Meet the 2010 Haitian Presidential Candidates

Open Letter to Valerie G: A Cry For Help

 

March 31, 2010

Dear Valerie,

It’s been a while. I haven’t seen you since since June 1974 in front of Hibbard Hall. Z. Chin, T. Cook, you and I were saying goodbye. I saw you in a recent alumni magazine and thought, I know that woman..

I’m living in Haiti. I’ve been here since 1985. Things are bad down here. If they weren’t this bad I would never be disrupting you from your busy schedule. The UN Donor Conference today is a sham. Please find a way to get the imput of everyday Haitians in the decision making process. I understand that Bill Clinton has been given this piece of the Foreign Policy Pie but unfortunately folks “trying to help” Haiti are being played by folks who have brought Haiti to the status of “Poorest Nation in the Western Hemisphere”. There has to be some fundamental change here.

I originally came to Haiti to play music and to research Rhythms. My mother, if you may recall is Haitian. As I said, I have been living here since 1985 and I’ve been through countless COUP’s, massacres, two US invasions, Two UN occupying forces, countless devastating hurricanes and now one indescribable killer EarthQuake. The two elections held here last year were fraudulent and yet no International Organization, including the UN, spoke out. I expressed those views to the UN Secretary General’s Spokesperson and at a meeting at the Supreme Court in Washington DC last year. I’ve visited Washington DC on numerous occasions in reference to Haiti. I’ld rather just play music and chill at my small but comfortable hotel but sometimes INJUSTICE rears it’s ugly head and I feel i have to make a stand and take some time from the pleasures I find in life.

My musicians are sleeping in tent cities. My hotel staff are mostly living in tents. I talk to the journalists, I talk to the Haitian People, I talk FOR the Haitian People, I talk to embassy folks, I talk to local grassroots organizers and I talk to diplomats. SOMETHING IS DEFINITELY WRONG DOWN HERE and I want things to get aired out before major decisions are made after this Donors Conference. I’m calling out to you. I hope you understand. Forgive me for anything I may have said or done..

This is a desperate Cry For Help..
Yours truly,
Richard

Richard Morse
Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Source:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-morse/open-letter-to-valerie-g_b_519843.html

Haitians will defend their sovereignty , Ronald Charles

Haitians will defend their sovereignty

President Thabo Mbeki on Haiti

Thabo Mbeki on Haiti  (Time Lives)

“The Big Read: It was difficult to hold back the tears as a deluge of news told of the catastrophe visited on the people of Haiti by the earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince on January 12. 

ON REFLECTION: Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Former president Thabo Mbeki says the people of Haiti are an inspiring example of human resilience and dedication to the cause of freedom, and the rest of the world must do whatever it takes to help them overcome this disaster.

” A bond of friendship has developed between us and the poor of Haiti ” Jacob Zuma

After the tragedies in Asia resulting from the Indonesia tsunami in 2004 and from Hurricane Katrina in the US city of New Orleans in 2005, it was possible to imagine that we could respond to future natural calamities with a certain degree of stoicism.

But when the full picture began to emerge about the destruction in Haiti, this proved to be little more than a delusion born of the wish to limit the pain all of us feel when merciless nature strikes suddenly, brutally claiming the lives of many helpless fellow human beings.

It was not necessary for us to see the human limbs protruding from under the rubble or to see lifeless bodies lying in the streets to know the terrible cost the earthquake had imposed on thousands of Haitians.

The heaps of bricks and mortar that had been houses necessarily invoked in the mind’s eye terrifying images of crushed bodies, of people still alive under the walls that had collapsed, but condemned to die slowly because help would not reach them on time, of human blood flowing into the canyons that had opened when the earth itself became an enemy of the Haitian humanity.

Those images in the mind, even without confirmation by the graphic television footage, were enough to produce the tears that are impossible to hold back.

But the tears also came because this tragedy engulfed this particular country – Haiti!

