The Haiti occupation continues

Haitians Protest Economic Crisis & Gang Violence, Demand U.S. Stay Out and Allow Domestic Solution

Protests are growing in Port-au-Prince as thousands fill the streets to demand the U.S.-backed Prime Minister Ariel Henry resign after he announced he would raise fuel prices amid an already dire humanitarian crisis. Countries including the U.S. and Canada have sent military equipment to assist the Haitian police in cracking down on the unrest, and the U.S. has been pushing the United Nations Security Council to authorize a security mission, spurring more protests against foreign intervention. “We are seeing people really protesting on the street for the right to [a] sovereign solution to the issues that are happening, and they are saying 'no' to an armed invasion from the international community,” says Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance.

quote:

Guerline Jozef: 

What we are seeing in Haiti right now is extremely painful as a Haitian woman, as a Haitian American woman, to see how the country has been dipping into this abyss. And we have been in communications with civil societies in Haiti to understand what is needed on the ground. And they are telling us they need a Haitian-led solution in order for the country to get out of where we are right now — as you mentioned, Amy, rampant violence, gang violence, political turmoil, assassination of the president still not answered.

And we are seeing people really protesting on the street for the right to sovereign — a solution to the issues that are happening. And they are saying no to an invasion, no to armed invasion from the international community, because every time there is the so-called help invasion, that people go to Haiti, results in chaos. You also mentioned the cholera pandemic that is in the rise right now. And that itself is a result of the U.N. being in Haiti after the earthquake. So, we are seeing and hearing, and we are taking the time to understand what Haiti needs right now in how we move forward.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Guerline Jozef, I wanted to ask you — we keep hearing about this gang violence that is rampant throughout Haiti. But there are some Haitians in the U.S., as well as other radicals and socialists here in this country, who say that all these gangs are not alike, that the — for instance, that the FRG9, the Revolutionary Forces of the G9 Family, led by Jimmy Chérizier, are much more political, and they’re the ones that are dealing with this blockade of the port, whereas other gangs, like the GPEP, are actually part of — work with the Ariel Henry government and the police, and the United States seems to be more focused on FRG9. Could you talk about whether there are differences between these gangs? And what’s your sense of how the narrative is being shaped here in the U.S.?

GUERLINE JOZEF: Absolutely. One thing I want to clarify is the fact that this gang pandemic, this gang phenomenon, is not native to Haiti. It’s imported to Haiti. We are not used to this type of violence when it comes to gangs. This is a new system that is being put in place, or that has been put in place, to destabilize the country. I do not know who is supporting which gang. I do not know which activities are being supported either by outside sources or people within the government.

But what we are seeing right now is that people are fearful. We are seeing entire neighborhoods being displaced, in Martissant, in Croix-des-Bouquets, in Pétion-Ville, where we never had any violence before, that we are seeing all places in the country dealing with gang violence. And again, it is imperative that we understand the narrative that’s being shared, is that Haiti has never had to deal with this level of gang violence. This is new. This is backed by many different other outside forces.

And we must understand that we have to come to a resolve where we rid the country of violence, so people don’t have to flee. Right now we are seeing people fleeing by boat, either going to Puerto Rico, to the Bahamas, to Miami. And they are dying on the way here. We are seeing people fleeing from Haiti, making their way to the border in Mexico, because they cannot be at home. We are seeing the political turmoil, the gang violence, that are being financed or supported by whomever, that are creating a space where people cannot survive.

That is why when we speak to civil societies in Haiti, we understand that in order for us to move forward, there must be sustainability. There must be proper school. There must be proper hospital. There must be — the agriculture needs to be revived, in order for people to be able to be safe at home and not have to flee.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Can you talk about the Montana Accords, what they are, and the group that developed them following the assassination of Haiti’s former president in 2021?

