16608: Karshan: ACP resolution calls for restitution to Haiti from France (Barbados Daily Nation (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: MKarshan@aol.com

Barbados Daily Nation

FACING REALITY: Embrace Haiti! - Monday 01, September-2003
by DAVID COMISSIONG

WHAT A SHAME it is that the Barbadian media and other civil society
organisations paid so little attention to the third Assembly of Caribbean people, which
was held in the island of Haiti between August 19 and 24!

It was left to the Clement Payne Movement, with a team composed of Bobby
Clarke, Edison Crawford, and David Comissiong; along with Iannique Jean-Louis and
Carl Lee Best, to hold aloft the banner of Barbados at this important
Caribbean convention.

The Assembly of Caribbean People (ACP) is a Pan-Caribbean gathering of social
movements, farmers, trade unionists, working people, students, feminists,
youth, artistes, intellectuals, NGO’s and representatives of community
organisations.

To their credit, the hard working regional executive committee of the ACP,
and our very generous and industrious Haitian hosts, were able to put together
an Assembly of some 700 delegates.

If I were forced to identify some specific issue which dominated the
assembly, I would single out the matter of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA),
and the need to mount hemisphere-wide resistance campaign to this latest
yankee “trojan house” of neo-imperialism.

All over the Caribbean, social and political activists are expressing deep
concern about the FTAA and its potential to deal a permanently crippling blow to
our long-standing efforts to build sovereign states and national economies in
our own geo-political space.

We all therefore made a collective resolve to redouble our efforts to educate
the masses of the Caribbean people about the true intent and purpose of the
FTAA, and to challenge our governments not to sign on to the FTAA.

Aside from this critical issue of the FTAA however, the members of the
Clement Payne Movement were most moved and touched by the Haitian people themselves
- their current condition, history and culture.

We were well and truly shocked by the level of poverty and human suffering
that unfolded before our eyes – the lack of proper sanitation, sewage, housing,
health care and other social amenities that so many of our Haitian brothers
and sisters are subjected to!

Indeed, we could not help but wonder how our Caribbean political leaders
could travel to Haiti, witness this level of human suffering and degradation with
their own eyes, and come back home and not speak about it, or seek to make it
a priority issue.

As far as we are concerned, it is shameful that in the heart of our
“Caribbean Community”, literally millions of our kith and kin could be existing in
conditions of such misery, and our governments and civil society organisations
make so little effort to come to their assistance.

The Clement Payne Movement has therefore resolved to establish a local
organisation to reach out in brotherly care and assistance to the people of Haiti.
We will also be lobbying the governments of Barbados and CARICOM to bestir
themselves and to embrace the people of Haiti in a more meaningful way.

Our organisation also played a critical role in piloting a resolution at the
ACP, calling upon the government of France and other guilty parties to pay
“Reparations” to the people of Haiti, for the tremendous damage that they
inflicted on Haiti during centuries of slavery, colonisation and neo-colonialism.
This is a matter that the Barbadian people will be hearing a lot about in the
months ahead.

But as saddened as we were by the poverty, we were “blown away” by the power
and vitality of the culture and history of Haiti.

Indeed, the high point of our entire sojourn in Haiti was our visit to the
massive mountain-top fortress of SansSouci’, which was constructed by King
HenriChristophe, about 200 years ago, in the early phaseof Haiti’s independence.

The 3 000 foot high Sans Souci must rank as one of the wonders of the world,
and is clearly the most impressive man made structure in the entire Caribbean.
As one approaches “Sans Souci” on horseback, one is left with a palpable
sense of the majesty of Haiti’s past – of the revolutionary heroics of such
legendary figures as Macandal, Boukman, Toussaint, Oge’, Dessalines, Christophe,
Biassou and Petion.

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