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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/06/24/the-haitian-revolution-today-and-the-limits-of-token-solidarity/">counterpunch.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">The Haitian Revolution Today and the Limits of Token Solidarity</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">by Seth Donnelly - June 24, 2022<br></div>
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<div id="gmail-attachment_247315" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-247315" src="https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/ecuador-and-brazil-training-new-haitian-army-glo.jpeg" alt="Ecuador and Brazil Training New Haitian Army – Global Exchange" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="392" height="261"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-247315" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Demonstrator
in Haiti in early March 2004, protesting the Feb. 29 coup. He is
definitely facing the assault rifle of a U.S. soldier by raising both
hands with his five fingers outstretched to symbolize the five-year term
mandated by the Haitian constitution that President Aristide was not
allowed to complete. – Photo: Haiti Information Project.</p></div>
<p>In 1826, the Congress of Panama was organized by Simon Bolivar,
including representatives from Peru, Mexico, and what was then Gran
Colombia (Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela) and the United
Provinces of Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras,
Nicaragua, and Costa Rica). Bolivar, who had been given refuge twice in
Haiti, promised that Haiti would be invited to what was arguably the
first international Pan-American summit with the goal to unify the
Americas against the imperial interests of Spain. The US government,
however, recognized an opportunity to expand its hegemony in the region
by implementing the Monroe Doctrine. Inserting itself as the new
‘protector’ in the region, it insisted that Haiti, the exemplary nation
of anti-slavery Black revolution, be excluded from the Congress. Even
those who were most committed to anti-imperialist unification accepted
the condition – a betrayal which set a pattern not only against Haiti
but against other countries that attempt to steer a course independent
of North American imperialism.</p>
<p>Ever since the Haitian people successfully overthrew slavery and
French colonialism in 1804, the US government refused to recognize the
independent Haitian republic; instead the US sided with the French
government to internationally isolate Haiti and force the Haitian people
to pay “restitution” to their former enslavers in France, a massive
robbery well-documented in the recent <em>NYT</em> article <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-history-colonized-france.html">“The Root of Haiti’s Misery: Reparations to Enslavers”</a>.</p>
<p>Echoing this history of the US exclusion of Haiti in 1826, the Biden
Administration convened another Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles,
excluding Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua from participation. There was
massive international attention and opposition by progressives to this
measure. The Haiti Action Committee was part of this opposition and
stands in full solidarity with the people of Cuba, Venezuela, and
Nicaragua.</p>
<p>Compared to the opposition to this exclusion, there has been little
international opposition to the Biden Administration’s exclusion of the
people of Haiti from authentic representation in the same Summit.
Instead, the Haitian people were “represented” by the ruling Haitian Tet
Kale Party (PHTK party), a neocolonial dictatorship installed,
financed, and weaponized by the US government during the UN occupation
of Haiti which followed the US-orchestrated 2004 coup against President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Fanmi Lavalas Political Organization.
This coup was also backed by the French and Canadian governments. On
June 7th, 2022, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was directly <a href="https://twitter.com/EugenePuryear/status/1534403650679844864">questioned</a>
by journalist Eugene Puryear about why the Biden Administration
excluded Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua from its Summit, but gave the
“red carpet treatment” to the US-backed PHTK dictatorship in Haiti.</p>
<p>In opposition to the Biden Administration’s Summit, a wide range of activists organized a concurrent and successful <a href="https://peoplessummit2022.org/">People’s Summit</a>,
also held in Los Angeles as well, which included Cuba, Venezuela, and
Nicaragua. The Summit was an important step forward for expanding and
deepening ties of international solidarity.</p>
<p>But the question remains for anti-imperialist activists as we
organize new international forums, alliances, and actions: will Haiti’s
revolutionary popular movement be truly represented and involved in
leading these efforts? Unfortunately, some US activists have supported
and promoted Haitian “leftists” who have a track record in enabling
and/or justifying the 2004 US-backed coup. One example is Raoul Peck,
the renowned filmmaker, who belonged to the pro-coup Group 184 being
funded by the US government. He was also a member of a group of Haitian
intellectuals who opposed the celebration of the bicentennial of the
Haitan Revolution prior to the coup. Following the coup, Peck publicly
and internationally carried out a <a href="https://haitisolidarity.net/voices-from-haiti/jafrikayiti/">campaign</a>
of vilification against President Aristide. For more information on the
role of Peck and other Haitian intellectuals in the coup and the
rewards bestowed upon them following the coup, see this <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/blar.12072">article</a>.</p>
<p>Another example is Camille Chalmers, an alleged representative of the
Haitian popular movement. While Chalmers has been a prominent
participant in previous World Social Forums and has a well-versed
leftist vocabulary, he also has a history of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/35332847/PAPDA_CIDA_s_Alternative_Development_includes_Coups_and_Repression">collaboration</a>
with US imperialism in Haiti. Chalmers is a leader of the Haitian
Platform to Advocate Alternative Development (PAPDA), an organization
supported by Grassroots International. One of the journalists who
documented the links between PANDA and the US and Canadian governments
during the early coup years is Anthony Fenton. As Pierre Labossiere, the
co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee, has noted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Camille [Chalmers] and PAPDA supported the racist, imperialist
bloody coup d’etat in Haiti led by the US, France and Canada against the
democratically elected and popular Lavalas government of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The late Senator Jesse Helms was the driving
force to bring about the coup. After two failed attempts by Haitian
“contras”, consisting of members of the FRAPH death squad, the disbanded
repressive military and Duvalier’s Tonton Macoutes, special forces from
the US, France and Canada carried out the kidnapping/coup on February
29, 2004, the year of the bicentennial of the Haitian Revolution. It
resulted in an estimated 10,000 victims. The continuing 18-year US-UN
occupation to shore up the coup d’etat with Brazil and other Latin
American nations joining the US have added to the number of our sisters
and brothers being killed, their lives destroyed and fleeing Haiti as
refugees.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Camille Chalmers’ PAPDA was part of the ultra-right wing Latortue
government imposed on the Haitian people by the US, France and Canada
immediately after the coup. The record of atrocities of this and the
succeeding US-installed coup d’etat governments is well-documented and
continues to this day.”</p>
<p>Camille Chalmers and PAPDA did not stop at supporting the February
coup and taking part in the imposed government that ruled after the
coup, a regime that was jailing and killing thousands of Lavalas
activists and supporters. In March 2004, immediately after the coup,
Camille Chalmers and PAPDA circulated a letter urging people to publicly
oppose the Jamaican government’s offer of asylum to President Aristide
and Mrs. Mildred Aristide who were in the Central African Republic after
having forcibly taken there by a US military plane. Many feared for
their lives. At great risk, Congresswoman Maxine Waters flew to the
Central African Republic to bring the Aristides to Jamaica. In this
letter, Chalmers and a handful of others urged their “Caribbean partners
to exert pressure on their respective governments so that they
understand that Mr. Aristide’s presence constitutes a real threat to the
fledgling and fragile democratic process.” In other words, they wanted
the Aristides banished from the Caribbean while the new dictatorship in
Haiti consolidated its power through a wave of extrajudicial killings.
