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</font><h2><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5><b>The Hapless and
the Wretched of the Earth
</b></font></h2><font face="Verdana" size=3>Sunday, September 26,
2004<br>
<b>7:39 AM EST</b> <br>
<a href="http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20040926t060000-0500_66621_obs_the_hapless_and_the_wretched_of_the_earth_.asp">http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20040926t060000-0500_66621_obs_the_hapless_and_the_wretched_of_the_earth_.asp</a><br><br>
So Kofi Annan has at last discovered that 3 A's
(Anglo-American-Australian) attack on Iraq was illegal and against the
basic premises of the United Nations. Some of us knew it then, and said
so. Some of us wondered why Annan withdrew his UN inspectors from Iraq,
giving the US carte-blanche to launch its bombers against an innocent
people.<br><br>
But courage was in short supply those days, as it is now, and cowards
abound and proliferate. If the war on Iraq was a crime against humanity,
what description do we use for the decapitation of the Haitian democracy?
<br>
The world Press, those brave gladiators for justice and truth, speak
about "hapless Haiti" and the "hapless Haitians";
they hide their prejudice and deceit behind euphemisms, behind
circumlocution, obfuscations and outright lies to conceal foul crimes.
They say President Aristide fled 'amid a popular revolt' - of about 500
bandits in a population of eight million.<br><br>
But the Haitians are "hapless". Our leaders, like the leaders
of the United States, France and Canada, the triad behind the criminal
enterprise in Haiti, are all full of hap: hatred, arrogance and
prejudice.<br><br>
While we, the hap-filled, are cleaning up and burying the few
unfortunates killed by Category Five hurricanes, hapless Haiti is
burying, in mass graves, thousands of the hapless killed by extremely
heavy rain from a storm whose winds affected Haiti only minimally. <br>
It is the second time in less than a year that thousands of hapless
Haitians are dying because of rain. <br>
History in Haiti has a habit of repeating itself. And history, in Haiti,
consists largely of the United States and its assaults on Haitian
freedom, all well meant, of course, and obviously intended to reduce
Haiti's Haplessness index to manageable levels. <br>
Who do they think they are?<br><br>
Haiti's history of haplessness began more than 200 years ago when a
Jamaican runaway slave called Bouckman lit the spark that fired the
Haitian revolution. Bouckman, despite being a giant of a man, a born
leader and probably a Muslim (think terrorist) did not survive to see the
fruits of the revolution. He was betrayed, captured and his head stuck on
a pike to discourage the others - perhaps a primitive attempt at
exorcising demonic ideas of freedom and liberty from the revolutionaries.
<br>
It didn't work. The Haitians went on to defeat the French colonial
forces, then defeated a British expeditionary force and then defeated a
French expeditionary army under Napoleon's brother-in-law, killing some
60,000 Frenchmen in the process.<br><br>
Before that, the Haitians had fought alongside the American
revolutionaries to help them throw the British out of the American
colonies. Haitian help was crucial in at least two battles in which
British power was broken - at Savannah, Georgia and at Yorktown.
<br><br>
In addition to all that, the Haitian revolution made another massive
contribution to the new American nation: in defeating France, the
Haitians exhausted the French treasury to the point where Napoleon had to
sell Louisiana to the US or risk losing it to the British. The Louisiana
Purchase doubled the size of the US.<br><br>
So, if the Haitians contributed so much to American independence and
development, why is it that in their extremity of grief and suffering,
the United States treats the Haitians so meanly? <br><br>
Originally, when the scale of the current disaster became known, the
United States, the richest country in the world, offered about US $60,000
for Haitian relief. Venezuela offered $1 million, Trinidad and Tobago
earmarked US$5 million while the European Union pledged US$1.8 million.
Somewhat abashed, the US raised its pledge to US$2 million. In the US
itself, where the damage has been far less severe, the federal government
alone is contributing more than $6 billion in hurricane relief.
<br><br>
Charity, of course, begins at home or perhaps, it is simply another case
of Haitian haplessness. But it must be said, however discreetly, that the
United States has had a great deal to do with the current Haitian
propensity to catastrophe, by destroying Haitian governments, Haitian
infrastructure economic and social, and by policies which have reduced
Haiti almost to a desert.<br><br>
The United States and Britain refused to recognise Haiti after it
declared independence. The US made recognition conditional on the former
colonial power, France, recognising Haiti's autonomy. At that time, of
course, the United States was busy titrating the humanity of blacks and
came to the conclusion that a black was 60% human and therefore not
entitled to all the rights of Man. And Liberty was as dangerous then as
socialism was in the twentieth century. <br><br>
Oddly, the French, the Americans and the Haitians had all been inspired
by the Enlightenment and Tom Paine's codification of the Rights of man.
