National Haiti Campaign to be launched by LASC and the HAC
by Diane Bohn, Dave Welch and Ben Terrell
Haiti’s crisis worsens; and the UN Peacekeepers are being pushed by the US, Canada and France to crack down on the poor, who still protest the military coup against former President Aristide. The Latin America Solidarity Coalition has asked the Bay Area’s Haiti Action Committee to help start a national campaign to plan corrective action.
In April, 2008, a US human rights delegation organized by the Bay Area’s Haiti Action Committee (HAC) visited Port-au-Prince and investigated the current human rights situation. The crisis is deepening. The government seems to be pressing ahead with a neo-liberal economic agenda that involves the scheduled lay-offs of 1300 out of 1800 national port authority workers on the docks and shifting production increasingly to private sub-contractors in order to be “globally competitive”.
Beyond the economic crisis, the Preval government has not been able to effectively halt political repression or address the “disappearance” of human 
rights leader Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine ten months ago. Additionally, many of the police officers who have carried out killings of civilians and neighborhood activists since the last coup remain on the force, operating with impunity, and including a de facto death squad that is terrorizing residents who may want to stand up for their rights: all tolerated by the police.
Moreover, despite the release of a few high-profile political prisoners, less well known Lavalas (pro-Aristide) community activists remain in prison without charges or legal representation, suffering horrific conditions. Thousands of Haitian men, women, and children were thrown into jail after the 2002 coup. They suffer dehydration, water-borne diseases, malnutrition and starvation. A Beri Beri epidemic is currently sweeping the prison. Cell blocks built to hold five or six people are packed with up to 80 prisoners who take shifts sleeping, sitting and standing. One former prisoner said that his cell block started out with 18 people July 2005, rising to 83 people by April 2006.
Neighborhood activist Gilbert Orivil died in January in the Port-au-Prince National Penitentiary after four years of beatings combined with a terrible diet. His body was held in the morgue for several months because his family did not have enough money to give him a burial. Thousands of others share a similar story.
The Preval government has also not been able to effectively curb abuses by the UN troops occupying Haiti. Haiti remains a country under military occupation without true national sovereignty.
On April 11th, a MINUSTAH (UN) soldier was shot and killed in downtown Port-au-Prince. While this killing was widely reported in the international media, what followed the killing was not. MINUSTAH troops launched a massive assault on Haitian street vendors, smashing property, setting the market on fire with flamethrowers, setting off tear gas, shooting directly at unarmed vendors, and killing at least three people. This follows a series of massive assaults by MINUSTAH troops on the civilian population in Cite Soleil on July 6, 2005, Dec. 22, 2006, February 2007 and numerous other occasions.
The situation in Haiti is virtually unknown to most North Americans and receives little coverage in our media.
The Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC) has issued an important statement on the situation in Haiti. (see www.lasolidarity.org/haiti/statementFeb08.html) and is in the process of launching a National Haiti Campaign. It is envisioned that this will be an action campaign focused on the following Seven Demands:
• End the US/UN Occupation - Respect Haiti's sovereignty
Get countries to withdraw troops from MINUSTAH
• Free the political prisoners - No more illegal arrests or prolonged detention without charges
• No more killings and sexual abuse of the poor by UN troops, police and paramilitaries under police control
• President Aristide must be free to return to Haiti - Respect the Haitian Constitution
• No more “disappearances”' - Work for the rule of law and the safe return of kidnapped Haitian human rights advocate, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine
• Launch an independent inquiry into the February 29, 2004, coup and forced removal of President Aristide. Promote the proposed US "Truth Act."
• Perpetrators of the coup and massacres of the poor must be brought to justice; reparations for the victims.
1. Support the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund (HERF);
2. Provide an educational packet that includes down-loadable fliers, position papers, sample letters, packet for Congressional visits.
3. Provide information on how to order books, pamphlets and films to encourage the organizing of community meetings about Haiti around the country.
4. Get cities and organizations to pass resolutions on Haiti calling for implementation of the Seven Demands, such as the resolution passed in May 2008 by the Berkeley, California, City Council.
5. Support Debt cancellation for Haiti (Jubilee Act includes a section on Haiti and has passed in the House. Now in Senate and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations).
6. Promote a DC Congressional teach-in.
[The authors are members of the HAC. Diana Bohn is on the LASC Coordinating Committee. Information provided from reports by Nia Imara and Seth Donnelly.
www.haitisolidarity.net and www.haitiaction.net.]