GUERLINE JOZEF: I am not an expert of the Montana Accord, but what we understand is that over 500 groups, civil societies, political groups, have come together to come up with a solution that is led by Haitians to be able to find a way moving forward. What we understand from the Montana Accord, it is the only alternative we have right now to really getting ourselves out of the political turmoil, possibly having a safe transition where then we can move to a better space in Haiti. So, again, I am not an expert in the Montana Accord, but from understanding and speaking with many different groups and people who were involved, it seems to be a good alternative in order to move forward.

But what we are seeing is that there’s no real engagement between the Montana Accord parties, the international communities, people who wants to support Haiti and wants to be able to get a way out of the issues we are dealing right now. So we are calling on the international community, on the U.S. and Canada, to not side with one — with the political people in power, but to make sure that they are including the civil societies, the people of Haiti, who are able to take their future in hand and see how we can work together. At this point, we believe that Haiti needs support. Haiti needs to be stabilized. Haiti needs to have a sustainable ecosystem, so that people can lift, people can prosper — not just survive, but thrive.....

kropotkin1951 wrote:

<p>The answer to your question is obvious. Russians are the real criminals that deserve to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. Don't we have enough whataboutism on this board already without trying to discredit the US once again. Going back twenty years ignores that history started in February of 2022. Any crime against humanity committed before that date is not to be raised, except by tankies.

I don't know what all this "history begins" stuff is about but Ukraine had and has internationally recognized borders. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 with the intent of annexing land and has funded an insurgency. To my knowledge Russia has nothing to do with Haiti. 

The situation in Haiti is quite different. Haiti also has internationally recognized borders. It is alledged that the US funded and armed insurgents in Haiti then during the unrest pressured Aristide to leave Haiti or kidnapped him or rescued him.

This suggests not everyone was happy with the government.

Multiple protests by Haitian students were organized in 2002, 2003 and 2004 against the Aristide government. On 5 December 2003, some of Aristide's supporters, backed by the police according to witnesses,[22] entered the social studies department of the Université d'État d'Haïti to attack students who were rallying for an anti-government protest later that day. Dozens of students were injured and the University dean had his legs broken.[23] This tragic event led to more protests by students, eventually joined by other groups. A student protest against Aristide on 7 January 2004 led to a clash with police and Aristide supporters that left two dead.[24]

Having said that international interference has not improved the situation for Haitians but worsened it and has undermined their sovereignty. Although I don't know of any polls it seems Haitians by a wide margin want international forces out. 

Looking to today I was wondering what the alternative could be and came across this from a German outlet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttzA0gCTqYM&ab_channel=DWNews

He suggests a provisional government of the various political parties and civil society with a mandate to hold elections within a year and to quell violence. He thinks the international community should help the Haitian police with training and weapons but no boots on the ground.

From the treatment of protesters it doesn't seem like Haitian police as a great option but at least they are Haitian. If this commentator is right how would the provisional government come to be? Who would set it up? 

What should the world do to help Haitians? Is arming the police against gangs a good idea? 

I'm not trying to spin anything. I'm not defending the US. I linked to a commentator that wants international forces out and the police armed. We know the US spirited Aristide out of the country one way or another. (They were ready to do the same with Zelensky, he refused.)

I have agreed time and time again that the US is the most guilty country on the planet and the greatest threat to world peace. 

Are you arguing that the US should go get Aristide and bring him back to Haiti after all these years? We can't change history.  I stated Haitians seemed to want all international forces to leave even though I haven't seen a poll I'm taking it at face value because I am aware international forces have abused Haitians. I support the will of the people so international forces should withdraw.

I am beginning with the premise that international forces should withdraw. That includes the US and Canada. 

The commentator suggested arming Police against the gangs as an alternative. Is that a good idea or is it just giving arms to a repressive force?

Is there any means through which we can help the Haitian people other than just not going there? I would say money but who would we give it to? Take in some refugees and call it a day?

Is there a South American country that could help maintain peace if they could afford it? 

How could Haiti go about creating an interim government with all the parties and civil society. Is civil society a code word for the wealthy? 

History didn't begin today but neither is it ending today. 

