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Haiti
is not for sale!
by Yves Engler, December 6, 2004
Centre des médias
alterternatifs du Québec - CMAQ
http://www.cmaq.net/fr/node.php?id=19286
Haiti is not for sale!
yves engler, lundi, 13/12/2004 -
Montreal-Haiti conference
“Haiti is not for sale,” “Liberate Haiti's political
prisoners” and “Latortue assassin — Paul Martin complicit”
were just a few of the chants this weekend in Montreal (in French of
course). Friday and Saturday the Canadian government held a conference
with an elite few of Haiti's two-million person Diaspora to discuss
the future of that country.
Canadian officials interested in legitimating the February 29th overthrow
of elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and improving western companies'
short-term economic prospects on the Caribbean island, selected participants
accordingly. The Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network labeled the gathering
the “Chalabis of Haiti.”
auto_sol.tao.ca
About 400 of the Diaspora elite living in Canada, the U.S. and France
accepted invitations to hobnob with puppet Haitian Prime Minister Gerard
Latortue, recently appointed Canadian Special Adviser for Haiti Denis
Coderre and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.
On the other hand, the 75 protesters on Friday and 125 on Saturday who
braved bone-chilling, snowy weather were uninterested in helping the
Canadian government build support for Haiti's illegal regime. Conference
attendees were denounced as occupation and coup d'etat collaborators.
Angry protesters distributed pamphlets claiming that 7,000 people, mostly
poor supporters of Aristide, have been killed over the past nine months.
This number, while impossible to confirm, may not be far from the truth.
Reports about dead bodies are commonplace and morgue officials describe
huge increases in the number of dead. All this has happened with little
attention from the Canadian media, even when newswires make the reports
available.
http://www.zmag.org
On Dec 9, for instance, Reuters reported that up to 60 people were killed
by police at the state penitentiary. This “massacre” took
place at a prison where hundreds of political prisoners are being held,
but few Canadian or international media outlets picked up the story.
alertnet.org
Fortunately this weekend's demonstrations did generate some good coverage
in Montreal's major French and English newspapers plus TV news reports
across the country at least made mention of the disagreement over Canada's
role in Haiti.
While the demonstration was a start, this minimal attention to the situation
on Haiti is a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed to end the
repression and restore constitutional order. All but a few of us on
the street in Montreal were from the Diaspora. Haiti seems to be off
the radar for much of the Canadian Left.
Massive numbers of Canadians are willing to march in the streets
to criticize the U.S. over Iraq but seem unwilling to denounce our own
government's substantial role in deposing the elected president of the
hemisphere's poorest country.
One reason may be the dominant media's disregard for Haiti. Another
possible explanation is confusion regarding Haiti's domestic politics.
Protestors chanted: “Who is our President? Aristide” and
most definitely support his return to power. Some left-wing groups,
such as Batay Ouvrière (Workers' Fight), criticized Aristide's
rule. But this doesn't change the fact that he was elected and is still
popular (as late as January 2004 Canadian officials said Aristide would
win a presidential election).
Still, none of this changes our duty as Canadians to hold our government
accountable for what it is doing in our name. Haiti is a country with
a long history of foreign meddling and lately Canada seems to have joined
in. In March of 2003 Canada organized the “Ottawa Initiative on
Haiti” that brought together U.S., French and Canadian officials
to discuss overthrowing the elected president and establishing a protectorate.
haiti-progres.com
During the “rebellion” (by former army thugs and convicted
drug runners) in February our Liberal government refused a request from
Haiti's government for troops to protect the constitutional (and popular)
authority. Soon thereafter Canada sent troops to help depose Aristide
and to occupy the country.
Today we actively support, with our conferences and military officers
in charge of all aspects of the logistics planning for the multinational
UN force, the unconstitutional and murderous nine-month tenure of the
“interim” Haitian government.
Is it any wonder then that Blackcommentator.com calls Canada “the
Great White North” — both snowy and racist or that the Jamaica
Observer refers to the country as the “new Canada” for its
colonial policies (how new those are is open to question).
