As Haitians began the grim task of burying their loved ones after the
January earthquake, the U.S. military used the pretext of providing “humanitarian
aid” to invade and occupy a defenceless Haiti. It is clear Western “humanitarianism” has nothing
to do with humanitarian aid, but much to do with U.S. imperialist domination.
In order to
understand Haiti’s current crisis, a brief history of the colonisation of Haiti
is instructive.
The Island
of Kiskeya was named Hispaniola by
Christopher Columbus. Early European colonisation decimated the Island’s Taino indigenous population. Today, the
Island is shared by the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The
Dominican Republic, which occupies the eastern two-thirds of the Island, receives
heavy rainfall, has less deforestation and more fertile soils. In contrast,
Haiti (Ayiti, land of high mountains),
which occupies the western one-third of the Island, is dryer, more mountainous,
mostly deforested (trees were cut-down and taken to France) and has less
fertile soils. The two nations are different today because of their different
colonial history. The Dominican Republic was colonised by Spain, which imported
few slaves, and allowed the nation to “develop” its economy and trade with the
outside world. Haiti, on the other hand, was colonised by France, which
imported large numbers of slaves and turned the nation into a massive
plantation, oppressed the inhabitants, and destroyed the environment. As a
result of this colonial history, Spanish is spoken by the people of the
Dominican Republic, whereas Creole (not French) is spoken by the people of
Haiti.
In 1659,
France established the colony of Saint Domingue (Haiti today) and began
importing slaves from Africa to work on the sugar and coffee plantations,
brutally exploiting them. In 1767, Haiti was the wealthiest colonised Caribbean
nation. The “Jewel of the Antilles”, as it was known, Haiti was supplying
two-thirds of all of Europe’s tropical products, such as, sugar, coffee, indigo
and cotton. Today, Haiti is described – rather shamefully – as the “poorest
country in the Americas” with degraded environment.
In the late
18th century, half a million African slaves under Toussaint L’Ouverture
rose up against 30,000 white European slave masters, and achieved a remarkable
victory by defeating Napoleon’s legions. On 1 January, 1804, Haiti was the
first black republic to declare independence and effectively became the first
non-slave republic in the Americas. France refused to recognise Haiti until two
decades later. The U.S. continued to enslave the people of Haiti fearing that
recognition of Haitian sovereignty would encourage a slave revolt in the U.S.
“The freedom of the negroes, if recognised in Saint Domingue [Haiti] and
legalised by France would at all times be a rallying point for freedom-seekers
of the New World”, said U.S. president Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson didn’t want
to see Haiti succeed as an independent nation. At the end, the U.S. and France
– supported by Britain, Spain and the Netherlands – colluded to undermine the
revolution and destroy Haiti’s independence.
In 1825,
France recognised Haiti, but only after Haiti agreed (i.e. was forced) to pay
France 90 million francs in gold as “retribution for liberty”. The French
abolitionist Victor Schoelcher wrote at the time that the imposition of “an
indemnity on the victorious slaves was equivalent to making them pay with money
that which they had already paid with their blood”. The payment was a loan with
high interest that Haiti had to take in order to pay its odious debt. As a
result, Haiti was indebted until 1947. It is estimated that France owes Haiti the
equivalent of more than $21 billion today.
The impact
of the debt repayments on Haiti was devastating. “By the end of the 19th
century, payments to France consumed around 80 per cent of Haiti's budget”,
writes Peter Hallward, a professor of Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex
University. France “extorted this money from Haiti by force and [...] should
give it back to us so that we can build primary schools, primary healthcare,
water systems and roads”, said former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The debt is used as an instrument of intimidation and exploitation of the
country’s natural resources, including Haiti’s native forest and oil and gas
reserves.
In 1915, U.S. Marines invaded and
occupied Haiti under the guise of “protecting Haitians” from themselves. Over
the next two decades, Haiti was occupied by a murderous U.S military force that
reinstated slavery, destroyed the nation’s constitution and siphoned billions
of Haiti’s wealth out of the country. In fact, the U.S. took over the nation’s
treasury. More than 3,000 Haitians, mostly poor peasants, were killed by the
U.S. Marines.
