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Haitian People Victorious
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by April Knutson, W A M M
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On February 7, 2006, Haitian people turned out in record numbers to vote in elections that had been postponed four times by the provisional government, appointed by the U.S.-backed occupation forces after the U.S. and France kidnapped the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, on February 29, 2004. Early returns showed a clear victory for René Préval, former prime minister under Aristide and president of Haiti from 1996 to 2000. Préval was predicted to win with 62 percent of the vote; the remainder of the votes split among the fifteen other candidates. Despite efforts by the puppet provisional government to rob Préval of a first-round victory, popular demonstrations forced the elections commission to admit that Préval had won, and that massive fraud was involved in attempting to deny him victory, including counting blank ballots as votes against Préval and disposing of votes in garbage dumps.
Despite all the obstacles set up to prevent a candidate of the popular movements from winning, people were determined to vote for Préval; many residents of the poor neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince left their homes at 3 a.m. on election day and spent all day in lines and/or walking around the city trying to find their polling place. In a country with 3.5 million voters, only 809 polling places had been set up (compared to 12,000 in 2000 when Aristide was elected). There were no polling places in Cité Soleil, a sprawling slum in Port-au-Prince that is home to half a million people, so 60,000 registered voters marched out of Cité Soleil together at dawn, looking for a place to vote. Knowing that the international press would be watching Haiti on election day, people were able to gather in large numbers without fear of violence and reprisals from the provisional authority police and the U.N. forces. The streets of Port-au-Prince and other cities were alive with happy people for the first time in months. The Haitian people reinserted themselves into the political and cultural life of the country.
The U.S. government and multinational corporations have once again been foiled in their plans to destabilize, tame, and take over Haiti. From the beginning of Haiti’s history, when Haiti became the first independent Black republic in the world in 1804, the U.S. has joined the European colonial powers in trying to defeat Haiti through blockades, crushing debts, and outright occupations. (The U.S. Marines occupied Haiti from 1915-1934.) Why does Haiti mean so much to the U.S. and European powers? Why is it necessary to defeat popular movements in this tiny Caribbean nation which has no oil or valuable minerals?
Haiti represents the first defeat of European imperialism and the only enslaved people to ever emancipate themselves from their masters and create an independent country. Haitian people established a counter-narrative to the established history of Western civilization. Haiti had to fail to prove that colonialism and white supremacy were correct policies. (Remember that in 1804, slave labor still produced half the goods in the United States.)
In more recent times, the Lavalas movement headed by Jean-Bertrand Aristide challenged the policies of the WTO and the IMF. The governments of Aristide and Préval undertook agrarian reforms and raised the minimum wage. Aristide recognized Cuba (the first Haitian leader to do so), and Cuba sent doctors, agronomists, and scientists to Haiti. After kidnapping Aristide in 2004, the first act of the U.S. occupation forces was to close the medical school established by the Aristide Foundation for Democracy, where 250 young Haitians were being trained by Cuban doctors. There are only 1,000 doctors in the whole country for a population of 7 million. The school is now a base for the Brazilian troops of the U.N. forces.
Together with the police of the provisional authority (many of them fascist thugs who had killed more than 3,000 people during the first coup against Aristide, 1991-1994) the U.N forces have wounded and killed many Lavalas movement leaders in the last two years. In July, 2005, U.N forces killed over 20 people in Cité Soleil. In August, US AID organized a soccer game. 5000 people attended. The police under the provisional authority entered the stadium and demanded that people identify any Lavalas leaders present. The police then executed 20 people in front of the crowd.
Despite this campaign of destabilization, intimidation, and extreme violence, the Haitian people had the courage and determination to vote for Préval on February 7. All of us in the peace and justice movement must keep our eyes on Haiti and demand that:
• Préval be inaugurated as scheduled on March 29, 2006;
• the U.S., France and other imperial powers stop interfering in the economic, political, and cultural life of an independent Haiti;
• the loans from the World Bank and other international lending agencies, held up by the Bush administration, be granted immediately to the Préval administration;
• Aristide be allowed to return to Haiti;
• all political prisoners be released.
A massive grass-roots effort around the world won the release of Father Gérard Jean-Juste, a priest in a poor neighborhood of Port-au-Prince and a supporter of Aristide and the Lavalas movement, who had been held in prison for months, growing weaker every day from untreated cancer. We must keep the pressure on to release all political prisoners. We must rein in our government to end the destabilization campaign against democratically elected, popular governments in Haiti and elsewhere.
Help other people to start seeing Haiti. The Haiti Justice Committee of Minnesota meets on the third Saturday morning of every month at the Resource Center of the Americas, in Minneapolis, from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. Please join us. A demonstration/celebration will be held on March 29, inauguration day in Haiti. Watch your WAMM calendar for upcoming events. |
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© 2006 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete April 2006 Index - click here
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