As anniversary of coup approaches Haitian regime can’t mask is repression By Pat Chin

www.workers.org/ww/2005/haiti0120.php

Jan. 20, 2005

Caribbean Community countries have once again refused to recognize the Washington-backed coup regime of interim Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue. The latest rejection came despite intense pressure from the White House amid maneuvers aimed at justifying the ouster last Feb. 29 of the popularly elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and at legitimizing the puppet regime.

Jamaican Foreign Minister Keith Knight declared on Jan. 7 in Georgetown, Guyana, “When democracy returns to Haiti, then that nation will be admitted again to CARICOM.”

Knight stressed, however, that voting alone won’t be sufficient. “Democracy goes beyond elections,” he said. He added, “It has to do with how people are able to participate in power, and we would not want to see discriminating practices in Haiti,” alluding to the targeted political assassinations and reign of terror against Aristide’s supporters and his Fanmi Lavalas party. (Xinhuanet, Jan. 9)

On Jan. 1 in Gonaives, when interim President Boniface Alexandre announced elections for later this year, a crowd of around 200 people heckled him, Gonaives Mayor Calixte Valentin and other speakers. They shouted at them to “get out.” (AP, Jan. 1) Hundreds of people remain without food and shelter four months after Tropical Storm Jeanne killed over 2,000 people and devastated the city.

Elections are being promoted even though Haiti remains occupied. Resis tance is growing as violence, wrenching poverty, starvation and social chaos deepens.

The United Nations occupation forces, headed by Brazilian Gen. Augusto Heleno, have been complicit, working in the police, with ongoing attempts to crush the popular movement.

On Jan. 4, police reportedly killed six residents of Cite de Dieux, including a 16-year-old girl. Two people, including a 13-year-old girl, were also killed in Cite de l’Eternel. Police dressed in black and camouflage arrested several others. (Haitian Press Agency, Jan 4).

One day later, hundreds of Brazilian occupation troops and special units of the Haitian police stormed Bel Air in Port-au-Prince—another pro-Aristide neighborhood. They were met with gunfire. Five residents were reportedly killed and nine arrested.

“The UN cannot on the one hand say they are bringing security while on the other they claim to be assisting the police as they kill us, beat us and arrest us,” said an unidentified Lavalas representative. “It is a contradiction they must resolve or there will never be peace. They must control the police and stop the killing. They must support us in releasing all the political prisoners filling our jails.” (Haiti Information Project, Jan. 7)

On Dec. 1, while U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Port-au-Prince delivering the latest Bush dictate to the puppet prime minister, inmates at the national penitentiary rebelled. Prison guards reportedly executed scores of detainees. Many more were wounded in what eyewitnesses described as a savage bloodbath that the coup regime is trying to cover up.

Haiti’s prisons are bloated with pro-Aristide supporters, most of whom have not been charged with or convicted of a crime. Many have not even seen a judge.

Only 17 of the 1,100 detainees at the national penitentiary have been convicted of a crime, according to a report circulated by the Haitian Lawyers’ Leadership Network.

As if things weren’t bad enough, in late December 75 residents at the public hospital in Port-au-Prince went on strike to protest overdue pay. Sixty-five interns also joined the job action.

Prime Minister Latortue can’t seem to find funds to pay doctors a mere $145 per month. But his administration has started to dole out money to thousands of ex-soldiers who’ve demanded “back pay” in return, they say, for surrendering their U.S.-supplied arms.

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters and 13 other progressive members of Congress fired off an angry letter to President George W. Bush on Jan. 7 demanding that he oppose this giveaway. “They are the same thugs and killers who attacked police stations, freed criminals from prisons and assisted in the coup d’etat that overthrew Presi dent Aristide last February,” said the letter. “Since then, they have murdered untold numbers of Lavalas party supporters, terrorized the Haitian population and demanded 10 years of back pay.”

Aristide disbanded the military with wide popular support in 1995 after decades of the army’s brutal repression of the masses and yet another attempted coup against his administration. This latest scheme, related in the long run to reconstituting the army, is projected to cost some $29 million if fully carried out.

Widespread attacks against Aristide’s supporters are calculated to silence all opposition to the coup regime—and to prevent Fanmi Lavalas, Haiti’s most popular party, from running candidates in elections they would win, for this would undermine Washington’s desire to install a puppet government more aligned with capitalist globalization.

Haiti’s National Popular Party (PPN) issued a Dec. 27 statement denouncing the plans of the de facto government and occupation authorities. “The PPN ridiculed the notion that free and democratic elections could be held in the present context of foreign occupation, fierce crackdowns and near-universal hunger,” reported the Dec. 29-Jan. 4 issue of Haiti Progress newspaper.

Were it not for the hundreds of doctors from socialist Cuba working in Haiti, health care—a vital service made even more necessary after both the coup and Tropical Storm Jeanne rained death and destruction on the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country—would totally collapse.

What Haiti needs now more than ever is a socialist revolution.