[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

19846: erzilidanto: Caribbean women denounce the U.S. backed coup in Haiti (fwd)



From: Erzilidanto@aol.com

Caribbean Women Denounce the US-backed coup in Haiti

Contact Caribbean: Andaiye, 0115922 277010 andaiye@solutions2000.net


                                    Jacqueline Burgess email

jacquie.cafra@wow.net


Contact US:  Margaret Prescod 323-221-1698

margaretprescod@crossroadswomen.net


We, the undersigned women of the Caribbean and of Caribbean descent,

denounce the US-backed coup, which culminated in President Aristide’s

removal from Haitian soil by US forces on Sunday, February 29, 2004.


The majority of the Western media, functioning as an arm of the coup-makers,

pretends that the issue is President Aristide’s faults and weaknesses, and

his loss of support among the people.  While we recognize that there are

likely to be legitimate criticisms of the Aristide government, that is not

the issue. The issue is that there was a democratically-elected government

which had not completed its term, and an opposition which included armed

gangs, purported drug dealers and mercenaries led by former leaders of the

FRAPH death squad and Duvalierists.  One of Haiti’s current liberators –

Chamblain – was leader of the death squads responsible for the mayhem which

led a U.N. envoy to Haiti in 1993 to declare, "the Haitian people are living

under the most ferocious repression in their entire history".  These

terrorists have had the backing of what has been called Haiti’s “permanent

government” - the merchants, elite mulattos, Black former military,

intelligence and bureaucratic establishment, and without doubt, drug lords -

a permanent government that had financial and other support from the US.

The people of Haiti have tried for decades to get them off their backs and

may well have succeeded if the US had not undermined their movement, which

threw out Baby Doc and put Aristide in power.


The coup is the latest action in the 200-year effort by the colonial powers,

including the US, to defeat the struggle for freedom of Black people of

Haiti and to prevent them from serving as an inspiration to others– which

the colonial powers first acknowledged with the words of Napoleon:  “The

freedom of the Negroes, if recognized in St. Domingue (Haiti’s name then)

and legalized by France, would at all times be a rallying point for

freedom-seekers of the New World.”  Napoleon sent in the largest force ever

to cross the Atlantic up to then, but he was defeated. The Haitian people

also inflicted military defeat on Britain and Spain.


Haiti was also a source of direct aid to other freedom-seekers. Under siege

itself, Haiti supplied Simon Bolivar, the Liberator of Venezuela and other

South American countries, who sought refuge there, with two ships and

supplies to overthrow Spanish colonial rule; they also helped to train some

of Bolivar’s soldiers.  Its only request was that in return, Bolivar fight

to free the slaves in Latin America.


The Haitian people achieved the first successful slave revolution in

history, abolishing slavery over 60 years before the US with its Civil War.

But they have never been allowed the conditions in which they could build

their future without premeditated outside interference.  The imperial

powers, especially France and the US, furious at what Black people, "their

property", accomplished against them, have made the Haitian people pay.

Backed by the United States, France ordered Haiti to pay 150 million francs

in gold as “reparations” to former plantation and slave owners as well as

for the costs of the war, in return for international recognition. It has

been estimated that French bankers and big business alone owe Haiti at least

$21 billion in reparations for the forced debt that took Haiti 120 years to

pay off.


For sixty years following the revolution, the U.S. government refused to

recognize the Haitian Republic. The U.S. threatened Haiti twenty-six times

by anchoring warships in its harbors to protect U.S. business interests. It

invaded Haiti in 1915 and stayed until 1934 – nineteen years of occupation.

U.S. marines robbed $500,000 from its National Bank in 1915 and deposited it

in the National City Bank-- now part of the Citibank octopus.  In the 200

years since Haiti’s independence, it endured thirteen coups before the coup

of February 29, 2004.  The bloody Duvalier dictatorships (father and son)

were backed by both the US and France. Cedras, appointed by Aristide during

his first term to head the army, later led a coup against Aristide, which

was the joint work of the Haitian business elite, and the CIA.



Under the Bush administration the US stepped up its campaign to force

“regime change” in Haiti. It pressured the Inter-American Development Bank

and other agencies to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in development

assistance to Haiti – earmarked for safe drinking water, literacy programs

and health services. It instructed the IMF and the World Bank to place Haiti

under a financial embargo. This is the administration which now asks us to

believe that it is acting in the interests of “peace” and “democracy” in

Haiti – as in Iraq.


And as is true everywhere, it is women and children who pay the highest

price for the violence, including the violence of poverty, corruption and

greed.  Grassroots women and their children in Haiti, particularly those who

are darker-skinned, are the poorest of the poor and have had to struggle to

keep their loved ones safe and fed in the midst of violence and misery. It

is the poorest sectors of the population who supported President Aristide.

Children have also been drawn into the struggle: images coming out of Haiti

show children placing burning tires on the streets and participating in

so-called “looting”.


