CARIBBEAN WOMEN DENOUNCE U.S.-BACKED COUP IN HAITI
----- Original Message -----
From: Malaika Kambon
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2004 5:59 AM
Subject: [unioNews] CARIBBEAN WOMEN DENOUNCE U.S.-BACKED COUP IN HAITI
NEW AFRIKAN MILLENNIUM
5 MARCH 2004
Every day is International Women's Day - We do not stop being women the other 364 days of
the year, just as those of us who are AFRIKAN Women do not stop being AFRIKAN - or Women
the other 336 (or 335 days if its a 'leap' year) of the year after Black (read: AFRIKAN) our story month.
We are always fighting for our dignity, self-determination, & right to be free, 24/7 every day.
A racist/sexist CRISTOBAL COLON & a racist, sexist, (& probably pedophiliac) pope set the
stage for us to have to do so 600 years ago.
Nothing has changed. The 1% of the world (old, white, male, rich, racist, genocidal, greedy [colonialist,
prison-industrial complex-(back then - slave) owners, etc.] ) are still trying to own & / or control most
of the material wealth of society- in the world.
The difference now is that for one brief moment - AFRIKAN PEOPLE - the people of AYITI -
threw them out...and kept throwing them out & kept throwing them out...repeatedly...
The alleged powers that be really cannot handle that.
Like the present miscarriage in CALI, they think that 'they are back.'
How wrong they are.
war without terms.
m
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 21:55:43 -0500
From: "Pan-African News Wire" <[log in to unmask]>
CARIBBEAN WOMEN DENOUNCE THE U.S.-BACKED COUP IN HAITI
Contact Caribbean: ANDAIYE, 0115922 277010
[log in to unmask]
Jacqueline Burgess email [log in to unmask]
Contact US: Margaret PRESCOD 323-221-1698
[log in to unmask]
We, the undersigned women of the Caribbean and of Caribbean
descent, denounce the US-backed coup, which culminated in
President Aristide's removal from Haitian soil by US forces
on Sunday, February 29, 2004.
The majority of the Western media, functioning as an arm of
the coup-makers, pretends that the issue is President
Aristide's faults and weaknesses, and his loss of support
among the people. While we recognize that there are likely
to be legitimate criticisms of the Aristide government, that
is not the issue.
The issue is that there was a democratically-elected government
which had not completed its term, and an opposition which
included armed gangs, purported drug dealers and mercenaries
led by former leaders of the FRAPH death squad and Duvalierists.
One of Haiti's current alleged "liberators." Chamblain was leader
of the death squads responsible for the mayhem which led a U.N.
envoy to Haiti in 1993 to declare, "the Haitian people are living
under the most ferocious repression in their entire history".
These terrorists have had the backing of what has been called
Haiti's "permanent government" - the merchants, elite
mulattos, Black former military, intelligence and
bureaucratic establishment, and without doubt, drug lords - a
permanent government that had financial and other support
from the US. The people of Haiti have tried for decades to
get them off their backs and may well have succeeded if the
US had not undermined their movement, which threw out Baby
Doc and put Aristide in power.
The coup is the latest action in the 200-year effort by the
colonial powers, including the US, to defeat the struggle for
freedom of Black people of Haiti and to prevent them from
serving as an inspiration to others which the colonial
powers first acknowledged with the words of Napoleon:
"The freedom of the Negroes, if recognized in St. Domingue
(Haiti's name then) and legalized by France, would at all
times be a rallying point for freedom-seekers of the New
World."
Napoleon sent in the largest force ever to cross the
Atlantic up to then, but he was defeated. The Haitian people
also inflicted military defeat on Britain and Spain.
Haiti was also a source of direct aid to other freedom-
seekers. Under siege itself, Haiti supplied Simon Bolivar,
the Liberator of Venezuela and other South American
countries, who sought refuge there, with two ships and
supplies to overthrow Spanish colonial rule; they also helped
to train some of Bolivar's soldiers. Its only request was
that in return, Bolivar fight to free the slaves in Latin
America.
The Haitian people achieved the first successful slave
revolution in history, abolishing slavery over 60 years
before the US with its Civil War. But they have never been
allowed the conditions in which they could build their future
without premeditated outside interference. The imperial
powers, especially France and the US, furious at what Black
people, "their property", accomplished against them, have
made the Haitian people pay. Backed by the United States,
France ordered Haiti to pay 150 million francs in gold
as reparations to former plantation and slave owners as
well as for the costs of the war, in return for international
recognition. It has been estimated that French bankers and
big business alone owe Haiti at least $21 billion in
reparations for the forced debt that took Haiti 120 years to
pay off.
For sixty years following the revolution, the U.S. government
refused to recognize the Haitian Republic. The U.S.
threatened Haiti twenty-six times by anchoring warships in
its harbors to protect U.S. business interests. It invaded
Haiti in 1915 and stayed until 1934 " nineteen years of
occupation. U.S. marines robbed $500,000 from its National
Bank in 1915 and deposited it in the National City Bank-- now
part of the Citibank octopus. In the 200 years since Haiti's
independence, it endured thirteen coups before the coup of
February 29, 2004. The bloody Duvalier dictatorships (father
and son) were backed by both the US and France. Cedras,
appointed by Aristide during his first term to head the army,
later led a coup against Aristide, which was the joint work
of the Haitian business elite, and the CIA.
