Haiti's Youth Fear The Return Of The Killers Of Street Children

[Say_What]

Also, question and answer chat at the WP with Eugenia Charles-Mathurin follows.

<clips>

EDITOR'S NOTE: Johnny (last name withheld for his safety), 18, is a former youth reporter with Radyo Timoun (Children's Radio) 90.9 FM in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. This week rebels looted and burned it along with the Aristide Foundation For Democracy in which the station was located. Johnny told his story to PNS contributor, Lyn Duff, a freelance writer who had worked with Radyo Timoun 9 years ago. Duff reached him in Port-au-Prince via telephone.

BY JOHNNY, PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - I was living in the gutter, dressing in old clothes and begging at the airport when President Aristide took office in 1990. One of the first things Titid did when he moved into the National Palace was invite a group of children who sleep in the streets to visit the Palace and speak out about the conditions of the street children.

I heard on the radio the voice of Little Sony, one of the street children, speaking from the National Palace about the rights of children and I knew that the lives of the children in Haiti would change.

When Titid became president he told the world that we street children were people, we had value, that we were human beings.

<http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=8420f019fee5f4bc26614fc30c17b1e4>

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Eugenia Charles-Mathurin, co-director of the "Haiti Reborn" discussed the overextending U.S. role in Haitian policy and the allegations that Aristide was forced to exile by the U.S.

<clips>

Southport, Conn.: Is it remotely possible that the US could have been involved in physically removing the President of Haiti? If so, what are the ramifications of this?

washingtonpost.com: U.S. Assembles Peacekeeping Coalition in Haiti (Post, March 2)

Eugenia Charles-Mathurin: I think the U.S. is very much involved in the removal of President Aristide. We can go back to the creation of the Haitian opposition. We started seeing the International Republican Institute (IRI) along with USAID who began the process of building political parties whom they felt were compatible to face the Fanmi Lavalas political party. Then we had the May 2000 election where the oppositions participated as individual political parties not as a coalition and formed a coalition after the result of the election had been announced. We see the U.S. provide financial diplomatic support for the opposition. The IRI particularly does the training for the opposition in the Dominican Republic and we see the attempted coop in 2001 where Philippe was very involved in it. When the Haitian government asked for Philippe to be brought back to Haiti to be tried the IRI said he was not able to be found. But then again he was in Dominican Republic being trained and the U.S. sent weapons to the DR border and those weapons are being used in the current situation in Haiti. And then we see the resurfacing of Philippe. The U.S. has not denounced Philippe and Louis Jodel Chamblain for terrorizing the Haitian people and even now they are being supported when they should be arrested by now.

The ramifications are that the U.S. is giving the blood of the Haitian people to Philippe. We think it is wrong and takes away from the people's hope and dreams. The U.S., France and Canada are not supporting democracy with no process and basically supporting human rights violators.

_______________________

Harrisburg, Pa.: What is it the rebels wants? It seems they have no clear objectives? Is there any hint of what they plan to do now that they have power?

Eugenia Charles-Mathurin: The rebels want the Haitian people's blood and they do not want to see democracy prevail. They most certainly don't have any objectives and that is what the international community should ask them to indicate their plan for the Haitian people. How are they going to continue to move forward with the process of democracy? Are they going to respect the Haitian people's rights? Will they submit themselves to the justice system given that they have been convicted in absentia for killing over 5,000 Haitians in 1991-1994? I think the plan is to reconstitute the Haitian army and continue to massacre the people who support democracy, the people who have been craving education, basic healthcare, clean water, and food, most importantly, the children who are dying of malnutrition.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20712-2004Mar1.html

[tom_paine]

1. Sounds like what the Busheviks have in mind for Amerika 2050

We will probably be very rich, compared to our fellow Third World Nations like Haiti, but I am glad I likely won't live to see the Mad Reogn of George P. Caligula...

[Nlighten1]

2. Indeed...too baaaaaad the sheeple don't see it...

The citizens of America are of no more value to the leaders than the people in the third world. What makes them think they won't turn the same policies on them?

