23428: Meeting hears about Haiti

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Building international solidarity
Meeting hears about Haiti and MWM

http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/sfmwm1014.php

By Brenda Sandburg
San Francisco
Oct. 14, 2004

As the U.S. government tightens its tentacles around Haiti, it is also
striking out at working and unemployed people in this country. And while
the Haitian people fiercely resist the occupation of their land, the people
in this country are standing up for their rights and for those of their
brothers and sisters around the world. A group of leading activists
discussed these two battlefronts--the struggle for Haiti's independence and
the upcoming Million Worker March--at a meeting here Oct. 1.

The dynamic event, sponsored by the San Francisco AntiWar 4 the Million
Worker March Committee, was taped by KPOO radio, a local African American
station.

Pierre Labossiere, co-founder of Haiti Action Committee, told those
gathered that the United States is responsible for the death squads,
murders and violence that have engulfed Haiti since the U.S.-backed coup
and kidnapping of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. On Sept. 30, he
reported, about 15,000 people took to the streets in Port-au-Prince to call
for Aristide's return on the anniversary of the first coup against him.

Labossiere noted that Aristide had instituted a hurricane preparedness
program that moved people to safer ground and brought supplies to them.
Since the coup, he said, many in these teams have been killed, jailed or
dispersed, so when the recent hurricanes hit, there was no one to help
people. That's why so many died in the storms.

Others, he said, have been shot down by Haitian forces aided by the U.S.
military. "Armed civilians came out with the police and shot into the
crowd," Labossiere said. The exact death toll is unknown because "some
bodies were picked up so there was no trace" of them.

Labossiere said the Haitian people compare the brutal Duvalier regime of
Papa Doc and Baby Doc to that of the two Bush administrations. At the time
of the first coup against Aristide in 1991, "Papa Bush was in office and
now Baby Bush" is in charge, Labossiere said.

LeiLani Dowell, a member of Workers World Party running for Congress in
California, talked about what has happened in Haiti since the
"coup-napping"--the term Haitians use for the kidnapping of Aristide by
U.S. forces. Last month Dowell went on a fact-finding delegation to Haiti
led by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark during which she met with
about 35 political prisoners, including several members of Aristide's
government.

"There have been more beatings, forced exiles and rapes, targeted mainly at
supporters of Aristide's Lavalas Party," Dowell said. Many people have been
arrested, released and re-arrested several times, she noted.

U.S. human rights groups have helped perpetuate the violations, while U.S.
corporations have been complicit in inflicting economic hardships on the
Haitian people, she stressed. "Aristide raised the minimum wage from $1 to
$2.40 per day," Dowell said, while the new interim "prime minister" is
allowing corporations to skip paying taxes for three years.