19668: Haiti Support Group : how to avoid a repeating cycle (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tttnhm@aol.com

Haiti: how to avoid a repeating cycle - Haiti Support Group

Press release, 2 March 2004

The Haiti Support Group - a solidarity group founded in June 1992 to support
the Haitian people in their struggle for justice, human rights, equitable
development and participatory democracy - makes the following points:

- There are too many guns in Haiti. There must be a comprehensive disarmament
strategy, aiming to disarm both the pro-Aristide and anti-Aristide
irregulars, and this must include the armed insurgents led by Guy Philippe, Louis Jodel
Chamblain et al. Such a strategy must necessarily entail:
·   a long-term project to provide alternative livelihoods to those
unemployed youth who have taken up arms;
·   effective police action to enforce the country's firearms possession
laws; and
·   the tight regulation and control of the Haitian elite's private security
structures.

- Rebuilding the Army is not a solution. Haiti needs a force to guarantee law
and order, in other words, a police force answerable to and controlled by the
Ministry of Justice. Haiti is not under threat of invasion, and does not need
an Army to protect its borders. The key roles played by the Haitian Army
since its creation during the US occupation of 1915-34 have been to defend the
country's tiny and reactionary economic elite, and to repress movements for
progressive political change. The Haiti Support Group fully expects a reborn
Haitian Army to play exactly the same role.

- Both disarmament and reform of the police force can only succeed if the
long struggle to end impunity takes a giant step forward. For this to occur,
there must be a proper judicial reform, not like the farce directed by the US last
time around (1994-98). A successful judicial reform needs, as much as
possible, to be directed by and to serve the interests of the Haitian majority, not
the Haitian elite minority.

- Whatever institutions are constructed, and however well they are
strengthened, if they are built on a swamp, they will, in time, collapse. In the case of
Haiti, this swamp is the fact that 85% of the population lives in abject
poverty.

Only when the majority takes control of Haitian society and refashions it so
that it addresses the majority's interests and concerns, can there ever be
stability in this country.

Only when the majority takes control of the Haitian economy and restructures
it so that it provides for and sustains the majority, can there ever be
economic development in this country.

If these points are not understood, then Haiti is doomed to live through a
repeating cycle of bloodshed, coups, collapse, and foreign intervention - again,
and again, and again.


Contact: Charles Arthur
email: haitisupport@gn.apc.org
______________________________________________


This email is forwarded as a service of the Haiti Support Group.

See the Haiti Support Group web site:
www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org

Solidarity with the Haitian people's struggle for justice, participatory
democracy and equitable development, since 1992.
____________________________________________