[tom_paine]

5. Denial. One of the most powerful human characters

(it's how the citizens of the village outside Auschwitz could happily dut off the greasy soot whichused to settle on their windowsills daily)

Close Cousin to "It Can't Happen Here".

Of course it can, silly. It can happen ANYWHERE.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Our Marines have left an indelible imprint with this yourth already

From your first link, delivered by a young man via telephone :

(snip) The U.S. Marines stood by and did nothing while the library at the Aristide Foundation was burned. With my own eyes I saw the American Marines stand and watch while rebels cut a woman and shot her. I yelled at them, "Do something!" and they swung their guns around toward me and yelled, "Get back!"

While I hid in a field the American Marines put their hats on the bodies of dead people and posed for pictures with them. It made me sick because in Haiti we respect the dead. The Americans scare me; I don't believe that they want anything good for the Haitian people because they support the criminals who oppose democracy.

We are fearful of the old army because they are those who killed the street children of Lafanmi Selavi. They killed the peasants in the North who wanted to have democracy and supported Aristide.

A new government has no hope for the children of Haiti. I am scared, I think the criminals will try to kill me too because I am one of Titid's boys. But I am not just scared for myself. I am scared for all the children of Haiti. And today I cannot stop crying.
(snip)

This is truly sad news.

[Say_What]

4. "Do something!" and they swung their guns around toward me and yelled, "Ge

Our troops in all their glory :puke:

[tom_paine]

6. Admittedly, this is an uncorroborated report

I would view it with a certain level of skepticism. This is not to dismiss it out of hand, but to acknowledge reality.

[Say_What]

12. REALITY in Latin America IS street children being killed.

I would say this *uncorroborated report* is probably more fact than fiction.

[Tinoire]

7. About the 1915-1934 Marine Occupation of Haiti

It left an indelible impression on the Haitians, especially the poor who were slaughtered by US Marines and forced to work on chain-gangs they called "corvees".

Here's something from Chomsky. The entire article is worth a read. What the US needs to accomplish in Haiti is going to be accomplished very brutally because the Haitians remember the last time I don';t think they're going to roll over for another colonization.


====
Year 501
The Conquest Continues

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Noam Chomsky

Chapter Eight
The Tragedy of Haiti

1. "The First Free Nation of Free Men"

2. "Unselfish Intervention" ((this chapter spells a lot out))

3. "Politics, not Principle"

¡¡

1. "The First Free Nation of Free Men"



"Haiti was more than the New World's second oldest republic," anthropologist Ira Lowenthal observed, "more than even the first black republic of the modern world. Haiti was the first free nation of free men to arise within, and in resistance to, the emerging constellation of Western European empire." The interaction of the New World's two oldest republics for 200 years again illustrates the persistence of basic themes of policy, their institutional roots and cultural concomitants.

<snip / huge RELUCTANT snip>

The brutality and racism of the invaders, and the dispossession of peasants as US corporations took over the spoils, elicited resistance. The Marine response was savage, including the first recorded instance of coordinated air-ground combat: bombing of rebels (Cacos) who were surrounded by Marines in the bush. An in-house Marine inquiry, undertaken after atrocities were publicly revealed, found that 3250 rebels were killed, at least 400 executed, while the Marines and their locally recruited gendarmerie suffered 98 casualties (killed and wounded). Leaked Marine orders call for an end to "indiscriminate killing of natives" that "has gone on for some time." Haitian historian Roger Gaillard estimates total deaths at 15,000, counting victims "of repression and consequences of the war," which "resembled a massacre." Major Smedley Butler recalled that his troops "hunted the Cacos like pigs." His exploits impressed FDR, who ordered that he be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for an engagement in which 200 Cacos were killed and no prisoners taken, while one Marine was struck by a rock and lost two teeth.

The leader of the revolt, Charlemagne Péralte, was killed by Marines who sneaked into his camp at night in disguise. In an attempt at psywar that prefigured some of Colonel Edward Lansdale's later exploits in the Philippines, the Marines circulated photos of his body in the hope of demoralizing the guerrillas. The tactic backfired, however; the photo resembled Christ on the cross, and became a nationalist symbol. Péralte took his place in the nationalist Pantheon alongside of Toussaint.

