As our rights are under attack by an arrogant clique of billionaires at home, the global beacon of freedom, Haiti, confronts one of the toughest moments in its centuries-long liberation struggle. 

For over four years now, burgeoning paramilitary gangs have waged a war on the 2.5 million people of Port-au-Prince. Last year, the disparate paramilitaries confederated into the Viv Ansanm gang under the leadership of former police officer turned warlord, Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier. In front of our eyes, the robust capital city of the world-famous carnival, of bustling commerce and proud traditions has been reduced to a city of refugees, shelters and isolated, hold-out communities resisting with everything they have. There are still neighborhoods like Kanape Vè and Akaye where the residents are organized into Brigad Vijilans (Neighborhood Self-Defense Brigades) to fight against the rule of death squads composed of child soldiers and other lumpen cannon fodder. David readies his slingshot against a Goliath, armed to the teeth with an avalanche of U.S. weapons which rendezvous with South American cocaine in this most permeable, punctured and penetrated country of the Caribbean. 

The War of Predation

The first question outsiders ask is “Why?” Why are the Viv Ansanm paramilitaries waging war on the civilian population, displacing now more than an estimated 1,000,000 Haitians, or half the capital city?  

It is important to highlight that August 22, 2018 represented the birth of the PetroCaribe movement to recover billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil embezzled by the corrupt colonial state. The sight of millions of Haitians conscious, united and mobilised forced the U.S.-sponsored aristocracy to pacify the millions of rebels. They partially built and set in motion a modern-day Frakenstein, their very own tonton makouts. The masses say the gangs are worse because “the criminal police and military wore uniforms and could be identified.” 

The “gangs,” as the mainstream media refers to them, are the shock troops of the Haitian bourgeoisie and foreign capital. Researchers Mamyrah Dougé-Prosper, Ernst Jean-Pierre, Georges Eddy Lucien and Sabine Lamour outline the state and gang “predation sites.” Like early police forces in the U.S. and the Duvalier’s private security force, the Tonton Makouts, Viv Ansanm are mercenaries for hire. 

“Customs is one site of predation, affording the capacity to import guns, rotted carcinogenic foods, and other expired products that kill. But the bourgeoisie monopolize all industries. The Gilbert Bigio Group, for example, controls construction (iron and wood imports).” 

According to these experts and the Haitian masses, the gangs have a definitive agenda. They only hunt down, corral up and occupy poor communities. The highest summits of the elites in Petionville like Pelegren, Morne Calvaire and areas of Laboul have remained untouched by “the terrorists,” or tewowis as the communities say. 

Furthermore, the scholars assert, the gangs “destroyed the Superior Court of Accounts and Administrative Disputes offices where government spending receipts are archived, including the dossiers concerning the PetroCaribe arrangement with Venezuela.” The Center for Economic and Policy Research reports on the medical catastrophe set in motion by four years of attacks from armed groups: “the situation is especially dire as only one of Port-au-Prince’s three major hospitals, and only 39 of 92 health facilities in the capital metro area, are now open.” 

The gangs are now claiming to be openly involved in legal politics as well, appointing public officials in the areas under their domination. As the Haitian people have told me thousands of times since 2021, this is an “organised and well-planned death project.” Isn’t it curious that the gangs’ agenda is the ruling class’s agenda?  

The Masters of Haiti

This video by content creator Tideone showcases the extreme wealth in the hills of Petionville that remain untouched by the gangs. The tiny bourgeoisie rules from here, with their breathtaking views, mansions and well-manicured lawns. Drone footage exposes the underground swimming pools, acres of land and elaborate architecture. The paramilitaries stop a few miles short from these private estates because they cannot bite the hand that feeds them. A feudal distance keeps diplomats and oligarchs enclosed and safe with their fancy designer shops, hotels and private doctors. There are elaborate private militarized security guarding the compounds. If the masses were to rise up in arms and penetrate the Haiti of the 0.01 percent, it would be a turkey shoot for the private police forces and paramilitaries to liquidate any threat. 

But the terrorists represent no threat to them. Afterall, they are the offspring of the well-guarded elites. Parents and children have their spats but remain loyal to one another. 

Viv Ansanm Takes Kenscoff

Further north of the oligarchs’ palaces is Kenscoff, a town known in Haiti for its cool breeze, winter hats and lookout points far above downtown Port-au-Prince. Haitians have long visited the serene, picturesque mountain top location to get away from the humidity and ride horses around the enchanted forests. 

Kenscoff was the site of the last remaining road that existed outside of the gangs’ control to exit Port-au-Prince to the south and west. On January 28th, Viv Ansanm units attacked the Belot and Godot neighborhoods of Kenscoff. Like the IDF in Gaza and the West Bank, the raiding army shot anybody and anything that moved. Others resisted or fled into the mountains or local public plaza. The Haitian Times reported that this one attack displaced 3,000 people, including 721 children. 

All images are from the Haiti Information Project. 

A Fractured State

Different elements of the corrupt Haitian National Police (PNH) line up to defend their own interests. Some police officers collaborate with the gangs taking bribes to look the other way, to coordinate arms and drug shipments and to alert Viv Ansanm of pending attacks from the Haitian National Police (PNH). Police chief Frantz Elbe was fired amidst a hail of such accusations. Community leaders remember how guns seized from the gangs magically made their way back into the very same hands they were seized from. 

Other elements of the PNH fight the gangs because it is their job and they remember the relatively more stable Haiti of recent years. Other police officers lived in these very neighborhoods and continue to fight alongside the civilian population on the barricades to defend their own families and communities. Some neighborhoods spoke of a necessary, temporary “marriage” with the police to live another day. Before the armed groups, reminiscent of the roving militias that murdered hundreds of thousands and displaced millions in 1990’s Liberia and Sierra Leone. 

The PNH has historically been the agent of repression of the social movements. In 2021, they attacked the massive anti-neoliberal uprising and worked alongside the gangs, sniping and executing different popular leaders. In Haiti, all of these state and paramilitary crimes go unsolved. Impunity reigns. The message from all sides is that Resistance is futile. Izo, Lamò San Jou and the other cast of “gangbanging” warlords can move all these drugs and guns without the complicity of the state and the bourgeoisie.  

Since 2021 and the advent of “the gangs,” there are now over 1,000,000 displaced Haitians, half of them children. The anti-Haitian, corporate media has conditioned us to think that Haiti is synonymous with war, displacement and tragedy. This relentless war on the population is not normal or common. No. I have known these neighborhoods personally since 1998. These neighborhoods are now gone. One of the main demands of thousands of families in the Palestine of the Caribbean is now: The Right to Return!

The Whitewashing of the Crimes

Viv Ansanm ironically means “to live together.” Smooth-talking, flamboyant gang boss Jimmy Cherezier, the public face of the confederation of the gangs since 2021, now claims Viv Ansamn is a serious political party. While his troops fire Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles piercing armored vehicles and downing helicopters, Cherizier’s preferred weapon is social media. 