The fact of our birth into the South Africa that was, placed Haiti in a special place in our hearts and minds. This is because it has the indestructible distinction that 206 years ago, in 1804, it emerged as the very First Black Republic in the world.

More than the mere fact of this was the history of the extraordinary uprising which led to this outcome, which could not but serve as an unequalled inspiration to those engaged in struggle to achieve their own liberation.

During a sustained military and political struggle, which ended with the birth of their Republic, the African slaves of Haiti, with many free mulattos as their allies, defeated the armies of the most powerful European powers of the day – Spain, Great Britain and France.

From this titanic struggle emerged true heroes of all oppressed peoples, including Toussaint L’Ouverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Henri Christophe and Alexander Pétion, who together out-smarted some of the best Generals that Europe could produce.

When, in 1803, their armies defeated the French forces, which were first led by Napoleon’s brother-in-law, General Leclerc, they saved the United States of America from occupation by France.

Because the African slaves of Haiti annihilated the French army, this army could not proceed to occupy the US territory known as Louisiana, as ordered by Napoleon. Ultimately France had to sell this territory to the US, which is celebrated in the US as the Louisiana Purchase.

Free Haiti also provided the outstanding Latin American liberator, Simon Bolivar, with the war materials he needed to defeat the Spanish forces, secure independence for Venezuela and therefore guarantee the liberation of Latin America from Spanish occupation.

The Haitian Revolution was organically linked to the American and French Revolutions and should have taken its place alongside these in the construction of the new world order of the day. Sadly, this was not to be.

One important reason for this was explained by the US newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, in its January 2 2004 edition, in an article by José de Côrdoba headed “Impoverished Haiti pins hopes for future on a very old debt”.

The article said, “More than two decades after rebellious former slaves vanquished troops from Napoleon’s army here (in Haiti) in 1803, France’s King Charles X made the fledgling republic of Haiti an offer it couldn’t refuse.

“In 1825, as the king’s warships cruised just over the horizon from the Haitian capital, a French emissary demanded 150 million gold francs in exchange for recognising the new republic. The implicit alternative was invasion and re-enslavement.

“It was a huge sum, about five times Haiti’s annual export revenue. Haiti’s then-president reluctantly agreed, taking on a crushing debt.

“Today, as Haiti celebrates the 200th anniversary of its independence amid growing political unrest and a collapsing economy, one of its few glimmers of hope is that long-ago deal.

“Haiti wants its money back – with interest.

“Aided by US and French lawyers, the Haitian government is preparing a legal brief demanding nearly $22-billion in ‘restitution’ for what it regards as an act of gunboat diplomacy.”

After its defeat, France refused to recognise the Republic of Haiti. Frightened by the example it had set, the slave-owning US imposed economic sanctions against the young Republic.

France demanded that the Republic of Haiti must pay compensation for the losses sustained by French property-owners in what had been its wealthiest colony. The most valuable property for which the French claimed compensation was the slaves themselves!

The France of Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité sent a new expeditionary force to enforce its demand that the liberated slaves had to pay money to guarantee their freedom.

Haiti felt that it had no choice but to pay the compensation demanded by France. Remarkably, it took Haiti 122 years to settle this debt, with the final payment being made in 1947 to the US, after the latter had bought this debt from the French!

To indicate how heavy the burden of this debt was, in 1900 fully 80% of Haiti’s national budget had to be set aside to service the debt imposed on the country by France in 1825, which continued to expand because of the interest it carried.

What the poor of Haiti paid during 122 years, expressed in 2004 US dollars, was conservatively estimated to amount to $22-billion! In 2004, a French government commission established to assess Haiti’s demand for restitution said this demand was “not pertinent in both legal and historical terms”.

It is probably true that Haiti today is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It is, however, also true that as their forebears did, the people of Haiti continue to stand out today as an inspiring example of human resilience and dedication to the cause of freedom.

The urgent task all humanity faces today is to come to the aid of the Haitians, to confront and overcome the consequences of the deadly earthquake which has claimed the lives of thousands and wiped out the little wealth they had accumulated in the protracted struggle of many centuries merely to survive.

