From HAITI LIBERTE
“Jus­tice. Verite. Independance.”

* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

Jan­u­ary 21 — 27, 2009
Vol. 2, No. 27

With some two mil­lion peo­ple jam­ming Washington’s two mile long National Mall lead­ing to the steps of the Capi­tol Build­ing, Barack Hus­sein Obama was sworn in this Tues­day as the 44th Pres­i­dent of the United States of Amer­ica, the first African-American to hold the post.

The inau­gu­ra­tion cul­mi­nated a week­end of inau­gural events dur­ing which the birth of slain civil rights leader Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. was also fit­tingly com­mem­o­rated. It was watched live on tele­vi­sion by bil­lions world­wide, from cities across North Amer­ica, Europe, Africa and Asia, to small vil­lages in the Hait­ian countryside.

Haitians could not but notice that Obama’s inau­gu­ra­tion was marked by the same joy, hope and colos­sal crowds that were wit­nessed on Feb­ru­ary 7, 1991, when Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide, the vic­tor of another “his­toric elec­tion,” was sworn in as the Pres­i­dent of Haiti for the first time.

The par­al­lel also helps to remind us that the power of the Pres­i­dency, by itself, can­not change the state and the real­i­ties of a given coun­try or the world. The forces of reac­tion and elite eco­nomic power still remain deeply entrenched despite the “Lavalas” out­pour­ing for change the world wit­nessed on Jan­u­ary 20, 2009. Pres­i­dent Obama, just like Pres­i­dent Aris­tide, will soon dis­cover what kind of vicious sys­tem he now pre­sides over if he truly wants or tries to reform it and put it at the ser­vice of people’s needs rather than the inter­ests of the rich rul­ing class.

Of course, his pol­icy pro­nounce­ments and cab­i­net choices so far show no sign of such a rad­i­cal agenda.

What is now needed is a mas­sive pop­u­lar move­ment to demand that the promises, many of them vague, of Obama’s two-year pres­i­den­tial cam­paign become real­ity. It is fur­ther nec­es­sary that many unad­dressed mat­ters be brought to the fore as well.

While Pres­i­dent Obama leads the United States and not Haiti, we think it appro­pri­ate for the Hait­ian peo­ple to artic­u­late their demands to the new U.S. Pres­i­dent. It should in no way be inter­preted that Pres­i­dent Obama has any right — legal, moral or polit­i­cal — to dic­tate any­thing to Haiti. But since the his­to­ries of the two nations are deeply inter­twined, Haitians must make their will known.

Here, we for­mu­late our top ten demands on behalf of Haitians everywhere.

1) Pres­i­dent Obama, you should apol­o­gize for the 2004 coup d’etat against Haiti which was prin­ci­pally fomented by the U.S. gov­ern­ment. It caused thou­sands of deaths and hun­dreds of unwar­ranted and ille­gal polit­i­cal deten­tions and exiles, many of which con­tinue to this day. It once again derailed Hait­ian democ­racy, the effects of which will be felt for generations.

You should also explic­itly repu­di­ate the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion pol­icy of suc­cess­fully ban­ish­ing for­mer Pres­i­dent Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide not just from Haiti but from the West­ern Hemi­sphere. You should declare that the U.S. will facil­i­tate Aristide’s return to Haiti and offer a jet to fly him back to his home­land from South Africa, just as it was an unmarked U.S. gov­ern­ment jet that flew the kid­napped Hait­ian pres­i­dent and his wife at the gun­point of U.S. Spe­cial Forces to Africa in the first place.

2) Pres­i­dent Obama, you should call and work for the imme­di­ate with­drawal of U.N. occu­pa­tion troops from Haiti. The U.N. is sim­ply doing the bid­ding of the U.S., France and Canada, which were the gov­ern­ments behind the 2004 coup which brought with it the occu­pa­tion. U.N. troops have car­ried out mas­sacres, abused and humil­i­ated our peo­ple, and wasted pre­cious resources through point­less show patrols aimed at intim­i­dat­ing or cre­at­ing a false sense of secu­rity. The U.N. mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion is a vio­la­tion of Hait­ian sov­er­eignty and of inter­na­tional law.

3) Pres­i­dent Obama, you should imme­di­ately abro­gate the shame­ful 1997 treaties which allow U.S. war­ships and war­planes to pen­e­trate Hait­ian waters and air­space when­ever they please. This treaty, which was forced on Haiti and presents the U.S. as the “police­man” of the Caribbean and the world, should be con­demned. Fur­ther­more, all U.S. claims to the Hait­ian island of La Navasse should be abandoned.

