Haiti: Some 5.5 million people — that’s nearly half of the country’s population — need humanitarian assistance

The Rapidly Deteriorating Security Situation in Haiti and its Impact on Haitian Civilians

From UN Briefing on Haiti

5 March, 2024

Turning to Haiti, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that the escalation of violence in several neighbourhoods in the capital, Port-au-Prince, has led to some [15,000; corrected below] people being forced to flee their homes.  Most of these people had already been displaced previously.

Despite the security constraints, our humanitarian partners on the ground have begun to respond to these new displacements by providing food; hygiene and health kits; mattresses, blankets and sheets; as well as lamps.

The World Food Programme (WFP) and its partners have delivered some 5,500 hot meals to some 3,000 people living in the three new displacement sites, while the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has started distributing emergency shelter material to more than 300 families.

The humanitarian community in Haiti calls on all sides to put an immediate stop to the violence; to allow safe access to the people in need; and respect human rights and humanitarian norms and standards.

As a reminder, some 5.5 million people — that’s nearly half of the country’s population — need humanitarian assistance.

This year’s $674 million Humanitarian appeal for Haiti is just 2.5 per cent funded; that means it had received only $17 million.

Tomorrow afternoon, the Security Council is scheduled to hold a private meeting on the situation in Haiti.  The head of our mission there — Maria Isabel Salvador — is expected to brief on the United Nations’ behalf; that will be done virtually.

I also want to reiterate that the Secretary-General is of course deeply concerned about the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Haiti and its impact on Haitian civilians.

He calls for urgent action, particularly in providing financial support for the Multinational Security Support mission, which is — as a reminder — is not a UN peacekeeping force.  This force will need to address the pressing security requirements of the Haitian people and prevent the country from plunging into further chaos.

He also calls on the Government of Haiti and other political actors to swiftly agree to the necessary steps to advance the political process towards the restoration of democratic institutions through the holding of elections.

Source

Leta Restavek: The suppression of democracy in Haiti

by Courtney Frantz, COHA Research Associate


In a unanimous resolution, the United Nations (UN) Security Council decided on Friday, October 14, 2011 to renew the mandate of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) for one year, reducing its numbers to “pre-earthquake levels.”[3] UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has declared that he “envisions a gradual withdrawal” over the upcoming years.[4] According to journalist Ansel Herz, many Haitians have been protesting MINUSTAH’s presence for at least a year. “There’s a [wide] range of demands,” he asserts, “Some people want MINUSTAH… to simply leave… Others are asking that they transform their mission from one of military so-called peacekeeping into development.”[5]

From an outsider’s perspective, it may seem unclear why many Haitians are indignant about the presence of UN peacekeeping troops in their country during such a tumultuous period. A vast number of news articles have reported that the protests are a response to recent accusations of severe misconduct and neglect by a relatively small number of UN troops. These include the collective rape of an eighteen-year-old man and the appearance of cholera, likely an inadvertent import from Nepalese peacekeepers.[6] These long-running reports tell the story of a supposed humanitarian group troubled by a series of isolated incidents of abuse and neglect. An in-depth overview of MINUSTAH’s history on the island, however, depicts a security force systematically serving foreign interests over those of the Haitians. Local residents are indignant because they see MINUSTAH as a tool of the United States’ self-interest in the region, and because the UN forces repeatedly have suppressed democracy, failed to address authentic humanitarian concerns, and have at times even perpetrated mass violence against Haitian citizens. By suppressing the Fanmi Lavalas party and other social and political movements, MINUSTAH has actively excluded Haiti’s poor majority from political participation, working against the interests of Haitians fighting for progressive economic and social reform. As President Martelly has observed, the recent alleged rape merely “‘put gas on the fire’ of relations between Haitians and the peacekeepers.”[7]

Recent Haitian History: the Aristide Affairs

To appreciate the context in which MINUSTAH’s troubled role is being played out, it is necessary to recount some recent aspects of Haitian history. In 1990, over two-thirds of voters elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide president of Haiti as the candidate of the Lavalas popular movement. Notably, he had the “overwhelming support of the poor.”[8] He worked to improve health care and education, raised the minimum wage, and changed trade policies to favor domestic agricultural production.[9]

After being overthrown by a military junta, Aristide was reelected in 2000 as part of the transformed Fanmi Lavalas party, which took a more leftist stance than its predecessor had. [10] On February 29, 2004, a contingent of US Navy Seals transported the President to exile in Africa, carrying out the calculated diplomacy of the UN, Canada, and France. The US and UN claim that rather than performing a coup d’état, they had rescued Aristide from growing armed conflict between supporters and detractors of the President, which supposedly posed a threat to international safety.[11] Aristide, however, insists that his “rescue” was involuntary.

