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The Haitian Situation – Part 1
By Apostle Cedric Moss

March 4, 2004

For several months I have been contemplating offering my thoughts on the Haitian situation in our country. Prompted by the climatic events in Haiti this past week that resulted in President Jean Bertrand Aristide’s resignation, I today I begin in earnest part one of a three part series.

More than talk
As I followed local news coverage of the events unfolding in Haiti, I was particularly moved by Dr. Eugene Newry’s request for prayer for the strife-torn nation of Haiti. Although Dr. Newry is the Bahamian Ambassador to Haiti, he seems to recognize that beyond diplomatic talk, the real need of the Haitian people is for divine intervention through prayer to Almighty God. I agree with him. Therefore, we who are followers of Christ should take heart that while governments talk and exercise human diplomacy, we can exercise divine diplomacy in prayer.

Balancing Two Concerns
For reasons that are obvious, a major concern in The Bahamas about the chaos in Haiti is that thousands of Haitians will come here with the hope of finding good fortune and a better life. However, we must have an additional concern. We must also be concerned about the plight of our brothers and sisters in Haiti, not just the effect that the situation there can potentially have on us.

I know it is easy to misunderstand my point so I will restate it: I am not saying that we must not be concerned about the potential additional strain that further amounts of Haitian immigrants will have on public services in our small country. We obviously must be concerned because our resources are limited. However, if our concern stops at the point of ourselves and does not take into account the grim circumstances faced by our Haitian brothers and sisters, we would be selfish. So we must balance these two concerns.

A Major Challenge
The reality is that even if there was a way to prevent further illegal immigration from Haiti to The Bahamas, the existing number of Haitians already here (speculated by some to be as high as 60,000) presents us with one of the most significant national challenges we face. This challenge cannot be wished away or talked away. It is here and our best option is to try to deal with it proactively.

As I listen to some Bahamians propose solutions to the problem of Haitians residing illegally in The Bahamas it is becoming clearer to me that many of them do not realize how serious and far gone the problem is. Therefore, their solutions are no real solution. In addition, some of the so called solutions are illegal and/or inhumane.

Our Day of Reckoning
In my view, although it is the lot of the present government to deal with the Haitian situation, successive governments of The Bahamas have to take collective responsibility for the state of affairs. While it would be naïve to minimize the task of effectively combating the problem of illegal immigration of Haitians to The Bahamas, I believe much more could have been done. By this I do not mean more rounding up and repatriations since this strategy by itself is no real solution.

In addition to successive governments falling short, we are Bahamians in general must take responsibility. Many among us took and still take economic advantage of our Haitian brothers and sisters and exploit them economically as modern day indentured servants, thereby contributing to the situation we now face. The tragedy is that now many of these same exploiters are speaking the loudest and shouting, “Send them home!” But it’s a bit too late. Our day of reckoning has come.

Part 2
Now that the government in Haiti is in further limbo, the prospects of our government getting the much talked about treaty that covers repatriation, among other things, signed any time soon is not that great. But what if they did get the treaty signed immediately? What would it produce?
Click here for Part 2. (http://www.bahamasissues.com/showthread.php?p=5043#post5043)

Apostle Cedric Moss serves as Senior Pastor at Kingdom Life World Outreach Centre. Comments and feedback may be directed to: apostle@kingdom-life.org.

Found this interesting letter at Haitian news site www.oplpeople.com:

Caribbean women denounce the US-backed coup in Haiti

We, the undersigned women of the Caribbean and of Caribbean descent, denounce the US-backed coup which culminated in President Aristide's removal
from Haitian soil by US forces on Sunday, February 29, 2004.

The majority of the Western media, functioning as an arm of the coup-makers,pretends that the issue is President Aristide's faults and weaknesses, and
his loss of support among the people. While we recognize that there are likely to be legitimate criticisms of the Aristide government, that is not the issue. The issue is that there was a democratically-elected government which had not completed its term, and an opposition which included armed gangs, purported drug dealers and mercenaries led by former leaders of the FRAPH death squad and Duvalierists. One of Haiti's current liberators - Chamblain - was leader of the death squads responsible for the mayhem which
led a U.N. envoy to Haiti in 1993 to declare, "the Haitian people are living under the most ferocious repression in their entire history". These terrorists have had the backing of what has been called Haiti's "permanent
government" - the merchants, elite mulattos, Black former military, intelligence and bureaucratic establishment, and without doubt, drug lords - a permanent government that had financial and other support from the US.
The people of Haiti have tried for decades to get them off their backs and may well have succeeded if the US had not undermined their movement which
threw out Baby Doc and put Aristide in power.

The coup is the latest action in the 200-year effort by the colonial powers, including the US, to defeat the struggle for freedom of Black people of Haiti and to prevent them from serving as an inspiration to others- which the colonial powers first acknowledged with the words of Napoleon: "The freedom of the negroes, if recognized in St. Domingue (Haiti's name then)
and legalized by France, would at all times be a rallying point for freedom-seekers of the New World." Napoleon sent in the largest force ever
to cross the Atlantic up to then, but he was defeated. The Haitian people also inflicted military defeat on Britain and Spain.

Haiti was also a source of direct aid to other freedom-seekers. Under siege itself, Haiti supplied Simon Bolivar, the Liberator of Venezuela and other South American countries, who sought refuge there, with two ships and supplies to overthrow Spanish colonial rule; they also helped to train some of Bolivar's soldiers. Its only request was that in return, Bolivar fight
to free the slaves in Latin America.