The invaders "legalized" the Occupation with a unilateral declaration they called a "treaty," which the client regime was forced to accept; it was then cited as imposing on the US a solemn commitment to maintain the Occupation. While supervising the takeover of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Wilson built his reputation as a lofty idealist defending self-determination and the rights of small nations with impressive oratory. There is no contradiction. Wilsonian doctrine was restricted to people of the right sort: those "at a low stage of civilization" need not apply, though the civilized colonial powers should give them "friendly protection, guidance, and assistance," he explained. Wilson's Fourteen Points did not call for self-determination and national independence, but rather held that in questions of sovereignty, "the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined," the colonial ruler. The interests of the populations "would be ascertained by the advanced nations, who best comprehended the needs and welfare of the less advanced peoples," William Stivers comments, analyzing the actual import of Wilson's language and thinking. To mention one case with long-term consequences, a supplicant who sought Wilson's support for Vietnamese representation in the French Parliament was chased away from his doors with the appeal undelivered, later surfacing under the name Ho Chi Minh.5

Another achievement of Wilson's occupation was a new Constitution, imposed on the hapless country after its National Assembly was dissolved by the Marines for refusing to ratify it. The US-designed Constitution overturned laws preventing foreigners from owning land, thus enabling US corporations to take what they wanted. FDR later took credit for having written the Constitution, falsely it appears, though he did hope to be one of its beneficiaries, intending to use Haiti "for his own personal enrichment," Schmidt notes. Ten years later, in 1927, the State Department conceded that the US had used "rather highhanded methods to get the Constitution adopted by the people of Haiti" (with 99.9 percent approval in a Marine-run plebiscite, under 5 percent of the population participating). But these methods were unavoidable: "It was obvious that if our occupation was to be beneficial to Haiti and further her progress it was necessary that foreign capital should come to Haiti..., Americans could hardly be expected to put their money into plantations and big agricultural enterprises in Haiti if they could not themselves own the land on which their money was to be spent." It was out of a sincere desire to help the poor Haitians that the US forced them to allow US investors to take the country over, the State Department explained, the usual form that benevolence assumes.


<another even more reluctant snip>

http://cyberspacei.com/jesusi/authors/chomsky/year/y501_008.htm

[Judi Lynn]

9. I can see why the use of the word "reluctant" is appropriate!

One has to wade through some alarming material on the way, concerning early US attitudes toward Haitians. Those people were desperately SICK.

It got me to this area which is tremendously important as it connects directly with right-wing Republican US/Haitian relations to this very moment in which we post:

(snip) The Occupation "consistently suppressed local democratic institutions and denied elementary political liberties," Schmidt writes. "Instead of building from existing democratic institutions which, on paper, were quite impressive and had long incorporated the liberal democratic philosophy and governmental machinery associated with the French Revolution, the United States blatantly overrode them and illegally forced through its own authoritarian, antidemocratic system." "The establishment of foreign-dominated plantation agriculture necessitated destruction of the existing minifundia land-tenure system with its myriad peasant freeholders," who were forced into peonage. The US supported "a minority of collaborators" from the local elite who admired European fascism but lacked the mass appeal of their fascist models. "In effect," Schmidt observes, "the Occupation embodied all the progressive attitudes of contemporary Italian fascism, but was crippled by failures in human relationships" (lack of popular support). The only local leadership it could mobilize was the traditional mulatto elite, its racist contempt for the great mass of the population now heightened by the even harsher attitudes of "ethnic and racial contempt" of the foreigner with the gun and the dollar, who brought "concepts of racial discrimination" not seen since before independence, and the "racist colonial realities" that went along with them.

