Five years later: Haitians step up their fight for independence and democracy

by Ezili Dantò
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In this Charles Boylan radio interview from Vancouver, Canada, conducted on Jan. 7, 2015, Ezili Dantò discusses the 11-year U.S. occupation of Haiti that’s outsourced to the U.N. military, the charitable industrial complex fronts, the events leading up to the fifth year anniversary of the earthquake, the squandering of the $9 billion collected in the name of the Haiti earthquake victims, the dissolution of Parliament on Jan. 12, 2015, the new generation of patriotic forces that’s arisen since the occupation began to say NO to dictatorship, no to American imperialism, no to the international gangsters. Ezili Dantò explains that MINUSTAH is the AFRICOM of the Western Hemisphere. Cuba, Venezuela, the African Union, Latin America and the CARICOM nations have turned a blind eye to the U.S. occupation of Haiti, even participating in the pillage and plunder. Ezili’s describes the Haiti revolutionary forces taking back the country, the fight-back, the losses and the Haiti charge forward. See partial excerpt published by TMLW.

Haiti-protest-outside-Bill-Clintons-Harlem-office-down-with-dictatorship-UN-Martelly-011215-by-Dahoud-Andre-web-300x225, Five years later: Haitians step up their fight for independence and democracy, World News & Views
In the freezing New York cold on Jan. 12, 2015, Haitians protest in front of Bill Clinton’s Harlem office, saying “No to dictatorship, down with the U.N., down with the U.S. puppet Martelly government!” – Photo: Dahoud Andre

Five years ago, after the catastrophic Haiti earthquake, the international community – a self-defined “Core Group” under the leadership of former President Bill Clinton – took over Haiti recovery and reconstruction and announced they would “build Haiti back better.” But this was a euphemism for land grabbing, privatization, occupation and imperial plunder.

Black lives don’t matter in the United States, much less in Haiti. Western capitalism and culture of consumption is built on the foundation that African and indigenous peoples are incapable of running their own affairs, must be starved, raped, murdered, subjugated, kept on their knees, their labor, lands, resources and very bodies used to service white supremacy – and only the assimilated are civilized. It’s the 1492 story to the present. Haiti is the counter and rebel of that story.

Eleven years ago, on the bi-centennial of Haiti’s independence in 2004, there was a U.S.-Canadian-French regime change against the democratically elected president of Haiti. The 2010 earthquake was used to bring back dictatorship and to strengthen the U.S.-Euros military and the “left-right” colonial hold on Haiti.

But events in Haiti show the Haitian people are finally waking up from the shock and awe of the U.S.-led “reconstruction” of Haiti. For the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake that killed over 316,000 Haitians in 33 seconds, I was interviewed on Vancouver Co-op Radio’s Discussion.

I explain that the Bill Clinton-Barack Obama reconstruction of Haiti these last five years meant the brutal use of the earthquake trauma to tighten foreign domination, oppress and imprison dissenters, and take Haiti lands, resources and offshore islands. A partial transcript of the interview is found here. Listen to the complete audio interview above.

Events in Haiti show the Haitian people are finally waking up from the shock and awe of the U.S.-led “reconstruction” of Haiti.

Despite the brutal U.S. occupation behind U.N. mercenary guns in Haiti, a new generation of dynamic Haiti revolutionary voices managed to surge to the forefront of the fight against dictatorship and impunity. There’s a Haiti proceeding filed against Bill Clinton for an accounting of Haiti quake funds and another lawsuit is on-going for corruption against the Michel Martelly presidential family.

Hey-Bill-what-happened-to-the-Haiti-earthquake-money-flier-for-protest-Clintons-Harlem-office-011215-232x300, Five years later: Haitians step up their fight for independence and democracy, World News & Views
This is the flier that drew a crowd to brave the cold on Jan. 12.

The widespread anti-government, anti-U.N., anti-NGO protests continue to gather momentum despite the U.N. shooting live ammo and chemical agents at unarmed demonstrators and the militarized police regularly lobbing foul, skin-scratching water, tear gas and rubber bullets at the demonstrators.

“I hope that the United States doesn’t brutally silence these people with death. I think I see a change. We hope not too many more people die. We hope that it’s not a bloodbath coming up in the next three weeks,” I told Charles Boylan, host of Discussion, on Jan. 7.

The U.S.-led false charity and benevolence in Haiti is a two century-old colonial blueprint that moves forward unabated. Empire’s horrid beat goes on. The hero/villain pathology of Western imperialism hides the fact that foreign “aid” is money laundering. It’s tied aid.

Foreign aid is mostly corporate welfare for the power elites on the Washington beltway. USAID’s purpose is to make foreign markets for Wall Street.

The human rights debacle and international crimes in Haiti go on year round. But Haiti may count on the mass media landing there on the anniversary of the terrible earthquake and for there to be lots of coverage this one time per year.

Some of the news coverage, like Russia Today (RT), will publish a good summary of the Haitian aid fraud. Others will make you see red, like the Jan. 12, 2015, press release where the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gushes about the “remarkable progress five years after Haiti earthquake.”