It was indeed truly inspiring to hear the international media reports about the efforts of fellow South Africans, working side by side with other foreign teams, to rescue Haitians from beneath the mounds of rubble in Port-au-Prince. It is this that makes it possible for one to say – I am proudly South African, and proudly human!

The time will come when other truths will have to be told about Haiti, to allow this country once again to set an example, this time to speak about what should be done and not done if, indeed, we are true to the humanist view that umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye – I am because you are!

When those truths are told, we will have the possibility to salute the people of South Africa that, during the year that Haiti celebrated its Liberation Bicentenary, they had the courage to welcome into their midst a distinguished Haitian family – the family of Jean Bertrand and Mildred Aristide and their two daughters.

Then we will tell of the bond of friendship that has developed between us and the poor of Haiti, including those who have resided in Cité Soleil, the biggest slum in Port-au-Prince, to which has been added the enormous destruction imposed by the January 12 earthquake.

We will also have the possibility fully to absorb the story told in Peter Hallward’s book, Damming the Flood, about what happened in 2004, as Haiti celebrated its Bicentenary and as it saw its elected president forcibly transported into exile in Africa, the ancestral home of the 1804 liberators of Haiti.

For now, we must convey our sympathy, condolences and solidarity to the Haitians who live among us, as well as the rest of the sister people of Haiti.

To give meaning to our words, we must join the rest of the world to do everything that has to be done to help ensure that tomorrow we shed tears of joy, as we see the people of Haiti realise the dreams which inspired the African slaves of Haiti to do what they did over two centuries ago, which affirmed the dignity of all Africans and all human beings, regardless of race, colour, gender or belief.”

Haitians Disappointed With Preval, Long For Aristide

This conversation was featured on NPR news. Click on the link below to listen.

Haitians Disappointed With Preval, Long For Aristide

Haiti, Religion, and Culture

 

Elizabeth McAlister, Associate Professor in African American Studies and  American Studiesf at  Wesleyan University has recently written a number of articles and given several public  interviews on the subjects of Haitian culture, politics, and religion . These will hopefully help interested American public and the world at large  to be educated about the Haitian culture and experience.

“Interview on Vodou in Haiti,”  New York Times Interactive
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/haitivoices.html

“Understanding the Haiti Earthquake” Interfaith Voices Public Radio Int’l
http://interfaithradio.org/node/1218

“Devil’s Logic:  Behind Pat Roberton’s Haitian Blame Game” on Forbes.com
http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/14/haiti-earthquake-pat-robertson-opinions-contributors-elizabeth-mcalister.html

“Voodoo View of the Quake” on Newsweek/Washington Post On Faith
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/01/voodoos_view_of_the_quake_in_haiti.html

“Voodoo Brings Solace to Grieving Haitians,” NPR All Things Considered
http://ww.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122770590

“Why Does Haiti Suffer So Much?”  on CNN.com
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/18/mcalister.haiti.faith/

“Haiti’s Musical Traditions, Past and Present” on The Takeaway/WNYC Radio
http://mediasearch.wnyc.org/m/28423534/haiti-s-musical-traditions-past-and-present.htm

“Keith and Gail talk with Elizabeth McAlister about Haiti” on Fox Radio
http://www.600kcol.com/podcast/keith_and_gail.xml

“Cover Story:  Resurrection of the Dead” New Yorker online
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2010/01/cover-story-frantz-zephirin.html

Haiti Needs Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Re: Aristide and Haiti

From:	Abdul Alkalimat <mcworter@ILLINOIS.EDU> Add to Contacts
To:	H-AFRO-AM@H-NET.MSU.EDU

---

// From: MOLEFI K. ASANTE <masante@temple.edu>

Haiti Needs Jean-Bertrand Aristide

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is the one contemporary Haitian
who brings the heroic legacies of L’Ouverture, Dessalines, Christophe, and Petion, the four horsemen of Haitian political history, to the current crisis. Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest and Haiti’s first democratically elected leader was President of Haiti in l991, and was overthrown by a military coup in September l991. However, he was once again President from l994 to l996, and President from 2001 to 2004. In February 2004, after he disbanded the army because of corruption and its attacks on civilians, a criminal band of less than one hundred men terrorized the nation and Aristide was physically removed from the palace, supposedly for his safety. The American government was complicit in this action and flew the President to Africa. The democratically elected President of Haiti has been forced to live in exile in South Africa.