As Port-au-Prince continued to burn, on March 6th, Cherezier congratulated his main lieutenants Krisla and Izo for “organizing a beautiful carnival.” These gang chieftains control the Fontamara, Vilaj de Dye, Kafou and Mariyani neighborhoods which give them access to the strategic National Route 2 to travel to Haiti’s South. The battered national highways are a main vein of the international gun and drug trade. Viv Ansanm hosted the carnival, which is historically held throughout Haiti in February, in an attempt to distract from their crimes and project a false sense of stability and happiness in the gang-run city. Local leaders, sociologists and voudou priests have long been trying to educate us through grassroots media projects like ImajINAN (so named after a voudou lwa or god) about the sociology of the armed groups. 

The same week that Barbecue again verified why he has earned his nefarious nickname, Colombian President Gustavo Petro pointed out in a cabinet meeting that “much of the cocaine coming from Colombia’s Catatumbo and Guajira region makes its way to the United States through Haiti.” The anti-imperialist president pleaded with the international community to stop the bloodshed. 

Here we can see infamous cocaine runner Izo and his gang 5 Segonn (5 Seconds) brag about “being devils,” as they rap about their crimes and the sanguinary war on the population. More and more displaced families are coming under attack a second or third time and are retraumatized, yet Barbecue always claims to be the victim of the attacks. He says here that every accusation against his paramilitary units, turned “political party,” reflects the guilt of others. His role together with his foreign backers is to clean up the image of the anti-social death squads behind the massacres. As absurd as it seems, foreign journalists have played their role in lionizing the butcher of Port-au-Prince. Daily, Haitians ask “How come every time a foreign journalist comes to hang out and take pictures with Barbecue, hundreds of us are murdered?”

The small force of occupying Kenyan, Salvadoran and other international troops protect strategic locations but do not confront the gangs. One is left to ask: Why are they occupying Haiti to begin with? The occupation which, Marco Rubio just breathed fresh life into, may dismantle one gang, “the gangsters in flip flops,” but it will only again solidify the rule of the oligarchs, “the gangsters with ties.” Haitians know a fourth U.S. military occupation in the past century is not the answer, but rather a part of the root cause of how Haiti has been so thoroughly traumatized and decimated. 

Standing with Haiti

The author reported from Solino and Nazon last year in a desperate attempt to alert the Western left that these stable working-class bastions of struggle were on the brink of falling. In late October of 2024, gang bosses Kempès and his boss Barbecue took control of these ghettos, burning, looting and murdering their way through family and community life. The thousands of families trapped in these downtown Port-au-Prince slums have now been reduced to begging and pauperism. Lucson Charles, a 22-year-old community leader and foreign language teacher, spoke to the author from Kan Antenor Firmin shelter near Turgo. He described the hunger, squalor and tension at the overcrowded high school turned refugee shelter. He went on to say: “Many families set out in the perilous hellscape in an attempt to beg for food during the day and have to sleep under the rain at night.” The Haiti Information Project reports weekly from the makeshift shelters on the deplorable conditions there. 

Lucson, his family and hundreds of thousands of Haitians are now trapped in the murderous grip of Viv Ansanm with no escape possible. The walls of neocolonial humiliation are closing in on this majestic city exploding with an even more majestic, historic people. I am a student of the veteran anti-imperialist leaders from this forgotten capital city in the Western Hemisphere, a city that is the West Bank of the Americas. There is a consensus that this is the most difficult moment in Haiti’s history since the 1804 revolution against French colonialism, Napoleon and tens of thousands of invading troops. What role can progressives and anti-imperialists play to stop the march of death cutting through the heart of Haiti’s capital city and breathe fresh life into one of the epic national liberation struggles of our epoch?  

Danny Shaw was a professor for 18 years at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who was fired for speaking out against the genocide in Palestine. The ethnographer has been traveling to Haiti and studying Kreyòl since 1998. He has published dozens of articles on Haitian popular movements and U.S. foreign policy towards Haiti. You can follow his work at profdannyshaw.com. 

The post In Occupied Port-au-Prince Over 1 Million Haitians Have Been Displaced by Paramilitary Gangs appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Danny Shaw.

Nearly 200 Haitians in Port-au-Prince were killed over the weekend on the orders of a powerful gang leader who reportedly targeted elderly practitioners of voodoo because he blamed them for sickening his son. The massacre is the latest chapter in Haiti’s ongoing political crisis, with gangs now controlling much of the capital despite a Kenyan-led security mission to stabilize the country and support the U.S.-backed Transitional Presidential Council. Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch called for what it described as a “full-fledged United Nations mission to Haiti.” Human rights lawyer Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, says what we are seeing is “the predictable result of dismantling democracy” by successive U.S. administrations, though foreign interference in Haiti goes back two centuries. He says that given the security situation today, it is “absolutely indefensible” for the Biden administration to continue deportations at this time, which the Trump administration is poised to intensify.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance focused heavily on immigration policy. Walz promoted the asylum restrictions of the Biden administration and touted his running mate Kamala Harris’s bill to further militarize the southern U.S. border. Vance, meanwhile, continued Donald Trump’s demonization of immigrants, including the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, that they falsely accused of eating people’s pets. We get reaction from Guerline Jozef, the executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which filed criminal charges against the Republican ticket over those lies. “We cannot allow this to continue,” Jozef says of the anti-immigrant rhetoric.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Photograph Source: bearclau – CC BY 2.0

Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates expressed horror on learning from social media that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating dogs and cats, their pets. The reports were false. Bomb threats followed, schools and public buildings closed down. Longtime African-American residents felt threatened.

Springfield’s economy had lost jobs and industries. Some 15,000 Haitians arrived, eager to work. Industry expanded but social service providers were stressed. The Haitians are in Springfield mostly under Temporary Protected Status. That governmental designation enables those migrants forced out of their counties by serious crises to enter the United States legally.

The bizarre twist of political behavior stems in part from the migrants being Haitian. Haitians and their nation have been problematic for the United States.

The fact of migration itself does not account for the exaggerated hostility. Almost nothing of that order happens to the one third of New York state residents and 40.9% of Miamians who are immigrants, or to the foreign-born residents of nine other urban areas in the United States who comprise from 21.1% to 39.1% of the several populations.

Stresses and frustrations associated with Springfield’s economic decline logically enough could have stimulated hostility toward migrants. But economist Franklin J. James rejects the idea “that immigration hurts U.S. natives by reducing job opportunities …[and] that immigrants displace natives from jobs or reduce earnings of the average worker.”

Being Black may indeed invite hostility in a racist society. But the disconnect is sharp between the rarity of unbounded disparagement at high political levels and the large numbers of African-descended people who never experience the like from anybody. Opportunities abound. In 2019 Black people made up from 21.6% to 48.5% of the populations of 20 U.S. cities. That year nine Ohio cities, not including Springfield, claimed between 32.0% and 11.2% Black people. In 2024, 17.4% of Springfield residents are Black.

