U.S. Imperialist Boot on Haiti
https://socialistaction.org/2021/03/23/u-s-imperialist-boot-on-haiti/
March 23, 2021
By Marty Goodman
On Feb. 28, thousands of Haitians marched through the capital,
Port-au-Prince, and other cities across the country to demand that the
de facto President Jovenal Moïse and his corrupt crony capitalist
blood-stained oligarchy step down.
A relentless, arrogant U.S. imperialism is putting its money – once
again – on this Haitian dictator who came to power in a 2015 election so
fraudulent that it had to be done over. Moïse refused to step down on
Feb. 7, 2021 as required by Article 134.2 of the 1987 Haitian
Constitution mandating that presidents must leave office on Feb. 7 after
five years in office.
Protests met with mass repression
Typical placards at the February protests read, “U.S., UN and OAS: Hands
Off Haiti” and “Haiti Can’t Breathe” and many other slogans that score
U.S. imperialism and Haiti’s ruling elite. On Feb. 1 and 2 a general
strike called by trade unions and supported by a diverse range of
opposition organizations paralyzed Haiti. The giant weekly
demonstrations that followed were met with clubs, tear gas and bullets
wielded by Haitian soldiers trained by the U.S. – remnants of decades of
U.S./UN occupation.
Human rights attorney Mario Joseph, who heads the International Lawyers
Office spoke out against the police repression in a Jan. 27 press
conference. “The corrupt PHTK [Haitian Bald Headed Party] government has
weaponized the PNH [Haitian National Police] to use bullets, tear gas,
physical aggression, arbitrary arrests, and imprisonment to crush
popular protests,” (Haiti Liberte, 2/3/21)
The giant anti-Moïse mobilizations were initiated by capitalist
opposition forces but have taken on a popular character. Anger has been
focused on Moïse but also on the generalized corruption, inequality and
dire poverty that has been Haiti’s fate under the thumb of U.S.
imperialism for more than a century. To this day, Haiti remains among
the poorest nations on earth with a U.S.-dominated economy replete with
near slave wage sweat shop factories enforced by systematic repression.
Seventy percent of the working age population is unemployed; inflation
stands at 23.4 percent; food insecurity affects more than 4 million out
of a population of 11 million.
Dozens of civic organizations, attorneys and judges, trade unions,
peasant groups, and student organizations insist that the de facto
president must leave office as per the Haiti’s constitutional
requirements. Moïse, who ran as the candidate of the rightest PHTK says
he will not step down until Feb. 7, 2022, citing the year he spent as
Haiti’s transitional president when he organized a re-run of the
fraudulent election that he “won” in 2015. With a mere 18 percent of the
re-run vote in 2016 he took office on Feb. 7, 2017.
Moïse was the hand-picked favorite of the previous Haitian president
Michel Martelly, 2011-2016. Martelly, who told the world “Haiti is
opened for business,” had his first election campaign boosted through
the active imperialist intervention of President Barack Obama’s
Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, then the U.S. earthquake relief
representative in Haiti in 2010, oversaw a multi-billion dollar “aid”
program mired in scandal, corruption, mismanagement and racist
arrogance. Of the $billions contributed from nations and relief
organizations around the world, little went to the Haitian people not to
mention to rebuild the virtually leveled Haitian capital. With
approximately 3 million people affected the 7.0 earthquake was the most
devastating natural disaster ever experienced in Haiti, the poorest
country in the Western Hemisphere and among the poorest in the world.
Roughly 250,000 lives were lost. 300,000 were injured and 1.5 million
forced to live for years in makeshift camps devoid of water, electricity
and basic social services.
The Clinton’s pressure on Haitian election officials “persuaded” them to
promote Martelly’s run-off campaign, enabling this mob-linked candidate
to win. The insidious role of the Clintons, which included pressuring
legislators to keep down Haiti’s minimum wage, was revealed by Wikileaks
founder, Julian Assange.
Moïse’s would-be personal dictatorship
Striking back at his critics, Moïse has threatened to impose his own
constitutional amendment, itself an unconstitutional act. His proposal
would essentially give him control of Haiti’s parliament and its
electoral council, while granting him direct control over the army,
which would in turn is slated to be granted immunity from prosecution
over its heinous deeds, past and present.
Will parliament block Moïse? Not a chance since there are only ten
remaining elected officials in the entire country! Moïse has already
dismissed the entire parliament, as well as local mayors. He has
dissolved the Supreme Court and arrested its top justices!
Despite the generalized Haitian outrage at Moïse’s dictatorial
proclamations, the despot has received the outright support of U.S.
imperialism, with the Biden administration continuing Trump’s policies
without missing a beat. A Biden spokesperson made this clear at a Feb. 5
U.S. State Department press conference on Haiti stating, “In accordance
with the OAS position on the need to proceed with the democratic
transfer of executive power, a new elected president should succeed
President Moïse when his term ends on February 7, 2022.”
In addition, the Biden administration has not criticized Moïse’s
“referendum” that would essentially establish Haiti as a one-person
dictatorship. Similarly, U.N. representatives, referring their still
occupying forces, have indicated that they will assist Moïse in
conducting the “referendum.” And the same with the U.S.-compliant
Organization of American States (OAS) that hustles Latin American votes
for Washington including casting critical votes condemning Venezuela,
despite Venezuela’s granting Haiti $4 billion in petroleum credits to
aid its poor. An official Haitian audit revealed that vast amounts of
donated relief funds were pilfered by Moïse and his associates before he
assumed the presidency.