Considering the CDC, U.N. and WHO (World Health Organization) were complicit in the initial delay in acknowledging U.N. accountability for the source of the cholera disease, their assertion is as much an affront to thinking people as the fake 40-year $2.27 billion U.N. plan to eradicate its cholera from Haiti. These rosy announcements are blithely made, when Haiti waterways are poisoned and not even back to where they were before the quake in terms of public access to clean water.

Despite the brutal U.S. occupation behind U.N. mercenary guns in Haiti, a new generation of dynamic Haiti revolutionary voices managed to surge to the forefront of the fight against dictatorship and impunity.

Over 10,000 Haitian humans are dead of U.N.-imported cholera, 850,000 sickened since October 2010 and the cholera deaths keep rising in the rainy season.

Haitians are systematically denied medical human rights along with clean water infrastructure reparations by the world arbiters of human rights. Last week a U.S. judge dismissed a Haiti cholera lawsuit against the United Nations. The General Hospital at the epicenter of providing quake relief for Haitians before international help landed still remains destroyed and not a reconstruction priority.

Haiti-protest-against-Martelly-UN-US-occupation-011115-300x300, Five years later: Haitians step up their fight for independence and democracy, World News & Views
Haitians are hitting the streets in protest nearly every day. Many are thrown in jail, but two young Haitian lawyers, André Michel and Newton St. Juste, have been able to get many of them out because of the people’s constant uprising. These lawyers are also asking Bill Clinton to account for the $10 billion that was collected from 2010, supposedly for Haitians, not for the Clintons.

Nearly 300,000 quake victims are still homeless five years after the quake, and thousands are being evicted from their makeshift homes. But beautiful luxury hotels for tourists were built with money meant for homeless people.

WHO-CDC short term cholera vaccines and ineffective, even weaponized vaccines and vitamins, swallowed down with foul drinking water on hungry stomachs are far from “significant progress toward rebuilding the national public health system.” (See also Neonatal tetanus vaccine by U.N. and WHO is found deadly and causes permanent infertility.)

On Jan. 11, 2015, a day before Haiti Parliament was set to dissolve, leaving President Michel Martelly to rule by decree for failure to hold local and parliamentary elections in three years, the U.S. Embassy continued to ignore the Haiti protesters’ refusal to live in a dictatorship and insisted the U.S. government would “safeguard the significant gains we have achieved together since the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake.”

A point to be highlighted is that, contrary to the general impression given by the mass media coverage of the overall Haiti situation, the crisis of government legitimacy in Haiti began in 2004 with the ouster of Haiti’s democratically elected president, not just in 2010 after the earthquake with the Martelly-Lamothe doctored elections. In fact, Haiti recently marked “One hundred years of Haiti resistance to U.S. imperialism in all its faces.”

“Yo di y ap ede nou, men se nou k ap mete manje nan bouch yo,” Haitians say, which means, “They say they came to help us, but it’s Haiti that’s feeding them.”

Most of the “experts” on Haiti will not clearly emphasize what Ezili’s HLLN has been pointing out as critical since before the earthquake: The U.S., under President Barack Obama, sent in 20,000 U.S. military troops paid for in “aid dollars to Haiti,” instead of sending in what the victims actually needed – 20,000 doctors and access and investment in clean water, electricity, sanitation, local agriculture and manufacturing – real infrastructure aid after the earthquake. (Clean water is life and health for Haiti. See Zili Dlo Clean Water,Skills Transfer and Solar Power; Zili Dlo: 2012 delegation.)

For instance, Haiti has the lowest crime rate in the Caribbean. But the poverty pimps at the State Department, their Core Group gangsters and international NGOs promote the image of Haiti’s violence in order to convince the world of their “heroic” work in Haiti. When, in fact, Haiti is broken because of intervention.

Haitians-flee-water-cannon-protest-against-Martelly-Port-au-Prince-011015-by-Hector-Retamal-AFP-300x199, Five years later: Haitians step up their fight for independence and democracy, World News & Views
Haitian police are militarized now, doing what police do in Ferguson, Missouri. They were trained by U.S. and Canadian police to put down the protests against dictatorship, but the protests only grow.

U.S.-led intervention is what actually brings violence, death, disease, impunity, injustice, dependency, endless debt and containment-in-poverty to Haiti’s world.

For the truth about Haiti and the horrific consequences of Western intervention, the hidden U.S. occupation, Dominican Republic apartheid and Haiti resistance, share the photo essay and presentation by Human rights attorney, Ezili Dantò titled “The Quiet Genocide in Haiti. How it is wielded from FDR to Obama. The United Nations, a criminal organization from Lumumba to Aristide.

Let the world know that contrary to popular belief Haiti has the lowest crime rate in the Caribbean. And although Haiti’s prison population has doubled since the 2010 earthquake and U.S. militarization of Haiti policing, Haiti still has the lowest prison population in the Caribbean.