Yet Haiti has always been on his mind. He is a child of the soil,
the most distinguished image of a fighting Haiti, and at this time of
natural disaster, political instability, and governmental weakness, however much Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to shore up President Rene Preval, the country needs its most potent political figure. Aristide has always been ready to inspire and rally his nation; this time is no different. At this moment when one considers the grim realities of death, destruction, and the enormous need for reconstruction, Aristide, the healer, teacher, philosopher, orator, leader, and the first truly democratically elected president of Haiti should be called upon by the international community. I believe that he is the only Haitian who can command both national and international respect at this time. President  Rene Preval, by all accounts, is a good public servant, but he has not been able to grasp the immensity of the situation in Haiti. Furthermore, he has been unable to convey a vision for the future. This has to be done by Haitians.

President Clinton, Secretary Clinton, and General Colin Powell
are not Haitians, however grand their objectives; they do not have the
credibility and the ability to rally Haitians like Jean-Bertrand Aristide.  They know it, the Haitians know it, and the world knows it. Before President Aristide was exiled to South Africa from his own nation, he had received more votes than any president in Haiti’s history, and just a gang of thugs supported by the enemies of a progressive Haiti were allowed to threaten the peaceful democracy. In spite of the apocalyptic scope of the earthquake, this is an opportune time for the country to make social, medical, economic, and political progress.

However, we are confronted with what appears to be a leadership
vacuum. Therefore, I call for the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. I am
asking that the UN Head, Ban Ki Moon and the US President, Barack Obama
guarantee the safe and secure return of President Aristide. I believe that President Rene Preval will grow in stature if he agrees to this return. In fact, Preval was once the second in command to Aristide. Perhaps nature has given the politicians what they could not have envisioned themselves, that is, a way to resolve the constitutional issue of two elected presidents. Why can’t President Preval now form a joint presidency as Sekou Toure and Kwame Nkrumah formed in Guinea? This is an African solution to the political crisis and to the moral and psychological issues facing the country.  President Aristide, one of the most generous, intelligent, and consistent leaders in Haiti’s history will certainly use his powers to rally the Haitian people once again to resilience and victory. I know President Aristide and I know that he is in pain about the conditions in Haiti. Let the international community call for his return to help minister to and rally his people.

Clinton vows to help Haitians chart destiny

Thursday, June 18, 2009 5:19 AM

From:

“Bob Corbett” <corbetre@webster.edu>

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From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Tue, Jun. 16, 2009
Clinton vows to help Haitians chart destiny
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
jcharles@MiamiHerald.com

Haiti’s newest envoy made his first pitch on behalf of the impoverished Carribbean nation Monday, outlining an ambitious list of priorities he plans to tackle on behalf of the United Nations.

”I’ll do my best. It’s a formidable task,” former President Bill Clinton said at a U.N. news conference in New York alongside U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Haitian Foreign Minister Alrich Nicolas. “This is the best chance that Haitians have ever had.”

Clinton did not say when he will make his first visit to Haiti as U.N. special envoy but his focus comes as Haitian President René Préval tries to avert yet another political crisis.

A decision last month by Haiti’s parliament to raise the country’s minimum wage from $1.70 to $4.90 a day has triggered weeks of protests by a group that characterizes itself as state university students.

Last week, as Préval attempted to negotiate a compromise between the country’s leading business owners and lawmakers, protesters erected barricades, burned tires and stoned government and private vehicles around the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince. They are demanding that Préval sign the legislation — or face whatever comes.