Biden continues Trump Haiti policies
Amy Wilentz, a contributing editor at The Nation magazine and a longtime
Haiti observer, wrote that the director of the UN’s Mission for Justice
Support in Haiti and a U.S. diplomat, Helen Meagher La Lime, is seen by
Haitian protesters as “a symbol of UN support for Moïse.” Wilentz wrote
that Meagher La Lime, “…continued the UN’s almost unstinting support of
Moïse.” She added, “Meanwhile, we have Joe Biden continuing Trump’s
support of Moïse – a real slap in the face to the Haitian Americans who
voted for him with high hopes.” (The Nation, 3/1/21)
After several U.S. Senate and House members urged the State Department
to reject Moïse, a Biden spokesperson stated on Feb. 8, “The situation
remains murky.” A State Department spokesperson claimed on Feb. 12, that
there was a “remarkable lack of popular response to calls for mass
protests in recent weeks.”
Moïse’s mass murder and repression
The day after Moïse was supposed to step down, he awarded his sweatshop
millionaire pal, Andy Apaid, a large plot of land to help produce
Cola-Cola, ceding to Apaid about 8,600 hectares (over 21,000 acres) of
farmland in the departments of Artibonite and Central Plateau. Haiti
Liberte reported on Feb. 17 that “In a country where nearly 40 percent
of the population suffers from food shortages, this large tract of land
would be used to produce stevia as a sweetener for the benefit of the
multinational Coca Cola.” Jacqueline Charles, a Haitian reporter for the
Miami Herald, reported on Jan. 14 some of the grizzly details of Moïse’s
rule: “Between 2018 and 2020, at least 10 massacres have been
perpetrated in Port-au-Prince, the most dangerous city in the country,
resulting in the murder of 343 people, the disappearance of 98 others,
and the gang rape of 32 women. Two hundred and fifty-one children have
been orphaned because of these bloody events.”
In just one incident in 2018 in La Saline, Charles reported, after
conducting extensive interviews, that “government-allied gangs killed at
least 70 people to retaliate against anti-government organizing in the
neighborhood.”
The “Opposition”
The New York City-based Haiti Liberte’s Feb. 3 issue reported, “Two
principal wings of Haiti’s constantly uniting and the fracturing
opposition – the Political Direction of the Democratic Opposition
(DIRPOD) and the Dessalines Children Platform (PPD) of former Sen. Moïse
Jean-Charles – along with a smaller, newer coalition known as the
National Front for Democracy (FND), announced the Terrace Garden Final
Accord, which created the National Commission for the Establishment of
the Transition (CNT). An outlier in recent years, the Lavalas Family
party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, did not sign the
accord.” None of these “opposition” groups signal that they will oppose
any aspect of capitalist rule. None are democratic workers formations;
none are consistently anti-imperialist and certainly not revolutionary.
Despite vague populist statements from the PPD, they are all capitalist
parties.
Haiti still awaits the building of a revolutionary socialist party of
working class fighters. Such a party would join in the day-to-day
struggles of the Haitian masses, but with the understanding that the
misery in Haiti will not end without a revolution transformation of
Haitian society.
Biden’s racist Haitian deportations
In campaign speeches, Biden promised a 100-day moratorium on
deportations, a promise cynically made in Miami’s Little Haiti
community. This promise, as with most of Biden’s campaign pledges,
turned out to be yet another lie as Biden has followed Trump’s use of a
Title 42 federal order that justifies rapid deportations as a health
measure amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
ICE knows exactly what deportees to Haiti face. Buzz Feed reporter Hamed
Aleaziz, (March 3), revealed that Department of Homeland Security
internal documents acknowledge that deported Haitians “may face harm”
due to violent crime and political instability.
In a March 16 dispatch, Steve Forester, Immigration Policy Coordinator
for the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, wrote, “Today’s
flight (the 20th to Haiti since Feb. 1, with four last week expelling
hundreds, including scores of children) is to a nation where
Administration officials acknowledge that deportees ‘may face harm.’”
Forester refers to editorials in The Miami Herald, the New York Times
and the Washington Post calling for stopping the deportations, and
urging that Haiti’s TPS (Temporary Protective Status) be maintained so
that proposed expulsions will be immediately terminated.
Forester asserts, “These Haiti expulsions of virtually anyone who
crosses the (Mexican) border seem to be the very intentional Biden-team
policy, not rogue ICE behavior.”
Racist expulsions
The expulsions are blatantly racist, a continuation of the historic
double standard in U.S. immigration policy toward Haitians, in
particular, in comparison to the carte blanche asylum received over
decades by the mostly white, anti-communist, Cuban so-called “refugees.”
The racist deportation policy continues to this day for Haitians fleeing
the most brutal of U.S.-backed dictatorships.
In a statement released Feb. 9, the organization Haitian Women for
Haitian Refugees, said, “We are outraged by the discriminatory
deportations that continue to be carried out by ICE in the midst of this
global coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic and while there is a serious
political crisis in Haiti, and a surge in kidnapping terrorism by
government-backed gangs. In the same week that President Biden signed an
executive order to launch a task force to reunite families separated by
the Trump administration, this administration is deporting Haitians,
including children and infants, in record numbers.”
On March 8, 2021, the Biden Administration announced that it would
designate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to eligible Venezuelans in
the United States. This could allow over 320,000 Venezuelans to remain
in the United States with legal standing. Once granted, their TPS status
would last for up to 18 months.
Clearly, the Biden administration is using Venezuelans in the U.S. as
part of its regime change propaganda barrage, massive sanctions and
other war moves against Venezuela, all aimed at once again securing that
nation’s vast oil reserves for future U.S. corporate plunder.
U.S. Hands off Haiti!
U.S. Troops Out Now!
No to All Deportations!
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