Support and Phone Calls Needed for Haiti

This came to Rights Action, via Jennifer Harbury. Below, there is
background info from ANSWER. Please re-distribute far and wide. If you
want on/ off our elist: info [at] rightsaction.org <mailto:info [at] rightsaction.org>

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Jennifer Harbury wrote:

We urgently need your support and telephone calls on the growing crisis in
Haiti. I am sure you have all seen the recent press articles about what is
described as the popular unrest there, but far more than civil disobedience
is at stake now. We are looking at yet another grab for power by the same
death squads that ravaged Haiti a few years ago.

The self proclaimed uprising has been extremely violent and people are
dying. While members of the political opposition are indeed part of this
uprising, so too are many of the most notorious torturers and death squad
members who devastated Haiti before Aristide's return to power.

When we remember that FRAPH and many other military human rights violators
were in fact backed by the CIA in those years, the recent insinuations by
U.S. officials that they would not oppose an ouster of President Aristide
take on a rather sinister light. Mr. Aristide was legally and popularly
elected by the people of Haiti not once, but twice, in the more recent
elections by 92% of the vote. (The claims of electoral error arose in a
senate election, not his presidential victory).

Why are we suggesting that he leave office or accept U.S.- dictated changes
in his policies?

The opposition demonstrators have seized the town of Gonaives, killing more
than 50 people the first week, including three hospital patients and 14
policemen who were mutilated and dragged through the streets. A number of
key roads and a bridge have been obstructed, preventing the arrival of badly
needed medical personnel as well as humanitarian supplies. According to
reports, the "Resistance" has proclaimed that anyone not supporting the
overthrow of Aristide would be attacked. They backed up this threat with
beatings and killings, and destroyed several homes, two of which happened to
belong to the survivors of the Raboteau massacre. (In 1994 the army and
paramilitary troops had entered Raboteau, shooting, beating and arresting
people in masses. As the people fled towards the harbor to swim to safety,
they encountered armed men on the beachfront, who opened fire on them.
Undeterred, the people of Raboteau pressed their human rights case through
trial, winning a verdict against 16 of the 22 defendants despite the U.S.
refusal to hand over thousands of FRAPH documents).

Two of the opposition leaders reported to have engaged in killings of police
officers in Haiti's Central Plateau, include Guy Philippe, a U.S.-trained
former Haitian soldier who has attempted at least three coups in the last
four years, and Louis Jodel Chamblain, the #2 ranked leader of the notorious
CIA-backed FRAPH death squad. Chamblain was convicted in both the
assassination of Antoine Izmery, a pro-democracy businessman in 1993, and
the 1994 Raboteau massacre.

Jean Pierre, alias Tatoune, was a local FRAPH leader and was serving a life
sentence for the Raboteau massacre, until his escape in a 2002 jailbreak.
The opposition also includes civilians like sweat shop owner and U.S.
citizen Andy Apaid, who opposed an increase of the minimum wage last year,
when Aristide attempted to raise it from the $1.60 per day where it now
stands.

Since so many of the more brutal members of the "opposition" in fact have
long standing ties to the U.S. intelligence community, we should be calling
off our dogs instead of pressing Aristide to bend his policies to U.S.
demands.

Haiti really does not need the FRAPH or other death squads, let alone the
CIA, to interfere with a lawfully elected government, let alone to return to
power for a new round of blood baths. Who can forget the massacre in the
Saint-Jean Bosco Church of 1988, which took place as Aristide was giving his
Sunday mass? Thugs and secret police broke down the church doors and opened
fire, attacking and stabbing the people as they prayed. A pregnant woman was
stabbed through the stomach, more than a dozen others were killed, many more
badly hurt, and the Church was burned to the ground.

Miraculously Aristide survived, became President, survived a violent coup,
and became President yet again.

The people of Haiti have spoken clearly enough about their choice of their
national leader. There are no masses of refugees fleeing Aristide as there
were under Duvalier and the FRAPH. We should respect this choice instead of
supporting yet more terror.

PLEASE CALL OR WRITE THE STATE DEPARTMENT, HAITI DESK: TEL. 202-736-4628.

Tell Them:

1.. The United States should fully support any legally and popularly elected
government, including that of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, President of Haiti..
2.. Because many of the persons involved in the current violence by the
opposition, were in fact death squad members and extreme human rights
violators, with long standing links to the U.S. intelligence services, the
U.S. government should take all steps possible to control these assets and
allies, and require the immediate cessation of violence and intimidation on
their part. Any and all covert funding to them should be halted forthwith.
3.. The U.S. government should respect and comply with any request by
President Aristide for reasonable assistance to his understaffed and
under-equipped police force.
4.. The U.S. should respect the sovereign status of the government of Haiti
and not interfere in the socio-economic policies of that country by
threatened intervention or sanctions of any kind.