But there is no question that Canada has aligned itself with Haiti's
traditional colonial powers, the U.S. and France. A week ago the Brazilian
commander of the UN mission, General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro, told a
congressional commission in Brazil: “We are under extreme pressure
from the international community to use violence.” He cited France,
the U.S. and Canada as countries pressing for stronger measures against
“gangs” (reuters.com), which refer not to the armed paramilitary
thugs who overthrew the elected government and still control large areas
of the country but to supporters of Aristide living in the slums of
Port au Prince.
Enough. The Canadian government must support democracy in Haiti. The
first step is to stop providing cover for the terrible repression going
on.
Canada must remove itself from all discussions about withholding
Haitian sovereignty or making Haiti a UN protectorate. Canada must call
for the return of the elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and
begin paying reparations to those victimized in the past nine months.
Then, we should provide proper levels of aid to build both human and
physical infrastructure.
Will Canada do this? Only if we build a movement for Haitian solidarity.
**********************
UN
Is Not For Africans
***********************
******************************************
The U.S. and the U.N. are Not QUALIFIED
to teach Haitians about justice and democracy
by Marguerite Laurent, Oct. 3, 2005
Neither the U.S. nor the
U.N. are qualified to teach Haitians about justice and democracy.
The U.S., U.N. Security Council (and for that matter, the OAS, France
and Canada - this "international community") could, in true
neighborly solidarity, assist with political, financial and military
support the development of a Haitinist democracy by the people for the
people, a Haitianist-designed and homegrown democracy and justice apparatuses,
but not TEACH Black Haitians about democracy, fairness and justice.
Why?
Because of our long history of suffering racist, discriminatory and
bullying tactics and policies from these US/Euro countries and their
sub-organs within the OAS and U.N.
Why?
Because also all Haitians - from the poorest Site Soley urban dweller
to the rural peasants of Milot to the richest in the wealthy neighborhoods
of Port au Prince - actually are afforded the one-person-one-vote principle
in Haiti's democratic elections and may vote for the president of their
country and have done so, in free, fair, and inclusive elections, in
1990, 1995 and 2000.
In the United States, the popular vote doesn't choose the U.S. president.
The
Electoral College does.
U.S. Presidents are chosen by the few - the Electoral College. Similarly,
the U.N. with five permanent veto-wielding members (Britain, China,
France, Russia and the United States) is ruled undemocratically by the
Security Council, an elite body with veto power over the popular vote.
Thus, both are oligarchic and have undemocratic mechanism lacking in
transparency. That is why, even though more than 1/3rd of the United
Nations (African Union and Caricom) do not recognized the Latortue government,
the U.N. is still the army keeping the illegal Latortue in power over
the objections of the majority of Haitian peoples.
If the United Nations was a democratic institutions, U.N. troops would
not be in Haiti right now upholding the Latortue regime, but protecting
the dignity of the people of Haiti, the Haitian Constitution, electoral
sanctity, democratic principles, human rights and preventing the return
of the bloody Haitian army.
However, the U.N. General Assembly's vote doesn't bind the superpowers.
Thus, Haiti is being re-colonized, over the objection, of 1/3 of the
U.N. countries who are not so witless that they can't see what can be
done to a small country like Haiti by the superpowers, through the Security
Council, may also prophesize their future. (See, the Ezulwini
Consensus: The Common African Position on the Proposed Reform of the
united Nations.)
So, how can two undemocratic powers teach Haitians about the value of
the vote as expressed by Condoleezza Rice last week in Haiti, when both
the UN and US electoral mechanism don't operate democratically?
Someone ought to remind Condoleezza Rice that in the 1990s, Haiti organized
one of the few free and purely democratic elections in the FREE WORLD
where the popular vote actually was the ONLY means to presidential office
and power. The U.S., with all its great pronouncements on exporting
democracy and justice, cannot claim, to have EVER accomplished such
an exploit.
Haiti's example in 1990 and in 2000 with the election of President Aristide
was so disturbing to the U.S., France and Canada, they are currently
in the process of rigging up upcoming elections in Haiti in the manner
the global elite worldwide are accustomed to in their own countries
- that is to disenfranchise, through exclusion.
The dirty tricks include imprisonment, summary executions/lynchings,
exiling opponents, violating privacy concerns with fingerprinting, setting
up electoral fraud possibilities and "big brother" controls
with obligatory national i.d. cards, reducing polling places to dilute
the vote in areas likely to vote for the popular candidate, all the
equivalent, in effect, to achieving, for Haitians in Haiti what the
U.S., through gerrymandering, redistricting, segregation, Jim Crow,
the prison-industrial-complex and literacy test have done to disenfranchise
its Black voters over the years.
