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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://sfbayview.com/2022/06/haiti-the-ransom-is-still-being-paid-2/">sfbayview.com</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Haiti: The ransom is still being paid</h1>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">June 30, 2022<br></div>
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<a href="https://sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Garment-workers-protest-021722-in-Port-au-Prince-Haiti-win-54-wage-increase-1400x781.jpg" target="_blank"><img title="Garment-workers-protest-021722-in-Port-au-Prince-Haiti-win-54-wage-increase-1400x781, Haiti: The ransom is still being paid, News & Views World News & Views" src="https://sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Garment-workers-protest-021722-in-Port-au-Prince-Haiti-win-54-wage-increase-1400x781.jpg" alt="Garment-workers-protest-021722-in-Port-au-Prince-Haiti-win-54-wage-increase-1400x781, Haiti: The ransom is still being paid, News & Views World News & Views" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="392" height="219"></a><font size="1">The mass protest by garment workers on Feb. 17, 2022, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, won a 54% wage increase.</font></div>
<p><strong><em>by Robert Roth, Haiti Action Committee</em></strong></p>
<p>On May 20th,<em> The New York Times</em> published a meticulously documented series entitled, “The Ransom,”<em> </em>detailing
the devastating impact of the so-called “Independence Tax” enforced by
France in 1825 on the world’s first Black republic. As <em>The Times</em>
reported, Haiti became the only place where the descendants of enslaved
people were forced to pay compensation to the descendants of slave
owners. With the first payment to France, Haiti had to shut down its
nascent public school system. As the billions of dollars paid to France
and then to U.S banks like Citicorp multiplied, Haiti’s economy
disintegrated.</p>
<p><em>The Times</em> series comes nearly<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8ywg8YOJhE">
20 years after the administration of then-President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide formally demanded $21.7 billion from France as restitution for
the funds extorted from Haiti</a>. Aristide’s initiative was a key
factor in France’s cooperation and support for the U.S.-orchestrated
coup that overthrew his democratically elected government. Mainstream
media at the time, including <em>The New York Times</em> and <em>The Washington Post</em>,
treated the demand as “quixotic” and a publicity stunt, as their
reporters wrote one article after another demonizing the democratically
elected Aristide administration, thus helping to lay the ideological
justifications for the 2004 coup d’etat.</p>
<p>We do not anticipate self-criticism from <em>The Times</em> for its past reporting. Hardly. But as <em>Times</em>
readers study the new series, they will hopefully demand to know more
about the ways in which the U.S. and France continue to exploit Haiti’s
resources, dominate its political life and prop up the tiny, violent and
corrupt Haitian elite that now rules the country. And they will
hopefully call for an accurate accounting of the powerful Haitian
grassroots movement that continues to fight for democracy and true
sovereignty.</p>
<p>Take for example the recent uprising of Haiti’s factory workers. On
Feb. 17, 2022, thousands of Haitian garment workers, their families and
supporters, filled the streets of Port-au-Prince to demand an end to
starvation wages and horrific working conditions. The workers demanded a
wage increase from 500 gourdes per 9-hour work day (approximately
$4.80) to 1,500 gourdes per day (approximately $14.40). As the
demonstrations continued throughout the next week, Haitian police fired
on the crowds with tear gas canisters and live ammunition, killing a
journalist and wounding many other protesters. </p>
<div>
<a><img title="Haitian-factory-workers-strike-demand-salary-increase-0222-by-Odelyn-Joseph-AP-1400x935, Haiti: The ransom is still being paid, News & Views World News & Views" src="https://sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Haitian-factory-workers-strike-demand-salary-increase-0222-by-Odelyn-Joseph-AP-1400x935.jpg" alt="Haitian-factory-workers-strike-demand-salary-increase-0222-by-Odelyn-Joseph-AP-1400x935, Haiti: The ransom is still being paid, News & Views World News & Views" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="392" height="262"></a><font size="1">Factory
workers in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, chant anti-government slogans during a
protest demanding a salary increase. – Photo: Odelyn Joseph, AP</font></div>
<p>The garment strike came in the midst of double-digit inflation in
Haiti, with the prices of food, fuel and other commodities soaring. To
make matters worse, the government of de facto prime minister Ariel
Henry recently announced that it would end fuel subsidies, leading to
even higher prices. Workers chanted, “You raised the gas but didn’t
raise our salaries.” </p>
<p>The strategy of the Henry government was classic counterinsurgency:
Denounce the militancy of the protests, unleash police repression to
terrorize the demonstrators, and offer a modest wage increase (to 770
gourdes a day) to quell the uprising.<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-port-au-prince-haiti-strikes-40a6e603513287f63bd2228885a9a5f3">
In numerous interviews, workers expressed their outrage over the
government response, pointing out that the cost of traveling to and from
their factory jobs alone took up 40% of their daily wage. Add to that
the cost of food and housing and you have a daily fight to survive.</a> </p>
<p>Who benefits from this sweatshop labor? Garment factories in Haiti
supply T-shirts and other apparel to corporate giants like Target, the
Gap, H&H Textiles, Under Armour and Walmart. Check out the label on
your T-shirt. It may very well read, “Made in Haiti.” </p>
<p>None of this is new. During the dictatorial reign of Jean-Claude
“Baby Doc” Duvalier in the 1970s and 1980s, garment factories supplying
U.S. companies set up shop throughout Port-au-Prince, while the
government unleashed terror campaigns against labor organizers and any
grassroots opposition. </p>