The scenario in Springfield may itself have been toxic: a large number of Black people from abroad descended together on an economically depressed small city. But Somali migrants arrived in Lewiston, Maine under similar circumstances, and their reception was different.

They showed up in 2001 and a year later numbered 2000 or so. In January 2003, an Illinois-based Nazi group staged a tiny anti-Black rally; 4500 Mainers joined in a counter-demonstration.

As of 2019, according to writer Cynthia Anderson, “Lewiston … has one of the highest per capita Muslim populations in the United States, most of it Somali along with rising numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers from other African nations.” Of Lewiston’s 38,404 inhabitants, 10.9% presently are “Black or African American.” Blacks are 1.4% of Maine’s population.

Anderson reports that with the influx of migrants, Lewiston “has struggled financially, especially early on as the needs for social services and education intensified. Joblessness remains high among the older generation of refugees.”

Lewiston is Maine’s poorest city. For generations massive factories along the Androscoggin River produced textiles and shoes, but no more. The city’s poverty rate is 18.1%; for Blacks it’s 51.5%.  In 2016, 50.0% of Lewiston’s children under five lived in poverty.

Citing school superintendent Bill Webster, an AP report indicates “immigrant children are doing better than native-born kids” in school, and are “going off to college to get degrees, as teachers, doctors, engineers.”

Analyst Anna Chase Hogeland concludes that, “The Lewiston community’s reaction to the Somalis demonstrated both their hostility and reservations, as well as the great efforts of many to accommodate and welcome the refugees.” Voters in Lewiston are conservative; they backed Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

The circumstances under which the two cities received Black immigrants differed in two ways.  A nationwide upsurge in racist rhetoric and anti-immigrant hostility worsened conditions for migrants in Springfield.  Lewiston’s experience had played out earlier.

Additionally, immigrants arriving in Springfield qualified for special attention. The aforementioned political candidates could have exercised their anti-migrant belligerence in many cities. They chose Springfield, presumably because Haitians are there. Why are Haitians vulnerable?

Black people in what is now Haiti boldly rebelled against enslavement on French-owned plantations. Remarkably, they expelled the French and in 1804 established the independent nation they called Haiti.

Ever since, the United States has spelled trouble for Haiti. Preeminent abolitionist Frederick Douglas pointed out in 1893 that, “Haiti is black and we [the United States] have not yet forgiven Haiti for being black.” Long after “Haiti had shaken off the fetters of bondage … we continued to refuse to acknowledge the fact and treated her as outside the sisterhood of nations.”

Scholar and activist W.E.B DuBois, biographer of abolitionist John Brown, explains that“There was hell in Hayti (sic) in the red waning of the eighteenth century, in the days when John Brown was born … [At that time] the shudder of Hayti was running through all the Americas, and from his earliest boyhood he saw and felt the price of repression —the fearful cost that the western world was paying for slavery.”

DuBois’s reference was to the U.S. slavocracy and its encouragement of collective fear among many white people that Black workers – bought, owned and sold – might rise up in rebellion. They did look to the example of Haiti and did rebel – see Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts. In the United States, from the Civil War on, the prospect of resistance and rebellion on the part of Black people has had government circles and segments of U.S. society on high alert.

That attitude, applied to Haiti, shows in:

+ U.S. instigation of multi-national military occupations intermittently since 2004.

+ Coups in 1991and 2004 involving the CIA and/or U.S.-friendly paramilitaries.

+ Backing of the Duvalier family dictatorship between 1957 and 1986.

+ The brutal U.S. military occupation of Haiti between 1915 and 1934.

+ U.S. control of Haiti’s finances and government departments until 1947.

+ No diplomatic recognition of Haiti from its beginning nationhood in 1804 until 1862.

+ U.S. economic sanctions against Haiti for decades, until 1863.

Says activist lawyer Bill Quigley: “US based corporations have for years been teaming up with Haitian elite to run sweatshops teeming with tens of thousands of Haitians who earn less than $2 a day.”

Ultimately, it seems, threads of governmental callousness, societal disregard for basic human needs, and outright demagoguery coalesced to thrust Springfield and Haitian migrants into the national spotlight. Molelike, the anomalous and little-acknowledged presence of Haiti asserts itself in the unfolding of U.S. history.

The post Abuse Against Haitians in Ohio: Examined With Reference to Lewiston, Maine  appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by W. T. Whitney.

As Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance continue to spread debunked, racist lies that Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s pets, we speak with Guerline Jozef from the Haitian Bridge Alliance, an immigrant advocacy group, about threats of violence that have forced closures and evacuations at hospitals, colleges and City Hall in Springfield, with some threats citing anger over the city’s resettlement of Haitian immigrants. This comes as Trump continues to promise mass deportations if he is reelected, starting in Springfield, even though the Haitians there were welcomed under the Temporary Protected Status program.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Recently racist and ignorant social media users have circulated the idea that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating pets. US Vice presidential candidate JD Vance greatly boosted the anti-Haitian claim with a post to X stating, “Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

Vance’s X post had over 11 million views with Donald Trump even referencing the claim in the presidential debate. This despite an absence of any evidence whatsoever. Springfield officials haven’t received any credible reports of Haitian immigrants abducting and eating pets.

The ‘Haitians eat pets’ tale is the latest in a long line of anti-Haitian claims. In the early 1980s Haitians were stigmatized as the originators of the HIV virus in the US. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) labeled Haitians as a risk group, which gave rise to “the 4-H’s” designation of Homosexuals, Hemophiliacs, Heroin addicts and Haitians. At the time the Canadian Red Cross publicly identified Haitians as a “high-risk” group for AIDS, the only nationality singled out. In 1983 they called on homosexuals and bisexuals with multiple partners, intravenous drug users, hemophiliacs and recent immigrants from Haiti to voluntarily stop giving blood. A Canadian government pamphlet, which was distributed in shopping malls, also linked Haitians with AIDS. Again, this was despite a lack of evidence that the incidence of AIDS in Haiti was greater than in the US. By 1987 it was lower in Haiti than in the US and other Caribbean nations. But, as a result of the unfounded stigmatization, the country’s significant tourism basically collapsed overnight. Out of fear the virus may transmit through goods, some Haitian exports were even blocked from entering the US!

The Haitians are responsible for AIDS allegation still pops up. During an explosion of xenophobia against Haitian migrants in Guyana in 2019 reports focused on HIV/AIDS and Voodoo and in a 2016 radio outburst former Canadian Member of Parliament, André Arthur, labeled Haiti a “sexually deviant” country populated by thieves and prostitutes responsible for HIV/AIDS.