Leaked diplomatic cables demonstrate that high-level US and UN officials worked aggressively to prevent Aristide’s return to Haiti. President Barack Obama (2009-present) and UN Secretaries General Kofi Annan (1997-2006) and Ban Ki-moon (2007-present) have all urged the government of South Africa to keep Aristide sequestered on that continent in an apparent attempt to quash the Fanmi Lavalas movement. [12] It was in the context of this political vacuum after the alleged coup was staged that MINUSTAH’s predecessor was created.

About MINUSTAH

MINUSTAH was originally formed to “succeed a Multinational Interim Force (MIF) authorized by the UN Security Council in February 2004, after President Bertrand Aristide departed Haiti for exile.”[13] It continues to operate under a mandate “to restore a secure and stable environment, to promote the political process, to strengthen Haiti’s Government institutions and rule-of-law structures, as well as to promote and to protect human rights.”[14] MINUSTAH is in Haiti under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, under which the “[Security] Council may impose measures on states that have obligatory legal force and therefore need not depend on the consent of the states involved. To do this, the Council must determine that the situation constitutes a threat or breach of the peace.”[15] The mission’s presence in the country is thus based on the proposition that since 2004, violence in Haiti has threatened the international community.

MINUSTAH includes both traditional “blue helmet” peacekeeping troops and police officers.[16] These troops are from many different countries, with very few of these forces speaking Haitian Creole, the language of the island’s poor.[17] The UN spent USD 5 billion on the institution even before the earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010, and USD 793,517,100 in the current year alone.[18] MINUSTAH, therefore, is a heavily funded multinational UN peacekeeping force directed to perform security functions, monitor elections, and assist human rights groups in order to prevent Haiti from breaching international peace.

The WikiLeaks Cables

Recent diplomatic cables supplied by WikiLeaks, however, provide some evidence that MINUSTAH has been acting to protect the security interests of the US government and the political ambitions of Brazil. According to a March 2008 US State Department cable, the Brazilian state, which supplies the largest contingent of UN forces, “has stayed the course as leader of MINUSTAH in Haiti despite a lack of domestic support for the PKO [peacekeeping operation]. The MRE [Ministry of External Relations] has remained committed to the initiative because it believes that the operation serves FM [Foreign Minister] Amorim’s obsessive international goal of qualifying Brazil for a seat on the UN Security Council.”[19] Even though the Brazilian population supports a withdrawal of its forces from MINUSTAH, then, the country’s government has not withdrawn its troops due to its ambitions of pleasing the UN and obtaining elusive Security Council membership.

In a 2008 cable, former US Ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson emphasizes that MINUSTAH “is an indispensable tool in realizing core USG [US government] policy interests in Haiti… A premature departure of MINUSTAH would leave the Preval [sic] government or his successor vulnerable to… resurgent populist and anti-market economy forces – reversing gains of the last two years… It is a financial and regional security bargain for the USG.”[20] Thus, Sanderson sees MINUSTAH as protecting US interests by preventing social and political movements from thwarting neoliberal policies and the post-earthquake influx of corporations in the country, which are working on a variety of development schemes on the island.

A 2006 cable also relates that policymakers from both the UN and the US held a meeting concerning how the “Aristide [m]ovement [m]ust [b]e [s]topped.”[21] Edmond Mulet, Head of Mission of MINUSTAH at the time, “urged US [sic] legal action against [forcibly exiled president] Aristide to prevent [him] from gaining more traction with the Haitian population and returning to Haiti.”[22] These cables demonstrate that the US government sees the poor pro-Fanmi Lavalas majority as “resurgent populist and anti-market economy forces” that “must be stopped,” and is prepared to use MINUSTAH to suppress their democratic participation.[23] Haiti’s poor majority has been actively involved in politics since the advent of the Fanmi Lavalas party, which has strenuously worked against the neoliberal policies of the time to achieve economic and social reforms.[24] Many poor Haitians are now engaging in so-called “resurgent populist and anti-market economy” politics via peaceful protest against the presence of MINUSTAH and in support of reforms such as an increase in the minimum wage.[25]