The Haitian people achieved the first successful slave revolution in history, abolishing slavery over 60 years before the US with its Civil War.
But they have never been allowed the conditions in which they could build their future without premeditated outside interference. The imperial
powers, especially France and the US, furious at what Black people, "their property", accomplished against them, have made the Haitian people pay.
Backed by the United States, France ordered Haiti to pay 150 million francs in gold as "reparations" to former plantation and slave owners as well as for the costs of the war, in return for international recognition. It has
been estimated that French bankers and big business alone owe Haiti at least $21 billion in reparations for the forced debt that took Haiti 120 years to pay off.

For sixty years following the revolution, the U.S. government refused to recognize the Haitian Republic. The U.S. threatened Haiti twenty-six times by anchoring warships in its harbors to protect U.S. business interests. It invaded Haiti in 1915 and stayed until 1934 - nineteen years of occupation. U.S. marines robbed $500,000 from its National Bank in 1915 and deposited in the National City Bank-- now part of the Citibank octopus. In the 200 years since Haiti's independence, it endured thirteen coups before the coup of February 29, 2004. The bloody Duvalier dictatorships (father and son) were
backed by both the US and France. Cedras, appointed by Aristide during his first term to head the army, later led a coup against Aristide which was the joint work of the Haitian business elite and the CIA.

Under the Bush administration the US stepped up its campaign to force "regime change" in Haiti. It pressured the Inter-American Development Bank
and other agencies to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in development assistance to Haiti - earmarked for safe drinking water, literacy programs and health services. It instructed the IMF and the World Bank to place Haiti under a financial embargo. This is the administration which now asks us to believe that it is acting in the interests of "peace" and "democracy" in
Haiti - as in Iraq.

And as is true everywhere, it is women and children who pay the highest price for the violence, including the violence of poverty, corruption and greed. Grassroots women and their children in Haiti, particularly those who are darker-skinned, are the poorest of the poor and have had to struggle to keep their loved ones safe and fed in the midst of violence and misery. It is the poorest sectors of the population who supported President Aristide.
Children have also been drawn into the struggle: images coming out of Haiti show children placing burning tires on the streets and participating in
so-called "looting".

All Caribbean people have a long experience of US economic, political and military domination and subversion in this region. We have always
understood that what happens in Haiti reflects whether we are winning or losing our long struggle to be free. Haiti has been used as the whipping board, as the example of what would be done to the rest of us if we dared do what the Haitians did so brilliantly, defeat the colonial powers. It was a Caribbean born and bred in Trinidad and Tobago, who wrote in Black Jacobins,
the great history of the Haitian revolution: "The transformation of slaves, trembling in hundreds before a single white man, into a people able to
organize themselves and defeat the most powerful European nations of their day is one of the great epics of revolutionary struggle and achievement."
We have always felt deeply that we must defend Haiti because Haiti is ours.

Now we must act.

We must act in defence of the other countries of the Americas where the US is also working to subvert a democratically elected government and bring about regime change to suit their interests against our interests. We must let the world know that we will not silently permit US destabilisation in Venezuela, a Caribbean country, where massive public support in the streets, led by women, has twice saved the people's President - Hugo Chavez, a man of
African and Indigenous descent like most of the Venezuelan population - and the people's anti-racist and anti-sexist constitution, the most advanced in the world.

We must act to prevent further massacres in Haiti by exposing the truth about US involvement. We must act to oppose another racist occupation of
Haiti by US forces and their allies. We must act to oppose fraudulent elections or any other intervention in Venezuela.

The coup and kidnapping of President Aristide is a threat to all of us, beginning with those of us in the Caribbean and Latin America regions.

We must call on Caribbean and Latin American governments to join with opposition voices in the US to:
1. Demand that President and First Lady Aristide be freed to travel where they want to and to speak freely so that the world can hear directly from them.
2. Condemn acts of violence against the people of Haiti, where as in any armed conflict, women and children bear the highest price, including in
sexual violence.
3. Support the bringing to justice of those who are committing violence and other atrocities against the Haitian people, including by coup leaders; and call for the convicted criminals among the coup leaders to serve their terms;
4. Oppose the return by the US government of Haitian refugees who are fleeing violence, including the violence of poverty imposed on then by the US and who are bound to face even greater violence upon their return to Haiti.
5. Insist on the sovereignty of the people of both Haiti and Venezuela, who must be in charge of their own affairs without outside interference.

We call on the United Nations to ensure that the social, cultural and economic rights of the women of Haiti are protected, especially during this
period


Lastly, we call on CARICOM Heads of Government now meeting in Kingston,Jamaica:
1. To refuse to commit Caribbean troops to Haitian soil, in light of the fact that the circumstances of the removal from office of the
constitutionally elected President remain unclear; and
2. To undertake its own public investigation into the circumstances which led to the removal of the constitutionally elected President Jean Bertrand
Aristide from office.



Signed as of March 2, 2004 (signatures are still being collected)

Name Country

Andaiye Guyana
Sheila Rampersad Trinidad and Tobago
Peggy Antrobus Barbados
Honor Ford-Smith Jamaica
Julieta Alfonso Cuba
Ramabai Espinet Trinidad and Tobago
Margaret Prescod Barbados/USA
Hazel Brown Trinidad and Tobago
Donnett Francis Jamaica
Jacquie Burgess Trinidad and Tobago
Alissa Trotz Guyana/Canada
Linnette Vassell Jamaica
Merle Hodge Trinidad and Tobago
Karen de Souza Guyana
Ijahnya Christian Anguilla
Dylis L. McDonald Trinidad and Tobago
Nadine Dominique Haiti/Québec