American forces have secured the airport in Port-au-Prince and thousands of Marines are on their way to Haiti, along with warships. Not for the first time in history either, which will help to explain why this week’s earthquake has had such a devastating impact on the impoverished country.
The United States has taken a hostile attitude to Haiti more or less since it declared independence from France in 1804, following a slave revolt. Haiti was occupied by US forces from 1915 to 1934. After World War I, angered by a US-instigated law requiring forced labour, as many as 40,000 Haitians rebelled. More than 3,000 Haitians were killed by American forces.
After World War II, Washington supported the notorious dictator Duvalier. When he was overthrown, the CIA helped depose elected politicians, including the popular president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He was removed in 1991 and then again in 2004 after he got too close to Cuba and Venezuela. Several thousand people were killed in the internationally-sponsored coup which was bitterly resented by Haitians. In place of Aristide, the Haitians were sent a US-UN “stabilisation and pacification” force to secure the country for corporate-led globalisation.
In 1996, under pressure from President Clinton, who sent troops to restore Aristide to power in 1994, Haiti agreed to the draconian conditions set by International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It called for suppressing wages, reducing tariffs, and selling off state-owned enterprises. The small amount for the countryside was designated for promoting export crops such as coffee and mangoes. The Haitian government also agreed to abolish tariffs on US imports, which resulted in the dumping of cheap US foodstuffs on the Haitian market.
Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, has explained how many of the earthquake victims came to live in shantytowns perched on hillsides. “The reason why the people got to the hillsides where they were most vulnerable to the earthquakes perched on the hillsides [is] they were pushed out of there by policies 30 years ago, when it was decided by the international experts that Haiti’s economic salvation lay in assembly manufacture plants. And in order to advance that, it was decided that Haiti needed to have a captive labour force in the cities. So a whole bunch of aid policies, trade policies and political policies were implemented, designed to move people from the countryside to places like Martissant and the hills — hillsides that we’ve seen in those photos.”
In July 2003, Haiti was forced to use more than 90% of its foreign reserves to service loans from foreign banks, requiring Aristide’s government to end fuel subsidies and slash spending on health and education programmes. This prompted Aristide to demand that France repay to Haiti “compensation” made after securing its independence. Six months later, France supported the coup against Aristide.
So it is no surprise that Haiti’s infrastructure has barely developed, explaining the slow to non-existent reaction by local authorities in the wake of the earthquake, as well as the large number of deaths of people living in makeshift dwellings on deforested hillsides. Instead, Haiti has been overwhelmed by aid agencies and NGOs of different sorts who come and go. No wonder Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world and that large sections of the population have emigrated.
The country may have won independence more than 200 years ago, but Haiti has been robbed of its self-determination and its ability to meet the needs of its own people. No one can prevent earthquakes – but the swift despatch of US troops is a reminder that the power responsible for the extent of the disaster is human and headquartered in Washington, home of the American government, the IMF and the World Bank.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
For revolutionary solutions to create a sustainable, not-for-profit economy in place of global capital alongside a real democracy based on People’s Assemblies. Visit our web site at www.aworldtowin.net
Showing posts with label Aristide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aristide. Show all posts
Friday, January 15, 2010
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Haiti still waiting for real support
Yesterday the people of Haiti, among the poorest in the world, witnessed the start of a high-profile visit by former US president Bill Clinton and UN general secretary Ban Ki-moon. It is billed as an attempt to turn round the island’s fortunes. The population could do with more than celebrity visits, however.
Tropical hurricanes last year left nearly 800 people dead and caused damage estimated at $1 billion. Several UN appeals for $108bn in humanitarian assistance fell on deaf ears. Tensions are running especially high as February 29 was the fifth anniversary of a CIA-sponsored coup against former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.
Aristide, a slum priest, won a landslide victory in the 1990 Haitian presidential elections, in defiance of death squads and military coups. Dr Paul Farmer, a renowned infectious disease expert at Harvard Medical School who is accompanying Clinton, has outlined the story of how the United States and France undermined Aristide after his election.
Despite efforts by the United Nations forces to discourage Haitians from commemorating Aristide’s forced eviction, the Lavalas movement founded by the former president organised a demonstration of up to 10,000 people. Mass arrests of young males were carried out in neighbourhoods where support for Lavalas remains strong. The September 30 Foundation organised a major contingent plus protests around the world to demand the return of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, a Haitian human rights activist who disappeared in 2007.
Last week university students barricaded themselves inside a building and clashed with police and UN peacekeepers demanding an improved curriculum. And, ahead of Clinton and Ban Ki-moon’s visit, a Brussels-based conflict watchdog, Crisis Group, warned that urgent support amounting to £3 billion was needed. The UN security council is to visit the island as soon as the two leaders depart.
Haiti’s closeness to the Guantanamo base in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, with which it shares the island of Hispaniola, makes it a strategically sensitive place. The island’s unique history makes it a powder keg within the Caribbean. It was the first island in the Caribbean to gain independence from its colonial masters which it did in 1804 as a result of a slave rebellion headed by the legendary Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Dessalines’ forces defeated 30,000 French troops sent by Napoleon Bonaparte and abolished slavery.