In another example of stigmatizing Haitians over disease, CDC incident manager for the Haiti cholera response, Jordan W. Tappero, blamed Haitian cultural norms for the 2010 cholera outbreak that caused tens of thousands of deaths. He told Associated Press journalist Jonathan Katz that Haitians don’t experience the “shame associated with open defecation.” As was then suspected and later confirmed, cholera was introduced to Haiti by UN forces who followed poor sanitation practices.

Ten months earlier influential US pastor Pat Robertson suggested the terrible January 2010 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas was due to a “deal made with Satan” two centuries earlier. Robertson claimed Haitians “were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever … And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’” Robertson added, “you know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.”

Canadian Protestant groups have promoted similar thinking about the August 1791 Bwa Kayiman (Bois Caïman) Vodou ceremony that helped launch the Haitian Revolution. In “Haiti’s Pact with the Devil?: Bwa Kayiman, Haitian Protestant Views of Vodou, and the Future of Haiti” Bertin M. Louis points out that some Haitian Canadian Protestants believe Haiti was consecrated to the devil. Mainstream Canadian voices have repeatedly denigrated voodoo. After the 2004 US/France/Canada coup the National Post published an editorial headlined “Voodoo is not enough”, arguing for “a coalition of the willing to permanently extract the country from the quagmire. A 1952 Globe and Mail story attempting to be sympathetic to the country began by noting, “Haiti’s principal export is not, as popularly supposed, Zombies.” One of the first books to expose North Americans to the voodoo zombie was Magic Island, a 1929 book by William Buehler Seabrook. The book sensationalized encounters with voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls.

Voodoo has been demonized by white supremacist and Christian forces for over two centuries. Important for defeating slavery and securing Haitian independence, the religion offered spiritual/ideological strength to those who revolted against their slave masters in maybe the greatest example of liberation in the history of humanity.

The 1791-1804 Haitian Revolution was simultaneously a struggle against slavery, colonialism and white supremacy. Defeating the French, British and Spanish empires, it led to freedom for all people regardless of colour, decades before this idea found traction in Europe or North America. The Haitian revolt rippled through the region and compelled the post-French Revolution government in Paris to abolish slavery in its Caribbean colonies. It also spurred London’s 1807 Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.

The Haitian Revolution led to the world’s first and only successful large-scale slave revolution. “Arguably”, notes Peter Hallward, “there is no single event in the whole of modern history whose implications were more threatening to the dominant global order of things.”

But, in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution thousands of photos, articles and books denigrated Haiti, depicting the slaves as barbaric despise the fact 350,000 Africans were killed, versus 75,000 Europeans, over the 13 years. Anti-Haitianism has deep roots.

It’s easy to mock those who claim Haitian immigrants are eating cats. But overt anti-Haitianism is also relayed by ‘sophisticated’ liberals. Their high-minded commentaries calling for foreign tutelage of the country appear regularly in the pages of the Globe and Mail and Boston Globe.

Anti-Haitianism flows out of and reinforces the country’s weakness, which is spurred by imperial domination. Technically “independent” for more than two centuries, outsiders have long shaped Haitian affairs. Through isolation, economic asphyxiation, debt dependence, gunboat diplomacy, occupation, foreignsupported dictatorships, structural adjustment programs, “democracy promotion”, coups and rigged elections, Haiti is no stranger to the various forms of foreign political manipulation.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

We get an update on the crisis in Haiti, where deadly violence has continued to escalate between armed groups and police fighting for control of the capital Port-au-Prince. The country’s political future remains unclear, with recently resigned Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who is stranded outside of Haiti, raising questions this week over the constitutionality of a “transitional council” formed to serve as an interim governing body until elections are scheduled. Meanwhile, Canadian forces have been sent to Jamaica to train troops from Caribbean nations to join the U.N.-authorized mission to Haiti. Haitian American scholar Jemima Pierre says the transitional council is essentially a front for U.S. interests, and warns there will be “inevitable war crimes” if foreign troops are deployed to Haiti. “It’s a terrible situation, but I think the idea that there’s a Haitian-led solution coming is actually a false one,” says Pierre. We are also joined by Kim Ives, editor of the English section of Haiti Liberté, who says Haiti is in the midst of a “revolutionary process,” led by Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier. Ives says that far from being a gang leader, Chérizier has built a coalition to fight the criminal groups in the country and was central to the ouster of Ariel Henry. “They always have to demonize, criminalize the people’s resistance, and that’s what we’re seeing today when they try to put all the armed groups of Haiti’s popular classes into one bag called 'the gangs,'” says Ives.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The United Nations Security Council has approved an international armed force to address spiraling gang violence in Haiti, where street battles have paralyzed the capital Port-au-Prince since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. The U.N. mission, which came at the repeated request of Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry, is being led by Kenya, marking the first deployment of international security forces to Haiti in nearly 20 years. The U.S.-backed proposal received 13 votes in favor, with Russia and China abstaining, and allows foreign troops to remain in Haiti for one year. “This validates the criminal government of Ariel Henry,” says Haitian pro-democracy advocate Monique Clesca, who says the $100 million the U.S. has pledged to support the U.N. mission would have been better used to support civil society. “The big problem right now is the governance system.” We also speak with UC Irvine’s ​​Mamyrah Prosper, host of the podcast Haiti: Our Revolution Continues, who says many Haitians are rightly skeptical given the history of foreign interventions in the country, including by U.N. troops. “This is not the first time that the Security Council has voted to send what Haitians are calling an occupation force,” says Prosper. “These missions don’t really come in, in fact, to protect the population. They are there to protect multinational investments.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We go with Democracy Now! correspondent Juan Carlos Dávila to the Dominican Republic, where many Haitian migrants and their descendants work on sugar plantations under conditions amounting to forced labor and live in heavily underresourced communities known as bateyes. Many bateyes do not have electricity or running water. We speak to local residents and members of the Reconocido movement, which fights for the rights of Haitians in the Dominican Republic, about the workers’ inhumane treatment and their lack of legal status in the country, as well as about efforts to improve living conditions in the bateyes, such as an initiative spearheaded by the Puerto Rican environmental group Casa Pueblo to install solar panels in the communities. “The right of energy has to be for everyone,” says Casa Pueblo’s executive director, Arturo Massol-Deyá, who shares how his organization is working in solidarity with batey residents to disrupt the cycle of poverty and prepare for climate adaptation.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The Biden administration faced fresh pressure Thursday to protect Haitians who are in the United States from being deported to a country that has endured increasing economic and political turmoil since a presidential assassination and devastating extreme weather last year.

"Given the deteriorating situation in Haiti, this administration should prioritize humanitarian relief."

In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), along with 14 other House Democrats, urged a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) extension for Haitians not affected by Ramos v. Mayorkas, and redesignation for people who arrived in the United States after July 29, 2021.

"Haiti is currently experiencing one of its worst outbreaks of violence in decades," the letter states. "The rule of law has effectively collapsed. Powerful gangs rule with impunity, and in some cases with government complicity."

