Protest: Stand with the people of Haiti! NOT another invasion.
The Global Women’s Strike UK (GWS), Women of Colour GWS and Caribbean Labour Solidarity join with Haiti Action Committee US in defence of the people of Haiti. Join us to demonstrate: Tuesday 10 October 2023, 4.30-6pm at Kenya High Commission, 45 Portland Place, London W1B 1AS.
Haiti Action Committee condemns in the strongest possible terms the UN Security Council vote to authorize yet another invasion of Haiti. Organized and promoted by the US, the invasion will be fronted by Kenya, which has pledged to send 1000 police. The Kenyan police force is notorious for its corruption and brutality, including the recent killing of over 30 people in a peaceful demonstration over increased fuel prices. Soon, this police force – along with other foreign troops – will be murdering Haitians.
The authorization comes despite overwhelming opposition from multiple sectors of Haitian society, who have demanded instead the removal of the current regime of unelected and illegitimate Prime Minister Ariel Henry and the installation of a broadly representative transitional government. While the US characterizes this new intervention as an attempt to stop “gang violence,” the real aim is to prop up the current dictatorship and to fend off the broad-based efforts within Haiti to oust it.
This is why Henry, the neoliberal puppet of the US and the Core Group of foreign occupiers, has called for foreign troops and why Kenyan soldiers are preparing an invasion. Faced with collapsing infrastructure, the spectre of famine looming over half the population, a new cholera outbreak, and a defunded health care system, Haitians now fear that the militarized national police and their armed proxies, the paramilitary “gangs” who have been terrorizing dissident communities, will be buttressed by more foreign tanks and troops, to further oppress the civilian population.
We remember the democratically elected governments of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Lavalas movement that were twice overthrown by US-supported coups d’etat. Had it not been for the coups, “Today, many of the beautiful dreams of the Haitian people would have already materialized,” a recent Fanmi Lavalas statement declared. “The anti-democratic forces have produced a hell on earth: kidnapping, insecurity, misery, hunger, corruption” – a failure that now requires a new occupying army to sustain it.
THIS IS WHY WE OPPOSE A NEW FOREIGN INVASION AND EXPRESS OUR OUTRAGE AT THE US GOVERNMENT’S POLICY
In March 2023, women’s organisations in Haiti stated:
“We members of women’s and popular organizations in the Grandans department raise our voices in solidarity with all women and men who are the victims of kidnappings, rape, assassinations, home burnings and pillage that the G9 gang and all the other gangs are perpetrating against the population.
We strongly condemn the dictatorial and criminal government of Ariel Henry along with the United States, France, Canada and the Core Group that have imposed Henry on the Haitian people. They continue to support him with weapons and money despite all the crimes against humanity conducted by the government against the people.
See full statement https://haitisolidarity.net/statement-from-haitian-womens-popular-organizations/
Haiti Action Committee will be demonstrating on 10 Oct at San Francisco Federal Building at 4pm local time. Contact: action.haiti@gmail.com
Global Women’s Strike gws@globalwomenstrike.net 020 7482 2496
Women of Colour GWS womenofcolour@globalwomenstrike.net
Caribbean Labour Solidarity info@cls-uk.org.uk