This page contains recent articles as well as older articles that provide background and context to the current tragicHaitian History
This page contains recent articles as well as older articles that provide background and context to the current tragic
events in Haiti. It will be continuosly updated, with the most recent postings at the top, so that we can all educate ourselves about Haiti, one day at a time.
6. Haiti Scholar Marc Schuller: "Sowing Seeds of Hope or Dependence?" 7/09/10
Monday it will be six months since Haiti's devastating earthquake.
Haiti is entering another phase, medium-term stabilization in hopes for beginning long-term reconstruction. The CIRH -- Interim Commission for Haiti's Reconstruction -- co-chaired by Bill Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Max Bellerive and comprised of mostly foreigners is looking for a director for the 18-month group that replaced Haiti's Parliament, collecting some $30 million so far to begin the work.
For those looking for signs of hope in Haiti, there are a few since my last visit in April.
Most striking is the procession of uniformed schoolchildren once again walking to and from school. Many schools have been destroyed; some of the larger, more expensive ones like Canado and St. Louis de Gonzague, are operating under tents provided by UNICEF and other temporary structures. This procession is made more possible because more of the roads are being cleared. There are more teams of yellow t-shirt-clad men and women hauling the rubble away on dump trucks. Each is getting a hot meal and paid for their day labor in a "cash-for-work" program that is being run jointly with donors, the Haitian government, and NGOs. read more...
5. Haiti and debt cancellation from Jubilee USA Network
...Over half of Haiti’s $1.3 billion debt is for loans granted to Haiti’s dictatorships, especially the brutal and corrupt Duvalier father-son dictatorship. While the US's decision to subsidize Haiti's debt is a victory for the country, Haiti’s onerous and odious debt should still be canceled immediately without conditions, as a matter of justice and as an essential tool in the global fight to end poverty under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Haiti’s debt must still be canceled outright without further delays.... Read full article
4. from March 2004 issue of The Little Way, the news letter for the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker (Washington, D.C.):
The US Coup in Haiti by Kathy Boylan
Living up to that bloody description the US Empire has once again destroyed democracy in Haiti. In February as it slaughtered the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. !he US staged a coup and kidnapped President Jean Bertrand Aristide who had won 92 % of !he vote in the 2000 election. For a few weeks before the coup. Amy Goodman alerted Democracy Now listeners to the vicious progression to presidential overthrow. In one especially informative program Amy interviewed Stephen Kinzer: author of All the Shah's Men, the first full account of the 1953 US government CIA overthrow of the Mossadegh government of Iran. Kinzer explained that he wrote the book to find out how the coup was planned and orchestrated. What he detailed can best be described as the "blueprint for US coup making. The attacks against Aristide and his eventual overthrow followed the blueprint to a tee.
How did they do it? The straightforward plan began on June 25. 1953 when covert agents began manipulating public opinion to turn as many Iranians as possible against Mossadegh, With CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt in charge, bribes were paid to newspapers to grind out stories portraying the Prime Minister as corrupt, pro communist, hostile to Islam and bent on destroying the morale and readiness of the armed forces. Parliament members, religious leaders, police and military officers received their share of the $150.000 bribe budget. While the propagandists were doing their work, the coup team hired gangs to create chaos in !he streets. In a few weeks Iran was in total upheaval as other armed thugs were hired to attack the first groups. On August 19. Mossadegh fled and then surrendered. He was "tried," jailed for three years. and lived rest of his life under house arrest.
I read the book and tried to counter the coup-makers lies about Aristide who was being described as a corrupt, drug running, human rights abuser.
Unfortunately, some.peace and justice folks were fooled by the Empire's propaganda machine. That some good people fell for the lies was. for me. extremely discouraging. The Washington Post ran an article condemning Aristide for failing to provide the people of Haiti with clean drinking water. Nowhere did the writer explain that for three years !he US had blocked more than $500 million on international loans to Haiti - intended for humanitarian purposes like potable water. Ironically, as the Post criticized Aristide., front page stories in the same paper exposed the news that the Distric of Columbia's drinking water was seriously lead contaminated. The Environmental Protection Agency and the water company officials had failed to inform the public for years!
