AFTER THE U.S. ELECTIONS: HAITI'S LIBERATION STRUGGLE ENTERS A NEW PHASE

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES newsweekly.
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                      * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                       November 10 - 16, 2004
                          Vol. 22, No. 35




Since a giant anti-occupation march on September 30, the 13th
anniversary of the first coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
both uprisings and repression in Haiti have steadily escalated.

During that demonstration, police shot and killed at least two
demonstrators, which U.S.-installed de facto Prime Minister Gérard
Latortue later boasted about. "We fired on them, some of them went down,
others were wounded, and others fled," he announced with no words of
regret.

The police then skirmished with armed anti-coup partisans from the
capital's popular quarters like Bel-air and Martissant in the following
days, and there have been dozens of casualties on both sides.

Latortue's government has become increasingly isolated and prone to
issuing absurd accusations against Aristide to explain the Haitian
peoples' growing insurgency and militancy.

In mid-October, Latortue lashed out against Aristide's host, South
African President Thabo Mbeki, as "not respecting international law" by
allowing the Haitian president "in his territory to organize violence in
another country."

South Africa's Foreign Minister brushed off the attack "with contempt,"
saying that Latortue was using Mbeki as "a scapegoat for failure by the
interim Haitian authorities to bring about peace and stability to
Haiti."

Latortue's repression has only stoked the fires of rebellion.
Spontaneous demonstrations and burning tire barricades occur every week.
In response, the de facto government has illegally arrested and jailed
dozens of Lavalas leaders, including constitutional Prime Minister Yvon
Neptune, Interior Minister Joclerme Privert, activist Annette "So Ann"
Auguste, and refugee rights pioneer Father Gérard Jean-Juste.

The attack on the poor masses is even more brutal. On Oct. 19, masked
policemen gunned down a 9-year-old boy in the capital's La Saline slum.
A week later, they returned to a house in Fort National where they
arrested and then executed 13 unarmed young people, among them three
women. Two days later, four youths, two with their hands tied behind
their backs, were executed in broad daylight on Rue Péan in the
capital's most rebellious slum, Bel-air.

The de facto government has denied that the massacres are carried out by
the police, blaming them on either "renegade" police units or "death
squads posing as policemen." The masked black-clad policemen carrying
out these massacres may in fact be former soldiers from the Haitian
Army, which Aristide dissolved in 1995. Two or three hundred of these
former soldiers were the core of the so-called "rebels" which invaded
Haiti in January 2004 from the Dominican Republic, where they were
equipped, trained and harbored with the support of both the U.S. and
Dominican governments.

Since providing the media backdrop for the U.S. Marines' kidnapping of
Aristide on Feb. 29, the ex-soldiers have been clamoring for
resurrection of the Haitian Army as well as 10 years of back pay,
claiming the army's dissolution was illegal. After several deadly
clashes with the police during September, the former soldiers struck an
uneasy truce and unpublicized deal with the de facto authorities. Some
were integrated into the police force while others set up bases in
provincial cities and perform parallel or joint operations with the
police and the occupation forces of the United Nations Mission to
Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH).

The former soldiers, along with death squad leaders and former Tonton
Macoutes (Duvalierist henchmen), have expressed eagerness to put down
the growing revolt in the Haitian capital.

Despite the savagery of the massacres, popular neighborhoods are not
intimidated and continue to repel police attacks. At least three times
during October, armed anti-coup militants in Bel-air expelled incursions
by the police backed by occupation troops. On one occasion, U.N. troops
abandoned their vehicle and weapons.

Resistance is not confined to the capital. In a significant development,
a well-organized commando attacked the police station in the
northwestern town of Gros Morne just after midnight on Oct. 24, subduing
the policemen and reportedly capturing weapons. One policeman was
wounded in the leg while fleeing.

The guerillas spray-painted slogans on the police station and
neighboring buildings saying "Down with the occupation," "Down with the
former soldiers," and "Down with the Macoutes!" Along with a red star,
they also left their name: the Dessalinien Army of National Liberation
(ADLN). Jean-Jacques Dessalines was the founding father of Haitian
independence 200 years ago.

George W. Bush's Nov. 2 electoral victory will also have a dramatic
effect on the Haitian struggle in coming weeks. Prior to the election,
Aristide's Lavalas Family party (FL) was clearly hoping that Democratic
hopeful John Kerry, if elected, could be persuaded to return Aristide to
the Haitian presidential chair, just as President Bill Clinton did with
an occupation of 20,000 U.S. troops in September 1994. Aristide, from
his South African exile, made repeated calls for "dialogue" with the
U.S. and France, the very nations which fomented his ouster in the first
place.