<p>In 1991, during Aristide’s first term as president, he was set to
raise the minimum wage, when a U.S.-organized coup toppled his
government only seven months into his presidency. In February of 2003,
during his second administration,<a href="https://haitisolidarity.net/pamphlets/"> Aristide doubled the minimum wage, impacting the more than 20,000 people who worked in the Port-au-Prince assembly sector.</a>
The Aristide government provided school buses to take these workers’
children to school as well as subsidies for their school books and
uniforms. In addition, his government launched a campaign to collect
unpaid taxes and utility bills from Haiti’s wealthy elite. None of this
sat well with Haiti’s factory owners, who played a key role in the
U.S.-orchestrated 2004 coup d’etat.</p>
<p><strong><em>The coup fast-tracked the implementation of the U.S.-imposed structural adjustment program, known in Haiti as the “Death Plan.”</em></strong></p>
<p>Haiti is still living with the grim effects of that coup and the
subsequent foreign occupation that enforced it. The coup fast-tracked
the implementation of the U.S.-imposed structural adjustment program,
known in Haiti as the “Death Plan.” Nowhere was this more apparent than
during the aftermath of the catastrophic 2010 earthquake, which killed
over 300,000 Haitians and left millions more under tarps and tents. </p>
<p>Shortly after the earthquake, then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton traveled to northern Haiti, declaring that “Haiti is now open
for business,” as she hailed the inauguration of the Caracol Northern
Industrial Park, now a key center of the garment industry and a target
of the current labor protests and strikes. State Department cables
obtained by <em>Wikileaks</em> revealed that Clinton and the State
Department, along with USAID, were pressuring Haiti’s government to
block any hike in the minimum wage, arguing that this would be
detrimental to the development of the export sector. A series of
compliant and corrupt Haitian regimes, selected and propped up by the
U.S., have facilitated this plan, taking their cut along the way.</p>
<p>The ongoing battle of Haiti’s garment workers for survival and
dignity is part of the broader popular movement in Haiti. The workers
who are in the streets of Port-au-Prince return home at night to
communities like Belair, Cite Soleil and Lasalin that have been targeted
by Haitian police and paramilitary death squads, who have besieged them
with<a href="https://www.nlg.org/report-the-lasalin-massacre-and-the-human-rights-crisis-in-haiti/"> massacres, kidnappings and gang rapes aimed at silencing their opposition to the current government. </a></p>
<p>The garment strike came just days after the term of de facto prime
minister Ariel Henry officially ended on Feb. 7. Hundreds of thousands
of Haitians demonstrated for months their opposition to the continuation
of this regime, which they rightly classify as illegitimate, a creation
of the so-called Core Group (the United States, France, Spain, Brazil,
Germany, Canada, the EU, the UN and the OAS) that controls Haiti’s
politics. </p>
<p>Numerous grassroots organizations, including Aristide’s <em>Fanmi Lavalas Political Organization</em> – the people’s party of Haiti –<a href="https://haitisolidarity.net/crisis-and-resolution/">
have called for a transitional government to end corruption, stop the
repression, respect the rights of workers, stabilize the economy, and
set the stage for free and fair elections.</a> Yet the State Department
has doubled down on its support for the Henry regime and has insisted
that it supervise new elections. This would simply lead to one more
stolen election designed to keep the ultra-right-wing PHTK (Skinhead)
party in power. </p>
<div>
<a><img title="Border-Patrol-agents-whipping-Haitian-migrants-with-horse-reins-092021-by-Paul-Ratje-AFP-1400x867, Haiti: The ransom is still being paid, News & Views World News & Views" src="https://sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Border-Patrol-agents-whipping-Haitian-migrants-with-horse-reins-092021-by-Paul-Ratje-AFP-1400x867.jpg" alt="Border-Patrol-agents-whipping-Haitian-migrants-with-horse-reins-092021-by-Paul-Ratje-AFP-1400x867, Haiti: The ransom is still being paid, News & Views World News & Views" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="392" height="243"></a><font size="1">These
images from last September of US Border Patrol agents whipping Haitians
have been memorialized in racist “challenge coins” being passed around
by the agents, proudly depicting those same attacks. – Photo: Paul
Ratje, AFP</font></div>
<p><a href="https://pressley.house.gov/media/press-releases/pressley-jones-demand-biden-administration-end-title-42-cease-deportations">I</a>n
the midst of the disaster that the U.S. has helped to foster in Haiti,
the Biden administration continues its unconscionable mass deportation
of Haitians, with the numbers now exceeding 25,000 since Biden’s
inauguration. <a href="https://atlantablackstar.com/2022/06/20/its-strictly-business-border-patrol-officers-were-captured-whipping-haitians-near-u-s-mexico-border-then-someone-created-a-coin-to-commercialize-the-controversial-incident/">Remember
those horrifying images of border patrol agents whipping Haitian
migrants last September? Now comes the news that those images have been
memorialized in racist “challenge coins” being passed around by border
patrol agents, proudly depicting those same attacks</a>. </p>
<p>In the month of May alone, the Biden administration loaded up 36
planes to deport 4,000 Haitians. They return to the worst spate of
kidnappings in Haiti’s history, where paramilitary groups have targeted
with impunity everyone from market vendors to medical workers and
teachers.</p>
<p>Only a fundamental change in Haiti of the kind envisioned,
articulated and fought for by Haiti’s powerful grassroots movement, can
reverse any of this. And the U.S. government, as it has been so often,
is the biggest obstacle that stands in the way.</p>
<p>The ransom is still being paid. And reparations are long overdue. </p>
<p><em>Robert Roth is an educator and was co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee. He can be reached at </em><a><em>rhroth3633@gmail.com</em></a><em>. </em></p>
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