So why are U.N. soldiers in Haiti? Why is the U.S. the largest funder of the U.N. mission in Haiti? The reason is unbelievable for Americans, fed a diet of mainstream lies, to absorb. But the results of colonial interventions everywhere on Planet Earth bear this out.

It’s obvious in the Caribbean nations surrounding Haiti. The warmongering U.N., U.S. and their private military security contractors (PMSCs), like DYNCORP, are in Haiti to assure Haiti becomes as violent and incarcerated as the rest of the “developed” Caribbean.

That’s why, although Haiti still has the lowest crime rate, since the U.S.-U.N. got there in 2004, Haiti has experienced a massive increase in the incarceration of Black men – more so than anywhere else in the Caribbean. Haiti has the lowest crime rate but the highest number of prisoners in the Caribbean who have NOT been tried or convicted of any crime – the highest numbers of pre-trial detainees in the Caribbean!

No-luxury-hotel-with-money-meant-for-homeless-people-Haitians-protest-in-London-0115-300x225, Five years later: Haitians step up their fight for independence and democracy, World News & Views
Haitians and supporters protest in London.

Seventy percent of Haiti’s prisoners are warehoused detainees who are made prisoners but have never had a trial or been convicted of a crime. The United Nations mission to Haiti used an estimated $9 billion in overhead and salaries over the course of their 11-year occupation to help the U.S.-Euros increase Haiti’s crime rate and incarceration rate.

In fact, the self-defined international “Core Group” as represented by former Obama Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Edward Mullet at the U.N. and the OAS in 2010, for instance, incarcerated the entire Haiti population into more torment by de-legitimizing elections to impose the unconstitutionally-qualified Martelly-Lamothe regime.

Not once a year, but every moment of Haiti’s agony, here are the questions Ezili’s HLLN constantly points to that all Haitians of conscience and caring world citizens should have an accurate answer for:

Question No. 1: What’s so important in Haiti that the United States would build its fourth largest embassy in the world there, while funding a U.N. proxy occupation force for over 11 years now?

The Haiti homicide rate is 6.9 per 100,000. But the Dominican Republic has FOUR times more violence than Haiti at 25.0 per 100,000. Haiti has the lowest incarceration rate in the Caribbean and the lowest crime rate in the Caribbean. Why is the U.N. not bringing stability to the more violent DR? Or to Brazil, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Jamaica, Mexico, Bahamas – all with greater violence than Haiti?

Question No. 2: Why is there a U.N. Chapter 7 shoot-to-kill “peace enforcement” mission in Haiti for over 11 years? Haiti is a country not at war, without a peace agreement to enforce, with less violence than most countries in the Western Hemisphere and the lowest crime rate in the Caribbean.

Question No. 3: Haiti has trillions of dollars in natural resources – gold, oil, natural gas, iridium, uranium, copper et al – why does Haiti need Obama-Bush-Clinton’s meager 41-cent-an-hour sweatshop jobs or U.S. charity (false NGO aid) when it has its own vast resources to develop its economy?

Learn more: For more details on the situation, see Former U.S. ambassador to Haiti lied, Martelly held a U.S. passport; Haiti is broken because of intervention; Haiti Dreadlocks Protest Eurocentric Profiling; Diaspora Music interview Ezili Dantò with Norman Otis Richmond: U.N.-MINUSTAH mission in Haiti is America’s AFRICOM in the Western Hemisphere, Oct. 26, 2014; Haiti Message to U.S. Ambassador Pamela White: “Stop Blocking Removal of Corrupt Martelly-Lamothe Regime”; Haiti Protest Caracol and Martelly Regime; Vertieres 2014-Haiti Resist U.S. Occupation and Martelly-Lamothe Puppet Gov; No to Sham Elections and U.S. Occupation; Slave patrol origins of U.S. police and military and Rebuilding on Quicksand: Haiti after the U.S. (s)election.

See also End the Left-Right White Solidarity against Haiti ; The Quiet Genocide in Haiti. How it is wielded from FDR to Obama. The United Nations, a criminal organization from Lumumba to Aristide; Neonatal tetanus vaccine by U.N. and WHO is found DEADLY and causes permanent infertility; Obama sides with the U.N. against Haiti in the cholera case; The Plantation Called Haiti: Feudal Pillage Masking as Humanitarian Aid; I pay this price for you: Haiti is open for business; the “Life and Debt“ documentary on the Jamaica situation which illustrates why tourism, an export economy, sweatshops and privatization of pubic assets are not development for Haiti, Africa or the Caribbean; and Haiti: Foreign Investment means Death and Repression: A Historical Perspective.

“Grenadye alaso sa ki mouri n’ap vanje yo!” –Indigenous Army of Ayiti, 1791

Ezili Dantò, award winning playwright, performance poet, dancer, actor and activist attorney born in Port au Prince, Haiti, founded and chairs the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN), supporting and working cooperatively with Haitian freedom fighters and grassroots organizations promoting the civil, human and cultural rights of Haitians at home and abroad. Visit her at www.ezilidanto.com, www.open.salon.com/blog/ezili_danto and on Facebook.