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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
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