Imperialism in Haiti

author : Tyler Rougeau topic : Haiti | imperialism

by Tyler Rougeau

In the midst of violent political repression and state-sanctioned terrorism, the interim government in Haiti has an opportunity to push through an economic agenda.

In ensuring that Haiti steer clear of implementing popular reforms aimed at providing for the population's needs, the US, along with other rich nations, has simultaneously tied the hands of progressive administrations through debt bondage and funded right-wing paramilitary and business organizations in Haiti. Surely Haiti is another example of the financial and military manipulation needed to maintain the high levels of inequality and poverty created by global capitalism. True democratic governance threatens minority privilege and therefore US interests. Acting out of its own self-interest, the "international community" is now working to frame Haiti's end-of-the-year elections within a context of state-sanctioned terrorism and illegitimate debt.

Soon after President Jean Bertrand Aristide's ousting in the February 2004 coup d'etat, the appointed Haitian government adopted the Interim Cooperation Framework (ICF) to solicit international funds from rich nations and their international financial institutions. In mid-2004 international donors pledged 1.1 billion dollars to Haiti, which has an outstanding debt of approximately 1.2 billion dollars. Much of the aid pledged to Haiti are loans and will add to the already heavy debt burden that the most impoverished country in the hemisphere is strangled with. Moreover, at least 40 per cent of Haiti's $1.2 billion debt is odious debt held over from the Duvalier dictatorship.

In January of this year the World Bank reportedly released $73 million in loans to Haiti after the country paid the Bank $52.3 million in debt service, according to a January 6 Reuters piece. This money, loaned to the interim government, is earmarked mostly for "economic governance," which is likely to mean the privatization of state-owned industries and further suppression of wages in favor of corporate profit. To be sure, one of the first consequences of the recent coup, reported the National Lawyers Guild, was the elimination of popular organizations, which provided basic, necessary services.

Representing the interests of the United States, known Aristide opponent and then-US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roger F. Noriega, remarked on April 14, 2004 to the American Enterprise Institute that Aristide's exile was an opportunity for the US to help the country "with restructuring and privatization of some public sector enterprises through a transparent process."

Likewise, World Bank Spokesperson Caroline Anstey characterized the undemocratic interim government in Haiti as providing a ''two-year window of opportunity to put in place some real social, political and economic reform'' in Haiti, as quoted by Jim Lobe's July 21, 2004 piece for the International Press Service (IPS).

"Economic reform" has been an agenda pushed on Haiti by powers in Washington since the grassroots Lavalas movement of Jean Bertrand Aristide began dominating Haiti's politics in the post-Duvalier years. After democratically elected President Aristide was ousted in a 1991 military coup, the US backed the anti-Lavalas paramilitary group Front for the Advancement of Progress of the Haitian People (FRAPH), which terrorized the country in notable CIA-backed death-squad fashion. The Clinton administration subsequently reinstalled Aristide as president in 1994, but only after he agreed to "economic reform" of the neo-liberal persuasion. Despite the majority of Haitians being against the privatization plans, neo-liberal reforms were subsequently pushed on Haiti in 1996, including the suppression of wages, privatization of state-owned industries, and lowering of tariffs. As a result of lowered tariffs, foodstuffs from US corporations such as Erly Rice were dumped on Haiti, undermining the country's own livestock and agriculture sectors, on which the majority of Haitians depend for subsistence.

Haiti generates corporate profits not only as a market for subsidized US agriculture. In January 1996 the National Labor Committee released a report detailing Haitian textile sweatshops paying less than the inadequate minimum wage of 36 gourdes, or $2.40, per day. The report, entitled "The US in Haiti", documents several US retailers seeking profits through the exploitation of Haitian workers, implicating Disney, Wal-Mart, Sears, J.C. Penney, "Wrangler" and "Lee" jeans, and Hanes apparel.

Paired with this form of international debt peonage, the International Republican Institute (IRI) funneled millions of US tax dollars through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to elite business interests in Haiti, as reported by Max Blumental on July 14, 2004 for Salon.com. The results of these covert "party building" operations were the Democratic Convergence (DC) and sweatshop owner Andre Apaid's Group of 184 Civil Society Organizations (G-184). This so-called "civilian opposition", which also receives funding from the EU, collaborated with the paramilitary elements in Haiti to overthrow Aristide after he was reelected in internationally recognized free and fair presidential elections in 2000 with sixty per cent voter turnout, according to the Organization of American States (OAS).

Aristide came under pressure during his second term when the international community, led by the United States, suspended much needed aid to the country, citing IRI-backed DC claims of electoral irregularities in the 2000 municipal elections. With the politically motivated suspension of aid, Haiti's population suffered while international lenders continued to accept payment from the country.

The situation went from bad to worse when former US-backed death squad forces crossed over from neighboring Dominican Republic in February 2004. The "rebel forces" seized Haitian territory and began a campaign of terror against Lavalas supporters throughout the country. Aristide, who had disbanded the Haitian Armed Forces (FAd'H) in 1995, was mortally threatened by paramilitary forces and pressured into exile by the "civilian opposition" and the US government.

Since then, the continued violence in the country has been largely blamed on armed thugs profiting on kidnapping ransoms whose strongholds are well-known Lavalas-supporting neighborhoods such as Cite Soleil. One such thug was recently targeted and killed in a United Nations operation in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood on July 6 this year. "Dozens of civilians," according to the Washington Post (August 5) died as a result of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) operation.