In Haiti, the imperialist, not satisfied with the bi-centennial coup
d'etat and pushing aside the Haitian Constitution to ouster Haiti's
elected government, not satisfied with imposing the interim Florida
Boca Raton regime, are now attempting the permanent disenfranchisement
of 70% or more of the Haitian population by methodically and insidiously
eliminating the poor Haitian majority from the voting rolls: the same
majority that twice elected President Aristide.
How are the great Western democracies accomplishing this perversity?
By reducing the polling places in Haiti from 12,000 in 2000 to 600 in
2005. By issuing fingerprinted I.D.s, controlled by foreign companies,
by automating the voting count and the ballot when almost 90% of Haiti
doesn't have access to reliable electrical or computerized communication
power. In the 2000 presidential elections, there were more than 12,000
polling stations in Haiti. Today, with all the OAS, U.S., U.N. (8,000
soldiers) and international community's "help" and "aid"
this figure has been reduced by 95%, disenfranchising the majority eligible
to vote in Haiti. Under U.N. and U.S.
auspices, the international fraud and crimes, committed, these last
19-months since the 2004 coup d'etat, against the people of Haiti to
retard our march towards justice and democracy, are simply psychopathic
and genocidal in proportions, but continue unabated within a profound,
profound mainstream media silence.
Haitians who have not been outright disenfranchised because they were
forced into exile, are in prison or were summarily executed by the forces
of the Bush coup d'etat, will experience a dilution of their vote because
of the reduction or distance of polls from their residence.
According to the lay of the land right now, many are expected to walk
more than 5 hours to get to a polling station, wait countless hours
in line, then walk the more than 5 hours back home.
Moreover, those left standing from the Lavalas or democratic movement
have been systematically polarized to weaken people-mandated Haitian
national interest from the political landscape. Thus, it is noticeably
evident how many "Lavalas Leaders", notably, "Neg cravat
yo - Neg levit yo" - the Lavalas suits, such as Heriveaux, Feuille,
Gilles, Leslie Voltaire, and even Rene Preval, who appear to have maintained
their visibility, since the coup d'etat, primarily in meetings with,
not by standing with the grassroots base, demonstrators and coup d'etat
resistance like father Jean Juste, but at foreign capitals or their
embassies in Haiti, and thus are at odds with the Lavalas grassroots
movement, and by extension, the majority in the Haitian
populace.
Like the Duvalierist-Bourgeois-and-Tonton-Macoute-coup d'etat contingent
on the other side of the isle, from Apaid, Boulos, Mourra, Baker, Danny
Toussaint, K-Plim, Franck Roman to Guy Philippe, these Lavalas suits,
through observable and countless meetings with foreigners in Haiti,
appear to base their actions on the proposition that to control Haiti,
they must have a mandate, not from the Haitian people, but from foreign
embassies and powers of the US, France and Canada, their NGOS and foreign
sycophants.
The upcoming coup d'etat's 2006 elections-under-occupation shall never
be as legitimate as the elections run by the Haitian people in 1990,
1995 and 2000. Thus, they will solve nothing in Haiti, except take Haiti
backwards. The Haitian people will
not likely stop pushing for authentic electoral democracy that will
then move forward to participatory and transparent democracy. It's our
gift, what we were created by the ancestors to bestow to a world run
by tyrants and the slave-making global elite.
The Haitian struggle is epic because Haitians are at the forefront of
the major human rights issues plaguing this planet. It's no coincidence
that it is, through observing their actions in Haiti decent people worldwide
are seeing a U.N. with its "human rights veil" lifted to reveal
the tyrannical nature of the Security Council.
Perhaps that U.N. reform will come someday after 19-years of occupation
and millions upon millions of Haitians have given their lives for a
more just world. Perhaps.
Haitians have already given 300 years of slavery, broken their own chains
only to suffer 200-plus-years of containment-in-poverty to now be facing
Lercler's retooled expedition in 2005 with 38-countries controlled by
the superpowers killing unarmed Haitians in the name of "peace."