At the same time, the Bush Administration was exerting tremendous
pressure on the Jamaican government, forcing the Aristides to accept
asylum in South Africa.</p>
<p>The recent <em>NYT</em> article <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-aristide-reparations-france.html">“Demanding Reparations, Ending Up in Exile”</a>
made clear that the coup against President Aristide was first of all in
response to his call for reparations for the money Haiti had been
forced to pay France for their “lost property”, in the form of human
beings.</p>
<p>With knowledge of this history, the late veteran Guyanese activist
Andaiye and Margaret Prescod, both with Women of Color/Global Women’s
Strike, had to <a href="https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/02/01/17996271.php?show_comments=1">denounce</a> the organizing committee of the World Social Forum in 2006 for inviting Chalmers. Andaiye stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p> “Solidarity in the fight for social justice must be international.
It’s not acceptable to be in solidarity with the Venezuelan people, but
not in solidarity with the Haitian people; it’s not acceptable to be for
Iraq, but against Haiti.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While Chalmers strove to block the Aristides from receiving asylum in
Jamaica, the repression wrought by the 2004 coup he supported has
continued to intensify, culminating in a relentless pattern of massacres
by paramilitaries against popular, poor neighborhoods that are bases of
Lavalas. Fact-findings teams involving members of the Haiti Action
Committee and the National Lawyers Guild have documented two such
massacres, one carried out by UN occupation forces on July 5th, 2005 in <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2005/7/11/eyewitnesses_describe_massacre_by_un_troops">Cite Soleil</a> and the other carried out by the PHTK regime’s police and paramilitary attaches in <a href="https://www.nlg.org/report-the-lasalin-massacre-and-the-human-rights-crisis-in-haiti/">Lasalin</a>
during several days in mid-November, 2018. While these massacres have
proliferated across Haiti, along with targeted political assassinations,
so too has destitution, reaching new levels of <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1114422#:~:text=According%20to%20recent%20projections%2C%2045,Security%20Phase%20Classification%20(IPC)">hunger</a> and other forms of deprivation.</p>
<p>The Haitian revolution was the first in world history to decisively
uproot slavery. Ever since then, Haiti has been relentlessly punished by
the former slave owning and imperial powers such as the US and France.
This never stopped the Haitian people from supporting Africans and
Indigenous people escaping slavery and colonialism in the Americas.
Haiti opened its borders and welcomed them, just as the Haitian republic
provided material assistance to freedom fighters like Simon Bolivar.</p>
<p>Today, the Haitian people are waging the most courageous resistance
against the US-backed PHTK dictatorship. Fanmi Lavalas– despite the
thousands of its militants killed since the 2004 coup– continues to play
a pivotal role in organizing and mobilizing popular resistance. Fanmi
Lavalas is the political party that grew out of the Lavalas movement of
Haiti’s poor majority, twice electing Aristide in overwhelming
majorities, first in 1991 and then in 2000, both times being interrupted
by US-backed coups. While Chalmers and PAPDA tried to discredit Fanmi
Lavalas, they have not succeeded. As Margaret Prescod recently put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Since the coup there are continued efforts on both the right and
some sectors of the left to silence, discredit and sideline President
Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas, an effort which has had more success within
the international arena than on the ground in Haiti. Without US
interference in the last Presidential election, the Lavalas candidate
Dr. Maryse Narcisse would [quite likely] have become Haiti’s first
elected woman president. Those in the popular movement in Haiti know
very well who stands with them, who is being used by those who want to
discredit Lavalas, and who has betrayed their movement.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is far past time that anti-racist and anti-imperialist activists
organizing forums and summits make sure that coup collaborators are not
given a platform to spread lies and undermine the Haitian popular
movement and its leadership. Bridges of solidarity must be built with
the true representatives of the Haitian people, including members of
Fanmi Lavalas, in this decisive moment of their history. As US
journalist and veteran Haiti solidarity activist Kevin Pina expressed
during a June 22 interview on Pacifica Radio’s <a href="https://soundcloud.com/sojournertruthradio">Sojourner Truth with Margaret Prescod</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The greatest act of solidarity is to carefully choose who you work
with and you do that based upon a very conscious understanding of the
situation. Anything short of that, you should not be involved in
solidarity. You’re doing more harm than good.”</p>
</blockquote>
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