But only the Haitian revolution recognised all those rights. In the US,
blacks and women, for instance, had to wait more than a century to reach
the status guaranteed to Haitians. France and the US maintained slavery
more than 50 years after Haiti abolished it.<br><br>
With the British and the US playing hardball on the recognition question,
France felt able to demand that the Haitians should pay cash for their
freedom. In Jamaica and other British colonies, the state paid the
slaveowners compensation. In Haiti the former slaves paid twice, in blood
and in treasure. When they had trouble paying back the French the kindly
American bankers came to Haiti's rescue. We will lend you the money to
pay off your debt, they said, and Haiti achieved another first becoming
the first Third World debtor nation. <br>
That debt was eventually paid off more than a century later - the last
payment was in 1947. In the meantime it had caused Haiti the most extreme
distress, wrecked her infrastructure and destroyed her independence. What
the metropolitan countries could not achieve by conquest, they achieved
by compound interest.<br><br>
Early in the last century, the Americans became a little dissatisfied
with Haitian repayment of their debt, and that led to an immediate
increase in Haitian haplessness. The US invaded, changed their
constitution, took away their land, chopped down their trees to plant
sisal, logwood, coffee and pineapple and destroyed the agricultural base
of the country. After they left officially in 1935, however, the
Americans bequeathed Haiti an armed force which was corrupt, cruel,
ungovernable and in thrall to the US. It guaranteed that any Haitian
President either obeyed Washington or went into exile. In 1947, Dumarsais
Estimé, said to be a socialist, was deposed after a couple of years. That
began a period of dictatorship distinguished chiefly by American support
for the ruthless Francois Duvalier and his inane son, Jean-Claude 'Baby
Doc' Duvalier. <br>
During the US occupation (1915 to 1935), the Haitians tried to throw the
occupiers out, only to be bombed and strafed in a eerie foretaste of the
fascist bombing of Guernica during the Spanish civil war. Nobody made
much of the Haitian version, because, after all, what were they but a
bunch of "Niggers speaking French" as they were described by
William Jennings Bryan, one of Colin Powell's predecessors as US
Secretary of State. The Haitian resistance leader, Charlemagne Peralte,
was like Bouckman, betrayed, murdered and his head exhibited to
discourage the others. <br><br>
History repeats itself in Haiti, but never as farce.<br><br>
Today, we watch as the United States leads its partners France and
Canada, in an adventure in Haiti which already resembles King Leopold's
so-called "humanitarian" incursion into the Congo over a
century ago. That enterprise, described by the King of the Belgians as
rather like "a Red Cross scheme" left between ten million and
twenty million Congolese dead or with their hands and feet chopped off
for misbehaviour. Four of them went to university. <br><br>
The American adventure in Haiti has not so far been identified by anyone
as an illegal enterprise. It would seem to be, on the face of it, an
illegal trespass into the affairs of another country, an illegal
complicity in the illegal removal of a duly elected head of state and an
illegal interference in the sovereign rights of Haitians - for a start.
<br>
Mr Annan, who has now condemned the American adventure in Iraq, may yet
find time to condemn the one in Haiti, but probably not before the US
elections. He is the chief guardian, it is alleged, of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.<br><br>
In the meantime, however, it is clear that the intervention has had some
catastrophic consequences. The bandits let loose and sanctioned by the
Americans, French and Canadians, have destroyed the health, educational
and democratic systems of Haiti - such as they were. More important for
the latest disaster, they destroyed the Civil Defence structure, the
network which would have warned Haitians of impending disaster and which
would have at least attempted to rescue those worst affected. It is
likely that had this organisation been in existence instead of in hiding
from the interim government's murderous heroes, so many would not have
died.<br><br>
But it is also clear that the Americans, Canadians and French do not
believe that the Haitians are entitled to the same rights as other human
beings. Perhaps, using their renowned scientific expertise and prowess,
they have once again figured out what precise degree of humanity is
possessed by each Haitian, and perhaps by each Jamaican and Trinidadian
also. <br><br>
That, of course, would explain why it is not necessary for anyone to
discover what really happened on February 29, when President Aristide was
posted to the Central African Republic as "cargo" in a CIA
plane which just happened to be on hand when the US Ambassador, Mr Foley,
decided to pay a call on the President before dawn one morning.
<br><br>
Perhaps it may explain why various Caribbean leaders are content to watch
the Haitians die without being able to organise to help themselves,
because of course, the Haitians are "hapless" and not 100%
human. <br><br>
It may not have occurred to our leaders that in condemning the Haitians
to 'haplessness', they are in fact, recognising that the United States
has the right to legalise a new class of human being, one without rights
- like the thousands locked away in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and a host of
secret dungeons around the world.<br><br>
It may not have occurred to our leaders that in acquiescing to this foul
doctrine they are not only condemning Haitians to death but they are
condemning themselves and us. It may not have occurred to them that in
their acquiescence they are occupying the same moral ground once
inhabited by such as Pierre Laval, Vidkun Quisling, Pol Pot and the
Africans who sold their brothers into slavery . <br><br>
But, as the West Indies cricket team has proved, in some cases, leaders
are expendable. When the Laras, the Pattersons and the Owen Arthurs fail
us, there may be others on whom we can depend to defend the hapless and
the wretched of the earth.<br><br>
Copyright©2004 John Maxwell <br>
maxinf@cwjamaica.com<br>
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