But it's no coincidence that, through Dumarsais Simeus*, the U.S. is,
once again, attempting to engraft "the Liberian Model" of
colonial rule on Haiti.
It's no coincidence that the major issues facing Africa and parts of
Asia and the Middle East - that is the Arab conquest of Black/African
territory on behalf of light skinned Arab elite jointly in alliance
with the global Western white hierarchy - is being played out in Haiti,
with Arab descendants Apaid, Boulos, Mourra, (not to mention their U.N.-Jordanians
friends "iron fist" on Site Soley in Haiti) wreaking havoc
in Dessalin's lands and Africa's original peoples on behalf of the white-power-structure
and white privilege.
It's no coincidence that many dismiss Haiti because of the racist myth
that the white man has the solution for Haiti.
The white power structure wishes we-Blacks were "aliens" to
the Americas. But, we had a history before these coarse white tribes
of Western Europe and their settlers' barbarity started.
We don't have to take on their biological fatalistic notions, their
fear, chaos and confusions. Haitians
have a legacy to reach.
It's no coincidence that such dismissal will cost those whose arrogance
won't allow them to realize it's not the size of the country, but the
size of the fight in the people of that country.
Dessalin did what Spartacus couldn't and no real Haitian will ever be
stripped of that knowledge, even in death. It's no coincidence that
Kofi-n Annan is one of the black overseers working for the white hierarchy.
All these paradigms and attempts at polarization, Haitians, descendants
of the ancestors who built every major civilization that ever existed
on this earth, have faced before and survived. Our destiny is to be
Africa's sacred trust. To undo our collective programming is a daily
task, but Dessalin's descendants give the fear back intact.
Ezili Danto
October 3, 2005
"Dje blan-yo mande krim. Bon Dje ki nan nou-an vle byen fe."
(Boukmann at Bwa
Kayiman, August 14, 1791)
****
*Dumarsais Siméus
attempted, with the strong armed assistance of the Bush Administration's
Condoleezza Rice, to impose himself on Haiti by running for Haiti's
presidency in violation of Haiti's dual citizenship provisions prohibiting
his candidacy
HLLN Note: At one point
in this "address,"
Mr. Simeus trivializes his U.S. passport by calling it "secondary."
However, with the incompetent federal response to Katrina fresh in our
minds; knowing how Bush cronyism works and that Simeus claims to be
a personal friend of the Bush-father and Bush-son, and therefore insulated
by the holy U.S.-neocon-power-elites imperially ruling the globe, it's
not to be expected that either the I.N.S. or D.O.J., under this Bush-son
Administration, would find this Dumarsais Siméus public statement
a straightforward trivialization of US citizenship tantamount to a public
denouncement of American citizenship.
According to reports Mr. Simeus is so desperate to be the President
of Haiti and Condoleezza Rice herself reprimanded her puppet government
in Haiti for not allowing said Simeus to register his candidacy. In
the campaign to reverse this CEP decision, Dumarsais Siméus reportedly
addressed the issue of his nationality today (Sept. 30, 2005) in a statement
broadcast on all Haitian radio stations. (See, Siméus
addresses the nation of Haiti.)
"He said, I am a Haitian - not just a Haitian by birth, but Haitian
of origin, as required by the constitution. My parents, grandparents
- all the way back to slaves - are Haitian," he said as he held
is Haitian passport. "As required by the Constitution, I own property
in Haiti and have been a continuous and visible presence here throughout
my life, personally and through my foundation, which supplies clean
water and health care to the people of Haiti. Do I have another passport
and documents allowing me to travel and do business in the U.S.? Of
course I have a SECONDARY U.S. passport and other appropriate documents."
(Emphasis Added) | You can find up-to-date information about the campaign
at http://www.simeus06.com.
Click
here for a sample letter (written and sent to Mr. Simeus by Steve White)
you might wish to use to remind Mr. Simeus and Ms. Rice that
the Haitian Constitution doesn't currently recognized dual nationality.
And until that law is duly and constitutionally amended, (which HLLN
would support when completed under the stewardship of a government whose
mandate issued directly and legally from the people of Haiti, not under
foreign occupation or tutelage.). As the law stands now, Simeus cannot
accept citizenship in the United States and still keep his rights in
Haiti to run for president of Haiti.
HLLN, Oct. 3, 2005
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See also UN
Is Not For Africans
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