While the U.S. occupation
officially ended in 1934, the U.S. did not leave Haiti. The Marines left behind
the “Garde d’Haiti”, a repressive force created to terrorise
Haitians. Further, U.S. love affairs with murderous dictators, corrupt despots,
killers and torturers ensured Haiti’s ongoing tragedy, enslavement and
submission to U.S. diktat.
In 1957, Francois Duvalier (‘Papa
Doc’) was elected president of Haiti and in 1964 he declared himself
‘president-for-life’. Duvalier ruled Haiti with brute force and terror. In
1971, Duvalier’s son, John-Claude Duvalier (‘Baby Doc’) was named
‘president-for-life’ at 19 years old and succeeded his father as president of
Haiti. He plundered the national treasury and turned Haiti into a major drug
trans-shipment stop. In 1983, a popular revolt against Duvalier rule
began throughout Haiti. In 1986, Baby Doc fled Haiti to France aboard a U.S.
C-141 Starlifter cargo plane, taking with him hundreds of millions of dollars
of Haiti’s reserves. During the
Duvalier murderous regime, Haiti was the ninth largest assembler of U.S. goods in the world
where Haitians were paid near-starvation
wages. The
Duvalier despots left Haiti bankrupt, drowning in debt, “economically ravaged
and bereft of functional political institutions”. Their 28-year brutal era was an era of “darkness”,
and it remains a bloody era in Haiti’s history. The Duvalier despots were protected by the infamous Tonton Macoutes, the secret death squad.More than 50,000 Haitians were murdered during the Duvalier
dictatorships. They were armed and backed by the U.S. and France against the
people of Haiti.
The end of the Duvalier brutal regime did not end the U.S. control of
Haiti. The U.S. continues its domination and control of Haiti using the United Nations (UN) as a fig-leaf to
legitimise U.S. interference in Haiti, ensuring the continuation of the repressive government.
On 16
December 1990, Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a proponent of Liberation
theology who was popular among the country’s poor majority, was elected
President. His Fanmi Lavals Party won 67.5% of the counted popular vote.
However, in
September 1991, a U.S.-backed military coup
d’état, orchestrated by the CIA and USAID and led by General Raoul Cédras,overthrew Aristide’s administration.
Cédras’ Military Junta was a brutal
military regime. Marc Bazin, a U.S.
favourite thug and former Finance and Economy minister under Jean-Claude
Duvalier’s dictatorship, who won only 14.2% of the popular vote, was appointed prime minister by the Military Junta in June 1992. It was
during this period (1991-1994) that a U.S.-backed political assassination
campaign began leading to the murder of more than 5,000 Haitians and supporters
of Aristide. Cédras remains an unindicted criminal
living in Panamá.
In February
1993, a joint UN/OAS International Civilian Mission in Haiti (MICIVIH) was deployed to “monitor the human
rights situation and to investigate violations” at the “request” of President
Aristide to “resolve” the Haitian crisis. In September 1993, the United Nations
Peacekeeping Operation in Haiti (UNMIH) was established to monitor Aristide efforts
to rehabilitate the army and create a new police force.
In 1994, President Aristide –
demonised and discredited by Western media and U.S. corporate politicians – was
reinstated president of Haiti by a U.S. military intervention (“Operation
Restore Democracy”) after he succumbed to Bill Clinton’s demands and accepted a U.S. “blueprint for Haiti's economic
development”. His return
was designed to legitimise Washington’s neoliberal (“free market”) policies.
After the withdrawal of the U.S. military in 1996, USAID and U.S. corporations
remained in charge of Haiti. In 1996, René Préval was elected president of
Haiti, a rare moment in Haiti’s politics.