Haitians have invested hope in Clinton’s visit because the former president ordered a US military-led intervention in 1994 to bring back Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But the 9,000 strong United Nations mission, the fifth on the island since 1993, has come under strong criticism from Haitian campaigners such as the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network. Accusations of brutality and even rape abound on independent websites such as Upping the Anti.
In past decades, the United States, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank insisted that in exchange for badly needed loans, Haiti should open its economy to global competition. This saw a country that once exported rice and sugar become a net importer, as Haitian farmers could not match the prices of a subsidy-supported US rice producers. Whether the election of Obama makes a difference to Haitians remains to be seen.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
Tropical hurricanes last year left nearly 800 people dead and caused damage estimated at $1 billion. Several UN appeals for $108bn in humanitarian assistance fell on deaf ears. Tensions are running especially high as February 29 was the fifth anniversary of a CIA-sponsored coup against former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.
Aristide, a slum priest, won a landslide victory in the 1990 Haitian presidential elections, in defiance of death squads and military coups. Dr Paul Farmer, a renowned infectious disease expert at Harvard Medical School who is accompanying Clinton, has outlined the story of how the United States and France undermined Aristide after his election.
Despite efforts by the United Nations forces to discourage Haitians from commemorating Aristide’s forced eviction, the Lavalas movement founded by the former president organised a demonstration of up to 10,000 people. Mass arrests of young males were carried out in neighbourhoods where support for Lavalas remains strong. The September 30 Foundation organised a major contingent plus protests around the world to demand the return of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, a Haitian human rights activist who disappeared in 2007.
Last week university students barricaded themselves inside a building and clashed with police and UN peacekeepers demanding an improved curriculum. And, ahead of Clinton and Ban Ki-moon’s visit, a Brussels-based conflict watchdog, Crisis Group, warned that urgent support amounting to £3 billion was needed. The UN security council is to visit the island as soon as the two leaders depart.
Haiti’s closeness to the Guantanamo base in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, with which it shares the island of Hispaniola, makes it a strategically sensitive place. The island’s unique history makes it a powder keg within the Caribbean. It was the first island in the Caribbean to gain independence from its colonial masters which it did in 1804 as a result of a slave rebellion headed by the legendary Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Dessalines’ forces defeated 30,000 French troops sent by Napoleon Bonaparte and abolished slavery.
Haitians have invested hope in Clinton’s visit because the former president ordered a US military-led intervention in 1994 to bring back Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But the 9,000 strong United Nations mission, the fifth on the island since 1993, has come under strong criticism from Haitian campaigners such as the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network. Accusations of brutality and even rape abound on independent websites such as Upping the Anti.
In past decades, the United States, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank insisted that in exchange for badly needed loans, Haiti should open its economy to global competition. This saw a country that once exported rice and sugar become a net importer, as Haitian farmers could not match the prices of a subsidy-supported US rice producers. Whether the election of Obama makes a difference to Haitians remains to be seen.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Free Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine
October is Black History month and it should be a time to celebrate the achievements of black heroes during the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade. And yet in Haiti, the small country that did more than any other to defeat slavery, a notable human rights campaigner, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, has vanished since August 12. Supporters, and even the UN mission on the island, are concerned that Pierre-Antoine has been kidnapped because of his outspoken criticisms of the occupying forces on the island and their association with the Haitian military.
This Friday campaigners from Global Women’s Strike will gather for the third week running at the foot of the Edith Cavell statue near Trafalgar Square as part of an international series of vigils. They are demanding the return of Pierre-Antoine, who was a leader of the pro-Aristide September 30 Foundation and critic of both U.N. and U.S. involvement in Haiti. He was last seen leaving his Port-au-Prince home shortly before midnight, according to Ronald Saint-Jean, leader of a coalition called the Group Initiative to Save Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine.
Pierre-Antoine is a high-profile member of the ousted President Jean-Betrand Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas Party. He is co-founder of the Fondasyon Trant Septanm, which works with victims of the 1991 and 2004 coups d’etat in Haiti. A trained psychologist, he created organisations to support street children in the country’s capital, Port au Prince, a centre for teenage mothers and Map Vivre, “(“I live”) a programme to help victims of the 1991 coup against Aristide. He had to flee Haiti in 2004 fearing persecution by the former military, supported by the US army.
The case of Lovinsky also highlights the continuing crisis faced by the government of René Preval. It is part and parcel of a destabilisation campaign aimed at overthrowing his democratically elected government. The February 2006 election was an extraordinary victory for the Haitian people in the face of an oppressive occupying UN force which provides a cover for the armed thugs of Guy Philippe who overthrew Aristide. Preval is supported by Aristide, even though he was still the democratically elected president when kidnapped by US forces in the 1991 coup.