Under the Bush administration the US stepped up its campaign
to force regime change in Haiti. It pressured the Inter-
American Development Bank and other agencies to cancel
hundreds of millions of dollars in development assistance to
Haiti " earmarked for safe drinking water, literacy programs
and health services. It instructed the IMF and the World Bank
to place Haiti under a financial embargo. This is the
administration which now asks us to believe that it is acting
in the interests of peace and democracy in Haiti " as in
Iraq.
And as is true everywhere, it is women and children who pay
the highest price for the violence, including the violence of
poverty, corruption and greed. Grassroots women and their
children in Haiti, particularly those who are darker-skinned,
are the poorest of the poor and have had to struggle to keep
their loved ones safe and fed in the midst of violence and
misery. It is the poorest sectors of the population who
supported President Aristide. Children have also been drawn
into the struggle: images coming out of Haiti show children
placing burning tires on the streets and participating in so-
called looting.
All Caribbean people have a long experience of US economic,
political and military domination and subversion in this
region. We have always understood that what happens in Haiti
reflects whether we are winning or losing our long struggle
to be free. Haiti has been used as the whipping board, as the
example of what would be done to the rest of us if we dared
do what the Haitians did so brilliantly, defeat the colonial
powers. It was CLR James, a Caribbean man born and bred in
Trinidad and Tobago, who wrote in Black Jacobins, the great
history of the Haitian revolution: The transformation of
slaves, trembling in hundreds before a single white man, into
a people able to organize themselves and defeat the most
powerful European nations of their day is one of the great
epics of revolutionary struggle and achievement. We have
always felt deeply that we must defend Haiti because Haiti is
ours. Now we must act.
We must act in defense of the other countries of the Americas
where the US is also working to subvert a democratically
elected government and bring about regime change to suit
their interests against our interests. We must let the world
know that we will not silently permit US destabilization in
Venezuela, a Caribbean country, where massive public support
in the streets, led by women, has twice saved the people's
President Hugo Chavez, a man of African and Indigenous
descent like most of the Venezuelan population and the
People's anti-racist and anti-sexist constitution, the most
advanced in the world.
We must act to prevent further massacres in Haiti by exposing
the truth about US involvement. We must act to oppose
another racist occupation of Haiti by US forces and their
allies. We must act to oppose fraudulent elections or any
other intervention in Venezuela.
The coup and kidnapping of President Aristide are threats to
all of us, beginning with those of us in the Caribbean and
Latin America regions.
We must call on Caribbean and Latin American governments to
join with opposition voices in the US to:
Demand that President and First Lady Aristide be freed to
travel where they want to and to speak freely so that the
world can hear directly from them.
Condemn acts of violence against the people of Haiti, where
as in any armed conflict, women and children bear the highest
price, including in sexual violence.
Support the bringing to justice of those who are committing
violence and other atrocities against the Haitian people,
including by coup leaders; and call for the convicted
criminals among the coup leaders to serve their terms;
Oppose the return by the US government of Haitian refugees
who are fleeing violence, including the violence of poverty
imposed on then by the US and who are bound to face even
greater violence upon their return to Haiti.
Insist on the sovereignty of the people of both Haiti and
Venezuela, who must be in charge of their own affairs without
outside interference.
We call on the United Nations to ensure that the social,
cultural and economic rights of the women of Haiti are
protected, especially during this period
Lastly, we call on CARICOM Heads of Government now meeting in
Kingston, Jamaica:
1. To refuse to commit Caribbean troops to Haitian soil, in
light of the fact that the circumstances of the removal from
office of the constitutionally elected President remain
unclear; and
2. To undertake its own public investigation into the
circumstances which led to the removal of the
constitutionally elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide
from office.
Signed as of March 3, 2004 (signatures are still being
collected)
NAME COUNTRY
ANDAIYE
Guyana
Sheila RAMPERSAD
Trinidad & Tobago
Peggy ANTROBUS
Barbados
Honor Ford-Smith
Jamaica
JULIETA Alfonso
Cuba
RAMABAI ESPINET
Trinidad & TOBAGO
Margaret PRESCOD
Barbados/USA
Hazel Brown
Trinidad and Tobago
DONNETTE Francis
Jamaica
Jacquie Burgess
Trinidad and Tobago
ALISSA TROTZ
Guyana/Canada
ZAKIA UZOMA WADADA
Trinidad and Tobago
LINNETTE VASSELL
Jamaica
Merle Hodge
Trinidad and Tobago
Karen de Souza
Guyana
IJAHNYA Christian
Anguilla
DYLIS L. McDonald
Trinidad and Tobago
Margaret D. Gill
Barbados
Patricia BYNOE
Trinidad and Tobago
JOSANNE Leonard
Trinidad and Tobago
VANDA RADZIK
Guyana
Diane Cummins
Barbados
Carol NARCISSE
Jamaica
AMINA Blackwood-Meeks
Jamaica
Denise BOODIE
Guyana/UK
Pauline Melville
Guyana/UK
EVETTE Burke-Douglas
Guyana
Rhoda REDDOCK
Trinidad and Tobago
Patricia Rodney
Guyana/USA
EUDINE BARRITEAU
Barbados
Marjorie L. Morris
Guyana/USA
Carol PERSAM
Canada
Cecilia Green
Dominica
Kamala KEMPADOO
Guyana/Canada
Rev. Patricia SHEERATTAN BISNAUTH
Guyana/Switzerland
NALINI PERSRAM
Ireland
Marie Therese DIMANOW
Haiti
Lisa Thompson
Guyana
Malaika Scott
Guyana
Chandra BUDHU
Guyana/Canada
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