The Occupation thus reinforced the internal class/race oppression that goes back to the days of French colonialism. One consequence was the rise of the ideology of Noirisme, in response to the racism of the occupiers and their elite collaborators. "Papa Doc" Duvalier would later exploit this backlash when, 20 years after the Marines left, he took the reins with the pretense of handing power to the black majority -- in reality, to himself, his personal killers (the Tontons Macoutes), and the traditional elite, who continued to prosper under his murderous kleptocracy.
(snip)

[Tinoire]

10. The People Were Very Peaceable

“The People Were Very Peaceable”: The U.S. Senate Investigates the Haitian Occupation

Largely at the behest of American bankers, U.S. marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. By 1919, Haitian Charlemagne Péralte had organized more than a thousand cacos, or armed guerrillas, to militarily oppose the marine occupation. The marines responded to the resistance with a counterinsurgency campaign that razed villages, killed thousands of Haitians, and destroyed the livelihoods of even more. The military atrocities and abuse of power during the Caco War of 1919–1920 led to a U.S. Senate investigation into the occupation. In these excerpts from the “Inquiry into Occupation and Administration of Haiti,” the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Haiti and Santo Domingo interviewed Haitians about marine conduct in the guerrilla war against the cacos.

<snip>

Source: Inquiry into Occupation and Administration of Haiti and Santo Domingo by the United States Senate Select Committee on Haiti and Santo Domingo (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1922).

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4945/

[Judi Lynn]

13. Unbearable testimony given to the Senate committee. So sad.

How could any man or men stoop so low as to torment and torture ordinary citizens to this protracted degree?

They're damned lucky they didn't have to work for a living, as did the people they preyed upon.

[Judi Lynn]

8. Your 2nd link specifically addresses propaganda points floated here

by pro-coup posters.

A couple of them have disputed the validity of the 2000 elections in Haiti, despite repeated links which clarified the situation.

Your link from the Washington Post should once again, illuminates the information for any DU'ers who haven't seen accurate responses yet to the false impressions created by propagandists:

1. For the May 2000 election, Haiti had 30,000 positions that needed to be filled. We had about 7500 cnandidates who ran for those open seats. OUt of the 30,000, only 7 Senate seats were contested. Once Mr. Aristide was inaugurated in 2001, he approached his political party and requested that those Senators resign. They did so in July 2001 to give way for the process to move forward. HOwever, the opposition came out and said, that's not what we want. We want the President to leave, which is against the peopel's will and is also unconstitutional. Based on our research, the CIA had done polling between 2001 and 2002 to test the consensus in Haiti to determine the popularity of the opposition. It should nt shock you at all to hear that they only had 4% popularity. Yet, the U.S. continued to support the opposition and give them the veto power over the negotiations process, over the formation of the C.E.P (provisional electoral council). As a result, we now have no Haitian Parliament. The Presidential election that took place in late 2000 had no bearing on the legislative elections. There were several other candidates who ran for President at the time Mr. Aristide declared his candidcay/. The Haitian people reelected him with 85% of the vote, making clear to the international community who they wanted to be their leaders. During the time of his inauguration, the opposition inaugurated a parallel gov't and called for the return of the army, who killed and tortured thousands of Haitians. The international community, inclduing the U.S. has never questioned the legitimacy of his election as President, and they recognized him as the elected offical of Haiti, and all the negotiation processes were done in a bilateral manner.
(snip)

U.S. support for the Duvalier government supporters:

The US would have never sent support to assist President Aristide because they created the opposition. They've always supported every demand the opposition presented. We've seen Secretary Powell come out and say, we support the process of democracy. We don't want to overthrow an elected gov't. A few days later, a new plan was presented to Pres. Aristide, a plan that would have removed all of his power. He accepted it. The opposition rejected it and made a counter proposal that he be removed from office. Soon thereafter, Sec. Powell says, "We don't think PRes. Aristide is fit to govern Haiti." And in the blink of an eye, he was kidnapped and removed from the people who had elected him, without even giving him a chance to address them.

Yes, the US continues to show their support for Papa Doc and Baby Doc supporters, that include the former soldiers, members of FRAPH, and the Haitian elite. The US has never been interested in Haitians who are peasants, because they want to take away the land from them to build more factories, so the Haitian elite can get richer, the peasants will be forced out f their land, will have no education, and their children will be deprived of basic needs. It is also why they had rewrote the Haitian constitution in 1915 after they oocupied Haiti, making it possible for them to buy and own land in Haiti, something that the Haitian forefathers like Dessalines and Toussaint, who wrote the constitition, opposed. He said no foreigners should ever own land in Haiti.
(snip)

Thanks for posting this information.

