[News] What's Behind The Crisis In Haiti?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

What’s Behind The Crisis in Haiti?

by Haiti Action Committee

On February 29, 2004, the democratically elected government of President 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti was overthrown by a violent coup. This 
was the second US-sponsored coup against a popularly elected Aristide 
government, the first one taking place in 1991 after he had served only 
eight months in office.

Orchestrated by the United States, France and Canada, and then 
sanctioned and enforced by a United Nations military occupation, the 
2004 coup forced President Aristide, his wife and colleague, Mildred 
Trouillot Aristide, and their two children into exile, and removed more 
than 8,000 elected officials. Thousands more were killed, raped or 
forced to flee their homes. The country has still not recovered.

The  coup shattered the work of the most progressive government 
<https://haitisolidarity.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/We_Will_Not_Forget_2010.pdf> 
in Haiti’s history. In the period of governance by Fanmi Lavalas, the 
party founded by President Aristide, more schools were built than the 
total constructed between 1804 and 1994. Twenty percent of the country’s 
budget was mandated for education. Women’s groups and popular 
organizations helped coordinate a literacy campaign that brought over 
320,000 people, mostly women, into literacy classes in over 20,000 
literacy centers. The minimum wage was doubled. A powerful initiative 
was undertaken to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS. Health clinics were 
established in the poorest communities. The government also launched an 
aggressive campaign to collect unpaid taxes owed by the wealthy elite. 
Aristide disbanded the notorious Haitian military, and empowered women’s 
and victims’ groups to bring cases against the military for its use of 
rape as a political weapon.

After the 2004 coup, Haitians courageously demonstrated their support 
for Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas political party, raising five fingers 
in a call for him to complete his five year term. Their resistance has 
never stopped.


The Centuries-Old Assault on Haiti

The 2004 coup was the continuation of a centuries-old attack on Haitian 
sovereignty. In 1791, 400,000 Africans enslaved in Haiti rose up against 
French colonial rule, launching a revolutionary war that culminated in 
Haiti’s independence in 1804, establishing the world’s first Black 
republic. From that moment on, Haiti has been in the crosshairs of white 
supremacist imperial powers. The United States led a worldwide boycott 
against Haiti and refused to recognize the new republic until 1864, 
knowing that Haiti was an inspiration to enslaved people everywhere and 
posed a grave danger to the US’s own system of slavery. In 1825, French 
warships encircled Port-au-Prince and forced Haiti to assume a debt to 
France of 90 million gold francs (equivalent to $21.7 billion as 
calculated in 2003) as reparations to the former slave owners for the 
“crime” of freeing themselves from slavery. With the first payment of 
the debt, Haiti had to close its nascent public school system. In 1915, 
the US invaded Haiti and occupied the country for 19 years, taking over 
Haiti’s banking system, defeating a peasant-led insurgency and 
installing one puppet regime after another, culminating with the 
Duvalier dictatorships which terrorized the country for close to 30 
years. Today we see the same US policies at work, once again devastating 
Haitian society.

The Crisis in Haiti Today

The current crisis in Haiti stands as a sharp rebuke to those who 
plotted and carried out the coup in 2004, and to the foreign occupation 
that has bedeviled Haiti ever since. There are currently no elected 
officials in Haiti, the result of years of rule by decree by imposed and 
illegitimate governments. Under the watchful eyes of the US and its 
so-called Core Group of foreign occupiers, Haiti has descended into what 
grassroots organizers have called a “hell on earth.”

As the year 2025 begins, people across the length and breadth of Haiti 
have been demanding an end to the terror unleashed by Viv Ansamn, a 
coalition of paramilitary death squads aligned with and emboldened by 
sectors of the business elite and government. Community self-defense 
groups have formed to resist the incursions of the death squads. In the 
last year alone, over 6000 Haitians have been killed by these 
paramilitaries, and more than one million Haitians have had to flee 
their homes. Nearly half the population is facing acute hunger, as roads 
are blocked and markets attacked. Tens of thousands of children have 
been unable to attend schools. Gang rapes have become the norm as 
paramilitaries escalate their attacks on opposition communities. The 
despised Haitian Army, disbanded by President Aristide in 1995, has been 
reconstituted, readying itself to commit yet more human rights 
violations.And a recently formed transitional presidential council, 
demanded for years by Fanmi Lavalas and other grassroots organizations 
as a stepping stone towards free and fair elections, has been sabotaged 
by the US State Department, which has made sure it is dominated by the 
same right-wing parties that have produced what Haitians call a “slow 
motion genocide.” These parties have long been in bed with the 
paramilitaries and show no interest in stopping their assaults against 
the population.

Building Solidarity

As the Trump Administration takes hold, we are witnessing renewed 
attacks on progressive and democratic forces within Haiti, as well as 
the targeting of Haitians living within US borders. Throughout their 
election campaign, Trump and Vance demonized Haitians. Already, as part 
of his attacks on migrants, Trump has issued executive orders ending 
Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for over 500,000 Haitians now in the 
United States.  And he has ended the Humanitarian Parole Program for 
Nicaraguans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Cubans, threatening hundreds of 
thousands more migrants with deportation. Trump has vowed to detain 
30,000 migrants in the infamous prison at Guantanamo Bay – and we know 
that many of those detainees will be Haitians.

Haiti Action Committee has stood with the popular movement in Haiti 
since our founding in 1992. We have maintained our solidarity through 
the 2004 coup, the deadly earthquake of 2010, the joyous return of 
President Aristide in 2011, the stolen elections of 2015 and 2016, the 
devastation unleashed by Hurricane Matthew in 2016, and the earthquake 
that struck Haiti’s southern peninsula in August 2021. We have continued 
to support Haitian refugees who have fled the terror unleashed by one 
US-backed reactionary regime after another. Now we are standing with the 
Haitian grassroots movement as it provides support to a population under 
daily attack, defends communities, and continues to develop and sustain 
programs to build a new, just and democratic Haiti.

This is a time to buttress our solidarity.  We hope you will join us in 
our work.

Email us at: action.haiti at gmail.com

For more information, www.haitisolidarity.net 
<http://www.haitisolildarity.net/>or 
https://www.facebook.com/HaitiActionCommittee/ 
<https://www.facebook.com/HaitiActionCommittee/>

To support the vital work of Haiti’s grassroots movement, please donate 
to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund at www.haitiemergencyrelief.or 
<http://www.haitiemergencyrelief.org/>g



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

33 years of solidarity with the grassroots struggle for dignity, 
democracy and self-determination of the Haitian people! We Will Not 
Forget the Achievements of Lavalas in Haiti 
<https://haitisolidarity.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/We_Will_Not_Forget_2010.pdf>

Please donate to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund 
<https://haitiemergencyrelief.org/> www.haitiemergencyrelief.org 
<http://www.haitiemergencyrelief.org> - all donations are tax-deductible 
and support Haiti's grassroots struggle for democracy


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