"For months, a gang blockade at Haiti's principal fuel terminal crippled day-to-day operations, severely restricting the movement of medicine, food, and supplies," the letter continues. "The situation paralyzed an already crippled economy in the country, where the inflation rate reached a staggering 30%."

The letter adds that "this has all occurred amid a resurgence of cholera in the country, particularly in Haiti's National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince. Since October, the disease has killed at least 100 people and sickened 8,000 more, though experts say the numbers are likely higher."

"Given the deteriorating situation in Haiti, this administration should prioritize humanitarian relief, especially given the positive impact that extending and redesignating Haiti for TPS will have for our nation," the lawmakers argued, also highlighting how Haitians positively contribute to the American workforce.

House Democrats' letter calling on the Biden administration to refrain from sending Haitians to "face an unprecedented crisis in their home country" was also sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and echoes recent demands from civil society.

More than 400 groups—including the Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC)—sent Biden, Blinken, and Mayorkas a letter last month, stressing the need for urgent action given that "the TPS designation for Haiti will expire on February 3, 2023."

FLIC renewed its call for action in a statement Thursday, warning that "Haitians are in mortal danger" and asserting that extending and redesignating TRS "is a matter of life and death!"

Last month, a Florida-bound vessel overloaded with almost 200 Haitians—including 46 children—struck a sandbar. After the rescue effort, the U.S. Coast Guard returned nearly all of them "to a Haiti plagued by a rapidly spreading cholera," noted FLIC's co-executive director, Tessa Petit.

Petit, who immigrated to Florida from Haiti, stressed that "you do not have to be Haitian to be outraged by the blatant human rights violations currently perpetrated by both the United States and the Dominican Republic on Haitian nationals."

Along with FLIC's TPS demands, the group is calling on the Biden administration to "provide all possible support required and needed to stop the abuse of Haitians in the Dominican Republic."

In the Dominican Republic, which shares an island with Haiti, "the violent attacks against Haitians have intensified, to include hateful bodily harm using whips and wooden sticks," Petit pointed out. "All this added to the mass deportation of Haitians regardless of their immigration status, their safety, and in a discriminatory manner, using the color of their skin as a crime."

Like the lawmakers, in addition to the moral appeal, FLIC director of politics and policy David Metellus—the son of Haitian immigrants—made an economic case for federal action.

"Haitians living in the United States currently eligible for TPS contribute $2.6 billion annually to our economy, and 81% of them are part of the American labor force, providing essential services at a time of worker shortages and high inflation," said Metellus. "They have lived here for 15 years, on average, and have built families of almost 200,000 American citizens."

"Continuing to provide TPS protections for Haitian nationals would ensure families remain together and continue building meaningful lives in our society," he added. "Moreover, redesignating Haiti for TPS would allow more Haitians in the U.S. to enroll in the program, and contribute their skills and talents to the American workforce and communities around the country."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

As U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met Thursday in Ottawa to discuss a possible multilateral invasion of Haiti in the name of restoring "stability," Haitian and anti-war voices denounced the prospect of yet another U.S.-backed intervention—which they say will bring the opposite of stability to the crisis-ridden nation.

"U.S.-style 'humanitarian' intervention is like a massive blow to the spine."

The Biden administration is seeking a nation to lead a rapid-deployment international military force, an intervention backed by the United Nations Security Council and requested by de facto Haitian prime minister Ariel Henry to quell the gang violence that has spiked since last year's presidential assassination, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake, and a hurricane that devastated much of the deeply impoverished nation.

While some Haitians—especially elites—and the U.S. corporate media push for armed intervention, other Haitians and peace activists have taken to the streets and to social media to condemn any new invasion.

"The U.S. wants another country to invade Haiti on its behalf to put down protests against the U.S.-installed government. They're also ready to make it happen with or without U.N. approval," tweeted the women-led peace group CodePink on Thursday. "The entire world must demand #HandsOffHaiti right now."

In a recent interview with Democracy Now!, Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, said that Haitians "are saying no to an invasion, no to armed invasion from the international community, because every time there is the so-called 'help' invasion, that people go to Haiti, it results in chaos."

Madame Boukman, a prominent Haitian political commentator, recently tweeted that "U.S.-style 'humanitarian' intervention is like a massive blow to the spine."

"It has completely paralyzed Haiti's development," she added. "Haitians call for a localized, Haitian solution based on the principles of self-determination."

Jemima Pierre, a sociocultural anthropologist, UCLA professor, and co-coordinator of the Black Alliance for Peace team on Haiti, said in a Wednesday interview on the progressive radio show "Between the Lines" that "the Haitian people... absolutely do not want foreign armed soldiers on the ground."

"Haiti has been invaded many times by the U.S. government," Pierre continued. "And every single time it's been complete brutality, rape... And so the last thing people want is to have these soldiers going around with guns and tanks pointing at them, right?"

Each time the United States has invaded or backed intervention in Haiti—the only nation born from a successful slave revolt—it has cited the restoration of order and stability as its pretext.

The U.S., which had coveted Haitian territory since the 19th century, used civil unrest sparked by a gruesome presidential assassination to justify a 1915 invasion and subsequent 19-year occupation.

U.S. Marines, wrote Time at the end of the occupation, "landed at Port-au-Prince and began forcibly soothing everybody." Thousands of Haitians who resisted were killed. Rape of Haitian women and children by U.S. troops ran rampant and went unpunished. Occupation forces implemented forced labor, Jim Crow segregation, and oversaw the looting of the country's finances and resources for the benefit of Wall Street banks and investors. All the while, U.S. politicians and press hailed what they called America's "civilizing mission."

The U.S. would occupy Haiti until 1934. In the decades that followed, successive administrations in Washington supported Haitian dictators including the brutal Duvalier dynasty. Democracy was finally restored with the 1990 election of then-priest and progressive populist Jean Bertrand Aristide, but a year later he was ousted in a military coup whose plotters included CIA operatives.

Amid calls for an international intervention to restore stability, President Joe Biden, then the junior U.S. senator from Delaware, in 1994 opined that "if Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn't matter a whole lot to our interests."

Then-President Bill Clinton did not agree, and that year his administration secured United Nations Security Council authorization to stage a U.S.-led invasion to "restore democracy" to Haiti. Clinton sent 25,000 troops on a "nation-building" mission, and Aristide was returned to the Palais National. Ten years later, he was ousted in another U.S.-backed coup.

When U.N. troops deployed to Haiti following a devastating 2010 earthquake, they brought more than the stability they were tasked with maintaining. A cholera epidemic traced back to Nepalese U.N. peacekeepers infected more than 800,000 people in four regional countries, killing over 10,000 of them.

A fresh cholera outbreak has been cited by some people seeking renewed intervention in Haiti, but Jozef said that "that itself is a result of the U.N. being in Haiti after the earthquake."