If you wish to make additional calls, please give your support and thanks to
Maxine Waters, and ask for help from other allies and friends on the Hill,
such as Sen. Leahy, Sen. Dodd, Rep. Conyers, Rep. Rangel, and Rep. Lantos.
The Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.

Thank you everyone. Your calls do make a difference, and always have.
Abrazos, Jennifer

===

BACKGROUND

STATEMENT FROM THE A.N.S.W.E.R. COALITION

The A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Caolition denounces
any intervention by the Bush Administration against the democratically
elected government of Haiti and its President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. We
oppose the financial embargo of this Caribbean country by the International
Monetary Fund and World Bank at the instruction of the U.S. government. We
condemn any CIA support for the anti-democratic opposition and the National
Endowment for Democracy (NED) programs it has in Haiti to funnel money to
the opposition.

Today Haiti faces a serious threat to its nascent democracy. Armed gangs led
by disbanded military officers, right-wing FRAPH coup makers who overthrew
President Aristide in his first term and then conducted a reign of terror,
and the death squad Ton Ton Macoutes movement loyal to the old Duvalier
regimes, are invading cities, burning police stations, killing and beating
Lavalas Movement supporters, and attempting to violently remove the elected
government from office.

The whole world (except the CIA and some business interests) took hope when
the Haitian people, through the Lavalas Movement headed by former priest
Jean Bertrand Aristide, came to office with a landslide victory in 1990. The
whole world (except the CIA and some business interests) mourned when a
military coup overthrew Aristide in 1991. Aristide is now serving again as
elected president and the same forces that opposed him before continue their
efforts to overthrow him.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. President Aristide's
efforts to respond to the desperate needs of Haiti's poorest citizens has
been crippled from the beginning by U.S. government manipulation of aid and
international loans, and by a complete cut-off of international aid and
loans since 2000. In a country as poor as Haiti, whose riches were looted by
its colonial masters, cutting off international assistance has had a
corrosive effect on society, opening the way for a re-emergence of the
violent, right-wing forces of the past. A.N.S.W.E.R. demands that the U.S.
government release all aid money appropriated by Congress for the Haitian
government and to remove its block on international loans and grants.

Despite being crippled by the aid cut-off, Haiti has implemented admirable
literacy campaigns and a Universal Schooling Program, has defended
children's rights, and has worked to find alternatives to corporate
globalization. Like Nicaragua of the 1980's and Venezuela today, this makes
Haiti "the threat of a good example."

Two hundred years ago the Haitian people established the second oldest
republic in the Americas. For sixty years the U.S. government refused to
recognize the
Haitian Republic, which resulted from the only successful slave insurrection
in history. From 1849-1913 the U.S. threatened Haiti 26 times by anchoring
warships in its harbors to protect U.S. business interests. The U.S. invaded
Haiti in 1915 and occupied it until 1934. U.S. marines robbed $500,000 from
the National Bank of Haiti in 1915. These stolen monies were then deposited
in the National City Bank--now part of the trillion dollar Citibank octopus.

The U.S. government supported some of the hemisphere's bloodiest, most
repressive governments including "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier in the
latter half of the 20th century. The U.S. invaded Haiti again in 1994 to
return Aristide for the remainder of his first term, but dictated that his
term could not be extended to make up for the three years denied him by the
coup. U.S. soldiers remain in Haiti today.

The reason why Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere is
that it made so many other countries so rich. It was Haitian sugar--the
product of slave labor--that fueled the industrial revolution in Britain and
France. French bankers and big business alone owe Haiti at least $21 billion
in reparations for a forced loan that took Haiti 120 years to pay off. Over
the past few centuries, the Haitian people have also been punished for
having the audacity to overthrow their slave masters. This heroic country
opened its arms to Simon Bolivar, supplying the liberator with two ships and
supplies needed to overthrow Spanish colonial rule. The only thing that
Haiti asked in return was freedom for all the enslaved people in Latin
America.

For all its problems, the majority of Haiti's eight million people will not
support a return to colonial servitude. The aim of the right-wing
insurrectionists is to provoke military intervention against the Haitian
government, possibly under disguise of a United Nations "humanitarian
mission." A.N.S.W.E.R. demands that the U.S., France, and the United Nations
keep their hands off Haiti. With the reparations owed Haiti by France; with
international aid directed by sovereign Haiti, Haitians can solve their own
problems and chart their own destiny.

***

There are a number of excellent sources to learn more about recent events in
Haiti. Here are a few:
- The Black Commentator,
http://www.blackcommentator.com/73/73_haiti_pina.html
- Haiti Progres, <http://www.haiti-progres.com/eng02-04.html>