In July 1996
UNMIH was replaced by the UN Support Mission in Haiti (UNSMIH) with a mandate
until May 1997. It was tasked with “assisting
in the development and professionalization of the police”.In November 1997, UNSMIH was replaced by the UN Civilian Police Mission (MIPONUH) to March
2000. Following MIPONUH, the International Civilian Support Mission in Haiti
(MICAH) was established in December 1999. Its mandate ended on 7 February 2001.
While all these acronyms were authorised by the UN Security Council, they were serving
U.S. imperialist interests, not Haiti’s.
In November
2000, Aristide was re-elected by a landslide for a second five-year term. The
election of Aristide prompted the U.S. to impose economic sanctions on Haiti.
The U.S., Canada, and France colluded to undermine Aristide’s government and
destroy the economy by withholding international aid and loans to Haiti from
2000 to 2004. Yet Haiti was required to pay interest on its debt, which left
Haiti cash-strapped. More than 90 per cent of Haiti’s reserves were sent to
Washington to pay for the odious debt which was linked to the Duvalier regime.
While the
U.S. government continues ranting about giving “aid” to Haiti, U.S. aid to
Haiti was not destined for the people of Haiti. Most of the aid money went to
undermine the democratically elected Aristide’s government and paid for the UN/U.S.
occupation. It is a familiar trend that the U.S. employs around the world to
undermine and destroy democratically elected grassroots movements. Moreover,
Aristide was never popular in Washington and was despised by the U.S. corporate
class.
On the night of 28 February 2004, American CIA agents and members
of the former Haitian military kidnapped the democratically elected Aristide,
and his American wife, and held them against their will. They were taken out of
the country to the Central African Republic, and were later forced into exile in South Africa. As he
was in the Central African Republic, Aristide said: “I declare in overthrowing
me they have uprooted the trunk of the tree of peace, but it will grow back
because the roots are l’Ouverturian. There is no doubt, one day Haitians will
be free again.”
On 29
February 2004, a U.S.-backed military coup d’étatled by Guy Philippe and Louis-Jodel Chamblain, two of Haiti’s most
notorious criminals, obliterated Haiti democracy and ignited a bloody campaign
to liquidate Aristide’s supporters. It was a carefully staged military-CIA
operation against Aristide’s democratically elected government. “We're grateful
to the United States!” shouted Louis-Jodel Chamblain. Around the world, U.S.-backed
military coups were “consistent with the long-standing pattern and priorities
of imperial foreign policy” of the U.S., writes Peter Hallward.
Guy Philippe
was a former Haitian military officer, who received training at a U.S. military
base in Ecuador. He joined the police as chief of Delmas and Cap-Haitian in
Port-au-Prince after the Haitian army was demobilised. He was known by the U.S.
embassy as a criminal and drug trafficker. In March 2006, the International Tribunal on Haiti found Guy
Philippe and Louis-Jodel Chamblain guilty of master-minding massacres, carried
out by paramilitary gunmen under their command on Haiti's Central Plateau
between 2002 and 2004.
Chamblain, a
former death-squad member and convicted assassin, was the vice-president of the
CIA-created and armed Front for the Advancement and Progress in Haiti (Front
Révolutionnaire Armé pour le Progrès d’Haiti, [FRAPH]).
FRAPH was a
notorious death squad involved in terrorising and murdering pro-democracy
Haitians during the first military coup against Aristide (1991-1994). Thousands of innocent Haitians were murdered
and hundreds of thousands fled the country to the Dominican Republic and
elsewhere. FRAPH leader, the former paramilitary thug, Emmanuel ‘Toto’
Constant, was guilty of crimes against humanity, including participating in the
Raboteau Massacre in 1994, rape and torture. In 2008, Constant was living in
safe haven New York when a Brooklyn jury found him guilty of mortgage fraud and
grand larceny and sentenced him to 12-37 years in prison. It was evident how much the U.S. really
cares about human rights violations.