4) Pres­i­dent Obama, you should imme­di­ately grant all undoc­u­mented Hait­ian refugees in the U.S. Tem­po­rary Pro­tected Sta­tus or TPS. After the four storms that sav­aged Haiti last August and Sep­tem­ber, Haiti is still reel­ing and buried in mud. All repa­tri­a­tions of Haitians must stop immediately.

5) Pres­i­dent Obama, you must imme­di­ately halt the depor­ta­tion of Haitian-born but U.S.-raised felons from the U.S. to Haiti. Often these crim­i­nals have no knowl­edge of Haiti, don’t speak the Krey l lan­guage, and con­tribute to Haiti’s crime problems.

6) Pres­i­dent Obama, you should imme­di­ately reject and dis­ap­prove the neo-liberal poli­cies which the U.S. gov­ern­ment has forced on Haiti over the past two and a half decades. These include the push for Haiti to pri­va­tize its strate­gic state-owned enter­prises, cut its gov­ern­ment ser­vices, lower its tar­iff bar­ri­ers, and bal­ance its bud­get. Even you have said the U.S. may run a deficit in the tril­lions of dol­lars to meet the finan­cial cri­sis your coun­try faces. Haiti faces an even worse finan­cial cri­sis, and this for many years.

7) Pres­i­dent Obama, you must imme­di­ately stop U.S. aggres­sion, threats, sab­o­tage and bul­ly­ing against our Caribbean neigh­bors, in par­tic­u­lar Cuba and Venezuela. These two nations are our key allies, pro­vid­ing us with fuel, doc­tors, power plants, edu­ca­tion, tech­ni­cal sup­port and finan­cial aid. U.S. aggres­sion against them is unwar­ranted and ille­gal. It hurts and out­rages the Hait­ian people.

Pres­i­dent Obama, you should call for the imme­di­ate can­cel­la­tion of Haiti’s $1.3 bil­lion exter­nal debt, about 40% of which was rung up by the Duva­lier dic­ta­tor­ships and never served the Hait­ian peo­ple. Most of this sum is owed to the World Bank, Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund and Inter­amer­i­can Devel­op­ment Bank. In all three insti­tu­tions, the U.S. wields the most influ­ence and votes. Haiti has already qual­i­fied for, but not received, debt relief through the Heav­ily Indebted Poor Coun­try (HIPC) ini­tia­tive. Haiti is being asked to meet dif­fi­cult require­ments while pay­ing about $1 mil­lion a week to the banks while in the midst of a human­i­tar­ian emergency.

9) Pres­i­dent Obama, you should pub­licly demand that Pres­i­dent Nico­las Sarkozy of France honor Haiti’s 2003 demand for repa­ra­tions total­ing some $21.7 bil­lion. From 1825 until 1947, France extorted some 90 mil­lion francs from its for­mal colony, with the con­nivance of other North Amer­i­can and Euro­pean pow­ers. Haiti’s demand for resti­tu­tion of this sum with inter­est, which is founded in inter­na­tional law of which you are a stu­dent, would be a first step towards cor­rect­ing the cen­turies of pun­ish­ment Haiti has endured for being the first and last nation in his­tory to carry out a suc­cess­ful slave revolution.

10) Pres­i­dent Obama, you should offer Haiti, not aid, but repa­ra­tions for the dam­age caused by the U.S. against Haiti in the coup d’etats of 1991–1994 and 2004–2006, which claimed the lives of not fewer than 9,000 peo­ple. Repa­ra­tions should also cover the dam­age and hard­ship caused by U.S. sup­port of the Duva­lier dic­ta­tor­ship for 29 years (1957–1986) and neo-Duvalierist dic­ta­tors for another five years (1986–1990), which com­bined claimed another 10,000 lives. Sup­port of these coups and dic­ta­tor­ships was, in fact, an unde­clared war, which caused vast dam­age to Haiti’s peo­ple, devel­op­ment and democ­racy. For the nearly four decades in ques­tion, at about $250 mil­lion in dam­ages yearly, we would set repa­ra­tions for this unde­clared war at $10 billion.

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, if your vic­tory is to be any­thing more than sym­bolic, if your pro­fes­sions of faith in peace, jus­tice, law and virtue are sin­cere, if you truly wish to reverse the course of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion and its pre­de­ces­sors, then you will not hes­i­tate to act on our demands. The Hait­ian peo­ple are watch­ing. The whole world is watching.

All arti­cles copy­righted Haiti Lib­erte. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Liberte.