Haitian reality under occupation
No normality, little food, heavy repression
By G. Dunkel
Gérard Latortue, the Boca Raton, Fla., business
consultant appointed defacto prime minister after the Feb. 29
coup against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, visited
France and Belgium May 12-14.
The main purpose of his trip--besides pleading for money
from the European Union--was to renounce Aristide's demand for
$21 billion in reparations from France.
After a slave revolution won independence in 1804, former
colonial power France forced Haiti to pay 150 million gold
francs to be recognized as a nation. No other initiative in
Aristide's second term as president created as much enthusiasm
and interest among the masses as the reparations demand.
In an interview with Le Monde May 13, Latortue asserted that
Haiti doesn't have a legal right to the $21 billion, but that
France does indeed have a moral obligation to provide aid. He
said it could come in the form of a "line of credit"--most of
it to be spent importing French products.
In their campaign to oust the democratically elected
Aristide, the United States. and EU reneged on promises of
financial aid. Instead they imposed devastating economic
sanctions on the Western Hemisphere's poorest country, while
assembling a rebel force of former military and death squad
members in the neighboring Dominican Republic.
Aristide asserts that U.S. military personnel kidnapped him
and forced him to leave Haiti.
Though more than two months have passed since the
U.S./French-backed coup, foreign aid has not resumed. Latortue
counseled patience. He told Le Monde, "I have worked too long
for the United Nations not to know the slowness of the
system."
His visit to France did have a slight payoff. French Foreign
Minister Michel Barnier made a 24-hour visit to Port-au-Prince
on May 15. It was the first visit by a top French diplomat in
the 200 years since Haitian independence. Barnier promised a 1
million Euro grant to help pay back wages.
Latortue may see the necessity of patience. But Haiti's
people, watching their children sometimes go days without food,
don't have that luxury.
Many Haitian workers can only afford a meal every other
day--if they are working. But many workers don't even have a
job. Unemployment is 70 percent.
Teleco, the telephone company that is 90-percent
government-owned, has announced plans to lay off half its
workers--some 2,000 people. (Associated Press, May 12)
Some education and public-health workers haven't been paid
for months.
Police and army
Adding to the already chaotic situation, the rebels who
attacked Aristide's government in January and February have
dissolved local police forces, freed human-rights abusers from
prisons, and usurped control of the courts.
Aristide, near the end of his first term in the mid-1990s,
had disbanded the Haitian Army, long known for its bloody
repression of the masses.
The May 5 edition of Haiti Progress reported that Latortue
and Interior Minister Gen. Hérard Abraham recently
announced the re-establishment of the Haitian National Police
(PNH). This is a first step toward reconstituting the army,
said Haiti Progress, noting that Abraham had invited
ex-soldiers to present their resumes to the National School of
Justice May 2. Demonstrations were held in rebel strongholds
that day demanding the Army's reconstitution.
If the old Haitian Army had continued to exist, the local
capitalist class and their U.S. masters wouldn't have had to go
to the trouble of building a rebel force of ex-army officers,
Tonton Macoutes and FRAPH death squad goons to overthrow
Aristide. They could have just ordered a military coup.
The bourgeoisie needs its bourgeois army, police force and
justice system--the capitalist state--to effectively maintain
its for-profit social order. Latortue and Abraham are
maneuvering to strengthen that state, even if the Haitian
Army's bloody history makes it difficult to openly proclaim
this intention.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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