True to the blueprint - news from Haiti reported the brutality of gangs of Haitian thugs carrying US M16's and wearing US uniforms rampaging through Haitian towns killing Aristide supporters. I began to organize an emergency delegation to offer Aristide the support of nonviolent peacemakers. I was to leave for Haiti with Ramsey Clark on February 29, but the trip was canceled when he was hit by a car and seriously injured the day before. The coop occurred on the 29th and I felt horrified at the US and very guilty that I had not been able to gather a witnessing community.
A few days later, I called a hospice in Port au Prince to inquire if I could visit. The positive reply and offer to pick me up at the airport was all I needed to decide to make the journey alone. On March 14, I traveled to Haiti where for several hours of four days I stood outside the US consulate and Embassy holding two signs written in English and Creole "STOP the US/Bush military coup in Haiti" and "US Military and CIA out of Haiti."
US Marines were guarding the roof of the consulate and just as I began the vigil, one marine called down to me, "I'd like to shoot you in the head and splatter your brains on the street!" Later that day, I saw a group of marines sitting on the balcony of the Presidential palace, with their feet kicked up on the railing casually drinking something out of cans. Someone had convinced these soldiers that Haiti was theirs!
I visited the brave people who staff the Office of Haiti Progress: the newspaper reporting attacks against Lavalas supporters. I learned from missionaries that US Aid. which had not had any money to fund clinics before, called the day after the coup to say that they had plenty of money for programs and were inviting applications. I listened nightly to the thunder of low flying US helicopters invisible in the night sky as they menaced the people of Port au Prince.
I returned to Washington and held a vigil near the White House for Aristide and Haiti. A diplomat's car turned the comer and stopped in the middle of H Street for its passengers to read my sign - "Stop the US coup in Haiti." A passenger in the front seat lowered his window and I called out. "Don't recognize the coup government in Haiti"
"We won't," came the response.
"Where are you from?" I asked.
"Venezuala," he answered.
"Oh my God. you're next!" The blueprint is in motion. I hope to God we can stop it next time.
Kathy recommends reading "Uses at Haiti" by Dr. Paul Farmer.
3. from Counterpunch, January 19, 2010:
No, Mister, You Can't Share My Pain by John Maxwell
If you shared my pain you would not continue to make me suffer, to torture me, to deny me my dignity and my rights, especially my rights to self-determination and self-expression.
Six years ago you sent your Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to perform an action illegal under the laws of your country, my country and of the international community of nations.
It was an act so outrageous, so bestially vile and wicked that your journalists and news agencies, your diplomats and politicians to this day cannot bring themselves to truthfully describe or own up to the crime that was committed when US Ambassador James Foley, a career diplomat, arrived at the house of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide with a bunch of CIA thugs and US Marines to kidnap the president of Haiti and his wife.
The Aristides were stowed aboard a CIA plane normally used for 'renditions' of suspected terrorists to the worldwide US gulag of dungeons and torture chambers. ...[Read the entire article here]
2. from commondreams.org:
January 17th, 2010
Haiti: Horsemen and Hoarse Women
It’s already bitterly ironic that Bill Clinton is the United Nation’s special envoy to Haiti, after the economic policy he imposed there to transform it into the Caribbean’s sweatshop. Now, President Obama has asked George Bush to lead fundraising efforts for relief in Haiti. After Bush took part in an international coup to overthrow Aristide. It’s like sending in the horsemen of the apocalypse to negotiate peace. There are, however, more sensible ideas. [Read the entire article here]
1. Bishop Gumbleton in the Catholic Peace Voice, 2005
Haiti: Call for Return of Aristide by Bishop Thomas Gumbleton
February 28, 2005 marked the first anniversary of the forced removal of President John Bertrand Aristide from office in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. In November of 2000 President Aristide was overwhelmingly re-elected with 92 percent of the vote. Local and international observers put voter turnout at 65 percent. Gallup polls conducted in Haiti before and after the election, confirmed both the voter turnout and the numbers who voted for President Aristide.
President Aristide was forced to leave Haiti, a country he loves and has served well for many decades. Even though the US Embassy insists that the US government had nothing to do with his removal, it is not difficult to discover US involvement.