[ManneredChild]

11. You may be interested in this valid source

http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/Hti-summary-eng

[Robb]

14. Amnesty is tough on everyone

They put the bar pretty dang high, which is a good thing actually. Their 2003 report slams just about everyone around the globe.... I expect AI would've been even harder on Marc Bazin.

The point remains Aristide was elected, and "we" couldn't stand his policies. Very, very good read here.

[Say_What]

15. Great article!! Thanks for posting. Loved this part..

<clips>

...An Ignominious Tradition

When one looks back at the history of Haiti, one can fully understand the motives driving US foreign policy toward the tiny Caribbean nation. It was the leading target of US intervention in the 20th century. In 1919, Woodrow Wilson had Haiti occupied, restored slavery, overthrew the parliamentary system, and basically turned it into a US plantation. Ever since then, the US has supported brutal dictators -- all of whom never had an embargo on them no matter how many atrocities they carried out.

Ironically, this year is the bicentennial anniversary of the nation's declaration of independence. Yet Haitians have little reason to celebrate. Haiti was once the richest colony in the Western Hemisphere; now it's the most impoverished. US foreign policy is the main reason for Haiti's perpetual state of poverty, especially the recent refusal to lend funds to the fledgling democracy, which was held back because of "election problems". In other words, Haiti hasn't met the US standard for democracy. In reality, Haiti's idea of democracy runs up against the US idea of a top-down democracy, run by an elite.

The problems Haiti is now going through all started with an election in 1990 which turned out the wrong way. The US was certain that their candidate would win, but out of the woodwork came a populist priest who won because he focused on things in the country that no one else was paying attention to.

Aristide's landslide victory in December 1990 took the US and most western countries completely by surprise. He was swept into power by a network of popular grassroots organizations which outside observers weren't even aware of. This did not fit the top-down democracy model the US wanted, so financial support was subsequently withdrawn. Yet with a solid two-thirds of the vote which demolished America's favourite, a former World Bank official named Marc Bazin (who received just 14%), the US was in a predicament: how were they going to get rid of Aristide who has popular support?

http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/16872/1.html

---

The US's favorite Presidents-for-Life:

<clips>

11 FRANÇOIS & JEAN CLAUDE DUVALIER
Presidents-for-Life of Haiti
In 1957 François "Papa Doc" Duvalier became Haiti's President-for-Life, establishing a strategic relationship with the U.S. that lasted into the 1970s, when he was succeeded by his son Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. During their 30 year rule, 60,000 Haitians were killed and countless more were tortured by the Duvaliers' Tonton Macoutes death squads, but in 1969, after 13 years of murderous rule by Papa Doc, U.S. Ambassador Clinton Knox shook hands with the dictator and called for increased aid to Haiti. PapaDoc made him an honorary Tonton Macoute. While Haiti became the poorest country in the Westem hemisphere, the Duvaliers enriched themselves by stealing foreign aid money. In 1980, for instance, the International Monetary Fund granted Haiti a $22 million budget supplement. Within weeks, $16 million was "unaccounted for," presumably in Baby Doc's bank account.

Papa Doc liked to compare himself to Christ and adapted the Lord's Prayer to read "Our Doc who art in the National Palace for life, hallowed be Thy name by present and future generations." Baby Doc, on the other hand, made Haiti into a trans-shipment point for Colombian cocaine. He allegedly let his father-in-law use Haiti's national airline to ship drugs to the U.S., and his brother-in-law was convicted of cocaine trafficking by a Puerto Rican court. Nevertheless, as long as Papa and Baby Doc were anti-communists, they could do no wrong in the U.S. government's eyes. Their regime finally ended in 1986, when Baby Doc fled angry mobs of Haitians for the comfort of a Parisian villa, where he now resides.

http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Caribbean.html