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Are you arguing that the US should go get Aristide and bring him back to Haiti after all these years?

What kind of bizarre world do you live in that you could possibly make such a completely absurd comment?

Why bring up the litany of US /Canadian sins in a response to me questioning what can or should be done for Haiti as the international community withdraws?

The commentator refers to the international community not just the US. Peacekeepers are not an option as they have been complicit in the abuse of Haitians. That's why I wondered if there could be a place for a South American country to help provide security.

We can't change history. We can only impact the future. If you are bringing it up in the context of reparations I agree but who would we give the money to?

If the Haitians must have a civil war so be it. No one interfered in the US civil war. You know so much about the past can you not speculate as to the best way for us to depart that won't be a mini-echo of our shameful withdrawal from Afghanistan?

kropotkin1951 wrote:

I was just going to talk about how the US has made Haiti the failed state and its interference is the US Monroe Doctrine writ large. However I did a tongue in cheek and look who I got a rise out of. LMAO

I don't see why we shouldn't send medical supplies and powdered milk, women always appreciate sanitary products, reusable diapers. Maybe some building supplies? Tarps? 

Pondering wrote:

I don't see why we shouldn't send medical supplies and powdered milk, women always appreciate sanitary products, reusable diapers. Maybe some building supplies? Tarps? 

My heart goes out to anyone who is struggling in life but Canada has also already sent close to 2 billion dollars in the last 13 years.

What social programs would you have funded with 2000x one million dollar checks? Let Haiti figure it out for themselves.

International aid is part of the underlying problem in Haiti. Here is an article that helps explain the crisis. Food aid to help Haitians after a hurricane collapsed the local food market and drove their farmers out of business. The country has never recovered from that help.

https://www.france24.com/en/20101006-us-food-aid-wrecking-haiti-agricult...

No Military Intervention, but Yes to the Haitian Insurrection

quote:

How can the world stand in solidarity with Haiti?

Haiti’s crisis can only be solved by the Haitian people, but they must be accompanied by the immense force of international solidarity. The world can look to the examples demonstrated by the Cuban Medical Brigade, which first went to Haiti in 1998; by the Via Campesina/ALBA Movimientos brigade, which has worked with popular movements on reforestation and popular education since 2009; and by the assistance provided by the Venezuelan government, which includes discounted oil. It is imperative for those standing in solidarity with Haiti to demand, at a minimum:

1. that France and the United States provide reparations for the theft of Haitian wealth since 1804, including the return of the gold stolen by the US in 1914. France alone owes Haiti at least $28 billion.
2. that the United States return Navassa Island to Haiti.
3. that the United Nations pay for the crimes committed by MINUSTAH, whose forces killed tens of thousands of Haitians, raped untold numbers of women, and introduced cholera into the country.
4. that the Haitian people be permitted to build their own sovereign, dignified, and just political and economic framework and to create education and health systems that can meet the people’s real needs.
5. that all progressive forces oppose the military invasion of Haiti.

The post before last about paying reparations makes sense only who do we give the money to?

Obviously this news can't be trusted because it is on CTV.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/let-haiti-decide-its-own-destiny-canada-...

While Canada has pledged financial aid in recent months for Haiti, experts and activists that have been closely following the events in the country over the last two decades say Haiti needs to be left alone.

“We keep saying what we’ve been saying for a long time, let Haiti decide its own destiny,” former Canadian ambassador to Haiti Gilles Rivard told CTV News in an interview.

Rivard, who served as the ambassador between 2008 and 2010 and later again in 2014, says Canada shouldn’t intervene in Haiti’s affairs until the country is able to make an agreement between its society and the government to run an election and solidify a government.

“Where do you start and where do you finish? Until there is no roadmap to put that country back on track in terms of political structure”? he said. “There's a lot that has to be done but that first part has to come from Haiti in my view.”

Haitian-Canadian activist Jean Saint-Vil says the Haitian people have been feeling the same.