Protesters even attacked Haitian Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis’ student-oriented nongovernmental organization in Port-au-Prince. At least two dozen people have been arrested so far, and police say most are not students.

The issue has become a political football for Préval’s opponents, raising suspicions among foreign diplomats and others that the demonstrations may be less about raising the minimum wage and more an effort to destabilize the government by forcing the resignation of Pierre-Louis, Préval or both.

A study by Haiti’s garment industry argues that the wage increase would immediately cost the country’s ailing assembly industry 14,000 jobs and kill any chances of Haiti benefiting from the U.S. Congress-approved HOPE II legislation that Clinton, Ban and others have been championing as a way to create desperately needed jobs. The legislation, which already has created 11,000 new jobs, gives Haiti duty-free access to the U.S. textile market for woven and knit clothing made in Haiti using fabrics from countries outside the Western Hemisphere.

”This proposal as is would be the death of HOPE,” Georges Sassine, Haiti’s point man on the legislation said Monday soon after leaving another round of negotiations with Préval at the presidential palace.

CLINTON’S AGENDA

Clinton did not address the controversy at his news conference, instead focusing on outlining his goals in the coming months as a special envoy reporting to the U.N. secretary general. He does not intend to personally staff the Haiti office nor involve himself in the U.N.’s or Haiti’s day-to-day operations.

”We will continue to elevate awareness of both the pain and the promise of Haiti in the international community and that there are real genuine economic opportunities there,” he said, dismissing reports in the Haitian media that his $1-a-year job was part of an imperialistic plot to take over Haiti.

“All I want to do is help the Haitians take over control of their own destiny. That’s all I have ever wanted for Haiti. That’s all the secretary general wants.”

To help accomplish this, Clinton said he plans on helping the hurricane-ravaged nation rebuild by attracting private investors and alternative energy sources, encouraging better coordination among thousands of nongovernmental organizations already working on the ground, and getting the international community to ante up the $353 million in pledges it promised at April’s donors conference in Washington.

”We want to encourage the donors to honor the commitments they have already made at the donor’s conference,” Clinton said.
But getting donors to ante up their pledges may be the least of the former president’s or Haiti’s challenges.
”The current upheaval shows how much resentment toward the Préval government still lingers below the surface, driven by the government’s inability to resolve the pressing economic distress facing the country,” said Daniel Erikson, a Caribbean expert with the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington.

”No one can doubt Bill Clinton‘s ability to mobilize the attention and resources of the international community on behalf of Haiti. The question is whether he can somehow help to create an environment where the Haitians themselves can work together to effect positive change in their country,” he added.
“On the basis of the current upheaval, this is a monumental, and perhaps impossible, task.”

WAGE ISSUES

Observers say while Préval believes Haitians need to make a livable wage, he is concerned about how the minimum-wage increase will take away Haiti’s competitive edge as it tries to lure textile companies to its shores.

In hopes of reaching a compromise, Préval has spent the past week leading all-day negotiations. On Monday, some business leaders said he had come up with a plan that would give an immediate boost to garment workers by raising entry level pay to $2.40 a day with room to earn more for top producers. All other industries would get the $4.90 minimum wage.

But two lawmakers pushing the increase — Deputy Steven Benoit of the lower house, and Senate President Kely Bastien — both told The Miami Herald that after three days of meetings with Préval the issue still is not settled. ”There is no compromise. We are still waiting on the president to send his proposal,” Benoit said.

Special correspondent Stewart Stogel contributed to this report from the United Nations.

© 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.

Is Bill Clinton Haiti’s Great White Hope?

Is Bill Clinton Haiti’s Great White Hope?By John MaxwellCreated 05/27/2009 – 01:08

 

Ban Ki Moon is playing another macabre joke on Haiti. In naming Bill Clinton as his “special envoy” to Haiti, the United Nations Secretary General has chosen a man that has already betrayed Haiti’s people several times over. “President Clinton made several pledges to Aristide and to Haiti, but history does not seem to record that any were kept.” Partly because of Clinton’s depraved policies, “Haitians are still scooping water to drink from potholes in the street and stave off hunger with ‘fritters’ made from earth and cooking fat.”

