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Haiti’s Struggle Continues, One Person’s Perspective
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by Paul W. Miller
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People in Haiti are starving. That’s really not news in Haiti, though it is as bad as it has ever been. So what is the news in Haiti five years after the U.S. removal of President Jean Bertrand Aristide? What struck me most on our recent visit to Haiti was the omnipresent United Nations military force. I suppose it is called a peacekeeping force, but that belies the tenor of their occupation. They are an occupying force carrying out somebody’s dirty work. A good guess is that the UN is working for the U.S. My second guess is that the UN is working for the U.S. My third and last guess is that the UN is working for the U.S. We did notice that the UN compound is right next to the huge new U.S. Embassy, a fact the U.S. doesn’t seem to want to highlight.
When former President Bill Clinton arrived in Haiti on Tuesday of this past week, he was greeted not by President René Préval or any Haitian dignitary but by the head of the United Nations occupying force (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ in_depth/7934068.stm), as if to say, “Welcome to our protectorate, Mr. President.” I can’t imagine what this says to the Haitian people. Not that Bll Clinton doesn’t have some crediblity with the Haitian people. He does. Anyone who brought back their beloved “Titid” (Aristide) will always have some credibility, some deserved, some not.
Once again Haiti’s well-being is being spotlighted by big-time politicians. Make no mistake, Bill Clinton is legions better for Haiti than George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell. In 2004 Mr. Powell, not for the first time, served as the face of the W. Bush foreign policy. On February 12, 2004, Mr. Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “The policy of this administration is not regime change. President Aristide is the elected president of Haiti.”
By Thursday, February 25, Powell had changed course drastically and said: “Whether or not he is able to effectively continue as president is something he will have to examine carefully, in the interests of the Haitian people,” effectively cutting the legs out from under any remaining international support for the democratically elected president of Haiti.
By Monday, February 29, Mr. Aristide was being flown out of the country by the United States government. Only people from the power side of the equation ask if he was forcibly removed. What followed was what has followed most of Mr. Bush’s actions, a total disaster. The past five years have seen a dismantling of the democratic systems that had been built, like all things in Haiti, on a fragile framework held up by the sheer will of the Haitian people, in spite of the Western world’s influence, certainly not because of it.
But the goodwill of the people can hold up its chosen government only so long. With the U.S. and the traditional Haitian power brokers wanting you out as badly as they wanted Aristide out, the question is when, not if. So Aristide was removed, again, and Haiti was decimated, again. I doubt George W. Bush gave it a second thought, nor do I think he thinks about it today. But a lot of us do, and the Haitian people certainly do. It’s hard not to when your country has paid severely for daring to overthrow slavery over 200 years ago. A good share of the pain in those 200 years has been inflicted by the U.S. It’s a wonder Haitians let any of us into their country. Of course we are the U.S. and we pretty much go where we want.
Bill Clinton visited recently, thankfully without Mr. Powell, and just over a month before Mr. Clinton, so did a group of four of us. What do I think Mr. Clinton can do to help? Based on what I saw and what I know, there is something he could do that would go a long way toward solving the problems that Haitians face over and over and over.
Mr. Clinton could convince the Obama administration to stop intervening in Haiti’s political affairs. No more deciding whom we want to run the country. No more IRI, NED, and all the other acronyms for U.S. organizations that destroy lives on a regular basis. Get ’em out of Haiti! No more using Canada and the United Nations to destroy a democratic movement. No more murder in the shantytowns where Aristide’s support has never wavered. No more appointments of “a council of sages.” No more heads of United Nations occupying forces greeting our politicians at the airport like it’s their country. No more imprisoning of Lavalas political figures. No more treating Haitians like dirt by imprisoning them when they desperately try to reach the shores of our country.
We could talk about many things that we could offer Haiti. None of what will be debated would compare to what it would mean to Haiti if we actually implemented a just foreign policy. It would be unprecedented and unbelievable. In fact, it would be change we could believe in. After 205 years maybe we could recognize the first independent Black nation in the Western Hemisphere for the great success that it is. Maybe the gracious Haitian people could forgive us for all the suffering we have caused, if we finally got it right.
Paul Miller is a member of the Haiti Justice Committee of Minnesota, a group that works for just U.S. policies towards Haiti. He and his 16-year-old daughter, Natalie, were part of a four-person delegation to Haiti for a week in January 2009. It was Paul’s ninth trip to Haiti. |
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Human Rights Resources
Reprieve
www.reprieve.org
PO Box 52742
London EC4P 4WS
Email: info@reprieve.org.uk
Reprieve uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.
Reprieve’s vision is of a world in which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is honoured by all governments, everywhere in the world, in every situation, regardless of the extremity of circumstances faced by a particular government or society.e
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© 2009 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete April 2009 Index - click here
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