In the course of acting in the interests of the US by thwarting these popular “forces,” MINUSTAH has actively suppressed democracy. As Mark Schuller, an anthropologist specializing in the impact of international development aid, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and MINUSTAH on Haitian social and political life put it, MINUSTAH comprises the enforcers… Many say that they are responsible for keeping Haiti a ‘leta restavek’ – a child servant state, owned by the international community. To many Haitian commentators, the Preval [sic] government willingly gave up control [to MINUSTAH and other international bodies] in exchange for its continued survival. The protesters MINUSTAH suppressed could have destabilized Preval [sic][26] and his small base of support. The mission has blocked both electoral democracy and popular protest in order to prevent these so-called “populist and anti-market economy forces” from gaining political power.

Party-Banning, Eleksyon Zombi,[27] and Other Examples of Electoral Fraud

One of MINUSTAH’s most important mandates was to carry out the 2010 presidential and general elections “through the provision of technical, logistical, and administrative assistance as well as providing continued security.”[28] There were, however, several major problems with the elections, which were funded by both the US and the UN[29] Most notably, over twelve parties were banned, including Fanmi Lavalas, Haiti’s most popular party and one supported largely by the poor.[30]

The notoriously venal Haitian Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) originally banned Fanmi Lavalas in February 2009, claiming it could not “verify Aristide’s signature, sent while he was still in forced exile in South Africa, as head of the party.”[31] A leaked US Embassy cable dating back to 2009 revealed the US government’s opinion that the CEP had thus “emasculated the opposition,” “almost certainly in conjunction with President Preval [sic].”[32] Completely revoking the majority party’s right to compete in an election on such a technicality was indeed “emasculating,” removing all power held by the largely poor opposition to René Préval’s government (1996-2001 and 2006-2011). Despite US Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth H. Merten’s fear that the party would later appear to be “a martyr and Haitians [would]… believe (correctly) that Preval [sic] is manipulating the election,” US government officials strongly encouraged the continuation of the fraudulent election.[33] The Fanmi Lavalas party was once again banned in the 2010 elections. MINUSTAH was largely instrumental in the execution of the elections through logistical and security support, as specified in its mandate. The UN Mission thus worked against the political participation of the poor majority by trying to support these elections.

Other serious electoral problems abounded: long lines, incomplete voter registries, fraud, and violence, along with the general lack of an “infrastructure for holding a fair and representative vote.”[34] A practice called eleksyon zombi in Haitian Creole also persisted, in which surviving citizens’ names were absent from the registries, while those of neighbors who died in the 2010 earthquake were used to file fraudulent ballots.[35] Perhaps partially due to the ban on the Lavalas party, the voter turnout for the election, which was twenty-three percent, was the lowest in the Western hemisphere for over sixty years.[36] Because of this fraud and lack of infrastructure, the majority of candidates called for the annulment of the election. Soon after, Edmond Mulet, Head of Mission at MINUSTAH during the election, personally called two candidates telling them to withdraw these requests because they were in the lead.[37] They followed his advice, knowing that Mulet, as head of the body running the elections, would know the results. Mulet would see to it that the election results were exactly as the authorities wanted them; several months later, President Michel Martelly won the run-off election. Both Mulet’s dispensing of insider tips and the logistical support of the rank-and-file peacekeepers helped to push the fraudulent elections through as anticipated. As the body charged with logistical and security-related support for the election, the Mission helped to systematically deny electoral democracy to the people of Haiti, forcing the country to elect a pro-U.S/UN candidate and playing a major role in keeping the country as a leta restavek.

Suppressing Protest

In addition to the suppression of electoral democracy, well-known journalists and academics have denounced MINUSTAH for a number of incidents of violent repression of peaceful demonstrations. According to anthropologist Mark Schuller, they clamp down on citizen mobilization, most egregiously in 2009 during the campaign to increase Haiti’s minimum wage. They shot tear gas numerous times, preventing people from protesting and crippling the state university (especially the human sciences school). They also shot at the funeral for Aristide supporter Father [Gérard] Jean-Juste.[38]

This behavior is part of a clear pattern of suppressing protest among Haitians and preventing political organization, especially among pro-Aristide activists. During another peaceful demonstration against MINUSTAH’s renewed mandate, MINUSTAH peacekeepers “threatened [protesters] at gunpoint… Shots were fired, and a UN vehicle drove into the crowd and pushed several protesters and an international journalist into a ditch.”[39] At another protest, “MINUSTAH troops with riot shields arrived to reinforce the police, firing warning shots and dispersing the protesters.”[40] This suppression of social movements complements MINUSTAH’s suppression of electoral democracy. The same cross-section of poor Haitians who form the majority of the Fanmi Lavalas party, and of the country as a whole, had organized in support of the removal of MINUSTAH, supported Father Jean-Juste, and fought for an increase the minimum wage. These are the “populist and anti-market forces” about which the US State Department had occasion to speak.