It is
important to note that, while Aristide was not a saint, he was never violent. A
Gallup poll in 2002 showed that Aristide was by far Haiti’s most popular and
trusted leader. The Aristide government was a progressive government and worked
to better the lives of Haiti’s poor majority. According to the Washington-based
Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA): ‘Under
Aristide, for the first time in the republic's tortured history, Haiti seemed
to be on the verge of tearing free from the fabric of despotism and tyranny
which had smothered all previous attempts at democratic expression and
self-determination’ (Cited in Chomsky, N. (1993). Year 501: The Conquest Continues, Verso, p. 209). It was the end of a short-lived
democracy in Haiti.
On 29
February 2004, the UN Security Council authorised the creation of the
Multinational Interim Force (MIF) to provide “security”. On 9 March 2004, the
U.S. installed a puppet government and Gérard Latortue, an expatriate and a
supporter of the military coup, was appointed as Haiti’s prime minister to
serve U.S. imperialist interests.
On 30 April
2004, the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) was established, and
Haiti was re-occupied by some 7,500 Brazilian troops on behalf of the U.S. Like
its predecessors, MINUSTAH, which began its mission in June 2004, has been
marred by scandals of killings, rape, and other violence [against Haitians] by
its troops almost since it began, according to a report by the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the University of
Miami.
In short,
the history of Haiti’s’ struggle against Western imperialism is long. The last few
hundred years have seen the people of Haiti colonised, enslaved, exploited,
oppressed, massacred, liberated themselves, invaded, occupied and terrorised.
Today, Haiti remains very poor, lacks adequate healthcare services, education
and vital infrastructure. And unlike its small neighbours (e.g., Cuba, Jamaica
and Dominican Republic), Haiti is unprepared and lacks the capacity to deal
with natural disasters.
The
estimated death toll from the January earthquake remains at over 230,000, with
many more wounded and some two million left homeless. Around three million Haitians – more than a third
of the country's population – have been affected by the earthquake. Some 500,000 people will be moved to
camps outside the capital of Port-au-Prince.
The UN
estimates that at least two million Haitians need immediate food assistance and
shelter. The UN says it will need enough food to feed some two million people
for at least fifteen days. Distribution of food aid has been limited. The World
Food Program (WFP) had reached about 200,000 in Port-au-Prince and 113,000 in
other areas. Hundreds of thousands of Haitians are still in need of food and
shelters. Displaced Haitians living in tent cities around the capital
Port-au-Prince say they have nothing to eat. Media reports reveal dire
shortages of food and medical supplies amidst fears the conditions will
encourage the outbreak of preventable diseases. Meanwhile, Brazilian forces
with the UN mission to Haiti (MINUSTAH) fired tear gas at desperate Haitians
crowding a relief centre with scarce food aid.
Bill Quigley of the Centre for Constitutional
Rights, who was in Haiti recently, said: “You
can walk down many of the streets of Port-au-Prince and see absolutely no
evidence that the world community has helped Haiti. Twenty-three days after the
earthquake jolted Haiti and killed over 200,000 people, as many as a million
people have still not received any international food assistance. Over a
million people are displaced. About 10,000 families are in tents, the rest are
living under sheets, blankets and tarps [...] Haiti and the United Nations
estimate 250,000 children under the age of 7 are living in temporary housing.
Most need vaccinations”.
The U.S.
response to the earthquake disaster has been another case of American
hypocrisy. A few hours after the earthquake struck Haiti, the right-wing
think-tank American Heritage Foundation declared: “Amidst the Suffering, Crisis
in Haiti Offers Opportunities to the U.S. In addition to providing immediate
humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti
earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional
government and economy as well as to improve the image of the United States in
the region”. In other words, the earthquake disaster is an opportunity for the
U.S. ruling elites to reshape Haiti in the way they want to see Haiti, as an
impoverished nation with labour costs still lower than those in Bangladesh. James
Robbins, a special envoy to Haiti under President Bill Clinton, suggested
“breaking up or at least reorganizing the government-controlled telephone
monopoly. The same goes with the Education Ministry, the electric company, the
Health Ministry and the courts”.
