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News :: Peace
Protesters Decry US-Sponsored Coup in Haiti	Current rating: 0
by Ricky Baldwin Email: baldwinricky (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified!) Phone: 217-328-3037 Address: 801 E California, Urbana IL 61801	04 Mar 2004
Anti-war protests now include opposition to US meddling in Haiti, a bloody pattern that has persisted for 200 years. (Champaign) The Bush Administration has given anti-war protestors a new reason to demonstrate on North Prospect this Saturday, March 6, from 2-4 pm. Even if US troops did not literally kidnap Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide on February 29 in the narrowest sense of the word, protesters say, it is clear that US interference is what forced him from office. Clear, that is, except to those who rely on the US media for understanding world events.
(Champaign) The Bush Administration has given anti-war protestors a new reason to demonstrate on North Prospect this Saturday, March 6, from 2-4 pm. Even if US troops did not literally kidnap Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide on February 29 in the narrowest sense of the word, protesters say, it is clear that US interference is what forced him from office. Clear, that is, except to those who rely on the US media for understanding world events. Most US stories downplayed Aristide’s claim that US troops “forced [him] to leave,” flanking the allegation on all sides with official US denials and dismissals, such as US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s scoff that Aristide’s story was “baseless” and “absurd” (AP, 3/2/04). The story was rarely framed in any context that would help the reader understand the long and nefarious history of US involvement in Haiti -- which could suggest a troubling pattern -- or even the events of the last few years. Troubling pattern Even US officials acknowledge that the leaders of the Haitian coup d’etat are “death squad veterans and convicted murderers,” (NYT 2/28/04). Two of these are Louis-Jodel Chamblain and Jean-Pierre Baptiste, leaders of FRAPH (Haitian Front for Advancement and Progress), a murderous rightwing group that was funded by the US for many years and played a leading role in overthrowing Aristide in 1991. FRAPH’s name, according to the Times, is a play on the French “frapper” (“to hit”). Both Chamblain and Baptiste have been convicted of political murders. Chamblain, a former Haitian Army officer, has been hiding in the neighboring Dominican Republic. Baptiste was serving a life sentence until he recently broke out of jail. Another is Guy Phillipe, trained by the US military as an army officer in Ecuador and later a particularly brutal police chief in Port-au-Prince. Phillipe has also been in hiding in the Dominican Republic, wanted in connection with a plot to overthrow the Haitian government in 2000. The former dictator himself, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, appointed president-a-vie (President for Life) at the age of 18 by his father, the infamous Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, apparently applied for a diplomatic passport “several weeks ago” to return to Haiti from exile in France (AP 3/2/04). The Duvaliers ruled Haiti from 1957 to 1986 with the help of US-trained and supplied troops, a reign of terror in which tens of thousands of Haitians died. The elder Duvalier died in 1971. After the younger Duvalier abdicated and fled on a US Air Force jet in 1986, the US continued to back the Haitian military rulers, who killed more people in the next four years -- until Aristide’s election -- than Baby Doc had in the previous fifteen (Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, by William Blum). Some of this history appears in the US press: “United States forces occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. They created the modern Haitian Army, dissolved Parliament and imposed martial law in those years. In the 1980's and early 1990's, the United States Central Intelligence Agency had important senior Haitian Army officers and Fraph members on its payroll, according to American officials,” (NYT 2/28/04). Of course, even this account is severely truncated. US forces actually intervened militarily in Haiti in 1849, 1851, 1857, 1858, 1865, 1866, 1867, 1868, 1869, 1876, 1888, 1891, 1892, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1911, 1912, 1913 and 1914, before occupying the country continuously from 1915-1934. After that, the US-backed Haitian governments seem to have been sufficiently repressive not to require direct intervention, though the relationship remained quite cozy. When Papa Doc Duvalier died in 1971, power passed to his son as part of a deal negotiated with the Nixon Administration guaranteeing certain investment “access” to the abysmally cheap Haitian labor pool: tax breaks for US companies, an absurdly low minimum wage, suppression of labor unions and so on (The Uses of Haiti, by Paul Farmer). The US continued to train Haitian military officers at the School of the Americas in Ft Benning, Georgia, at least until 1996 -- and most likely still does. Déjà vu The more recent the events, the less frank the American “free press” in their depiction of US involvement. The most fanatical reader will search the papers in vain for any suggestion that the pattern of US bad influence continued right through the Clinton years, including the supposed US rescue of Haitian democracy, when the US reluctantly returned Aristide to office. Aristide had been elected in 1990 after being persuaded to run by a growing reform movement of the urban and rural poor called Lavalas (“the flood”). However, the US-backed Duvalierist military remained, and promptly overthrew him. The first Bush Administration’s denials that they were behind the 1991 coup have always been incredible to Haitians, well aware that key officers involved in the