HAITI? Humanitarianism Or Imperialist Occupation?

This week the UN Security Council extended the mandate of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH. This deployment is not based on any principles of humanitarianism, but rather is an imperialist occupation which seeks to make sure that the island’s government can implement and maintain repressive policies favourable to international investors. The occupation force must be withdrawn. EDITOR'S NOTE

This article was written just days before the U.N. Security Council announced a renewal of the mandate of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) for another year.
 
On 15 October, the United Nations Security Council will meet to “debate” the extension of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) which has acted as an occupying force in the country since the summer of 2004. MINUSTAH was created to put an end to the Multinational Interim Force (primarily made up of U.S., French, Canadian and Chilean troops) which occupied Haiti after an internationally backed coup d’état ousted the democratically elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas party from power on 29 February 2004.

During these ten years, MINUSTAH has compiled a horrific record of human rights abuses, including but not limited to extrajudicial murder, an epidemic of sexual assault against Haitian men, women and children, the repression of peaceful political protests, in addition to unleashing cholera through criminal negligence which has caused the death of over 9,000 people and infecting nearly a million more. Despite these well-documented abuses, the historical record has shown that the Security Council will mostly likely renew MINUSTAH for another year without any thought to damage being done to Haiti. As evidence of how little resistance there is to the renewal of MINUSTAH’s mandate in the United Nations, on August 21, MINUSTAH’s budget was extended to June 2015 – clearly signalling that the occupation is certain to continue.

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People from countries around the world whose troops are stationed in Haiti under a UN mandate ought to wake up to the reality that this is an occupation force, serving imperialist interests and deeply hated by the Haitian people on account of serious, well-known human rights abuses over the past decade EDITOR'S NOTE

The UN Security Council extended the MINUSTAH mandate for a year on Tuesday.

Most people across the Americas are probably unaware of the fact that the people of Haiti live today under an occupation. They are more likely to be aware of the recent passing of the infamous dictator and president-for-life than to know about the military force imposed on Haitian soil.

Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, erstwhile dictator of Haiti, died of a heart attack on 4 October 2014. He had been ousted by a popular movement in 1986, but retained wealth and cronies until his death. News emerged from the capital Port-au-Prince on 10 October that the Duvalierist regime in Haiti would not provide a state funeral to its favoured son – in deference to popular sentiment that still runs deep.

One week after Baby Doc’s last breath, the Campaign to End the Occupation of Haiti (based in Toronto) held an informational picket to highlight the abusive role MINUSTAH – the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, charged with ensuring a compliant and neoliberal Haiti – plays on the island.

MINUSTAH was charged with keeping order in Haiti, following the coup that removed democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004. The coup had its origin in a meeting just outside of Ottawa with officials from the United States, Canada and France plotting a post-Aristide Haiti.

The abuses this international force has directed against Haitians are legion: sexual assault of minors (which resulted in, among others, 111 Sri Lankan soldiers and three officers being returned to their country of origin), political repression directed against entire neighbourhoods, and extrajudicial murders. Children were shot at and others killed during violent MINUSTAH suppression of protests in 2005, where 41 armored carriers transported personnel into a pro-Aristide neighbourhood. During this operation, these UN troops used over 22,000 rounds of ammunition.

To add base insult to the injuries, a cholera outbreak – originating in October 2010 at a MINUSTAH base – has thus far killed 9,200 people and infected over 750,000. In other words, MINUSTAH personnel evidently saw fit to dump untreated, contaminated sewage into the Artibonite River, an important source of water for domestic and agricultural purposes for Haitians.

These infuriating truths are symptoms of an underlying power imbalance between Haiti and the rest of the world. Wikileaks reports that a classified cable from US ambassador to Haiti, Janet Sanderson, stated on 1 October 2008 that “a premature departure of MINUSTAH would leave the [Haitian] government…vulnerable to…resurgent populist and anti-market economy political forces – reversing gains of the last two years.” In spite of a part of MINUSTAH’s mandate being “to support the constitutional and political processes; to assist in organizing, monitoring, and carrying out free and fair municipal, parliamentary and presidential elections,” Fanmi Lavalas, the most popular political and electoral organization in Haiti, has been barred from all elections since the 2004 coup. Aristide once led the party.

One aim of the Aristide government, which Sanderson’s cable refers to by innuendo, was to seek repayment of the 90 million gold francs (now worth over $22 billion) paid out to France between 1825 and 1947, as compensation for the slaveholders’ loss of property in enslaved Afrikans land resulting from the Haitian Revolution. Aristide’s claim for compensation infuriated France. His demand that France repay the extracted independence ransom is widely seen as a factor that country’s role in engineering the 2004 coup.

And so Aristide was removed, and MINUSTAH moved in. The UN’s façade of political neutrality here is unmasked. Duvalier is dead, but his role has been recast in the current regime of President Martelly, with his Duvalierist ministers and administrative approach.

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