members of the electoral council, and Haitian activists, the
Obama administration insisted. Martelly was placed on the ballot for the
runoff of the presidential elections.
**March 20, 2011**
The second round of the presidential elections occurs. Half of the
members of the provisional electoral council refuse to ratify the
results of the first round. Less than 23% of Haiti’s registered voters
had their vote counted in either of the two presidential rounds. It is
the lowest electoral participation rate in the hemisphere since 1945,
according to the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research.
**April 4, 2011**
Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly is declared president of Haiti. He
reportedly receives less than 20% of the vote from the registered 4.5
million registered voters.
**JULY 7, 2021**
Jovenel Moïse, the installed successor to Michel Martelly as Haiti’s
president, is assassinated.
**July 11, 2021**
The Core Group issues a
statement<https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/politics/1655660-core-group-signals-support-for-haitis-designated-pm> declaring
that Ariel Henry, who had been named but not officially installed by the
time of Moise’s assassination, would assume the official role of Prime
Minister of Haiti.
**October 2, 2023**
The US manages to get the UNSC to overwhelmingly vote to
authorize<https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1141802> a “non-UN”
security mission to Haiti – presumably to take care of an internal
“gang” problem. It must be noted that the US had been trying for more
than 2 years to get an UN-sanctioned build-up of the military presence
in Haiti to protect the puppet government of the unelected and unpopular
Ariel Henry. Importantly, Resolution 2699, was //passed// under Chapter
7 of the United Nations Charter, which, like the resolution that began
the occupation in 2004, allows the use of deadly force against
individual states.
**Not a Conclusion: 2024 - … **
Haiti officially lost its nominal sovereignty in late February 2004
through the U.S./France/Canada-led coup d’état and an occupation that
has been managed by the machinery of the United Nations.
The nature of the legitimization of the coup by the UN (through the
deployment of “peacekeeping troops” and via long-term occupation) allows
it both to not be perceived as a coup and for the foreign occupation to
not be understood as occupation.
Three important points need to be made about the deployment of the UN
“Peacekeeping mission” to Haiti that established the occupation. First,
it was permanent members of the UNSC, France and the U.S., which played
the key role in backing and aiding the removal of Haiti’s sitting
president. The UNSC, it must be remembered, is the only body with the
power to deploy a multinational “peacekeeping” mission. Second, the
narrative used to justify the coup and occupation was concocted by
France and the U.S. Despite all evidence pointing to the reality that
Aristide was kidnapped, all the UN security documents and resolutions
about Haiti during this time – and especially about the deployment of UN
military forces – used Aristide’s “resignation” as justification for
intervention. Finally, and perhaps the most egregious point, the
so-called Haitian “interim” government that the UNSC claimed to have
asked for a stabilization force in 2004, was illegitimate.
In other words, the UN deployment and occupation - based on a coup
d’état sponsored by two states of the UNSC, the claims that the
president resigned, and the illegal swearing in of an illegitimate head
of state – were fraudulent. To add insult to injury, most of the UN
resolutions refer to securing Haiti’s “sovereignty,” as if this
sovereignty could coexist with foreign political control and military
occupation. This is especially since the UN’s Core Group continues to be
the arbiter of //colonial// (not “neocolonial”), direct rule of Haiti.
But another reason that the current occupation of Haiti is not deemed an
occupation as such, is that while it was initiated and largely funded by
the U.S., France, Canada, and the United Nations, Haiti’s sovereignty
has been extinguished by a multiracial coalition of Caribbean, Latin
American, and African countries. This may be the most sinister and
effective aspect of the occupation. The current U.S. goal is to use
Kenya and other Caribbean countries in the effort. How do you hide an
occupation? Diversify it!
We must also point to the coordinated work among many US institutions –
the U.S. State Department, the US intelligence apparatus, and its
mammoth “aid” network. For example, it is no secret that the CIA-front,
National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded several Haitian “civil
society groups” against the country’s elected president. There is also
he western media which is predisposed to very certain racist textual and
pictorial representations of Haiti (and of the African continent). A
review of more than 200 years of western media coverage of Haiti would
reveal the same language about Haitian as a place of violence, chaos,
savagery, anarchy, etc.
US, France, and Canada’s actions in Haiti over the past twenty years
demonstrate the country’s critical place as a laboratory
<https://nacla.org/haiti-empire-laboratory>of US and western
imperialism. And US imperialist actions in Haiti have and continue to
fundamentally shape //internal //dynamics - the national terrain of
class and color conflict, of politics and culture, of accommodation and
resistance.
The occupation of Haiti that began in 2004, and that continues, should,
as Peter Hallward (2004) argued, be considered the “most successful
exercise of neo-imperial sabotage.” The US, France, and Canada were able
to remove a democratically elected and popular president, bypass the
country's constitution and, over the past twenty years, install prime
ministers, and presidents, while overseeing the complete dismantling of
the Haitian state. This was all done with the support, however
unwitting, of the world. Perhaps this is the most shocking aspect of the
coup. Today, most people in the world do not understand that Haiti is
currently under occupation!
The struggle continues.
/*Jemima Pierre is an Editor and Columnist to Black Agenda Report and a
Co-Coordinator for the Haiti/Americas Team, Black Alliance for Peace.*/
**REFERENCES**
Dupuy, Alex. 2007. //The Prophet and Power: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the
International Community, and Haiti.// Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers.
Farmer, Paul. 2004. “Who Removed Aristide? Paul Farmer Reports from
Haiti.” London Review of Books 26(8): 28–31.
Hallward, Peter. 2007. //Damming the Floods: Haiti and the Politics of
Containment//. New York: Verso Books.
Podur, Justin. 2012. //Haiti’s New Dictatorship: The Coup, the
Earthquake and the UN Occupation//. London: Pluto Press.
Robinson, Randall. 2007. //An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to
the Kidnapping of a President.// New York: Basic Civitas Books.
Sprague, Jeb. 2012. P//aramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in
Haiti//. New York: Monthly Review Press.
//*This presentation draws in part from my article, “Haiti: An Archive
of Occupation, 2004 - …” which was published in the academic journal,
//Transforming Anthropology//, Vol. 28, Number 1, pp. 3–23 (2020).//
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