Tag: Dr. Maryse Narcisse

Fanmi Lavalas continues to focus on mass mobilization of the Haitian people to defend against death squads and non-functional institutions created by the U.S.- backed illegal dictatorship of Jovenel Moise.

Haiti Action Committee is honored to circulate this statement from Fanmi Lavalas, the people’s party in Haiti, at a moment when the coronavirus has made its deadly march into Haiti. Faced with government inaction, repression and corruption, Haitians have turned to each other and to the popular movement to meet the challenge. We urge you to distribute this statement widely.

Haiti Action Committee is honored to circulate this statement from Fanmi Lavalas, the people’s party in Haiti. Fanmi Lavalas issued the statement in solidarity with the massive upsurge of protest against the corrupt regime of Haiti’s current president, Jovenel Moise. The statement comes in the wake of violent state repression, including the horrific massacre of over 60 people in Lasalin, a center of popular grassroots activism. This Dec. 16 was the 28th anniversary of the election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide as Haiti’s first democratically elected president. The date was marked in Haiti with continued mobilizations for democracy and an end to the brutal attacks on the population.

Dr. Maryse Narcisse, presidential candidate of Fanmi Lavalas, addressed an overflow audience in Oakland in late April. She spoke in the wake of the selection of Haiti’s new president, Jovenel Moise, a right-wing businessman and protégé of former president Michel Martelly, who took office via an electoral process so replete with fraud and voter suppression that opposition forces called it an “electoral coup.”

Five hundred people packed an Oakland church to welcome Dr. Maryse Narcisse, presidential candidate of Fanmi Lavalas, the party of Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The event kicked off a week-long speaking tour of California that took her to Scripps College in Los Angeles County, the UCLA School of Public Health and the National Lawyers Guild annual dinner in San Francisco.

Dr. Maryse Narcisse, the presidential candidate of Haiti’s Fanmi Lavalas Party, is coming to the Bay Area. She will speak in Oakland at the First Presbyterian Church, 2619 Broadway, at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 23, at an event that also features the music of Vukani Mawethu, Phavia Kugichagulia and Val Serrant. Fanmi Lavalas was founded by former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide who was twice elected with huge majorities and twice overthrown by U.S. supported coups. The visit by Dr. Narcisse provides a rare opportunity to hear directly from one of its leaders about the situation on the ground in Haiti.

It should be obvious by now that the U.S.-U.N., E.U., OAS and various hired paramilitary police have engineered a second fraudulent election in as many years in Haiti. This latest attempt to kill Haiti’s freedom by aborting her dreams of democracy via the electoral process was designed to prevent landslide victories by Fanmi Lavalas, reminiscent of the presidential victories of Jean Bertrand Aristide. The U.S. and U.N. do not want to see this.

On June 7, the office of Dr. Maryse Narcisse, the presidential candidate of Fanmi Lavalas, the party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who publicly endorsed her, was sprayed with gunfire. This blatant violence against the movement that has long represented Haiti’s poor majority sparked outrage in Haiti but was met by silence in the mainstream media in the U.S.

Democracy has been sorely missing in Haiti ever since the 2004 coup d’état backed by the U.S., France and Canada, which ushered in a two-year reign of terror, followed by the unjust exclusion of Haiti’s largest and most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas, from participating in any elections until August and October 2015.

The voice of Haiti’s popular movement at this critical period in the country’s history has never been clearer. For the past several months, since the discredited legislative and presidential elections of last August and October, mass, vibrant protests for the right to a free and fair vote and against foreign intervention have been a relentless force, in the face of heavily-armed and well-financed adversaries and mounting repression.

Black Lives Matter – from Haiti to the Bay: Join the Haiti Action Committee pre-MLK March protest in solidarity with the fighting people of Haiti on Monday, Jan. 18, 10 a.m., at the Oakland Federal Building, 1301 Clay St. (12th Street BART), featuring drummers and a report from Haiti by Pierre Labossiere; then join the Martin Luther King March at 11 a.m. in Oscar Grant Plaza.

The Haitian people are determined to thwart what they see as an ongoing “electoral coup d’etat” by Haiti’s ruling elite, President Martelly and their U.S., French and Canadian backers – marching in the streets almost daily in their tens of thousands, risking their lives to insist that the fraudulent election be thrown out. On Dec. 16, the 25th anniversary of Haiti’s first free election in 1990, large-scale demonstrations will take place again throughout Haiti. We are echoing and amplifying their demands with a day of action and solidarity with the people of Haiti.

Hooded gangs attacked a large demonstration against election fraud today in the Haitian capital. Haitians, determined to thwart what they see as an ongoing “electoral coup d’état,” have been in the streets almost daily in their tens of thousands since the Oct. 25 first round presidential elections. There were huge demonstrations, punctuated by police firing into the crowd, wounding several, on Nov. 18. On Nov. 1, a big election protest in the Bel Air popular district, led by a Rara band, was attacked and two marchers shot dead; later that day a third protester was ambushed and killed on the way home.

On Oct. 25, Haitians are slated to go to the polls to elect a new president and Parliament, after a disastrous first round vote for Parliament on Aug. 9, marred by Martelly government-sponsored voter suppression, violence and corruption. Amid protests and calls from thousands of demonstrators to annul the August elections, it took almost two months to announce the “winners” who will contest this Oct. 25 “run-off.”

"I was at his (President Aristide's) house, we heard a roar of shouts of joy, and then over the walls people started coming in, pouring into the courtyard of the house when they saw the car. People were accompanying the car as many as three miles from the airport to his house," relates Pierre Labossiere of the jubilant welcome that greeted the Aristides on their return to Haiti ending seven long years of exile for them and brutal repression of the people they had to leave behind. Pierre tells the story of the Haitian people and how their never-say-die spirit continues to inspire the world.

Haiti's Lavalas movement effectively destroyed the credibility of the April 19 Senate election through a successful boycott campaign called Operation Closed Door. Participation may have been as low as 3 percent nationwide.