It is important to remember that Haiti
remains an American plantation and a giant sweatshop. Haitians have been
exploited to the point of starvation to produce products for the U.S. market. As
reporter John Pilger writes: “When I was
last in Haiti, I watched very young girls stooped in front of whirring,
hissing, binding machines at the Port-au-Prince Superior Baseball Plant. Many
had swollen eyes and lacerated arms. I produced a camera and was thrown out.
Haiti is where America makes the equipment for its hallowed national game, for
next to nothing. Haiti is where Walt Disney contractors make Mickey Mouse
pyjamas, for next to nothing. The US controls Haiti's sugar, bauxite and sisal.
Rice-growing was replaced by imported American rice, [destroying domestic rice
farming], driving people into the cities and towns and jerry-built housing.
Year after year, Haiti was invaded by U.S. marines, infamous for atrocities
that have been their specialty from the Philippines to Afghanistan”. American ruling elites think they own
Haiti. They see Haiti as part of U.S. “sphere of influence” and must remain
oppressed and poor.
The U.S.
government response to the earthquake disaster was to send in the U.S. Marines,
the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, and other military forces to
occupy the country for the fourth time since 1915, using so-called “security”
as the pretext to justify an outright illegal invasion of a defenceless and
traumatised nation. The military occupation of Haiti is an illegal military
occupation and cannot be justified by natural disaster and security. It is an
assault on the nation’s national sovereignty. Moreover, the full-scale U.S.
naval blockade is designed to prevent
Haitian refugees from reaching U.S. shores. It makes the U.S. argument of “providing
aid” to Haiti ring hollow.
The media response to the disaster in
Haiti is normal and consistent with
Western media role in perpetuating Western propaganda. In the case of Haiti,
the media overlooked the man-made disasters and the struggle of the people of
Haiti against ongoing Western interference in their nation’s affairs. Instead,
Haitians are portrayed by the media only from the side they did not cause, and
as if they are responsible for the situation they are in today. Demonising Haitians and painting
“Haiti as a tinderbox ready to explode” is an outright racism and part of
Western imperialism. The Western cliché of “we are good-hearted and they
[Haitians] are looters and criminals” is devoid of moral responsibility and
truthfulness.As always, the
Zionist-controlled BBC takes the credit. “Anything will do as a weapon: a hacksaw, a stick, and of course all the
machetes and guns that you cannot see. Patience is running out and all the
ingredients for unrest now exist: a whole city of destitute people hoping for
help, and at the same time you have a substantial criminal element and a
history of violence. None of this bodes well for Haiti. If the anarchy spreads,
the US troops may soon find themselves patrolling the streets in what will look
like a full-scale military operation”, wrote the BBC’s most bigoted and warmongering journalist,
Matt Frei (BBC News, 19 January
2010). Frei is a chronic liar and lacks moral principles to expose his own
country’s (Britain) criminal role in perpetuating and aiding violence around
the world.
“There are
no security issues”, said Dr. Evan Lyon of Partners in Health who works in the
General Hospital in Port-au-Prince. He told Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow on 20 January 2010, “I don’t know if you guys were out
late last night, but you can hear a pin drop in this city. It’s a peaceful
place. There is no war. There is no crisis except the suffering that’s ongoing
[...] But the first [thing] that listeners need to understand is that there is
no insecurity here. There has not been, and I expect there will not be. This
question of security and the rumours of security and the racism behind the idea
of security has been our major block to getting aid in. The U.S. military has
promised us for several days to bring in machinery, but they’ve been listening
to this idea that things are insecure, and so we don’t have supplies”.
Natural
disasters have become one of the major pretexts for U.S. military invasions and
for U.S. capitalist corporations to move in to profit from the disasters in
what is described as “Disaster Capitalism”. In other words, disasters provide
the opportunity to impose Western neoliberal policies and spread poverty. It is
important to remember that in 2008, Myanmar (Burma) – devastated by Cyclone
Nargis – refused to allow the Western military to infringe on its sovereignty
disguised as “humanitarian aid”. The Myanmar regime rightly accused Washington
and its Western allies of using the disaster as a pretext to seize the
geostratigicalyimportant and resources-rich nation. The
“humanitarianism” pretext failed because Myanmar was not a defenceless nation
and therefore did not qualify for Western “humanitarian” invasion. In 2003,
Iraq did qualify, and was deliberately destroyed in the most barbaric fashion
by the Anglo-American fascist forces.