In related Haiti news, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and 15 colleagues—including progressives Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—this week urged the Biden administration to "immediately extend and redesignate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti," a move that would allow Haitians currently in the United States to remain in the country until conditions improve in their homeland.

Haiti's current TPS status is set to expire in February 2023. The Biden administration has deported tens of thousands of Haitian asylum-seekers—many of whom report human rights abuses by U.S. immigration authorities—despite the grave humanitarian situation in the country.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Protests are growing in Port-au-Prince as thousands fill the streets to demand the U.S.-backed Prime Minister Ariel Henry resign after he announced he would raise fuel prices amid an already dire humanitarian crisis. Countries including the U.S. and Canada have sent military equipment to assist the Haitian police in cracking down on the unrest, and the U.S. has been pushing the United Nations Security Council to authorize a security mission, spurring more protests against foreign intervention. “We are seeing people really protesting on the street for the right to [a] sovereign solution to the issues that are happening, and they are saying 'no' to an armed invasion from the international community,” says Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The notorious incident in Del Rio, Texas, where US border patrol agents on horseback were photographed apparently wielding long reins as whips against Haitian migrants, prompted widespread public outrage. But where Ukrainians seeking refuge in this country found a strong advocate in the Washington Post editorial board, their Haitian counterparts have received notably different treatment.

It’s a fair comparison: Migrants from both countries seek protection in the United States because they fear for their lives in their home country. While Ukraine is actively at war, Haiti’s violence and instability have ebbed and flowed for decades, a result largely of foreign exploitation and intervention, compounded in recent years by devastating earthquakes and hurricanes; neither can provide a basic level of safety for their citizens today.

All have the right under international and US law to seek that protection, including at the US border, where they are required to be given a chance to apply for asylum. Under Title 42—an obscure and “scientifically baseless” public health directive invoked under Donald Trump at the start of the Covid pandemic, and largely extended under Joe Biden’s administration (FAIR.org, 4/22/22)—that right has been violated, as Haitian (and Central American) asylum seekers have been summarily expelled without being screened for asylum eligibility.

One might imagine that this trampling of rights, more actively nefarious than the foot-dragging on resettling Ukrainian refugees, would prompt more, not less, outrage among media opinion makers. Yet the opposite is true for the Post editorial board, which has written about both situations repeatedly.

‘These could be your children’

A Washington Post editorial (3/4/22) in support of Ukrainian refugees calls attention to the fact that “these could be your children.”

When the Russian invasion of Ukraine sparked a mass exodus of refugees, the board (3/4/22) quickly and passionately urged the Biden administration to “welcome Ukrainians with open arms”:

The images linger in your mind: Ukrainian children pressed against the windows of a bus or train sobbing or waving goodbye to their fathers and other relatives who remain behind to try to fight off an unjustified Russian war on Ukraine. It’s easy to imagine this could be your family broken apart. These could be your children joining the more than 1 million refugees trying to flee Ukraine in the past week.

The board argued that accepting Ukrainian refugees would be a “way to truly stand with the brave and industrious Ukrainian people and our allies around the world”—and “also provide more workers for the US economy.”

Less than two weeks later, the Post (3/16/22) returned to the issue, forcefully demanding that Biden’s inaction on bringing Ukrainian refugees to the US “must change” and suggesting that the Department of Homeland Security “step up” and grant them entry under a humanitarian parole system. “At the moment, it’s hard to think of a cohort of refugees whose reasons are more urgent,” the board wrote.

A few weeks after Biden’s March 24 announcement that the US would admit 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, the Post (4/19/22) found the idea “heartening,” but called the lack of implementation “an embarrassment to this country.” This was at a time when, as the board noted, most Ukrainians who managed to make it to the US/Mexico border were being allowed entry under the parole system the Post had favored.

Later, the Post (6/22/22) celebrated that its exhortations had been followed: “The US Door Swings Open to Ukrainian Refugees.” In that editorial, the board explicitly highlighted that the Ukrainians who had thus far entered the US had done so “in nearly all cases legally.” They wrote:

That tens of thousands of them have successfully sought refuge in this country over about three months, with relatively little fanfare—and even less controversy, considering the toxicity that attends most migration issues—is a reaffirmation of America’s commitment to its values as a beacon to the world’s most desperate people. That commitment must be sustained as the war in Ukraine drags on, which seems likely.

But the Post board doesn’t want that beacon to shine too brightly for all the world’s most desperate people—such as Haitian asylum seekers.

‘Inhumane to incentivize migrants’

A Washington Post editorial (9/20/21) on Haitian refugees takes President Joe Biden to task for suggesting he would “relax the previous administration’s draconian policies” toward Latin American asylum seekers.

After the Del Rio incident, the board (9/20/21) expressed umbrage that “Haitian migrants, virtually all Black, are being subjected to expulsion on a scale that has not been directed at lighter-skinned Central Americans.”

Yet this was quickly balanced by the Post‘s indignation at Biden’s “on-the-ground leniency” toward migrants that “led many or most of [the Haitians at Del Rio] toward the border.” The board wrote that Biden had suggested he would “relax the previous administration’s draconian policies” for “others, especially Central American families with children, tens of thousands of whom have been admitted to the United States this year,” thereby encouraging Haitians to come but then expelling them by the thousands. “The policy is inhumane,” the board lamented; “equally, it is inhumane to incentivize migrants to risk the perilous, expensive journey across Central America and Mexico.”

To be clear, the Biden administration expelled migrants under Title 42 in more than a million encounters in 2021; however, a change in Mexican policy meant the US could no longer expel Central American families with young children (American Immigration Council, 3/4/22). What the board is suggesting here is that the policy of sending away migrants who have a right to seek asylum in the US, and will almost certainly face a dire situation upon arrival in their home country, is equal in its inhumanity to reducing the use of that policy—because that incentivizes more people to exercise their right to seek asylum.

So what’s the answer to this conundrum? Ultimately the board pinned the blame on “partisanship in Congress” that has “doomed” attempts at comprehensive immigration reform. Setting aside the absurdity of the idea that both parties are equally at fault in stymying immigration reform, that analysis implies that any sort of immediate relief for actual Haitians is not a priority for the Post editorial board, regardless of their suffering.

After the Del Rio incident, the Biden administration cleared out the migrant camp the Haitians were staying in, and most were flown to Haiti or fled to Mexico to avoid that fate. Many Democrats criticized Biden for the treatment of the Haitian migrants, but the Post (10/13/21), in its next editorial on the subject, argued that those critics “fail[ed] to acknowledge the political, logistical and humanitarian risks of lax border enforcement.”

The headline of that editorial, “How the Biden Administration Can Help Haitian Migrants Without Sending the Wrong Message,” clearly signaled the board’s priorities; when advocating for helping Ukrainians, the Post never betrayed any concern that such help might send the wrong message.