Ambassador James Foley insists that he came to Haiti two weeks before the coup to present to President Aristide a final offer on how he could remain in power. However, according to Ambassador Foley, President Aristide was adamant, simply refused to cooperate and chose to leave. In fact, the "offer" amounted to becoming the President in name only while others made the real decisions.
Aristide was provided with conditions that no legitimate president could accept. He would have to pretend to be acting as president, when in fact his governing power was almost totally removed, and was to be exercised under the guidance of the United States. Obviously, President Aristide is too honest a man to accept such a dishonest and evil solution to the problems that were clearly present in Haiti. He was told if he did not leave he would be killed together with thousands of Haitians. Without a real choice he was put on a US military plane to the Central African Republic, where he was to live quietly and be totally removed from Haiti and its concerns. Subsequently, the US removed all of his ministers and set up a new government.
Since that time the situation in Haiti has deteriorated. Many delegations of human rights observers from outside the country and human rights workers within Haiti have documented what has happened since President Aristide was forcibly removed from office. After 10 months under this interim government, backed by the United States, Canada and France, and buttressed now by a force from the United Nations, Haiti's people are caught up in an extreme situation of violence. If you travel in the streets of Port-au-Prince or other cities throughout the country, you will hear gunfire breaking out at almost any moment, you will sometimes discover bodies abandoned in the streets. You will see whole neighborhoods, where support for President Aristide is very high, cut off from the outside world. People live in fear especially in the poorest areas of Haiti. Gangs, police, irregular soldiers and even UN peacekeepers bring this fear. There is no investment in dialogue to end the violence.
Haiti's security and justice institutions fuel the cycle of violence. The police carry out summary executions. In many poor neighborhoods even honest police officers feel they must kill or be killed. When President Aristide was overthrown, the members of the former army, which he had disbanded, returned to the country, crossing the border from the Dominican Republic, armed with weapons from the United States, even wearing U S military uniforms. This restored army insists that it is the only legitimate, constitutional entity in the country. The "army" acts with brutality and complete disdain for the rights of the majority of the people.
Many times I visited prisoners in Port-au-Prince and found that the constitutional rights of these men and women have been completely ignored. They are arrested without warrant, imprisoned without charge and contrary to the law of Haiti, do not appear before a judge within 48 hours. Many have been kept in prison for weeks or months without any indication of why they are there or what law they are alleged to have broken. Obviously, they are simply people by whom the interim government feels threatened. Among these political prisoners are Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert.
The situation reminds me of the situation in El Salvador in the 1980's when Archbishop Oscar Romero declared what it meant to be a poor person in El Salvador. "To be a poor person," he said, "means to be disappeared, to be tortured, to be murdered and to have your body found in the gutter." This is what is happening to the poor of Haiti.
One of the most difficult things for the poor is that when they are the objects of direct assassination attempts or simply caught in the crossfire between the police and some of the street gangs, they are not able to receive proper medical care. They are afraid to go to a hospital because once there, they would only lie in puddles of their own blood, ignored by the medical personnel or they might even be killed by the police who come into the hospital to finish the job.
What is even worse, when they die, their bodies are trucked to the morgue where they are simply piled up. According to the law, when a body is brought to the morgue, it is to be left there for 22 days in order for families to try to locate them. However, without any refrigeration, the bodies are kept for only 5 days and are then thrown onto trucks, carried out of the city and dumped. Families never find out what has happened to a "disappeared" loved one.
The US government, some elements in Haiti, and some former supporters of President Aristide insist that the violence is a result of his encouraging his supporters to turn to violence. Supposedly he is still doing this from South Africa. But there is no evidence of this. From my knowledge of President Aristide and his deep commitment to non-violence, I know that this is not the case. At the present time there is a complete breakdown of civil order in Haiti. The only hope of ending this violence is to restore the constitutional government. This means the return of President Aristide and his lawfully appointed ministers.
It is time for people of the United States who care about justice, who care about non-violence, who care about peace for the people of Haiti, to insist with ever greater determination, that President Aristide be returned to his legitimate office to complete his term. In the short time that would be left for him, perhaps a new order of justice could begin.
Source: The Catholic Peace Voice, May/ June 2005