U.S.-Approved Carnage Grips Haiti

U.S.-Approved Carnage Grips Haiti
- Pro-Aristide Majority Brutally Suppressed by Military Occupation

By Charlie Hinton

Haiti began 2004 celebrating the 200th anniversary of the defeat of Napoleon's army and French slavemasters, but it quickly became a year of misery and terror for the Caribbean island's long suffering people. -- photo: Haiti Information Project

Beginning last spring, a U.S.-sponsored incursion of former military and death squad members led to the overthrow and kidnapping of democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. On February 29, U.S. military personnel forcefully escorted the president to the Central African Republic, concluding a carefully orchestrated destabilization campaign begun after Aristide’s election in 2000. The campaign included U.S. and French funding of phony opposition groups; blocking disbursement of an Inter-American Development Bank loan destined to improve schools, health, roads and water; and a smear campaign by both corporate and so-called progressive media and NGOs such as Amnesty International.

In addition, the U.S. and French governments received the United Nations' blessing for their occupation of Haiti. The UN recognized the rule of former Supreme Court justice, Alexandre Boniface, and of Gerard Latortue, a former official of the 1988 General Prosper Avril junta regime. Both men are strong opponents of Aristide.

Nature brought floods in April that killed hundreds of people; tropical storm Jeanne killed several thousand in September, and a year-long all-out attack on President Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas Party have all added to the death toll. Hundreds of homes have been burned and tens of thousands of people were forced to abandon their families and communities to live underground, fearing for their lives.

The Haitian majority, which passionately loves President Aristide, have never accepted the legitimacy of the U.S. and now UN-imposed occupation government. In April, Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas Party rejected participation in an electoral council to plan new elections. It cited the grounds that Haitians have twice elected a president, only to see him militarily overthrown each time. As President, Aristide had designated voodoo an official religion, sought to collect taxes from the wealthy, doubled the minimum wage, disbanded the army, and opened relations with Cuba.

When Lavalas leaders announced they would demonstrate to call for Aristide's return on May 18th, Haiti's Flag Day, U.S. marines responded by arresting folk singer and voodoo priestess Anne August (So Anne). The Haitian police attempted to stop the march by shooting into the unarmed crowd, killing at least nine people, while U.S. occupation forces watched. It is common practice for police to steal murdered bodies, preventing burial and an accurate count of the dead.

Lavalas then announced actions to commemorate the 1791 slave insurrection on August 14. The presence of international observers and a letter writing campaign to the UN may have helped the marches proceed relatively peacefully, and Lavalas announced more demonstrations for September 30, the anniversary of the first coup against Aristide in 1991. On that date, units from the National Police opened fire directly into a crowd of at least 10,000 people marching in capitol city Port-au-Prince, killing several people while UN peacekeepers watched. The next morning, Latortue boasted at a press conference: “We opened fire on demonstrators; some of them have been killed, others injured, and still others fled.”

On October 2, police arrested three Lavalas leaders at Radio Caraibe after they criticized the occupation government on the air. Later that day police officers raided the offices of the Confederation of Haitian Workers (CTH) labor union and arrested nine union members, all without a warrant. The official justification for the arrest was that the defendants were "close to the Lavalas authorities." Hours later masked men in military attire attacked the office of the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of the Haitian People (CDPH).

Some two weeks later, on October 13, authorities violently arrested Father Gerard Jean-Juste, a beloved priest, activist and pacifist, as he served food to 600 hungry children in his parish, wounding three of the children during the arrest. They have arrested hundreds more and killed more than 85 people since September 30. In one of the most sickening examples, an entire household of 13 people were murdered execution-style on October 26. Two days later, four young people with hands tied were similarly executed. Police have sealed off popular neighborhoods such as Cite Soleil and Bel Air and conducted house-to-house searches, often destroying everything of value in the process. Latortue was overheard saying the regime may have to kill 25,000 people in Port-au-Prince alone to purge it of Lavalas.

Besides the terror brought upon the Haitian majority, the unconstitutional removal of President Aristide sets a dangerous precedent for Latin America and for the world, and neither the Caribbean CARICOM countries nor the Organization of African Unity have recognized the occupation government. In 1804, Haiti became the only successful revolution of enslaved people in the history of the world. The United States refused to recognize this new government for 60 years, until the end of the Civil War, and has worked ever since to prevent true independence and self-determination for Haiti. The 2004 coup against President Aristide continues this brutal imperialist policy.

Charlie Hinton is a member of the Haiti Action Committee, www.haitiaction.net, and GCIU Local 388M. He works at Inkworks Press, a worker-owned and managed union printing company in Berkeley, CA.