It is unlikely that the FL leadership can continue to make moral appeals
to French and U.S. imperialism. Bush administration hard-liners,
emboldened by their electoral victory, are in no mood for compromise and
are hungry for new attacks, particularly against neighboring Cuba.

Meanwhile, the National Popular Party (PPN) has insisted, as it did in
1994, that only the Haitian people can return Aristide to power. The PPN
calls for struggle against the foreign military occupation, rejects
proposed negotiations with the de facto government or their imperialist
sponsors, and spurns de facto rigged elections.

"We think that because the ruling sectors have put an end to the civil
form of struggle, it would be an illusion to think that the normal
democratic approach to political power could be practical in the current
context," said the PPN's secretary general Ben Dupuy in an interview in
the September edition of Socialism & Liberation. "So we leave every door
open. We think it is the duty of any people to fight illegitimacy,
tyranny."

In many ways, the political conjuncture in Haiti today mirrors what
existed in 1803 when Napoleon Bonaparte wanted to reestablish slavery,
when the colony's ruling groups were feuding among each other for
privileges, and when the French empire was fighting wars of expansion on
many fronts.

Today, the Haitian masses will not accept the ruling classes' overthrow
of the government they overwhelmingly elected in 2000, as imperfect as
it was, to crush the modest gains in economic and political rights that
the people have won since dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier's fall in 1986.
The comprador and big landowning factions of the Haitian ruling class
are also fighting among themselves, as they have historically, over the
political power they snatched from the people in the Feb. 29th coup.

Finally, the U.S. empire, just like Napoleon's France, is hugely
overextended and finding it necessary to "outsource" its occupations to
surrogates: in Haiti's case, the Brazilian, Argentinian and Chilean
troops which make up the bulk of the MINUSTAH. These nations have no
stake in enforcing Haiti's continued subjugation other than whatever
diplomatic and financial bribes the Bush administration has offered
them. As the situation will surely continue to worsen in the months
ahead, Brazil and other MINUSTAH collaborators can be expected to look
for ways to extricate themselves from the quagmire in which they find
themselves sinking. Already Brazil has sent an emissary to South Africa
to explore ways to include Aristide in new negotiations with the de
facto government and its allies, a move which displeases Washington.

In short, the conditions for revolutionary change in Haiti today are as
favorable as they were 200 years ago. Just as the former slaves of St.
Domingue rose up and founded a new republic which sparked the liberation
of the South America, once again, the Haitian masses stand positioned to
open a new chapter in the hemisphere's history and the liberation of
mankind.



A READER RESPONDS TO GRAPHIC COVERAGE

October 30, 2004

Dear Haiti Progres,

I have been a very avid reader of your newspaper for years, not to say
from the beginning. I just picked up a copy, and I feel very strongly
the need to respond to a disturbing picture on the front page (see HaVti
ProgrPs, Vol. 22, No. 33, 10/27/2004). The death of a child is very sad,
but publishing the naked picture of him is sadder. I do not know the
circumstances of his death and I do not want to comment on that, but I
cannot understand why you have to publish a photo like that out of
respect for the child's memory and his family. Life is not easy in Haiti
and having to bury a child is heartbreaking. I feel very bad for the
family members who have to be reminded by the graphic photos in your
paper.

Ben Dupuy has been a hero for me in the struggle he is fighting
alongside the Haitian people and I applaud him for his courage and his
determination. I do think an apology to little Manno [the murdered child
on the cover] is a noble thing to do to his family and the Haitian
people. I am hoping you will find the courage to do so and to admit that
it was wrong to publish such graphic photos of an innocent child,
regardless of the circumstances of his death.

May his soul rest in peace and God bless his family

Sincerely yours,

André P. Abelard
Brockton, MA

Haiti Progres responds:

Like Mr. Abelard, we were shocked, not only by the photo, but by the way
in which young Emmanuel Marcéus was killed by men dressed as Haitian
police. We contacted Manno's family about publishing the photo. They
said that they wanted people in Haiti and its diaspora to see that photo
so that they would understand the repression and terror that exists in
Haiti today since the Feb. 29th kidnapping of President Aristide. We
thank Mr. Abelard for his words of support for Haiti Progres and assure
him that we will continue to work on behalf of the Haitian people and to
present Haiti's realities, which are often shocking.

All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED. Please
credit HaVti Progres.