RCMP training Haitian police under the Western-installed regime after the 2004 coup.
by Ajamu Nangwaya , Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity & Toronto Haiti Action Network
As we approach the 10 year anniversary of Canada’s invasion of Haiti, Ajamu Nangwaya of the Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity & Toronto Haiti Action Network explores humanity’s debt to, and imperialism’s crimes against, the Haitian people.
by Ajamu Nangwaya
February 28th/March 1st will mark the 10th anniversary of the coup in Haiti that was orchestrated by the French, American, and Canadian governments, resulting in the kidnapping and downfall of democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. According to journalist and writer Yves Engler:
“On January 31 and February 1, 2003, Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government organized the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” to discuss that country’s future. No Haitian officials were invited to this assembly where high-level US, Canadian and French officials decided that Haiti’s elected president “must go”, the dreaded army should be recreated and that the country would be put under a Kosovo-like UN trusteeship.”
Just over a year after this pivotal meeting of the three Western states in Canada, the democratic government in Haiti was overthrown, President Aristide had been kidnapped and exiled to the Central Afrikan Republic, hundreds of Fanmi Lavalas’s (FL) supporters were killed, immediate occupation of Haiti by 2,000 Western troops (latter replaced by the United Nations’ military intervention), repression against grassroots organizations, filling of the jails with political prisoners and abandonment of the FL government’s investment in education, job creation, healthcare, public services and preoccupation with increasing the minimum wage.
People of good conscience across the world, especially those in the Americas, should take the upcoming anniversary of the coup to not only learn about what has transpired in Haiti these past ten years, but more importantly, develop and strengthen our ties of solidarity with the popular organizations within and serving Haiti’s working-class and peasantry.
The UN’s occupation forces in Haiti were instrumental in “stabilizing” the post-coup order by conducting urban counter-insurgency operations against Port-au-Prince’s major “slums”, like Cité Soleil, where support for the deposed Aristide was strong and where resistance was could be expected to flow from.
People-to-people solidarity based on mutual respect and principled collaboration will assist the Haitian people in their long struggle to rid themselves of the United Nations’ (MINUSTAH’s) occupation force that has been implicated in gross human rights abuses over the past decade, including the UN borne 2010 cholera outbreak that killed 8,300 deaths and infected close to 650,000 Haitians.
Our solidarity could support the demand put forward by kidnapped and deposed president Aristide that France repay Haiti the 90 million gold francs (over $23 billion today) ransom that was extracted from the latter as the price for diplomatic recognition and freedom from the threat of re-enslavement.
Our awareness can help end the cycle of Western military interventions, coups and/or propping up of anti-democratic, anti-people regimes that has plagued Haiti throughout the entire 20th century up to the present; and help Haitians put an end to the local elite’s and foreign capital’s exploitation of the people. Based on Haiti’s contribution to humanity, it should hold a special place in the internationalist programmes of progressive forces across the world.
Haiti’s 1804 revolution was the first successful slave revolution in human history to not only defeat its oppressor, but establish a new society of the liberated.
In the annals of history, the enslaved Afrikans in Haiti were the only people to have successfully overthrown a system of slavery. They defeated the strongest military forces of the day, that of France, Britain and Spain, in order to free themselves from the servile labour regime and boldly assert their freedom and humanity.
This historic feat, the Haitian Revolution, was significant beyond the victory that the enslaved Africans registered in using armed struggle to effect emancipation-from below. These Black Jacobins etched the fear of revolution in the hearts and minds of the enslavers or agricultural capitalists in the other slave-holding territories in the Americas.
Haiti’s role in Simon Bolivar’s wars of independence in Latin America is not widely known. In the spirit of principled international solidarity, Haiti provided a place of refugee to Bolivar and his comrade Francisco de Miranda in 1815 and gave them material aid in the form of schooners, printing presses, fighters and as well as guns for several thousand troops.
Haiti’s only condition for its contribution was Bolivar’s commitment to abolishing slavery, which he didn’t vigorously and speedily implement. Haiti was still living up to the ideal of universal freedom from slavery and colonial domination and it was there during a crucial movement in the Latin American struggle for self-determination. It is rather instructive and ironic today to see Latin American military forces serving in Haiti in occupation army under the United Nations’ banner (a force that includes Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay).
Haiti’s legacy of defying and exposing the farcical nature of the racist characterization of Africans as sub-humans by defeating the best European armies of the period, taking its freedom in its own hands, contributing to the liberation of Latin America and threatening the continued viability of slavery has probably earned the country the unenviable economic and political status it currently holds in the region.
I believe the poet William Wordsworth’s was right in declaring to the fallen and deceived Toussaint L’Ouverture (and by extension Haiti), “Thou hast great allies / Thy friends are exultations, agonies, / And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.”
Our anti-imperialist obligation to Haiti and its people for their contribution to universal freedom entail the provision of political, moral and material support in fighting our common enemies of social emancipation and justice.
Click the image for information on the Toronto event marking the ten year anniversary of the 2004 coup.
As the 10th anniversary of the coup d’etat and occupation of Haiti approaches, the least you can do is inform yourself about the situation in Haiti by attending Toronto Haiti Action Committee’s February 24 public education event with Haitian human rights lawyer, Mario Joseph and Dr. Melanie Newton of the University of Toronto.
The abolitionist, former enslaved Afrikan, feminist and statesman Frederick Douglass had this to say about Haiti’s role in promoting “universal human liberty” and a reminder of our debt of gratitude and obligation to its people:
“In just vindication of Haiti, I can go one step further. I can speak of her, not only words of admiration, but words of gratitude as well. She has grandly served the cause of universal human liberty. We should not forget that the freedom you and I enjoy to-day; that the freedom that eight hundred thousand colored people enjoy in the British West Indies; the freedom that has come to the colored race the world over, is largely due to the brave stand taken by the black sons [and daughters], of Haiti ninety years ago. When they struck for freedom, they builded better than they knew. Their swords were not drawn and could not be drawn simply for themselves alone. They were linked and interlinked with their race, and striking for their freedom, they struck for the freedom of every black man [and woman] in the world.”
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