22133: Esser: Statement in Solidarity with the Haitian People (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

SOLIDARITY [Detroit, MI]
http://www.solidarity-us.org/

April 2004

Statement in Solidarity with the Haitian People

On February 29, 2004, with paramilitaries twenty-five miles from
Port-au-Prince, Jean-Bertrand Aristide flew into his second exile. 
According to Agence France-Presse Aristide was forced to leave by
U.S. soldiers, who came in the middle of the night to whisk him away
by helicopter.  Subsequently U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters and
Randall Robinson have established that Aristide, his wife and
brother-in-law are being held against their will in the Central
Republic of Africa.

Solidarity, as a U.S.-based feminist, antiracist and socialist
organization, denounces Washington for the role it has played in its
ruthless economic destabilization and armed intervention in
Haiti-from its arming of paramilitaries to its removal of Aristide on
February 29th.  We reaffirm the right of the Haitian people to govern
their own affairs.  Since its birth 200 years ago as a successful
slave revolt, Haiti has faced intervention by various powers,
including the French, Spanish, British and U.S. governments.  It has
also suffered more than thirty coups.

The aid embargo that Washington imposed on the Aristide government
over the last four years-beginning with successfully pressuring the
Inter-American Development Bank to cancel $512 million in already
approved development assistance and loans-combined with material aid
to the opposition destabilized the government and opened the door to
yet another coup.

For the past three weeks the pressure on Aristide had been mounting. 
Jean "Tatoune" Pierre, convicted of the 1994 Raboto massacre, led the
assault on Gonaives, slaughtering at least fifty people.  Many of the
fourteen policemen killed were dragged through the street and
mutilated.  Last week Pierre was identified in the U.S. media as a
former Aristide supporter who was leading a rebel force, this week
Washington labels him a drug dealer.  On February 14 twenty armed
Haitian commandos-including Guy Philippe, a Duvalier death squad
leader, and Louis Jodel Chamblain, a FRAPH /CIA operative identified
as one of the planners of the 1993 assassination of Guy Malary,
Minister of Justice in the first Aristide government-forcibly crossed
into Haiti from the Dominican Republic.  According to Amy Goodman and
Jeremy Scahill, they arrived with M-16s, camouflage uniforms and
all-terrain vehicles.  This is the same border that 900 U.S. soldiers
patrol jointly with the Dominican army.

As in the case of Aristide's first overthrow in 1994, the
fingerprints of Washington's involvement are everywhere.  The
political opposition, known as the Convergence, is made up of tiny
parties, from free-market businessmen to ultra-right Duvalierists,
with some former leftists thrown in.  They have received
U.S.-government funding by the National Endowment for Democracy,
funneled into Haiti through the International Republican Institute. 
Although distancing themselves from the gangs, the Convergence has
intransigently demanded Aristide's resignation.

The same recycled officials who supported the contras in Nicaragua
and were involved in the attempted coup last year in Venezuela are in
charge of U.S. policy in the Caribbean today.  Roger Noriega,
Undersecretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs, negotiated
Washington's "peace" plan, and had nothing to say when Aristide
accepted it and the opposition balked.  Over a year ago Noriega and
Otto Reich were linked to the planning of a secret conference at
which the Francophone nations were urged by U.S. agents "to be
prepared to call for direct intervention and a possible U.N. 
trusteeship in the wake of Aristide's departure after violence
escalated in Haiti."  ("US Double Game in Haiti," Tom Reeves, Znet,
Feb.  16, 2004) The French government seems to have been a willing
partner in this "regime change."

Having weathered the coups of July and December 2001, but trapped by
the country's structural poverty, the U.S. aid embargo and
compromises made with Clinton in 1994, Aristide was unable to buy the
time and political space to raise living conditions.  Attempting to
walk a fine line between, on the one hand, the demands by the Haitian
elite and U.S. government and, on the other, the needs of the Haitian
people Aristide reduced tariffs on U.S.-grown rice-leading to the
bankruptcy of thousands of Haitian farmers-and agreed to privatize
state enterprises.  (In actuality only the least profitable, concrete
and flour, have been carried out.) Last year the Aristide government
signed free trade zone agreements with the Dominican Republic.

Of course these compromises did not satisfy either the U.S.
government or the Haitian businessmen, but they did undercut the
popular movements.  Since the first coup, the Haitian popular
movements have been devastated by killings, emigration or in some
cases funding from USAID or other U.S.-sponsored sources.  All this
has played a part in demobilizing the popular movements, although as
recently as November 22nd 30,000 people demonstrated against a
"campaign to destabilize democracy in Haiti" and for the right of
Aristide to fulfill his term of office.  ("Is the US Funding Haitian
Contras?" by Kevin Pina, www.dissidentvoice.org)

Although the U.S. media painted Aristide as unable to stop the
violence, in fact most of the violence arose from drug gangs and the
ultra-right.  The media also portrayed him as a tyrant, unable to
compromise and tainted by a flawed election process.  Whatever
deficiencies of Aristide, the reality is that Aristide's attempt to
meet criticism was rejected as insufficient by both the opposition
and a Bush administration (that could be characterized with exactly
these defects, and more besides).  The destabilization of Haiti-like
the one Washington had a hand in fermenting last year in
Venezuela-seems to have succeeded, but only because Washington
directly acted by kidnapping a duly elected president.

It is to the credit of the Congressional Black Caucus that they
attempted to bring the increasingly violent situation to the
attention of the U.S. public.  They demanded that Washington
intervene to prevent the duly elected government from being
overthrown without understanding that Washington was already
intervening-in arming the thugs.  Washington's plan, to have the
prime minister resign and be replaced by an oppositionist, was a fig
leaf to provide the armed wing of the opposition the time to conquer
territory.  While Aristide quickly accepted the plan, the Convergence
requested two additional days to think it over-before rejecting it. 
Meanwhile the paramilitaries launched their assault on Cap Haitien,
Haiti's second largest city.

The last piece of the destabilization process was announced by
President Bush himself when he sternly stated-in defiance of
humanitarian standards-that no Haitian refugee would find shelter on
U.S. soil.  Given the fact that Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, founder of
the paramilitary FRAPH and leader of the last coup, is living in
Queens, NY that was not only a slap in the face, but put additional
pressure on Haiti, whose people had no where to escape.

It is crucial to call attention to the possible bloodshed to follow
the overthrow of the democratically elected Aristide government. 
Leaders of the popular movements are in immediate danger.  In fact,
on March 2nd management at the Codevi Free Trade Zone in Ouanaminthe
called in the local paramilitaries to rough up workers who
demonstrated in support of 34 recently fired coworkers.  Also facing
immediate danger are 525 Cuban medical personnel who have been
working in the rural areas, along with another hundred Cuban teachers
and technical workers carrying out various literacy, sanitary,
aquaculture and agricultural programs.

We in Solidarity call on the popular and human rights movements
around the world to document what is happening in Haiti today, and to
expose the role of the U.S. government and complicity of the French
government.  We note that CARICOM, the organization of the fifteen
Caribbean states, has refused to contribute troops to the so-called
"peacekeeping" forces.  The eyes of civil society and the spirit of
solidarity must aid the Haitian people in their struggle for human
dignity and justice.

—Political Committee, Solidarity
.