Is Bill Clinton Haiti’s Great White Hope?

John Maxwell

This article originally appeared in Jamaican Observer [1].

”Neither Haitian democracy nor Bill Clinton’s reputation will survive this appointment.”

History is littered with treachery. In the noisome Slough of Dishonor are mired thousands of reputations, most of those who betrayed their own countries, like Pierre Laval, Vidkun Quisling, Jonas Savimbi and Augusto Pinochet. The deepest pits though, the most purulent sinks, are reserved for those who have ranged abroad to betray and sabotage strangers, to inflict unnecessary suffering on people who have never given them cause for complaint. People like Leopold of Belgium, Neville Chamberlain, Hitler, Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush spring readily to mind.

Last week, former President Clinton announced that he would accept an invitation from the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, of South Korea, to become the SG’s personal envoy in Haiti. It is an appointment that will end in disaster.

I mention Ban Ki Moon’s nationality because I believe that the disaster that already exists in Haiti is the result of a culture clash which is entirely incomprehensible to most people outside the Western hemisphere and not easily understood by most people outside the international crime scene that has been created in Haiti.

Ground Zero for Modern Civilization

It is my contention that the modern world was born in Haiti.

When you understand that the modern rotary printing press is a direct descendant of mills made to grind sugar you may begin to get the drift of my argument. Since I am not a historian my arguments will not be subtle and nuanced. I am simply presenting a few crude facts which, however you interpret them, will I believe lead inexorably to the conclusion that modern ideas of liberty and freedom, modern capitalism and globalization of production and exchange, would have spent much longer in gestation had it not been for the black slaves of Haiti who abolished slavery and the slave trade. In the process they defeated the armies of the leading world powers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, destroyed the French empire in the western hemisphere, doubled the size and power of the United States and incidentally promoted the European sugar beet industry and revolutionized European farming.

“Nowhere was freedom taken more seriously than by the Haitians.”

The problem with all this, as I have repeatedly pointed out, is that had the Haitians been ethnically European their achievements would now suffuse the world narrative; conversely, had Spartacus been black, he would long ago have faded into the mists of barbarian myth.

The Haitians and all the other blacks of the Western hemisphere were uprooted from their native grounds, their civilizations laid waste, and they themselves transported to unknown lands in which they were forced to create unexampled riches and luxury for their rapists and despoilers.

For reasons lost to history, the blacks in Haiti and Jamaica were, for most of their captivity, the most unwilling subjects and continued to fight for their freedom for more than three centuries.

The Enlightenment and its prophets and philosophers popularized the ideas of freedom and liberty, the rights of man. Nowhere was freedom taken more seriously than by the Haitians, who, described as Frenchmen, fought valiantly for American freedom in that nation’s Revolutionary War of Independence. When Revolution convulsed France in turn, the Haitians threw their support to those they thought were fighting for freedom. When that proved a false trail, the Haitians continued to fight, defeating the French, British and Spanish armies sent to re-enslave them.

“The fact of Haitian freedom frightened the Americans and other world powers.”

Although the Americans and the French said they believed in freedom, they formed an unholy combination to restrict Haiti’s liberty. The fact of Haitian freedom frightened the Americans and other world powers. Haiti promised freedom to any captive who set foot on her soil and armed, provisioned and supplied trained soldiers to Simon Bolivar for the liberation of South America. Nearly 200 years before the United Nations (and France and the USA), Haiti proclaimed Universal Human Rights, threatening the slave societies in America and the Caribbean.

Haiti’s freedom was compromised by French and American financial blackmail, and as I’ve said before, what the Atlantic powers could not achieve by force of arms they achieved by compound interest. Haiti was the first heavily indebted poor country, and the United States, Canada, France and the multilateral financial organizations, the World Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank and the IMF have worked hard to keep her in that bondage.