While it’s “easy to sympathize with the impulse behind” calls to end Title 42, and to grant Haitian refugees asylum if they are judged to have a “reasonable possibility of fear,” the board wrote, “the trouble is that it would swiftly incentivize huge numbers of new migrants to make the perilous trek toward the southern border.”

They argued that their concern wasn’t theoretical; it was “proved” by the “surge” of Haitian asylum seekers “driven in large part by the administration’s increasingly sparing use of Title 42″—implying that the human rights of Haitian migrants must be judiciously balanced against the supposed threat of a “surge” of them at the border. The board members concluded that “Americans broadly sympathize with the admission of refugees and asylum seekers, but a precondition of that support is a modicum of order in admissions.” First comes order, then come the Post‘s sympathies.

Two months later (12/30/21), they argued that the mass expulsion of Haitian migrants was “deeply troubling,” quoting a UN report that Haitians are “living in hell.” And yet they found themselves unable to forcefully condemn the Biden administration’s continued use of Title 42 to prevent Haitians from exercising their right to seek asylum, arguing that the policy is “politically defensible,” since “Americans do not want to encourage a chaotic torrent of illegal immigration.” The strongest umbrage they could muster was to call the situation “worth a policy review, to say the least.”

‘Main export is asylum seekers’

The Washington Post (5/7/22) calls for a “vigorous US policy” to oppose Haiti “chaos.”

The Post editorial board is clearly very aware of the plight of Haitian refugees. As they pointed out in an editorial (5/7/22) calling for a “concerted, muscular diplomatic push” to address the Haitian government’s lack of legitimacy, they wrote that for those deported to Haiti, their “chances of finding work are abysmal, but the possibility that they will be victimized amid the pervasive criminality is all too real.”

The board has been vocal (7/7/22) about calling for US policy change toward Haiti to reduce the “human misery”—and the “outflow of refugees”—arguing that “deportation is a poor substitute for policy.” Recently, it has ramped up its rhetoric, even suggesting (8/6/22) the idea of a military intervention in Haiti; in its most recent call for intervention, the board (10/11/22) argued:

It is unconscionable for the Western Hemisphere’s richest country to saddle the poorest with a stream of migrants amid an economic, humanitarian and security meltdown.

But it’s the country, not its people, at the center of concern here. At no point in the piece are those people, or the impact of US policy on them, described. (Certainly it’s never suggested that “these could be your children.”) Worse, the board calls Haiti a “failed state whose main export is asylum seekers,” reducing those asylum seekers to objects. (One might add that comparing Black human beings to “exports” shows a callous disregard for Haitian—and US—history.)

The board wants intervention in Haiti in part to relieve the “humanitarian suffering” in the country (9/22/22)—but it’s not ashamed to put “death and despair” in the same sentence as “a steady or swelling tide of refugees” as the two things the Biden administration should be seeking to prevent via such an intervention.

The source of the discrepancy between its position on Ukrainian and Haitian refugees seems to be that the Post editorial board sees them as fundamentally different problems. Ukrainians fleeing violence and instability are themselves at risk and need help; Haitians fleeing violence and instability are a risk to the US.

That framing of the problem was perhaps most clear in their editorial (2/10/21) condemning Biden’s support for Haiti’s “corrupt, autocratic and brutal” then-President Jovenel Moïse:

As with Central American migrants, the problem of illegal immigrants from Haiti can be mitigated only by a concerted US push to address problems at the source.

Haitian migrants are, to the Post, more a problem for the US than human beings with problems of their own.

And the editorial board’s use of the term “illegal immigrant”—a dehumanizing and inaccurate slur the widely-used AP style guide nixed ten years ago—is also telling. The board repeatedly refers in its editorials on Haiti to “illegal border crossings” and “surges.” But as mentioned previously, Haitians, like Ukrainians—and the Central American migrants the Post dreads in the same breath as Haitians—are legally entitled to come to the US border and seek asylum. In fact, to request asylum, migrants are required to present themselves on US soil. The only thing that makes their crossings “illegal” is Title 42, which itself is clearly illegal, despite judicial contortions to keep it in place. Yet it seems the moral (and legal) imperative to offer the opportunity to seek asylum must always be balanced, in the Post‘s view, with their fears of an unruly mob at the border.

‘An enduring gift to their new country’

Early in the Ukraine War, some journalists came under criticism for singling out Ukrainian refugees for sympathy, in either explicit or implicit contrast to refugees from non-white countries (FAIR.org, 3/18/22). CBS‘s Charlie D’Agata (2/25/22), for instance, told viewers that Ukraine

isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European—I have to choose those words carefully, too—city, one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that, it’s going to happen.

“They seem so like us,” wrote Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph (2/26/22). “That is what makes it so shocking.”

Both journalists were white; it is perhaps worth noting that nine of the ten members of the Washington Post editorial board are likewise white. (Post opinion columnist Jonathan Capehart, who is Black, is the sole exception.)

The Washington Post (4/28/22) shows no fear of a “surge” of Afghan refugees.

And yet the differential treatment it accords migrant groups may go beyond racism or classism for the Post; in April, the board (4/28/22) published an editorial headlined, “Don’t Forget the Afghan Refugees Who Need America’s Support.” In it, the board asked, “Why can’t the administration stand up a program for US-based individuals and groups to sponsor Afghan refugees to come here, as it has done for Ukrainians?”

Earlier, the board (8/31/21) had argued that Afghan refugees “​​will become as thoroughly American as their native-born peers, and their energy, ambition and pluck will be an enduring gift to their new country.”

The Afghanistan case illustrates that the Washington Post doles out its sympathy on political, not just racial, terms: Afghans, like Ukrainians, are presented as victims of enemies the Post has devoted considerable energy to vilifying—the Taliban on the one hand, Russia on the other. The plights of Haitians (and Central Americans), by contrast, can in no small part be traced back to US intervention—something the Post has little appetite for castigating.

And Afghans, for the most part, have not been arriving at the US/Mexico border, which is clearly a site of anxiety for the board, with its fear of “surges” and lawlessness.

The humanization and sympathy the board offers to both Afghans, and especially the Ukrainians that “could be your children,” is never offered to Haitians. Their circumstances are described, sometimes in dire language, but they themselves—their “pluck,” their “children pressed against the windows of a bus or train sobbing or waving goodbye to their fathers and other relatives who remain behind”—remain invisible and, ultimately, unworthy.

ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Twitter @washingtonpost.

Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.

The post WaPo Wants US ‘Beacon’ for Ukraine Refugees—but Not for Haitians appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Julie Hollar.

The post Ciudad Juárez: Haitians in Limbo appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kent Paterson.

In recent days Ottawa has aggressively taken up the Haitian cause. On Wednesday Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations Bob Rae met the president of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, to talk about Haiti. The somewhat unusual move — heads of state generally meet each other — was explained by the fact Canada leads the UN Economic and Social Council’s Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Haiti.