Haitian Social Movements Continue Their Fight

Contrary to its mandate to protect the human rights of the Haitian people and promote democracy, MINUSTAH has suppressed democracy both by supporting fraudulent elections and by repressing peaceful protests. In each of these instances, the mission has taken on the role of “enforcers,” holding the Haitian people in check and helping to keep Haiti as a leta restavek. As analyst Beverly Bell asserts, however, “the country’s highly organized grassroots movement has never given up the battle its enslaved ancestors began…The mobilizations, protests, and advocacy have brought down dictators…and kept the population from ever fitting quietly into anyone else’s plans for them.”[41] Haitians, especially the poor majority, have been fighting for economic and social democracy and for the autonomy to rebuild their nation. To achieve these goals would require unseating both MINUSTAH and the interests of the US, as the WikiLeaks cables demonstrate. Haitians are protesting in large part because of this systematic suppression of their nation’s right to self-determination. The “fire” to which President Martelly refers had been raging years before the recent allegations of rape and other abuses, and it will not be doused until Haitians find justice in their own country and not just in their distant memory.

References for this article can be found here.

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and information organization. It has been described on the Senate floor as being "one of the nation's most respected bodies of scholars and policy makers." For more information, visit www.coha.org or email coha@coha.org

October 20, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Is Haiti in better shape than a generation ago with the advent of democracy?

Haiti's twenty-five-year flirtation with democracy: A failed experience!
By Jean H Charles


I remember where I was, twenty five years ago, on February 7, 1986. I was leading, along with community leader Wilson Desir, a parade in Brooklyn, New York, celebrating the departure of the dictatorship that had gripped Haiti for thirty five years under Duvalier pere and fils governance.

In the jubilation that engulfed the Haitian community, joy and good wishes were shared by the whole New York citizenry with the Haitian people.

A nurse from the Philippines wanted to see Marcos and his Jezebel wife Imelda thrown out of her country.

“The people power” born in Haiti would spread like wildfire in the Philippines to chase Marcos out of power in September 1986.

An old man from Poland, tears in his eyes, dreamed with me of a motherland without the militarism under Russian leadership. Lech Walesa would come some years later (1989) to deliver Poland from the grip of the Russian army.

As if on cue, twenty-five years later, another wave of people power, this time born in Tunisia, is shaking the entire Arab world. It is demanding the departure of Hosni Mubarak, who ruled Egypt with an iron hand during the last thirty years. He was grooming his son to become the next chief of state, as the people say enough is enough!

Jordan, Syria, Yemen all have their political and social convulsions demanding the advent of a nation that shall become hospitable to all. In this age when the internet, Twitter, texting and other means of fast communication are becoming an effective tool of militancy, the era of dictatorship is fading away at great speed.

The Haitian Constitution promulgated one year after the departure of Jean Claude Duvalier, as well as the successive elections, did not safeguard the nation against the culture of illiberal governance.

Twenty-five year later, to the question whether Haiti is in better shape than a generation ago with the advent of democracy, the answer is a clear and unequivocal no.

There are improvements in the area of freedom of expression, yet there is a deep deceleration in the area of environmental, food, personal, and public health security in spite of massive foreign intervention.

The western style of democracy, with recurrent elections, has been in Haiti a bad vehicle for dispatching essential services and efficient institutions. The concept of nation-building has not been in the lexicon of governmental praxis.

Haiti is still the land of a wide schism between the vast majority (87%) of the population living in a fragile environment, in extreme poverty, without education and formation, versus a minority (13%) highly sophisticated in full control of the political, financial and social level of the society.

A brief vignette of the governments after the departure of Jean Claude Duvalier reveals a pattern of corruption, foreign interference with bad faith, inadequate leadership, and complete indifference to the fate of the population.

