Solidarity Movement To End UN Occupation Of Haiti

RESIST! HAITI, OCCUPATION, UNITED NATIONS

By Ajamu Nangwaya, http://www.blackagendareport.com
September 25th, 2014

“From the beginning of our century until now, Haiti and its inhabitants under one aspect or another, have, for various reasons, been very much in the thoughts of the American people. While slavery existed amongst us, her example was a sharp thorn in our side and a source of alarm and terror…. Her very name was pronounced with a shudder.”
– Frederick Douglass, World’s Columbian Exposition, January 2, 1893

As former Haitian President Aristide is placed on house arrest, supporters worldwide demand immediate halt to attacks on him and Lavalas Movement

 

We are no longer living in the 19th century with the specter of Haiti’s successful struggle for its freedom haunting the consciousness of slave masters across the Americas. Yet the military occupation of this country since 2004 by way of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) is sending a clear message that the Haitians’ tentative step toward exercising control over the destiny in the 1990s and the early years of the new century is still “a source of alarm and terror” to imperial overlords such a Canada, France, and the United States.

US opposition to minimum wage increase in Haiti revealed

Sweat shop in Haiti (file foto) WikiLeaks public cables have showed how the U.S. Embassy in Haiti worked closely with factory owners contracted by Levi’s, Hanes and Fruit of the Loom to block an increase to the minimum wage for Haitian workers. In 2009, the minimum wage was $1.75 per day. In June 2009, responding to workers’ pressure, a parliamentary bill proposed to raise it to $5 per day. Factory owners opposed it saying they would only pay $2.50 “to make T-shirts, bras and underwear for US clothing giants like Dockers and Nautica”. Backed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Embassy, they urged then Haitian President René Préval to intervene. The Haiti cables reveal how closely the US Embassy monitored widespread pro-wage increase demonstrations and the political impact of the minimum wage battle. UN troops were called in to quell workers and students protests, sparking further demands for the end of the UN military occupation of Haiti. Because of these fierce demonstrations, sweatshop owners and Washington were unable to keep the minimum wage as low as they had wanted to for long. In August 2009, President Preval negotiated a deal with Parliament to have two minimum wages: $3.13/day for textile workers and $5/day for other workers. But Parliament also adopted a progressive increase over three years so in October 2012 textile workers minimum wage finally went up to $5/day ($6.25 for other sectors). “200 Gourdes ($5) right now!”

Book Exposes Violent Role of Paramilitaries in Haiti

Paramilitaries destroyed the free school buses that had been operating in Cap Haitian under Aristide’s government. Credit: Judith Scherr, Cap Haitian, Haiti, August 2004.

By Judith Scherr, Inter Press Service

OAKLAND, California, Aug 16 2012 (IPS) – Haiti’s brutal army was disbanded in 1995, yet armed and uniformed paramilitaries, with no government affiliation, occupy former army bases today.

President Michel Martelly, who has promised to restore the army, has not called on police or U.N. troops to dislodge these ad-hoc soldiers.

Given the army’s history of violent opposition to democracy, Martelly’s plan to renew the army “can only lead to more suffering”, says Jeb Sprague in his forthcoming book “Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti”, to be released mid August by Monthly Review Press.

The role of Haiti’s military and paramilitary forces has received too little academic and media attention, says Sprague, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He hopes his book will help to fill that gap.

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Sprague researched the book over more than six years, traveling numerous times to Haiti, procuring some 11,000 U.S. State Department documents through the Freedom of Information Act, interviewing more than 50 people, reading the Wikileaks’ files on Haiti, and studying secondary sources.

An interview with an Iraqi woman whose family was brutalized by US soldiers

[This voice of an Iraqi women on the US occupation must be heard.  As people in the US are being asked, once again, to support the war moves of the US and allied governments, the experiences she relates must be heard, in order to build the struggle and solidarity against imperialist war.  The views she expresses are drawn from her experience, and are not necessarily the views of Revolutionary Frontlines. We thank William T. Hathaway, the author, for submitting this article for posting.  — Frontlines ed.]

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by William T. Hathaway, author

SAMs for Uncle Sam,  from the book “RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War”

Merna al-Marjan is a young Iraqi who is currently in Germany studying European history. We talked in her dormitory room, a spartan but functional cubicle in a building that embodies a hopeful change in European history: it was constructed in the nineteenth century as an army barracks but now houses university students. That’s progress.

On Merna’s small table sat a pot of peppermint tea and a plate of baklava. She’s short and plump with smooth skin the color of clover honey and deep anthracite eyes; she was wearing a long skirt of light cotton, a long-sleeved blouse, and a green paisley headscarf.