The U.S.
military occupation of Haiti’s main airport (Toussaint L’Ouverture Airport) in
Port-au-Prince hampered serious humanitarian traffic and needlessly caused the
death of thousands of people trapped beneath the rubble of collapsed buildings
in Port-au-Prince and Léogane. Only a few search and rescue teams from Cuba,
Iceland, Venezuela and China were able to move swiftly to provide aid to the
people of Haiti and entered Haiti before the occupation of the airport and the
U.S. decision to re-route relief flights to the Dominican Republic. Indeed,
more than 400 Cuban doctors and healthcare professional are working in 227 of
Haiti’s 337 communes, offering free health services to the Haitian people.
Assistance from these and other small nations remains underreported in Western
media.
A large number of rescue organizations and charities accuse the U.S.
military of denying them landing rights to provide necessary medicines, food
and water to the millions of Haitians stricken, injured and homeless. Haiti’s
capital “looks more like the Green Zone in Baghdad than a centre for aid
distribution”, reported Al-Jazeera on 17 January 2010 from
Port-au-Prince. “These
weapons they bring, they are instruments of death. We don’t want them. We don’t
need them. We are a traumatized people. What we want from the international
community is technical help. Action, not words”, an unidentified Haitian
citizen told Al-Jazeera.
The Geneva-based charity MédecinsSansFrontières criticised the U.S. takeover of Haiti’s main airport,
saying hundreds of lives were being put at risk as planes carrying vital
medical supplies were being turned away by American air traffic controllers.
The Spanish aid group, Intervención, Ayuda y Emergencias, in Port-au-Prince,
denounced the U.S. militarisation of the earthquake. The UN World Food
Programme (UNWFP) plane carrying food, medicine and water for three days was
blocked from landing because the U.S. military gave priority to flights
ferrying U.S. troops and equipment and evacuating Americans living in Haiti.
The label
“humanitarian” was used even when the U.S. and British governments were
murdering innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Haiti’s earthquake is
another example of a disaster as an opportunity for Western governments to
claim the moral high ground. The corporate media concentration on rescued
individuals by Western-based charities and NGOs is nothing more than PR
designed to mislead the public at home.
To accept
Western “humanitarian aid” as valid is to be deluded to the point of mental
incapacity. Western aid in time of disaster has become a propaganda instrument.
While most Western governments and corporate media are using the Haiti
earthquake disaster to claim the moral high ground, they are supporting
Israel’s murderous regime besieging and terrorising 1.5 million Palestinians in
Gaza. In addition, during the Israeli criminal attack on Gaza last year when
more than 1,400 innocent Palestinians (a third of them children) were viciously
and brutally murdered by Israeli forces, most Western governments not only turned
a blind eye, they applauded Israel’s “right to defend itself” against a defenceless
population. The Zionist propaganda organ, the BBC, refused to air an appeal by
the Disasters Emergency Committee to aid the Palestinians because it will
offend Israel.
Even Israel
– an exclusionary Zionist colony that has for long persecuted and dispossessed
the Palestinian people and claims self-righteousness
– is quick to use Haiti’s disaster to enhance its fabricated image and cover-up
its war crimes against the Palestinians. While Israel continues on a daily basis
to dispossess, starve and murder Palestinians in cold blood, the Zionist media
are busy glorifying Israel and promoting Israel’s manufactured image. How can
Israel claim morality while Palestinians are denied access to food and drinking
water? Israel has no concerns for human life. It is using the Haiti’s disaster
as a PR operation. “Haiti’s disaster is good for the Jews”, read the headline
in the Hebrew daily Maariv. The
ongoing persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people proves
Israel lacks moral principles. As it has been doing for the last six decades,
Israel is exploiting the suffering of people for its own benefit. For example,
Israel often invokes the Nazi holocaust to justify its racist and murderous
policies by turning past Jewish suffering into an extortion racket. The Israeli
newspaper Ha’aretz and YNet media reported that Israeli leaders
are preparing to use today (Wednesday, 27/01/2010) – “the holocaust remembrance
day” – to discredit the Goldstone Report. If Israel has concern for human lives
and morality, Israel should open the Gaza Concentration Camp and allows the
Palestinians to breathe the air of freedom.