I rushed to Haiti after February 7, 1986, to help the military government establish a Haiti hospitable to all. In spite of my personal relationship with the military leader, I was not received as a friend because I came to reconcile Henry Namphy (the military leader) with Gerard Gourgue (the civilian leader) for the sake of the nation, instead of getting into the gossip of the day. Namphy led by a gang of venal military officers would be chased out of office a year later after the burning of a church packed with worshippers.

The transitional government of Ertha Trouillot introduced in Haiti the complete stronghold of the international community into the Haitian res publica, leading to the UN occupation, the advent of the mobster style government of Jean Bertrand Aristide, followed by his nemesis Rene Preval, who wears a velvet glove while presiding over a nation sliding at great speed into an abyss without end.

In contrast to Haiti over the past twenty-five years, the experience of Singapore, Malaysia, China, Vietnam and even next door Dominican Republic, based on the Renan doctrine, with no foreign intervention in following their own footprint has achieved within a generation the building of a nation with a growing middle class, delivering good services with essential infrastructure.

Haiti, at the dawn of a new generation in its experience of democracy, is engulfed profusely with a foreign intervention that seems to sustain the old culture of squalor for the majority and enlightenment for the minority.

Edmond Mulet, the chief UN resident with its machine of deterrence (MINUSTHA), has sided with Rene Preval, the decried president, to sustain a legislature bent on keeping Haiti in a failed democratic mode, postponing the advent of the emergence of true democracy in the nation.

The timing of the transition from one regime to another, the link that could break the chain of injustice, is once again hijacked by a foreign hand with a strong grip, this time with international glove.

At age 25, the Haitian democracy must take a new turn. It cannot be continued nor replicated beyond Haiti’s borders. The complete absence of governmental leadership, supplemented by the so called force of stabilization, has been a recipe for disaster.

Haiti democracy will grow in age gracefully when it takes charge of building its own army (replacing the MINUSTHA) that will protect its environment and its people; when it will root its population in their localities with ethical institutions and adequate infrastructure and when, last but not least, she will take the national determination to leave no one behind!

This is the formula for a successful democracy. So far, the western democracies, the international institutions have prevented these steps from taking root in the underdeveloped countries like Haiti, while they are the staple policy in Europe and in the United States.

The exceptional models of Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam that rely on their own culture, the strength of their people united as one to defend and to enhance the motherland, while treating each citizen as a potential jewel that should be polished for the glory of the nation will soon become the international canvas copied all over the world!

Thomas Friedman, in a recent op-ed in the New York Times, put it best: “Tharir Square (the site of the protest in Cairo Egypt) will be for now on the wave of the future.” The generation in waiting is fighting for a better standard of living, not for a cause but for Egypt or Haiti, starting with each one of them.

Once again, as two hundred years ago, the failure of the international institutions in the last twenty-five years to incubate on their watch, true democracy in Haiti is a lesson for all nations to learn from.

Note:
A test of the maturity of the Haitian democratic process: In the tradition of Justice John Marshall, the issue of removing or retaining the Haitian president, who remains in power after its mandate can and should be solved not by street demonstrations or a dicta by the UN resident Edmond Mulet but by the judiciary, the Haitian Supreme Court (Cour de Cassation) that will decide whether Rene Preval can remain into power beyond February 7.

February 12, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Haiti needs a democratic revolution not an election!

By Jean H Charles:


“After Rwanda and Yugoslavia, Haiti seems to be the next theater of a major mischief by some international institutions.”

I must state at the outset that I am not advocating nor promoting neither a violent nor an armed revolution. I am talking about a democratic revolution in the minds and the spirit of the people, a revamping of the institutions and a new covenant of the government to usher in a true process of democracy. Once this revolution is on the way, Haiti can then proceed with a free and fair election.

The country needs a hiatus of three to five years of reconstruction, free of politicking, to heal the nation and set the country on the road of reconciliation and nation building. The present regime can be compared to a piece of wood filled with termites in a piece of furniture. To repair the furniture one needs to cut and throw away the damaged wood before affixing a new piece. Otherwise the damage part will eventually infect the entire furniture, including the new piece.

It was Alexis de Tocqueville who coined the concept of democratic revolution, while speaking of the birth of the United States. Akin to South Africa before Mandela, Haiti must transform itself from a de facto apartheid country to a state where the sense of appurtenance is the rule. It needs now a democratic revolution not an election.