All Caribbean people have a long experience of US economic, political and

military domination and subversion in this region.  We have always

understood that what happens in Haiti reflects whether we are winning or

losing our long struggle to be free. Haiti has been used as the whipping

board, as the example of what would be done to the rest of us if we dared do

what the Haitians did so brilliantly, defeat the colonial powers.  It was

CLR James, a Caribbean man born and bred in Trinidad and Tobago, who wrote

in Black Jacobins, the great history of the Haitian revolution: “The

transformation of slaves, trembling in hundreds before a single white man,

into a people able to organize themselves and defeat the most powerful

European nations of their day is one of the great epics of revolutionary

struggle and achievement.”  We have always felt deeply that we must defend

Haiti because Haiti is ours. Now we must act.


We must act in defense of the other countries of the Americas where the US

is also working to subvert a democratically elected government and bring

about regime change to suit their interests against our interests.  We must

let the world know that we will not silently permit US destabilization in

Venezuela, a Caribbean country, where massive public support in the streets,

led by women, has twice saved the people’s President – Hugo Chavez, a man of

African and Indigenous descent like most of the Venezuelan population – and

the people’s anti-racist and anti-sexist constitution, the most advanced in

the world.


We must act to prevent further massacres in Haiti by exposing the truth

about US involvement.  We must act to oppose another racist occupation of

Haiti by US forces and their allies.  We must act to oppose fraudulent

elections or any other intervention in Venezuela.


The coup and kidnapping of President Aristide are threats to all of us,

beginning with those of us in the Caribbean and Latin America regions.


We must call on Caribbean and Latin American governments to join with

opposition voices in the US to:


  1.. Demand that President and First Lady Aristide be freed to travel where

they want to and to speak freely so that the world can hear directly from

them.


  2.. Condemn acts of violence against the people of Haiti, where as in any

armed conflict, women and children bear the highest price, including in

sexual violence.


  3.. Support the bringing to justice of those who are committing violence

and other atrocities against the Haitian people, including by coup leaders;

and call for the convicted criminals among the coup leaders to serve their

terms;


  4.. Oppose the return by the US government of Haitian refugees who are

fleeing violence, including the violence of poverty imposed on then by the

US and who are bound to face even greater violence upon their return to

Haiti.

  5.. Insist on the sovereignty of the people of both Haiti and Venezuela,

who must be in charge of their own affairs without outside interference.



We call on the United Nations to ensure that the social, cultural and

economic rights of the women o f Haiti are protected, especially during this

period


Lastly, we call on CARICOM Heads of Government now meeting in Kingston,

Jamaica:


1.  To refuse to commit Caribbean troops to Haitian soil, in light of the

fact that the circumstances of the removal from office of the

constitutionally elected President remain unclear; and


2. To undertake its own public investigation into the circumstances which

led to the removal of the constitutionally elected President Jean Bertrand

Aristide from office.



Signed as of March 3, 2004 (signatures are still being collected)


Name                                          Country


Andaiye                                                     Guyana


Sheila Rampersad                                    Trinidad and Tobago


Peggy Antrobus                                        Barbados


Honor Ford-Smith                                     Jamaica


Julieta Alfonso                                           Cuba


Ramabai Espinet                                      Trinidad and Tobago


Margaret Prescod                                     Barbados/USA


Hazel Brown                                             Trinidad and Tobago


Donnette Francis                                      Jamaica


Jacquie Burgess                                       Trinidad and Tobago


Alissa Trotz                                               Guyana/Canada


Zakia Uzoma Wadada                              Trinidad and Tobago


Linnette Vassell                                         Jamaica


Merle Hodge                                              Trinidad and Tobago


Karen de Souza                                        Guyana


Ijahnya Christian                                      Anguilla


Dylis L. McDonald                                     Trinidad and Tobago


Margaret D. Gill                                         Barbados


Patricia Bynoe                                           Trinidad and Tobago


Josanne Leonard                                      Trinidad and Tobago


Vanda Radzik                                            Guyana


Diane Cummins                                        Barbados


Carol Narcisse                                          Jamaica


Amina Blackwood-Meeks                         Jamaica


Denise Boodie                                          Guyana/UK


Pauline Melville                                          Guyana/UK


Evette Burke-Douglas                               Guyana


Rhoda Reddock                                        Trinidad and Tobago


Patricia Rodney                                        Guyana/USA


Eudine Barriteau                                       Barbados


Marjorie L. Morris                                      Guyana/USA


Carol Persram                                          Canada


Cecilia Green                                            Dominica


Kamala Kempadoo                                   Guyana/Canada


Rev. Patricia Sheerattan Bisnauth           Guyana/Switzerland


Nalini Persram                                          Ireland


Marie Therese Dimanow                          Haiti


Lisa Thompson                                         Guyana


Malaika Scott                                             Guyana


Chandra Budhu                                         Guyana/Canada


*********