Hathaway: “Headscarves have become a controversial item of clothing here in Germany.”

Al-Marjan: “Yes, you can’t teach in the schools if you wear one. It’s OK for a teacher to wear a Christian crucifix but not a Muslim headscarf. I didn’t wear a hijab in Iraq, but I’ve started doing it here to show solidarity. It’s ridiculous to ban an article of clothing, a simple piece of cloth. What sort of freedom is that?

“The West has such a distorted view of Arab women. Well, of men too, but since I’m a woman, I notice that more.

“What really makes me mad is when Westerners use the way women live in the Muslim world as a justification for invading it ― either with their armies or their ideas. They’re convinced we should be like them. If they were happy, that would be one thing. They could say, ‘Here, follow our example.’ But they’re much unhappier than most of us are. Their marriages and families fall apart, their children commit terrible crimes, commit suicide. Their society is fragmented into these isolated individuals who have to compete against one another. It’s a wreck, but they’re trying to force it onto us.

Haiti: fertile land seized for new sweatshop zone

Weekly News Update

07/11/2011

Residents of Caracol, a village in Haiti’s Northeast department, say they were never consulted or even warned about plans to build a huge new “free trade zone” (FTZ, a complex of assembly plants) on land where many of them have been farming for some 20 years. “It’s the most fertile area we have at Caracol,” resident Renel Pierre told journalist Sylvestre Fils Dorcilus. “It’s inconceivable and unacceptable that the government could choose this part of the land to set up an industrial park.”

The Parc industriel du Nord (Northern Industrial Park, PIN) is a joint project of the US government, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB, or BID in French and Spanish) and South Korea’s leading apparel manufacturer, Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd. Together, they are putting some $300 million into the FTZ, which promoters claim will generate 20,000 jobs in the short term and 65,000 jobs over time. The Haitian government provided the land, which it says is state property; the administration of former president René Préval (1996-2001 and 2006-2011) promised to compensate the peasants who have been using it.

2.2 million Iraqis displaced in Iraq, another 1.8 million in exile

It was all about Weapons of Mass Destruction, said Bush. Countless dead, and millions displaced, but no WMD have been found.

2010-08-18

Jonny Abo and Abdul Jalil Mustafa

Damascus/Amman – Surviving 17 gunshot wounds was a feat in itself, but enduring life as a refugee was a second battle for al- Mortaji Abdel-Moneim al-Kaabi, a displaced Iraqi in Syria.

“I still suffer from a lot of diseases, but thank God I’m alive, although I feel like I am psychologically bleeding because I cannot forget the painful memories,” said al-Kaabi, an Arabic language teacher.

The violent incident in 2007 was never solved by police. It came after the slaying of his brother the previous year, prompting al- Kaabi and his wife and flee their homeland – like so many other refugees – for a long journey and clandestine entry into Syria.

The trip saw the two go far south to Basra, along the Gulf, then north-west to Amman in Jordan and further north to Damascus, where they found shelter in one of the teeming refugee neighbourhoods of the Syrian capital.

“Liberating” the Women of Afghanistan

[With “liberators” like these, who needs oppressors?  This article breaks down the deceitful justifications of the US war in Afghanistan.-ed.]

By Huda Jawad

09 August, 2010

Countercurrents.org

TIME magazine must be experiencing a severe case of amnesia, judging by the cover of this week’s issue which asks, “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan .” At best, this effort by TIME is irresponsible slick journalism; at worst, it is one of the most blatant pieces of pro-war propaganda seen in years. The world owes Afghanistan’s women an honest answer as to why we apathetically allow their condition to deteriorate from horrible to simply unspeakable. Instead, TIME is willingly deceiving readers into thinking that the condition of Aisha – the woman pictured on the cover – is a product of the Taliban 10 years ago. It is not. Aisha’s scarred face is a heart-wrenching reflection of the state of Afghan women today in the year 2010, and under the absurd assertion of democracy and the presence of thousands of US and NATO troops in the country.

Aisha was attacked by the Taliban last year, the same time that thousands of foreign troops were running around the country under the guise of liberating it. TIME is repeating the inexcusable and now redundant mantra used by the Department of Defense and by just about every neocon politician: We’re in Afghanistan to save the women. Here’s the problem: as US troops remain in the country and have dominated it for the past 10 years, violence against women in Afghanistan has been increasing – not decreasing. The actions of the Taliban have been reprehensible and the farthest thing from Islamic doctrine; however, TIME magazine and Katie Couric (who gave a humiliating endorsement of the cover and succeeding article) seem intent on fueling the fire of Islamophobia using such images.