On February 29, 2004, US military personnel kidnapped Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the legally elected president of Haiti, and flew him to the Central African Republic. It had became apparent the residents of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, could repel the US created armed “rebels” that had overrun the northern part of the country and begun to march on the city, so the French and the United States governments took matters into their own hands.

This kidnapping concluded a carefully orchestrated destablilization campaign against Haiti since Aristide's election in 2000, characterized by funding phony “opposition” groups and preventing the disbursement of a loan package from the Inter-American Development Bank to improve schools, health, roads, and water. A smear campaign included both corporate and “progressive” media, and NGOs such as Amnesty International. Finally, the US trained and armed former military and death squad members in the neighboring Dominican Republic. They began their bloody incursion into Haiti in January, which has led to thousands of deaths and the complete disruption of life for Haiti's poor majority.

The US and French governments maneuvered the U.N. to bless their occupation of Haiti. They put into place an occupation government led by Supreme Court justice Alexandre Boniface as President, and Gerard Latortue, a minister from a 1988 military-installed government who had not set foot in the country for 16 years, as Prime Minister. A UN “peacekeeping” force led by Brazil replaced the U.S. and French forces in August, but pursues the same occupation policy.

The Haitian majority, who passionately love President Aristide, have never accepted the legitimacy of the occupation government. In April, Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas Party rejected participation in a new electoral council to plan elections, on the grounds Haitians have twice elected a president, only to see him militarily overthrown for making Haitian Creole an official language and voodoo an official religion, for seeking to collect taxes from the wealthy, double the minimum wage, disband the army, and open relations with Cuba.

Lavalas leaders announced they would demonstrate on May 18th, Haiti's Flag Day, to call for Aristide's return. US marines responded by arresting Anne August (So Anne), a folk singer and voodoo priestess, on May 10th. Then the Haitian police tried to stop the march by shooting into the unarmed crowd, killing at least 3 people, while occupation forces watched. (Police often steal murdered bodies, preventing burial and an accurate count of the dead.)

Lavalas then announced actions to commemorate the 1791 slave insurrection on August 14th. The presence of international observers and a letter writing campaign to the UN may have helped large marches proceed relatively peacefully, and Lavalas announced more demonstrations for September 30, the anniversary of the first coup against Aristide in 1991. At least ten thousand people marched in Port-au-Prince, when again, units from the National Police opened fire directly into the crowd, killing several people, while UN “peacekeepers” watched. The next morning, Latortue boasted at a press conference: “We opened fire on demonstrators; some of them have been killed, others injured, and still others fled.”

On October 2, police arrested three Lavalas leaders at Radio Caraibe after they criticized the occupation government on air. Later that day police officers raided the offices of the Confederation of Haitian Workers (CTH) labor union and arrested nine union members, all without a warrant. The official justification for the arrest was that the defendants were “close to the Lavalas authorities.” Hours later masked men in military attire attacked the office of the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of the Haitian People (CDPH).

On Wednesday, October 13, authorities violently arrested Father Gerard Jean-Juste – a beloved priest, activist and pacifist — as he served food to 600 hungry children in his parish, wounding three of the children during the arrest. They have arrested hundreds more and killed more than 85 people since September 30, with an entire household of 13 people murdered execution style on October 26th. Two days later, four young people with hands tied were similarly executed. Police have sealed off popular neighborhoods such as Cite Soleil and Bel Air and conducted house-to-house searches, often destroying everything of value in the process. Latortue was overheard saying they may have to kill 25,000 people in Port-au-Price alone to purge it of Lavalas.

Besides the terror for the Haitian majority, the unconstitutional removal of President Aristide sets a dangerous precedent for Latin America and for the world, and neither the Caribbean CARICOM countries nor the Organization of African Unity have recognized the occupation government. In 1804, Haiti became the only successful revolution of enslaved people in the history of the world. The United States refused to recognize this new government for 60 years, until the end of the Civil War, and has worked ever since to prevent true independence and self-determination for Haiti. The 2004 coup against President Aristide continues this brutal imperialist policy. --------- Charlie Hinton is a member of the Haiti Action Committee, www.haitiaction.net, and GCIU Local 388M. He works at Inkworks Press, a worker-owned and managed union printing company in Berkeley, CA.