Prior to traveling to Santo Domingo Rae was in Port-au-Prince. He met Haiti’s de-facto Foreign Affairs Minister Jean Victor Geneus and civil society actors. Rae held a press conference with Haitian media and released a number of statements and tweets about Canada’s desire to assist.

At the Organization of American States last week Canada’s permanent representative to the organization, Hugh Adsett, said “we continue to feel that the international community in collaboration and in consensus with Haiti can play a crucial role” in Haiti. Adsett added, “Canada is ready, willing and able to accompany Haitians on this path to emerge from the crisis but the solutions must come from within Haiti.” The statement was made just after Canadian-backed OAS head, Luis Almagro, published a statement on Haiti and called for the return of United Nations soldiers to the country.

Last month Ottawa supported a year-long extension of the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH). “Canada welcomes the renewal of BINUH UN ’s mandate by the UNSC”, tweeted Canada’s Mission to the UN. In his interview with Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste Rae said he “works closely” with BINUH head Helen La Lime. In that interview Rae dismissed as “ridiculous” the notion — believed by many Haitians — that the foreign powers want chaos to justify extending BINUH and possibly resending UN troops.

Canada’s ambassador to Haiti, Sébastien Carrière, accompanied Rae during his meetings and has recently clamored for major changes in Haiti. Last weekend Carrière hosted a webinar titled Haiti, sortie de crise: quel accompagnement du Canada” (“Haiti, emerging from the crisis: what support from Canada”). The event included multiple Haitian actors and was led by Canadian government-funded Haitian-Québec journalist Nancy Roc, a virulent opponent of Haiti’s elected president in the early 2000s. (When I challenged panelists at an August 2005 conference in Montréal titled “Haiti: A democracy to construct” for failing to mention the February 29, 2004 US/France/Canada coup or violence unleashed by the coup government, Roc called me a “Chimères”, a purported pro-Aristide thug.)

On social media Haitian diaspora activists suggested the aim of the webinar may have been to legitimate further foreign intervention. They believe Ottawa may use the event to say Haitian actors were consulted.

Among his multiple recent interventions Carrière boasted about Canada spending $30 million on the Haitian police in 2022. On August 10 the federal government approved the export of Canadian-made armored personnel carriers to the Haitian police. Since ousting the elected government in 2004, Canada has devoted significant resources and political capital to the Haitian police. But in Les Cayes the police reportedly killed two protesters on Tuesday while simultaneously repressing protesters in other cities. Canadian officials have stayed mum on the repression at demonstrations against growing insecurity and soaring prices. This week tens of thousands demonstrated to demand the departure of Prime Minister Ariel Henry who was selected a year ago by the Core Group (representatives of US, Canada, France, Brazil, Spain, Germany, EU, UN and OAS).

It is unclear what Ottawa’s immediate objective is in Haiti. Does it want a new UN military or police force? Some are suggesting foreign countries wants to contract private security forces.

Irrespective of their plan, there is little reason to believe Ottawa’s rhetoric claiming a desire to assist solutions “coming from within Haiti”. During this century Canada has helped destabilize an elected government, planned a coup and invaded to topple a president. It also trained and financed a highly repressive police force, justified their politically motivated arrests and killings. Ottawa has also backed the exclusion of Haiti’s most popular party from participating in multiple elections and helped fix at least one election. After a terrible earthquake Canada dispatched troops to control the country and later propped up a repressive, corrupt and illegitimate president facing massive protests. Ottawa has also been part of a coalition of foreign representatives that openly dictate to Haitian leaders.

Considering Ottawa’s recent history no one should trust Canadian claims about assisting Haitians. But even if you ignore the last two decades and stick to policy this week why trust officials who refuse to even criticize police who kill protesters?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

I have two memories of Haiti. The first was in 1993. I had led a United Nations delegation to Haiti to ascertain the consequences of the embargo imposed by the U.N. The embargo intended to put pressure on the military-installed regime to restore president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.

I was with a number of other colleagues; we were staying at a hotel of relative luxury near the capital Port-Au-Prince. The hotel had a panoramic view of the city and its surroundings, but, being mostly dry land, it was not an attractive sight. There was a disconnection between the comfort of the hotel and the surrounding poverty.

One morning I took a walk around the hotel when I heard a murmur of children singing. I tried to locate where the sound was coming from, when I realized it came from a group of boys and girls on the way to school, their books hanging precariously from their school bags. All were immaculately dressed in white. This was quite a feat, given the difficulties in obtaining water. The children happily singing may have been a touch of magic in their lives; witnessing it, was certainly mine.

The second memory was when I went to assess the Pan American Health Organization’s collaboration efforts with the government regarding public health. I was visiting a hospital in Port-au-Prince with a colleague when, all of a sudden, she asked me, “Did you see that?” Regrettably, I had. She was referring to a dead child covered by a sheet, flies buzzing around the corpse, seemingly abandoned in a hospital hallway. For days afterwards that sight was a recurring nightmare for me. It also was proof of the desperate state of Haiti’s hospitals.

Today, the dire situation in Haiti has increased exponentially. The country has the combined negative effects of political and social violence, the economic crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, there is continuous civil unrest and gang violence. Also, should a new resurgence of the infection occur, the country is unprepared to deal with it.

A month after Moïse’s assassination, on August 14, 2021, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the Tiburon Peninsula, followed by Tropical Storm Grace. The natural disasters affected two million people; left 2,246 dead; more than 12,700 injured; at least 329 missing, and up to 26,000 displaced. The Haitian government estimates it needs $2 billion to recover from the earthquake. As of last February, donors have pledged only $600 million.

The country is undergoing a serious political and constitutional crisis. Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who had been appointed by Moïse two days before his assassination, was found to have close links to a prime suspect in the assassination and to have maintained contact with him after the president’s assassination.

At this time of crisis for the country, Human Rights Watch has denounced the deportation of Haitians back to Haiti by the U.S. and other countries. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), from January 1, 2021 through February 26, 2022, 25,765 people were returned to Haiti, including 4,674 children, who make up 18 percent of returnees.

“No government should return people to Haiti. And the United States, which accounts for the vast majority of returns, should end the unnecessary and illegitimate use of public health regulation for abusive expulsion of Haitians,” stated César Muñoz, senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch. Muñoz is referring to Title 42 of the U.S Public Health Services Law.

Title 42 is a clause which the Trump Administration began using in 2020 to prevent migrants from entering into the U.S. It grants the government the ability to take emergency action to stop immigrants from entering the U.S. on the premise that it will prevent the introduction of Covid-19. On March 11, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ceased its authorization of Title 42 expulsion authority regarding unaccompanied children.

Is there is a future for Haiti? Unlike those who look on with despair at the difficulties the country is facing, Haiti’s human resources could be the foundation of a new revitalized society that would address the crises imposed by inept governments and foreign powers’ interference. Haiti needs economic and technical help, and effective financial assistance judiciously provided. The Haitian people deserve no less.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Cesar Chelala.