Finally, the appointment of
former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to head the fundraising
“efforts” in Haiti is an insult to human morality. Both Clinton and Bush played
their parts in Haiti’s man-made disasters. How can they be trusted to help
black Haitians? Both war criminals were responsible for the premeditated murder
of more than 2 million innocent Iraqi men, women and children. Clinton, in
particular was responsible for the death of more than 500,000 Iraqi children
under the age of five, callously justified by his administration as “a price
that was worth it”. In addition, Clinton and Bush were responsible for the
wanton destruction of the nations of Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia. Their
appointment to help earthquake-stricken Haiti is mind-baffling.
The January
earthquake is just the latest of natural disasters compounded and worsened by
man-made disasters to devastate Haiti. While the people of Haiti showed
resilience, courage and a capacity to survive, ongoing Western interference in Haiti’s affairs undermines
Haiti’s ability to recover from the earthquake disaster.
The
situation in Haiti today is the result of centuries of imperialist domination,
isolation, occupation and economic strangulation by the U.S. and France. “Haiti is a net product of the colonial, capitalist
and imperialist system imposed on the world. Haiti's slavery and subsequent
poverty were imposed from abroad”, writes former Cuban President, Fidel Castro.
In 2008, Haiti’s total foreign debt was $1.4 billion, or 40% of its GNP. In
2009, Haiti debt service payments to its creditors amounted to $50.9 million.
These payments are hindering Haiti’s ability to build an adequate education
system, healthcare services, and vital infrastructure. This odious debt is the
primary factor in Haiti’s ongoing poverty.
“It is uncontested that poverty is the main cause of
the horrific death toll: the product of teeming shacks and the absence of
health and public infrastructure. But Haiti's poverty is treated as some
baffling quirk of history or culture, when in reality it is the direct consequence
of a uniquely brutal relationship with the outside world — notably the US,
France and Britain — stretching back centuries”, writes Seumas Milne (Guardian.co.uk, 20 January, 2010).
Thirty years ago, Haiti was self-sufficient in stable rice and exported surplus rice and sugar.
Today, Haiti is not only importing all of its rice and sugar, but unable to
feed its people. The U.S. uses Haiti as a dumping ground for cheap U.S. subsidised
agricultural products, which has destroyed Haiti’s agriculture and forced its
farmers into destitution. According to a 2008 study by UNWFP, about 75% of
Haiti’s population (4.5 million people) lives on less than $2 per day, and 56%
live on less than $1 per day. In other words, the majority of the Haitian
people (80%) live in abject poverty.
“The collapse of the Haitian
nation resides at the feet of France and America, especially. These two nations
betrayed, failed, and destroyed the dream that was Haiti; crushed to dust in an
effort to destroy the flower of freedom and the seed of justice […] The sudden
quake has come in the aftermath of summers of hate. In many ways the quake has
been less destructive than the hate”, writes Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, principal of the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies.
In a time of
desperation, Haiti needs all the aid it can get. The first action must start
with the abolition of Haiti’s multi-billion dollar odious debt. Haiti is in
need of grants to build its healthcare services, its education and its civilian
infrastructure.
The
capability of the people of Haiti to surmount the aftermath of natural
disasters and build their nation can only be strengthened by the withdrawal of
U.S. and other foreign military forces from Haiti. Support to the people of
Haiti must include opposing Western governments' use of humanitarian aid in
natural disasters as a pretext to enforce U.S. imperialist domination of the
region.
Ghali Hassan is an independent writer
living in Australia.
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