I have this week visited a rural community named Mazere on the road from Grand River to Bahon. I have in mind these pictures that depict the extent of the misery, the magnitude of the squalid conditions as well as the inequality that 85% of the population of Haiti is forced to live under.

The public school, the only state presence of the area is located across the river. There is no bridge for easy access. I asked the kids how they get to school, one of the mothers interjected to let me know they carry the younger ones across the river, which sometimes destroys everything in its way, including an irrigation dam recently built.

Inquiring further with the adults, I asked them what their most pressing needs are. They told me that the government used to protect the land with rock formation on the hills to prevent avalanches during the rainy season. This operation has not been done for the past decades. We have now huge amount of water sitting for months in the fields destroying our produce.

It has been decades that the Haitian government has been a predatory entity preying on its people instead of providing services and support to help its citizens to enjoy the pursuit of happiness.

As such the people of Haiti educated or otherwise are waiting for the Blanc (the white man) to bring about deliverance. On the political scene, the question is not what is the agenda of the candidates, it is rather who has the blessing of Barack Obama for the presidency of Haiti? The sense of civics patriotism and leadership has been dimished by the last sixty years of corrupt governance.

The entire population is a crowd in transit. The rural world with no services from the government is in transit towards the small cities. The small towns have become ghost entities with the citizens in transit towards the larger cities, their citizens are in transit towards the capital and there the dream is to find an American visa or take a leaky boat towards Florida or the Bahamas.

Building up the sense of nation has not been a governmental priority or a United Nations foreign intervention initiative. MINUSTHA (the UN force) is substituting itself as the Haitian army without assuming the defense of the country. Inequality and injustice is queen, extorting the notion of appurtenance from and for each other. The sense of noblesse oblige of the past that kept the poor ones afloat has been substituted by the doctrine of “rock in the water against rock in the sun” or class warfare by Aristide. The Preval regime has introduced the concept of “swim to the shores at your own risk” leaving everyone to fend for themselves... It has left no lifeline of security for the majority of the population which is going into a free fall abyss.

In an article this week in the Miami Herald, Jacqueline Charles depicted the fetid situation where the Haitian refugees are living under in the Corail camp. “What was supposed to be the model for a new Haiti looks like the old one, a menacing slum.” Jean Christophe Adrian the United Nations Human Settlements Program added “the international community has a tremendous responsibility for creating this monster.”

Haiti, after Rwanda and Yugoslavia, could be the scene of a major catastrophe orchestrated by a non sensitive government with the connivance of major international institutions. I was in Washington last June at the OAS mansion at a conference on Haiti organized by CARICOM. In a conversation with Mr Colin Granderson, the Haiti resident, I shared my intention of running in the next election. His answer: how much money do you have, instead of what is your vision for Haiti? Sounds like “how many regiments do you have at your disposal?”

The gang of three -- the UN, the OAS and CARICOM -- in its dealing with Haiti is using according to Emil Vlajky in the wretched of the modernity, the absolute rationality which is anti-human. The human rationality with its sense of ethics is not in favor. The poor, the wretched, the refugees of the catastrophe will continue to live with unkept promises. While the entire country is decrying the upcoming election as a masquerade with the president holding all the marbles, the General Secretary of OAS characterize the process as “credible”. The Haiti of the Duvalier’s, the Aristide’s and the Preval’s culture is a gangrene that must be extirpated to create a modern nation sensitive to the needs of its people.

Any policy short of this radical intervention is unfriendly to the gallant people of Haiti that deserve a break from a life of abject misery.

September 20, 2010

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Port au Prince, Haiti: Nou Bouke! We are exhausted!

By Jean H Charles:


This graffiti is now covering most of the remaining walls of Port au Prince, Haiti. During election time, candidates commandeered slogans and graffiti on the walls for a price. This slogan Nou Bouke (pronounced key) has nothing to do with politics; it is the cry of exasperation of a people that have endured misery, deception, earthquake, hurricane and ill governance constantly for the past sixty years!

I received last week a challenge from a brother from Jamaica now living in the Turks and Caicos asking me to clarify or expand on the issue of governance and democracy in Haiti, the relevance of the demise from Haiti and the forced exile to South Africa of Jean Bertrand Aristide and last but not least the issue of redemption to Haiti from France. I welcome the challenge hoping neither of us will be a winner but the larger community will benefit in knowledge and understanding from the exchange.