Such "pro-Aristide gangs" are frequently invoked to justify both political repression in poor Lavalas strongholds and extrajudical executions carried out by the Haitian National Police. But eyewitness reports of these "security operations" don't praise the enhanced security situation. Rather, they testify to the operations' gross disregard for the loss of innocent life.

Over a year into the operation, MINUSTAH has been unable or unwilling to effectively carry out its mandate, which includes protecting the population. In a report issued in March 2005 by the Harvard Law School Advocates for Human Rights, MINUSTAH is criticized for contributing to an atmosphere of state-sanctioned terrorism. According to the report, UN forces in Haiti have been unwilling to provide protection to civilians from attack in hospitals. As a

result, many injured people do not seek medical attention for fear of further harm or execution at the hands of police forces. In clear violation of its purported mandate, the report concludes, "MINUSTAH has not effectively investigated or reported human rights abuses; nor has it protected human rights advocates. Charged to train and reform the Haitian National Police, MINUSTAH has instead offered unquestioning support to police operations that have resulted in warrantless arrests and detentions, unintended civilian casualties and deliberate extrajudicial killings."

Despite the limited public pressure put on MINUSTAH for the July 6 massacre, another wave of state-inflicted violence erupted when the Haitian National Police used lethal force in Haiti's Solino neighborhood. According to the Haiti Action Committee's August 10 alert, the National Police handed out machetes to death-squad elements working with the police who then dismembered Lavalas supporters, particularly young women.

The words of one community member, quoted from the above source, put the scene in context, "They are trying to dismantle the grassroots leadership of Lavalas by killing them -- in one neighborhood after another. This is all in preparation for the sham elections they have cooked up for this fall to try and legitimize the February 29, 2004 coup de tat and the coup regime. By 'they' I mean the death-squad government and their US, UN, French and Canadian backers."

The Fanmi Lavalas Party has publicly rejected participating in the upcoming end-of-year elections, citing the continuing political violence directed at Lavalas supporters. Party leaders, including the former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, and community leaders, such as Fr. Gernard Jean-Juste and Annette "So Anne" Auguste, have become political prisoners detained without due process. In a blatantly illegal arrest, Jean-Juste was seized at a funeral ceremony with no warrant issued or crime witnessed. The popular priest's persecution was facilitated with the aid of UN "peacekeepers" who transported him from the funeral to the custody of the Haitian National Police. In a letter released by his lawyer Bill Quigley, Jean-Juste expressed hope, gratitude, and solidarity with "those who stand all over the world for the rights of everyone whatever color, whatever creed, whatever nationality. . . . Personally, regardless of all the hardship, I am still joining my voice to the voices of all democracy lovers to demand the return of constitutional order in Haiti, the physical return of our elected president Aristide, release of all political prisoners, respect of all human rights, and if that is done then real elections can happen."

In contrast, paramilitary leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain, who was not arbitrarily arrested but surrendered after the recent coup, was released from prison earlier this month. Chamblain is accused of participating in the murder and torture of hundreds if not thousands of people during the 1991-1994 reign of FRAPH in which he served as second in command. But he escaped justice despite incriminating evidence, including Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents released to the Center for Constitutional Rights, revealing that Chamblain was known to be involved in "plans to kill [Haitian Justice Minister Guy] Malary." Moreover, Chamblain's prosecutors failed to provide evidence or call more than a single witness in the "trial", which lasted less than 14 straight hours. Both Amnesty International and out-going US Ambassador to Haiti James Foley criticized the blatant mockery of justice displayed in Chamblain's acquittal and release by the coup regime.

The Cold War confrontation between the United States and Soviet Union may be over and done, but Cuba's example of alternative development is still a threat to the US Empire. Elite interests in the United States fear Cuba's example with good reason, too. Subjected to an internationally condemned US trade embargo, Cuba's population has nonetheless achieved a significantly higher level of human development than those Latin American and Caribbean nations subjected to the full-blown developmental package of free-trade agreements and structural adjustment loans. According to the United Nations, Cuba's poverty, literacy, child mortality, and improved sanitation rates are staggeringly better than its neighbors such as Haiti.

One can only wonder whether people here in the US will demand accountability from the policymakers responsible for supporting such atrocities. Some Representatives have challenged the Bush administration on its role in overthrowing Aristide, notably members of the Congressional Black Caucus. These efforts should be supported and commended, since neither justice nor peace will not be achieved with an orchestrated election and business as usual.

In this so-called War on Terrorism, those resisting occupation have been declared "enemy combatants" undeserving of humane treatment assured by the Geneva Conventions. At the same time, no mechanisms exist for meaningful democratic participation by occupied populations, or if they do exist they are eliminated as in Haiti, making armed resistance inevitable. Thus Haiti is on the verge of being labeled a failed state not because of its own inept backwardness, but because of the outside, forceful imposition of plutocracy. This is evidenced by the imposition of further debt through the ICF, which will serve to curtail any potential social programs a future candidate may promise the Haitian electorate. Haiti shows everyone willing to see, that the US version of democracy means the freedom to choose between similar corporate-friendly candidates - not the grassroots empowerment of all citizens.