End the occupation of Haiti - open letter to his excellency Evo Morales Ayma

END THE OCCUPATION OF HAITI

OPEN LETTER TO HIS EXCELLENCY EVO MORALES AYMA

President of the Republic of Bolivia

10 February 2009

Dear Compañero Morales,

Cc Presidents Hugo Chavez, Fidel and Raul Castro

We write with deep respect for you, Compañero Morales, and the massive Indigenous movement that brought you to power. All over the world we have celebrated your 2005 and 2008 electoral victories, and the recent adoption of the new constitution. We have publicly condemned the racism of the elite and their massacre of Indigenous and rural people, in Santa Cruz, Pando and elsewhere. Those of us who live in Bolivia have fought and marched over many years, and continue to organize to ensure the implementation of the constitution, and the prosecution of all those who, like ex-prefect of Pando Leopoldo Fernandez, have murdered, raped and maimed in attempts to bring down the government and deny us the power to found society anew.

As organisers and concerned individuals from different countries, many of us immigrants, we deeply appreciated your excellent statement against the European Return Directive which calls for immigrant people to be detained for up to six months before they are deported.

The year 2008 marked the 35th anniversary of the US-orchestrated coup in Chile which killed President Allende and thousands of other people who were fighting for a better world. At a meeting in London called “No More Pinochets”, the Bolivian and Venezuelan ambassadors Beatriz Souviron and Samuel Moncada explained their governments’ admirable decisions to expel the US ambassadors from both countries. They called on grassroots people everywhere to unite so we can defeat Washington’s free market policies and survive.

Fortunately, South America is not ruled from Washington as it was in 1973. In the struggle against US attempts to partition Bolivia, you have won the support not only of Cuba and Venezuela, which have led the way for Third World unity and solidarity, but of Unasur (the Union of South American Nations) – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay… signalling a much more united continent.

Some time ago you recalled that before your election in 2005 as the country’s first Indigenous president, you and Cuban President Fidel Castro had discussed the possibility that the US might cut commercial ties with Bolivia. “You know what Fidel told me? First, Bolivia’s not an island like Cuba. Second, Bolivia has countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil. And third, Bolivia has so many natural resources – hydrocarbons, petroleum. This was engraved in my mind.”

This year 2009 marks the 5th anniversary of the coup in Haiti, in which Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first-ever democratically elected president, was abducted by US marines (with the backing of Canada and France) and forced into exile. Two months later the UN legitimized this coup by sending troops to occupy Haiti, and they have remained till today.

What was President Aristide’s “crime”? Like you in Bolivia and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, he was and remains the people’s president, a man of colour determined to abolish poverty. If you and President Hugo Chávez won an overwhelming popular mandate with over 67% and 61% of the votes respectively, what must we say of the popularity of President Aristide who was elected twice, the second time in 2000 by 91.69% of the vote?

Sadly, Latin America’s support for people’s right to self-determination has not extended to Haiti. Most countries, including Bolivia, have collaborated with the US in this bloody occupation.

Brazil heads MINUSTAH, the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti. Residents of Haiti’s most impoverished areas as well as independent journalists have reported massacres and rapes committed with impunity by the UN forces. They say that Cité Soleil and other neighbourhoods, community churches and organizations which were key to defeating the infamous Duvalier dictatorship and to bringing Aristide to power, have been targeted. (See references below.)1 In other words, the individuals and communities leading the struggle against racism and imperialism are targeted for death. In early 2005, MINUSTAH force commander Lieutenant-General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira testified at a congressional commission in Brazil that “we are under extreme pressure from the international community to use violence,” citing Canada, France and the United States. While some troops have been sent home following rape reports, none as far as we know have been prosecuted for their crimes.

Forty-four countries have been drawn into this outrageous and violent occupation drawing the most representative governments into the perpetration of this gross injustice. Even countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay whose governments have a reputation for championing human rights are taking part. (Full list of MINUSTAH below.)2 The UN pays military forces which participate in its operations. But money can never buy the abandonment of the prime anti-imperialist principles of sovereignty and solidarity. Venezuela and the Caricom countries have refused to be involved: they condemned the 2004 coup and didn’t recognize the “provisional government” installed by the US after the coup.

Why would a socialist government like yours which is fighting for self-determination at home, want to associate itself with the occupation of a country whose president was removed by the same foreign power which has been trying to topple you?

Unlike Bolivia and Venezuela, Haiti has neither oil nor gas. Like Cuba, Haiti is an island; and people, their ability to work and their extraordinary revolutionary legacy are its “only” resource. And while the neo-liberal governments of the US, France and Canada have long recognized how they can profit from Haiti’s impoverished population and punish it for its audacity to defeat them all, socialist-leaning South American governments have been slow to recognize their debt to Haiti.

Yet the whole world owes a huge debt to the Haitian people. Their 1804 revolution was the first to overthrow slavery, making way for emancipation throughout the Americas and strengthening liberation movements everywhere. Haiti directly aided South American Liberator Simón Bolivar by twice giving him refuge, and sending him home with ships and fighters. The Haitians asked only that he work to abolish slavery. (President Chávez acknowledged this when he visited Haiti in March 2007 after René Préval was elected president; he had promised to bring Aristide back to Haiti.)

In 1825 France imposed a crippling debt, forcing Haiti to pay for its loss of slaves and costs incurred from the Haitian Revolution – these payments continued until after WWII. The US has repeatedly imposed coups, invasions and dictators, killing thousands and forcing many more into exile. The latest coup was that of 2004 against President Aristide.