“Get out. Haitians have been telling Canada, the United States, Europe to get out,” he told CTV News in an interview.

Saint-Vil says instead there needs to be reparations made to the country starting with the United Nations involvement in the cholera outbreak. In 2013 the UN had disputed claims that their peacekeepers brought cholera to the country during recovery efforts after the 2010 earthquake. The UN did not say they started the epidemic but they did admit their own involvement in 2016 after a report made by a UN investigator was leaked.

Since 2010, the cholera outbreak has killed nearly 10,000 people on the island according to the World Health Organization.

“The reason why they are propping up this thing right now is to pretend that this is a humanitarian intervention,” he said.

In a tweet following the statement on the new shipment, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reiterated Canada’s commitment to support Haiti’s law enforcement.

“Our two countries remain committed to supporting the Haitian National Police’s work of protecting and serving the people of Haiti. And together, we’ll continue to support the restoration of security in Haiti,” he said.  

This MSM article is clearly slanted against Trudeau so we can't trust what they are saying about activists. Those activists are probably undercover right-wing isolationists that just don't want to help Haiti. Those activists just want us to send them money as "reparations". Maybe they are members of the gangs? We all know the MSM is all propaganda so we can't believe a word of it. 

Haiti has been almost a Quebec colony for two generations at least. So far it is not going well for the people but they were stupid enough to vote for politicians that the Quebec and other international actors didn't like.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

International aid is part of the underlying problem in Haiti. Here is an article that helps explain the crisis. Food aid to help Haitians after a hurricane collapsed the local food market and drove their farmers out of business. The country has never recovered from that help.

https://www.france24.com/en/20101006-us-food-aid-wrecking-haiti-agricult...

 

Thanks for posting that article that's a really great point. I never thought of how sending aid would risk collapsing a local community like farming. It seems so simple too.

Asking them to solve those problems is like asking arsonists to put out a fire they set and continue to stoke.....

Canada pushes for Caribbean troops to occupy Haiti

Canada is acting just like the junior imperial power it is in a part of the world this country has long considered its backyard.

Washington is asking Ottawa to lead a military mission to Haiti. The Canadian government in turn is leveraging its influence to get Caribbean countries to staff and sell a Haiti force.

Justin Trudeau would prefer to put a black face on his military intervention and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) troops are his preference. On Friday Canada’s prime minister said, “I’m so pleased that there is such an interest by the Caribbean countries to be part of any solution” in Haiti.

Trudeau has repeatedly met with CARICOM officials to discuss Haiti. On Tuesday the Jamaica Gleaner reported, “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has, within a one-week period, held a second round of talks with Caribbean Community leaders on the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian and security situation in Haiti.”

The direct outreach to CARICOM is on top of a broader Canadian campaign which has included Caribbean leaders. Last month Trudeau hosted a meeting on Haiti at the United Nations headquarters in New York while Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly held a gathering to discuss the embattled and poverty-racked Caribbean nation at the Organization of American States summit in Peru.

Bahamian Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis said he would send troops if CARICOM okayed the mission. “If CARICOM decides that the Haitian situation requires the deployment of security troops, then the Bahamas will abide by the outcome of the organization’s resolution,” he declared. Jamaica’s Information Minister Robert Morgan echoed that comment.....

Why? Why do the US and Canada even care?

Court Blocks U.N.-Approved Plan for Kenyan Police to Deploy to Haiti

A Kenyan court blocked a plan to send 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti to help combat gang violence, ruling the move was unconstitutional. The U.N. Security Council approved the mission last year, and Kenyan forces were due to deploy as early as this month. In Haiti, the reaction to the news was mixed, as some residents have called for foreign intervention amid the spiraling violence. Others have rejected any outside actors coming to Haiti.

Psycka Lemaire: “The crisis is a Haitian crisis. I remember in 2005 through 2006, when the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti arrived in Haiti. They left behind children, diseases like cholera. They left many children without dads. Today, if we are united, we can do wonders.”