coup were on the CIA payroll in addition to the many years of US training of Haitian killers. The leader of the coup, Colonel Raoul Cedras, was himself part of an elite group of military officers trained and organized by the CIA and already involved in repression and cocaine trafficking before the coup (NYT 11/14/93). The official story in 1991 should sound familiar now, that decent Haitians -- that is, not that rabble from the slums that elected him -- were not behind Aristide. “Everybody who is anybody is against Aristide,” remarked one Haitian businessman at the time, “except the people,” (Farmer). Also virtually absent in the US press is any mention of US violations of international law, under Bush and Clinton, first returning thousands of Haitian refugees who fled Duvalierist violence, then imprisoning many of them at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. When these returns are mentioned at all, their clear illegality is conveniently skipped, as is any issue surrounding the Guantanamo prison camps. At the time, the US press portrayed Guantanamo as a “safe haven” for Haitians, a view flatly contradicted by eyewitness accounts and several human rights groups. The captured refugees were held behind barbed wire, in rat-infested cages, fed on chicken containing maggots, beaten, spat on, forcibly injected with contraceptives, and sometimes left lying on the ground with their hands handcuffed behind their backs (Farmer). Confronted with these inhumane conditions, the US made another argument that should sound familiar now: Guantanamo is not part of the US, said officials, and so the US Constitution and other laws do not apply there. The US Supreme Court agreed then, too. Moreover, the Clinton Administration refused to facilitate Aristide’s return to Haiti for many months, allowing the renewed Duvalierist massacres under Col. Cedras to escalate and virtually wipe out Aristide’s supporters. Then, when international pressure finally persuaded the US Administration to demand that Col. Cedras step down and allow Aristide to return to office in 1994, there were important conditions on that return. Aristide had to renounce most of the reforms that got him elected, agree to severe economic austerity for Haitians while favoring US investment, and promise not to run for office in the 1995 elections. Aristide would only serve one year of his first term, and that with his hands tied. Takes one to know one The Bush Administration has made much of Aristide’s allegedly undemocratic character, and this obvious propaganda is not contradicted in the mainstream press. Even the most revealing reports in the US media exaggerate the “flaws” with Aristide’s reelection melodramatically under headings like “Power and fraud” : “In elections boycotted by the opposition, and criticized by international groups, Aristide claims the presidency,” (NYT 2/28/04). In fact, Aristide kept his promise not to run in 1995, but such was the support for reform among the Haitian people that a close ally of his Rene Preval did win. In 1997 Lavalas became a political party under Aristide’s leadership, and in 2000 they easily swept the parliamentary and presidential elections. True, the small Duvalierist opposition called for a boycott once they realized they had no chance at all. Afterwards, the US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) criticized the formula used to distribute parliamentary seats -- they had no problem with it beforehand -- but the International Coalition of Independent Observers concluded that "fair and peaceful elections were held". Allegations persist that a few parliamentary seats were improperly gained, a serious matter if true, but we may never know now. And even without those seats, Aristide’s party would still have won a clear supermajority, and in the presidential election later that year Aristide won by a landslide. Compared to US elections that same year, one commenter noted, Haitian elections were “exemplary” (London Guardian 3/2/04). After the 2000 elections, the Clinton Administration imposed a crippling economic embargo, continued by the Bush Administration, and continued to refuse to release millions in aid promised to rebuild the war-torn country in 1994. (Recall that the “war” was a US-backed coup and purge that led to a mass exodus that exceeded even the pre-Aristide years in scope.) These vicious economic attacks led directly to the poverty and starvation now cited by the Bush Administration as reasons that Haitians have supposedly turned against Aristide. Except, of course, for the people.
Related stories on this site: President Aristide Says 'I Was Kidnapped', 'Tell the World it is a Coup' Regime Change in Haiti: A Coup By Any Other Name BTL:Haitian President Charges U.S. Military Kidnapped Him in Support of... Haiti Coverage: Mainstream Media Fails Itself Aristide Speaks to Democracy Now! in Most Extensive English-Language Interview Since His Removal from Haiti
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Comments

Re: Protesters Decry US-Sponsored Coup in Haiti
by NRA4Freedom nra4freedom (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified)	Current rating: 4 28 Apr 2004
Part of that is correct. Maybe the United States should get out of there, let those people all kill each other off and what few remain can then live in the dirt and squaller that would remain. OR, the United States can intervene and attempt to make life halfway decent for the majority of good people who are unfortunate enought to have been born there. Look around the world with your eyes wide open a moment, without Western influence, what always happens? Dictatorships that either terrorize or rob blind the innocent, or worse, chaos. Either way, people die, period. This world is a fallen creation, it ain't gonna get any better by pie in the sky pipe dreaming liberals allowing their brains to fall out like is going on at this web site!