by Charles Arthur, Haiti Support Group

On the morning of 27 March, some 3,000 people marched through the streets of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, to denounce the invasion of Iraq and U.S./OAS interference in Haitian affairs. The demonstration began at the downtown Place d'Italie, proceeded along Bicentenaire, and finished with a rally in front of the National Palace in Champ-des-Mars. The protesters, many of them carrying placards and wearing white T-shirts, chanted slogans against the US government.

In front of the U.S. Embassy, protesters burnt a life size effigy adorned with a U.S. flag and a papier-mâché mask of U.S. President, George Bush. Some protesters chanted, "George Bush has turned the US into a rogue state."

A prominent theme on the demonstration was solidarity with Cuba, and one placard read, "Cuba - Haiti, two peoples united in struggle against the U.S."

The National Popular Party (PPN) said it organized the protest to condemn in the strongest possible terms the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, undertaken in the face of world condemnation, and to denounce Washington's brazen meddling in Haitian internal affairs.

PPN leader, Benjamin Dupuy, said the invasion of Iraq, formulated years before George W. Bush's theft of the U.S. presidential elections in 2000, aims to take control of Iraqi oil, encircle China, stop the encroachment of the Euro on the dollar as oil's currency, and provide a beach-head in the Middle East for further U.S. military attacks against other nations.

Addressing the crowd in front of the National Palace, Dupuy denounced what he called an alliance between former Tontons Macoutes, the local bourgeoisie, the Democratic Convergence, the Group of 184 and the Civil Society Initiative, that aimed to destabilise the government as a form of coup d'etat. "Lavalas has already made too many concessions," said Dupuy.

A PPN statement advertising the protest said that "on March 19, as the bombs began to fall on Baghdad, the U.S. State Department's arch-reactionary Otto Reich, of Iran/Contra fame, led an OAS delegation to Haiti which laid an ultimatum before the Haitian government to comply with Washington's demands that the government disarm and arrest its partisans in urban popular organisations. Meanwhile, the U.S. has sent twenty thousand new M-16s to the 25,000-man Dominican army, and 8,000 U.S. troops are being deployed in the Dominican Republic as well."

The Haiti Support Group notes that there have been no reports of this demonstration by the Associated Press, Reuters, The Miami Herald, Voice of America radio, Radio Metropole, Radio Signal FM, or Radio Vision 2000, even though in the past much smaller demonstrations by supporters of the opposition Democratic Convergence have received extensive coverage.

(This text is a slightly edited version of a Mar. 28 press release put out by the London-based Haiti Support Group.)