Haiti’s PM Ariel Henry to Resign After Losing Support of Washington

Haiti’s unelected Prime Minister Ariel Henry has announced he will resign once a transitional council is established. Henry made the announcement after Caribbean leaders held an emergency meeting in Jamaica to discuss the crisis in Haiti, where armed groups launched an uprising against Henry last week. U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken attended the meeting and pledged $100 million to help finance the deployment of a multinational force mission to Haiti. Ariel Henry announced his plan to resign in a video message posted online.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry: “After the Council of Ministers, it’s been agreed to set up a presidential transitional council. Once chosen, the council will govern over different sectors of national life. … Haiti wants peace. Haiti needs stability. Haiti needs sustainable development. Haiti needs to rebuild democratic institutions. I’m asking all Haitians to remain calm and do everything they can for peace and stability to come back as fast as possible for the good of the country.”

The Miami Herald is reporting CARICOM has proposed a plan to set up a seven-member presidential panel that would appoint a new interim prime minister for Haiti. Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said the panel would only include Haitians who support the deployment of a U.N.-backed security force. Last week, Ariel Henry traveled to Kenya, which is slated to lead the security mission. He has been unable to return home and was reportedly most recently in Puerto Rico.

On Monday, one of the leaders of the recent armed uprising in Haiti, Jimmy Chérizier, who is known as “Barbecue,” warned against outside forces picking Haiti’s next leader.

Jimmy Chérizier: “We take this opportunity to say to the international community that if it continues down this path, we will plunge Haiti into chaos when it chooses a small group of politicians and negotiates with them on paper to decide who can be president and what kind of government we’re going to have. Today it’s clear that it’s the inhabitants of the working-class districts and the Haitian people who know what they’re suffering at the moment, and it’s up to them to choose the person who’s going to lead them and the way he’s going to lead them.”

..from above. a western project like palestine. the world currently rising up bucket list..haiti.

quote:

“We are not in a peaceful revolution,” says Chérizier. “We are making a bloody revolution in the country because this system is an apartheid system, a wicked system.” (Here is a Western news media report citing Chérizier. The report uses typical imperialist language dismissing the popular, self-defense forces in Haiti as ‘gangs’.) By all accounts, Chérizier is the dominant figure in an armed rebellion that has usurped control from the foreign-appointed government at virtually all levels. “Barbecue is now the most powerful man in Haiti,” according to Judes Jonathas, an independent consultant based in Port-au-Prince.

quote:

Henry flew to Kenya to encourage the government there to join and lead an international policing force to protect Henry’s hated, do-nothing administration. The U.S. had offered Kenya $100 million to pay for this effort, but the plan was never popular locally. On January 26, Kenya’s highest court ruled that the policing scheme was unconstitutional because Kenya is not at war with Haiti. The government now says its policing plan is ‘suspended’.

The US is now offering a $300 million total bounty for any country willing to lead an invasion of Haiti and install a U.S.-backed, unelected government by force. The plan is supported by CARICOM, a regional trade bloc that has lost much credibility in Haiti as a result of accepting a role as doormat for the imperialist powers.

The revolutionary forces of Haiti are showing no sign of permitting the formation of any ‘transitional government’ that would act as a vassal of US imperialism. “Haitian citizens and political organizations have firmly declared that they do not support the political transition that the US Department of State is preparing for Haiti,” writes Isabelle Papillon on March 13 in the trilingual print weekly Haïti Liberté. For the time being, Haiti’s revolutionary forces have defeated the unelected puppet government installed by the U.S.-led imperialist cabal.....

epaulo13 wrote:

..i think in many ways hamas is similar to the revolutionary forces in haiti

Haiti is being run by criminal gangs in 2024.

..revolution never really ends. it's in our dna. and there is never a scarcity of oppressors to revolt against. it's capitalism that wants to freeze us in place.

..you really don't have an argument for what i said..do you. just some drive by shot totally irrelevant to the post.