Eventually, 93 years ago, the Americans invaded Haiti, destroyed the constitution, the government and their social system. American Jim Crow segregation and injustice destroyed the Haitian middle-class, enhanced and exacerbated class distinctions and antagonisms and left Haiti a ravaged, dysfunctional mess, ruled by a corrupt American-trained military in the interest of a small corrupt gang of mainly expatriate or white capitalists, ready to support any and every murderous dictator who protected their interests.

”What the Atlantic powers could not achieve by force of arms they achieved by compound interest.”

Finally, twenty years ago, the Haitians rose up and overthrew the Duvaliers and the apprentice dictators who followed. In their first free election the Haitians elected a little, black parish priest, the man whose words and spirit had embodied their struggle. But the real rulers of Haiti, the corrupt, bloodthirsty capitalists with their American passports and their bulletproof SUV’s, had no intention of letting Haitians exercise the universal human rights their leaders had proclaimed two centuries before.

When Jean Bertrand Aristide was deposed after a few months in office it was with the help of the CIA, USAID, and other American entities. Then ensued one of the most disgraceful episodes in the long unsavory history of diplomacy. Bill Clinton – elected President promising to treat the Haitian refugees as human beings – elected instead to observe the same barbarous policies as George Bush I, and when the refugees became a flood Clinton’s answer was more illegality. He parked two massive floating slave barracoons in Kingston Harbor where refugees picked up in Jamaican waters were, with the craven connivance of the Patterson government, denied asylum, captured and processed and 22% of them selected for the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp while the rest were returned to their murderers in Haiti.

Eventually, largely due to pressure from black pressure groups in the US and crucially, a fast to the death begun by Randall Robinson, Clinton agreed to restore Aristide while General Colin Powell talked grandly of the soldier’s honor he shared with Haiti’s then murderer in chief, a scamp called Raoul Cedras.

“Bill Clinton – elected President promising to treat the Haitian refugees as human beings – elected instead to observe the same barbarous policies as George Bush I.”

President Clinton made several pledges to Aristide and to Haiti, but history does not seem to record that any were kept.

Had even a few been kept, Haiti may have been able to guarantee public security and to install some desperately needed infrastructure. Instead Haitians are still scooping water to drink from potholes in the street and stave off hunger with “fritters” made from earth and cooking fat.

The Haitian Army, the most corrupt and evil public institution in the western hemisphere, was abolished by Aristide, to the displeasure of the North American powers. Now that the Americans have deposed Aristide for the second time, security is in the hands of a motley mercenary army, a UN peacekeeping force.

Security in Haiti is so good that three years ago, the then head of this force, a Brazilian general was found shot to death after a friendly chat with Haitian elites.

The rapes, massacres, disappearances and kidnappings continue unabated and the only popular political force, the Fanmi Lavalas, has been effectively neutered.

President Clinton “will aim to attract private and government investment and aid” for the poor Caribbean island nation, according to Clinton’s office and a senior U.N. official.

“A U.N. official said that Clinton would act as a cheerleader” for the economically distressed country, cajoling government and business leaders into pouring fresh money into a place that is largely dependent on foreign assistance.

It all sounds so nice and cozy, a poor, black “hapless” nation under the tutelage of the rich and civilized of the earth.

I am prepared to bet that neither Haitian democracy nor Bill Clinton’s reputation will survive this appointment. Democracy is impossible without popular participation and decision making.

In Haiti democracy is impossible without Lavalas and Aristide.

If Haiti itself is to survive, the UN General Assembly needs to seize this baton from the spectacularly unqualified and ignorant Security Council and its very nice and affable Secretary General, even less attuned to Haitian reality than the last SG, Kofi Annan and his accomplices, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, P.J. Patterson and Patrick Manning.

John Maxwell a veteran Jamaican journalist. He has covered Caribbean affairs for more than 40 years and is currently a columnist for The Jamaica Observer. He can be contacted at jankunnu@gmail.com

BelO – Lakou trankil