The opposition to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, like the opposition to your government, has been led by Washington and a tiny local elite. They have profited from sweatshops, and from the destruction of local farming to make way for imported US rice. With food price increases and the devastation caused by four successive hurricanes the lives of millions are under threat. The death toll is high and rising as tens of thousands have been without food or water for many days, and two-thirds of the population is homeless. They desperately need and deserve support in their struggle for survival and against occupation.

In his inaugural speech President Préval asked MINUSTAH “to help us with more tractors, bulldozers, loaders, trucks to build roads, to make canals to water our lands. These are the materials that are necessary today to stabilize the country. There is no longer any need for tanks.” He called for “a Haiti with more roads, more jobs, more food, more schools and more hospitals…”

The people have gone further: in the aftermath of the recent devastating hurricanes, they have called for the troops to leave and President Aristide to return. They ask: Why does the UN spend over $535 million a year on MINUSTAH, but has only raised 17% of the $108 million emergency money needed after the hurricanes? Why are “security concerns” being used to prevent food distribution? Why does “security” not extend to finding Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, the much loved and respected community organizer and advocate disappeared in Port-au-Prince on 12 August 2007? And given Haiti’s past history with hurricanes, why didn’t the UN help set up emergency shelters, and shore up roads and bridges in areas that have traditionally been hardest hit? Why is there money to occupy but not to feed?

This year also saw the inauguration of President Barack Obama, the first US Black president put in power by a massive movement for change. We note that President Preval was the first head of state of a country of the South to meet with Obama´s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. We hope this signals that the new US foreign policy promised by President Obama of respect for the will of the people and away from military intervention will be applied to Haiti.

MINUSTAH has made clear that its mission is far from humanitarian. The Bolivian forces in Haiti are under UN, not Bolivian, command. Even if Bolivians wanted to, they would not be able to meet humanitarian needs while they are part of a force of occupation.

Recently President Preval asked Hillary Clinton to stop aid money being given through NGOs and convert it instead into direct budget money paid to the government. It is well known that internationally most aid money paid to NGOs is not used to help those in need but to fund the salaries and Western lifestyle of the NGOs themselves – in Haiti, these are the very NGOs which supported the US coup. He also pointed out that it would be far better to give Haiti the $100 million it was seeking to tackle poverty and create jobs, than to continue financing a UN occupation to the tune of $500 million a year.

Like the Indigenous people of Bolivia, the Black people of Haiti have for centuries been exploited, murdered, raped, discriminated against, treated as less than human, lied about, their pain and suffering ignored. They are now being betrayed by the governments of the countries they helped bring to birth 200 years ago. We cannot stay silent when the very governments which we support in their anti-imperialist struggle against Washington, join with Washington against the people of Haiti. What would the people of Bolivia say if we were silent while Washington removed their elected president and imposed a UN occupation upon them? Yet, that is what Bolivia and other Latin American countries are involved in imposing on Haitian women, children and men.

Cuba and Venezuela have found ways to help Haiti without participating in the occupation – Cuba has sent doctors, Venezuela subsidized oil and tons of food. Why can’t Bolivia join with them?

On 3 November 2008 we met with Silvia Lazarte, president of the Constituent Assembly of Bolivia, Walter Prudencio Magne Veliz, Bolivian ambassador to Germany, and Beatriz Souviron ambassador to London, to discuss Bolivia’s involvement in the UN occupation forces in Haiti. We were told that international agreements had been signed before you came to power in 2005 and could not be changed overnight, but that once the new constitution was passed your government would be able to review all international agreements and reject those that are in breach of the constitution. They made clear that the new constitution is against war, and gave us a copy of your “10 commandments to save the planet, humankind and life” in which you condemn not only the war in Iraq, but all war as the greatest waste of life and natural resources. They said that a country with such a constitution cannot be part of the occupation of another people.

Bolivia won its new constitution on 25 January by over 62% of the vote. In the name of the debt owed to the people of Haiti, of opposition to racism and exploitation, of sovereignty and solidarity in the face of a common imperialist enemy, of the fundamental human right to life, water, food, healthcare, shelter and education, and a life free of rape and other violence, we urge you to reconsider Bolivia’s participation in MINUSTAH and to withdraw your troops from Haiti.

With the new president in the US, people everywhere are hoping for a transformation away from war, intervention and economic greed. Withdrawing from Haiti now would show the US and the world that the government of Evo Morales Ayma opposes racism and intervention not only in Bolivia but wherever they raise their ugly heads. The unity of the Global South and the unity of all those who are fighting for a world free of poverty and exploitation would have taken another step on the road to victory.

We are all Bolivians, we are all Haitians!

Invest in caring not killing.

Selma James and Nina López, Global Women’s Strike

Pierre Labossiere, Haiti Action Committee

Andaiye, Red Thread (Guyana)

Margaret Prescod, Women of Colour in the Global Women’s Strike

www.globalwomenstrike.net

womenstrike8m@server101.com redhuelgamund.bolivia@hotmail.com

NOTES

1. For evidence of UN massacres, see Kevin Pina’s documentary “We Must Kill the Bandits” www.teledyol.net, the Haiti Action Committee’s “What’s Going on in Haiti?” www.haitisolidarity.net, and articles in the Sunday Times, Online Sri Lanka and Washington Post.)

2. Countries contributing military personnel to the UN forces: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Jordan, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Spain, Sri Lanka, United States and Uruguay. Countries contributing police/civilian personnel: Argentina, Benin, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, DR Congo, Egypt, El Salvador, France, Grenada, Guinea, Jordan, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Senegal, Spain, Sri Lanka, Togo, Turkey, United States and Uruguay.