23163: Esser: Speaker recalls Haiti coup (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser <torx@joimail.com>

Pulse of the Twin Cities
http://www.pulsetc.com

Speaker recalls Haiti coup
Wednesday 15 September

Area activists volunteered there until recent government overthrow
by Lydia Howell

“The coup government closed down a school in Haiti I’ve supported and
visited for two years,” said Paul Miller, his voice trembling.
“What’s wrong with teaching kids to read?” he asks.

Miller was one of many Minnesotans volunteering to help the poorest
country in the Western Hemisphere in those fragile years after it
elected its first democratic president, Jean Bertrand Aristide. He
and his fellow volunteers mourned when Aristide was overthrown last
February, by U.S. government-backed opposition.

On Tuesday, September 21, Aristide’s former foreign press liaison,
Michelle Karshan, will tell her story of the collapse of the
government she worked for.

“I want to share what I witnessed and experienced in Haiti,” said
Karshan. “This recent coup did not start in early 2004. It was
carried out over a three-year period, taking on many dimensions and
reaching fruition in late February. In addition to recounting the
mechanisms of a coup d’etat in slow motion, I want to speak to how we
can get back on the path to restore democracy in Haiti.”

“The February coup was against the elected government and President
Aristide, but it went beyond that, attacking any institution giving
voice to the majority,” claims Laura Flynn, who had volunteered in
Haiti for several years. “It’s a coup against the Haitian people.”

As George W. Bush campaigns for re-election on “moving Iraq towards
democracy,” Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) has sponsored a bill
calling for an investigation into the U.S. government’s role in the
February coup against Aristide and his Lavalas Party government.

“All evidence brought forward thus far suggests the Bush
Administration carried out a form of regime change,” Lee told the
Associated Press, describing her bill H.R. 3919 TRUTH (The
Responsibility to Uncover Truth about Haiti). Forty-nine members of
Congress, including Minnesota’s Rep. Betty McCollum (DFL-St. Paul),
have signed on.

“Ten years of dedicated effort to build a legal and democratic system
has been wiped out,” says Miller. “The people back in power are thugs
who threw out a democratic leader, putting in guys convicted of
murder ...The U.S. can dictate who calls the shots.”

The current government includes former officials of the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund, as well as human rights abusers
documented by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. As is the
case in Iraq’s provisional government, many have not lived in Haiti
for years.

“The elite is at the heart of Haiti’s problems. The elite does not
accept the idea of democracy. They don’t accept one person, one
vote,” declares Flynn.

Aristide’s Lavalas Party won the 2000 parliamentary elections.
Although the U.S. agency National Endowment for Democracy had
strongly supported other parties, none got more than 12 percent of
the vote.

“After ten years of democracy, the elite said ‘No. We don’t accept
democracy.’ The U.S. backed them all the way,” claims Flynn,
emphasizing that Haiti’s 80 percent poor majority steadfastly support
Aristide.

In press conferences, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed
Aristide was offered “safe passage” out of Haiti, repeatedly
referring to his “resignation letter.” But 48 hours after being taken
by American military to an undisclosed location, Aristide told
Pacifica Radio’s Amy Goodman on March 2 that what happened was a
“modern-day coup by kidnapping.”

On the eve of the coup, the United States and France vetoed
Aristide’s request to the United Nations’ Security Council for a
small peacekeeping force. Once Aristide was out of the country, 2,000
U.S. Marines arrived, similar to the landing that began the U.S.
occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934. They were joined by 1,000 French
troops, returning to their former colony; Haiti was created when
African slaves rose up and defeated Napoleon’s army exactly 200 years
ago.

Flynn said that Haiti’s elites pay no taxes, send their children to
school overseas and receive healthcare in Miami hospitals. Haiti’s
poor majority are mostly rural peasants, without education,
healthcare or political rights. Flynn worked with the AFD changing
this through his involvement with adult literacy and children’s
education programs, health clinics, and economic development programs.

“The current violence is not ‘generalized’ violence,” said Bruce
Nestor, Minnesota attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, who made
two human rights observation trips to Haiti this spring. “It’s
targeted violence: against community leaders, union organizers,
teachers, pro-democracy activists.”

“We documented international military forces—including U.S.
troops—are not operating to protect human rights or restore
democracy.” Nestor emphasized. “U.S. troops are only in communication
with the armed rebels. Their purpose is to consolidate the coup.
Mayors are in hiding—none resigned! Part of the purpose is
dispossession of all leadership, replacing them with leadership
acceptable to the U.S. and local elites.”

“Haiti can be looked at as the ‘floor’—the lowest wages in the
hemisphere,” Flynn said. “The lower that is, the lower wages can be
in the rest of the hemisphere.”

Dick Bernard of the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers—the
organization hosting Karshan—communicates with human rights activists
in Haiti regularly. He said that a phone call this week from
pro-democracy activists in hiding reported, “conditions are worse
than after the coup six months ago.” Bernard continued, “Reading
about Iraq daily and getting emails from Haiti, I see lots of
similarities in the treatment of both countries’ people by the United
States.”

But if Haiti has no oil, why would the U.S. government back a coup?

“The U.S. project to dominate Latin America is in the air,” Nestor
said. “Look at progressive governments in Venezuela, Brazil. Cuba’s
still going after 40+ years. Peasants in Chile want to nationalize a
gas pipeline. Contested elections in El Salvador,” Nestor says.
“Haiti is part of a trend. It’s important to the U.S. elites to
reverse that trend wherever it can.”

“The smaller the country, the more important it is that country
challenges U.S. dominance,” Flynn says. “Bigger countries will say,
if Haiti can resist globalization, so can we.” ||

Michelle Karshan, foreign press liason to President Aristide, will
speak Tues., Sept. 21 at 7 p.m. at Hennepin United Methodist Church
on Hennepin and Lyndale, Minneapolis. For more information:
http://www.haitiaction.org
.
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