Haiti occupies a unique place in the hearts and minds of those seeking black and human liberation. It is the world's oldest black republic and the second-oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States. At the time of the French Revolution of 1789, there were 790,000 slaves - one third of the entire African slave trade – working on the plantations of Hispaniola, the island of which Haiti forms a part. A decade before Abolition, a freed slave, Toussaint-Louverture, inspired by the French revolution, led a massive army of blacks to victory over the whites and free coloureds, securing native control over the colony in 1797. He defeated a massive British force, freed the slaves and tried to re-build Haiti's economy, but was eventually kidnapped and imprisoned by French forces.
Ever since that time, Haiti’s inhabitants have been singled out for punishment, by despotic leaders supported from the outside by former colonial masters. As Stephen Lendman writes, “Nothing is ever simple in Haiti, a country that for over 500 years has had very few periods of stability free from the oppressive heel of a foreign occupier or oppressive dictatorship.” Lendman has exposed how the Haiti Democracy Project (HDP) is “umbilically linked to the US State Department, backed by the corporate media tried to stop Preval from winning the election. It is now engaged in a demonisation and destabilisation campaign to undermine his administration”.
Haiti is presently the least developed country in the Western Hemisphere. Over half its people are unemployed, with many bordering on starvation. Aids is rife, especially amongst pregnant women. Seventy per cent rely on the land for their living. Eighty years ago forests covered nearly 60% of Haiti, now reduced to 2%. During Hurricane Dean last summer, Haiti was excluded from relief flights to the Caribbean because of “civil unrest”.
A World to Win joins with the millions of Haitians in their demand that Lovinsky should be brought home. We also call for the withdrawal of the UN forces from the island. Former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune must be released, should he still be in jail. Haiti must not rely on the IMF and the World Bank’s privatisation and “structural adjustment” programmes to rebuild its economy.
Corinna Lotz
Secretary, A World to Win
This Friday campaigners from Global Women’s Strike will gather for the third week running at the foot of the Edith Cavell statue near Trafalgar Square as part of an international series of vigils. They are demanding the return of Pierre-Antoine, who was a leader of the pro-Aristide September 30 Foundation and critic of both U.N. and U.S. involvement in Haiti. He was last seen leaving his Port-au-Prince home shortly before midnight, according to Ronald Saint-Jean, leader of a coalition called the Group Initiative to Save Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine.
Pierre-Antoine is a high-profile member of the ousted President Jean-Betrand Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas Party. He is co-founder of the Fondasyon Trant Septanm, which works with victims of the 1991 and 2004 coups d’etat in Haiti. A trained psychologist, he created organisations to support street children in the country’s capital, Port au Prince, a centre for teenage mothers and Map Vivre, “(“I live”) a programme to help victims of the 1991 coup against Aristide. He had to flee Haiti in 2004 fearing persecution by the former military, supported by the US army.
The case of Lovinsky also highlights the continuing crisis faced by the government of René Preval. It is part and parcel of a destabilisation campaign aimed at overthrowing his democratically elected government. The February 2006 election was an extraordinary victory for the Haitian people in the face of an oppressive occupying UN force which provides a cover for the armed thugs of Guy Philippe who overthrew Aristide. Preval is supported by Aristide, even though he was still the democratically elected president when kidnapped by US forces in the 1991 coup.
Haiti occupies a unique place in the hearts and minds of those seeking black and human liberation. It is the world's oldest black republic and the second-oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States. At the time of the French Revolution of 1789, there were 790,000 slaves - one third of the entire African slave trade – working on the plantations of Hispaniola, the island of which Haiti forms a part. A decade before Abolition, a freed slave, Toussaint-Louverture, inspired by the French revolution, led a massive army of blacks to victory over the whites and free coloureds, securing native control over the colony in 1797. He defeated a massive British force, freed the slaves and tried to re-build Haiti's economy, but was eventually kidnapped and imprisoned by French forces.
Ever since that time, Haiti’s inhabitants have been singled out for punishment, by despotic leaders supported from the outside by former colonial masters. As Stephen Lendman writes, “Nothing is ever simple in Haiti, a country that for over 500 years has had very few periods of stability free from the oppressive heel of a foreign occupier or oppressive dictatorship.” Lendman has exposed how the Haiti Democracy Project (HDP) is “umbilically linked to the US State Department, backed by the corporate media tried to stop Preval from winning the election. It is now engaged in a demonisation and destabilisation campaign to undermine his administration”.
Haiti is presently the least developed country in the Western Hemisphere. Over half its people are unemployed, with many bordering on starvation. Aids is rife, especially amongst pregnant women. Seventy per cent rely on the land for their living. Eighty years ago forests covered nearly 60% of Haiti, now reduced to 2%. During Hurricane Dean last summer, Haiti was excluded from relief flights to the Caribbean because of “civil unrest”.
A World to Win joins with the millions of Haitians in their demand that Lovinsky should be brought home. We also call for the withdrawal of the UN forces from the island. Former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune must be released, should he still be in jail. Haiti must not rely on the IMF and the World Bank’s privatisation and “structural adjustment” programmes to rebuild its economy.
Corinna Lotz
Secretary, A World to Win
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