On the issue of redemption for past slavery, one will be surprised to find out I have single-handed initiated the process for putting on the table the issue of redemption for Haiti. It all started during a cursory visit to a bookstore in downtown Port au Prince. I came upon an issue of Paris Match where I read that a legislator from Martinique has succeeded in having the French Parliament pass a resolution condemning slavery as an act of cruel and inhuman treatment inflicted by France upon million of slaves. My legal mind told me that France has opened a hole that will make it liable and vulnerable to demand for compensation from former colonies in general and from Haiti in particular.

In a follow up conversation with my father, a retired chief judge of Haiti Civil Court and past Dean of a law school, I revived the discussion concerning the pros and cons of such an approach. On a strict construction of the law, the doctrine of clean hands and the doctrine of viability of an action in criminal matters are in full force. France cannot continue to benefit from the billion of dollars in retribution paid by Haiti while it has enjoyed the forced labor and the sweat of generations of slaves enriching named French citizens individually and the nation as whole for several centuries. Haiti has conquered its freedom on its own, paying a price in gold to have that freedom recognized by France is unconscionable morally and it is illegal now, considering the resolution passed by the French Parliament. There was a guest in my home at that conversation; he was a personal advisor of Jean Bertrand Aristide. He brought the issue to the President, the rest was history.

President Aristide could have called upon the best legal minds of the world, including those from France to make the legal case for Haiti for retribution in light of this new development. He chose instead to pursue a political and demagogic road poisoning for ever the legal advantage. At the other end of the spectrum France and Belgium owe the rest of their former colonies an obligation to help extract the virus of distrust, dissent and internal fratricide injected into the ethos and the culture of most of the former French and Belgium colonies. From Congo to Madagascar, from Haiti to Gabon and from Senegal to Tunisia, the story is the same with some variances, France meddling and the sequels of French culture is at the heart of the poor governance, the internal fighting and the robbing of the natural resources depriving the citizens of enjoying in peace their God given national endowment.

Should President Aristide have been deposed from power and sent to exile? This debate will continue for generations yet the truth of the matter is Aristide was deposed by a popular movement of the people of Haiti led by students who found his policies of dividing the already disjointed Haitian family too much to endure. As usual, France and the United States have come at the end to claim the paternity of the movement and lead the transition to their own advantage. Sending Aristide to exile was a small price to pay to bring about solace to million of Haitian families.

Under the Duvalier regime, the repression was codified and led by uniformed tonton macoutes, under Arisitide, the repression, the kidnapping and the killings were done by thugs, hired renegade paid by the government with not even a uniform to claim the appearance of a state enterprise. His complete disregard for law and order was putting the nation at its core into the path of disintegration. This axiom enshrined in the Preamble of the, Constitution of the United States is of value to the people of Haiti as well as the people of the world:

“All men are created equal; they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute a new government. It is the duty of the people to rise and to defend themselves against that tyrant.”

We often tend to follow the politics that the mice are smaller than the rats, as such we can live with the mice. Duvalier’s son was better than Duvalier therefore we can live with him. Arisitide was better than Duvalier fils therefore he is acceptable. Preval is better than Aristide, we should give him a chance.

The principle of democracy is a simple one. I have often called upon Ernest Renan as my preferred prophet for spreading the message. You shall defend your frontiers and your territory with all your might! You shall instill into the souls of your citizen the love and the admiration of the founding fathers! You shall take all the necessary measures to insure that no one is left behind!

In Haiti today the people are crying nou Bouke! nou Bouke! We have enough of this government that is interested in perpetuating itself while playing a scant view of the welfare of its people. Confirmed reports have informed me that before the earthquake some 900 projects vetted by Haiti’s own service of business promotion that would bring jobs for the Haitian people have been blocked by the Haitian government because graft has not been tendered for a final approval. After the earthquake the only reconstruction firms that can obtain a permit to start demolition projects are those introduced by or retained with the first Lady of Haiti.

It might be time for Haiti and for the friends of Haiti to plan regime change in Haiti, if the country should enjoy free and fair elections leading to democracy. The Haitian people did have their Friday of Crucifixion for too long it is time now for them to have their Easter Sunday. It is also the quickest way to bring about a minimum of coordination to the avalanche of help brought about by the international community to the gallant people of Haiti averting as such a second disaster.

It was a brother from Jamaica who sparked the Haitian revolution changing the world for ever and for the better! His name was Bookman. Would you, my dear brother from Jamaica, lend a hand again?

March 20, 2010

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