19815: Bellegarde-Smith: Ramsey Clark On Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: P D Bellegarde-Smith <pbs@csd.uwm.edu>
>
>International Action Center
>Founded by Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark
>39 W. 14th St., NY, NY, 10011 212-633-6646, www.iacenter.org
>
>A Message from Ramsey Clark
>March 1, 2004
>
>The Bush administration has worked towards the removal of President
>Jean-Bertrand Aristide from office for three years. It has enforced a
>unilateral embargo and cut off humanitarian aid to the poorest
>country in the hemisphere. It has sought to undermine support for
>President Aristide while supporting his opposition. It has waged a
>relentless propaganda campaign to force him out of office. It has
>supported calls for elections in violation of the constitution and
>laws of Haiti.
>
>Most recently the U.S. has forced regime change by armed aggression
>supporting former Haitian military officers, FRAPH leaders and
>criminal elements who entered Haiti with heavy firepower. Though only
>hundreds in number they easily captured Cap Haitien, Gonaives, Hinche
>and Les Cayes, killing the police who were untrained in warfare, or
>in defending against commando units, armed only with pistols.
>
>This small force could never have entered Haiti if President
>Aristide, a man of peace, had not abolished the Haitian army, a
>praiseworthy act. Unfortunately, this left the country defenseless
>against armed aggression.
>
>The international organizations, CARICOM, OAS and the UN should have
>acted to protect the democratically elected government of Haiti.
>After Costa Rica abolished its army, President Somoza (who U.S.
>President Franklin Roosevelt called "our SOB") of Nicaragua, twice
>threatened invasions of Costa Rica, only to be stopped, once by the
>OAS and once by Venezuela.
>
>The U.S. consistently acted to force President Aristide to leave
>Haiti, abandon his constitutional duties, repudiate democratic
>processes and desert his people to the tender mercies of the Old
>Regime. The army, the paramilitary FRAPH, criminal gangs and the old
>oligarchy that supported Duvalier terrorism against the Haitian
>people with U.S. support for 30 years. When in 1986 Baby Doc Duvalier
>was forced to leave, his repressive forces no longer able to contain
>the anger of the people, it was in a U.S. Air Force plane to the
>French Riviera with millions of dollars wrung from the sweat of the
>poor people of Haiti.
>
>President Aristide consistently refused to leave his people, to
>resign, to subvert Haitian democracy and constitutional government
>under enormous pressure from the Bush Administration. He was under
>that enormous pressure for months as violence was again threatening
>his presidency as it did in 1991, nine months into his first term as
>the first democratically elected president of Haiti, the first and
>only country in which a successful slave rebellion took place. That
>revolution was begun by Toussaint Louverteur in 1791 and ended under
>Jean-Jacques Dessalines and others who defeated Napoleon's legions,
>20,000 strong, and win independence for Haiti in 1804.
>In his autobiography published in exile in 1992 first in France,
>Aristide wrote, "In Haiti, we are watching the ascent of a rebellious
>people who are revolting against slavery. I am only the reflection,
>an echo of that movement?they are the principal actors. I simply try
>to exist in their dimension, to show love and non-violence, through
>and beyond all the difficulties of life, as the only thing that will
>enable us to go forward."
>
>President Aristide listed in the final chapter of his
>autobiography, "The Ten Commandments of Democracy in Haiti," first
>spoken by him before the General Assembly of the United Nations in
>September 1991. The commandments of President Aristide, the political
>faith of a priest, scholar and person of, by and for the poor,
>included: liberty; democracy; fidelity to human rights; the right to
>eat and to work; defense of the Haitian diaspora; no to violence;
>fidelity to the human being &#8213; and the highest form of wealth
>&#8213; fidelity to Haitian culture; everyone around the same table.
>
>This is the man President Bush has deposed.
>
>If the Bush administration policy of unilateral wars of aggression,
>violations of international law and the U.S. Constitution and regime
>change is to be stopped before the U.S. loses its last friend and
>creates a wave of terrorism that will engulf the planet for years,
>the U.S. Congress must investigate: 1. The role of the U.S. in
>forcing President Aristide from Haiti 2. The support the Bush
>administration gave in training, financing and arming the aggression
>against Haiti 3. The acts the Bush administration took to destabilize
>social order in Haiti, to support the old army, the FRAPH and the
>wealthy oligarchies 4. The role the U.S. played in President
>Aristide's sudden departure from Haiti, contrary to all his public
>statements, and his transport to a distant country 5. Any explanation
>the Bush administration has for its failure to demand the former
>military, FRAPH and other violent groups lay down their arms, arms
>the U.S. provided, until the eve of the president's coerced departure
>6. Why Washington placed every pressure at its disposal to force the
>democratically elected President of Haiti to surrender his
>constitutional powers
>7. Why President Aristide was kidnapped in fact, even as Toussaint
>Louverture was kidnapped to imprisonment in France in 1803 and
>Philippine President Emilio Aguinaldo was kidnapped by U.S. soldiers
>to end the Philippine-American War in 1901?
>
>The Western Hemisphere cannot be a safe or happy place until U.S.
>military and economic intervention and regime change end, justice for
>all is assured, reparations for past offenses to Haiti are paid and
>until President Aristide returns for Haiti to serve his people.
>
>Ramsey Clark
>March 1, 2004
>
>
>