Ten Years After the Coup in Haiti, Democracy is Still Under Siege

[Judi Lynn]

Published on Saturday, March 1, 2014 by Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch/ CEPR

Ten Years After the Coup in Haiti, Democracy is Still Under Siege

by Dan Beeton

It has been 10 years since the February 29, 2004 coup d’etat that ousted the democratically-elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti. Paramilitary groups – including many former members of Haiti’s disbanded army and/or CIA-funded death squads – had engaged in a campaign of violence directed against supporters of the government, and the Haitian National Police (HNP), for years before. Supported by the Dominican government and advised by groups based in Washington, they unleashed a wave of terror, killing innocent civilians including children and women, assaulting and brutalizing others, and burning down police stations and other government buildings. In the end, however, these groups seem to have realized they could not mount a successful incursion into Port-au-Prince, and it was a U.S. plane that flew Aristide out of the country.

As CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot wrote after the coup, Washington also directed international financial institutions to withhold funds from the Aristide government (some of which were designated for potable water – their being withheld helping to create the conditions for the cholera epidemic several years later):

The Administration has been working on toppling Aristide for the past three years, plunging the country into chaos in the process.

The major international financial institutions (IFI's) -- including the IMF, World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, supported the administration's destabilization efforts by cutting off hundreds of millions of dollars in credit to one of the most desperately poor countries in the world.

The pretext was a dispute over the election of seven senators of Aristide's party in 2001. Aristide offered every possible solution but it didn't matter. With Washington and the IFI's backing them, the opposition refused any agreement short of Aristide's resignation.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/01-7

[Demeter]

1. What would it take to get the teeth of the Yanqui Imperialist Dogs

out of the carcass of Haiti? That's the question that puzzles me--is it reflex, or drugs, or what?

What keeps the US pouring money and influence into destroying a little place like that?

[Judi Lynn]

2. It surely looks as if they mean to stomp the remaining poor people into the ground

one way or another, level the island, except for the homes and properties of the tiny, wealthy French-speaking circle of Haitians and other business owners who have been doing business with the US from the first, and start building their luxury resorts from one end of Haiti all the way to the border with the Dominican Republic.

(For the benefit of anyone so slow as to imagine Haiti cannot be included when referring to the Americas as part of "Latin America," I'd love to beg that person extends to Haiti the benefit of the doubt he is obligated to extend to the OTHER half of the island, the D. R., if he can summons the graciousness in doing so. Otherwise, it should be referred to as part of the Aleutian Chain, I guess!)