Police detained David Apaid... he was released on Dec. 1 after Judge Joassaint St. Clair dismissed the charges against him.

In decades past, the Haitian bourgeoisie has generally enjoyed the equivalent of diplomatic immunity in Haiti. If arrested, they could usually count on their “connections” to rapidly spring them from detention and, more often than not, they circumvented courtrooms and prosecution.

Justice and jails were not for them; that was for another class of people.

This preferential treatment then explains the fury with which they reacted following the Nov. 14 arrest of two members of the bourgeoisie on weapons charges. Police detained David Apaid and Charles Henry Baker, vice president of the Haitian Association of Manufacturers (ADIH), after finding three guns in the Mercedes the men were driving to an anti-government demonstration in the capital presided over by Apaid’s uncle, André Apaid (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 21, No. 36, 11/19/2003). The two were released on Dec. 1 after Judge Joassaint St. Clair dismissed the charges against them, perhaps in response to the bourgeoisie’s intense political pressure.

When stopped and asked for gun permits, Baker had presented the permit of someone else, government prosecutor Riquet Brutus had charged. Baker’s lawyers argued it was an “honest mistake.”

Furthermore, although two of the guns had valid individual permits, the third was registered to Apparel & Garment Contractors, an assembly factory in the airport industrial park. No representative of the company was with the firearm thus resulting in another violation, the prosecution argued.

The police arrested 25 people on Nov. 14 and quickly released all but four, including Apaid and Baker.

Outraged that their ilk should be charged and held in the same manner as any ordinary citizen, the bourgeoisie immediately castigated the arrests as “political” and “unjustified.”

“There is no infraction, no violation, no crime,” said Gervais Charles, a lawyer for Apaid and Baker. “It is purely a political affair.”

Mme. Marie Claude Bayard, the ADIH president, used veiled blackmail to explain why the courts should not prosecute Baker and Apaid. “Such a decision risks throwing tens of thousands of employees out of work,” she said.

In fact, Baker used this tactic, ordering that his factory doors be closed while he was in jail, thereby pressuring workers to clamor for his release.

The tactic is similar to that used by the Venezuelan bourgeoisie in their campaign to collect signatures for a petition to force a recall vote of President Hugo Chavez. In many cases, workers who refuse to sign the petition have been fired.

On Nov. 25, ten members of André Apaid’s “Group of 184” (G184) occupied the Port-au-Prince headquarters of the Organization of American States (OAS) for five days to demand the release of the two men.

“The Special Mission deplores this inappropriate action by the representatives of the Group of 184,” the OAS said in a mild protest 48 hours after the occupation started. “The ends and the means must be congruent and this, on behalf of everybody. The Mission calls on the Group of 184 to immediately withdraw its representatives from the OAS diplomatic offices.” But not until Saturday, Nov. 29, did the G184 withdraw.

A protest occupation of OAS offices during the 1991-1994 coup d’état against Aristide was taxed as “terrorist” by many of the same bourgeois-aligned radio stations which hailed last week’s action.

by Faustin Beaurevers

Kill the Haitians!” is the refrain heard in Rockstar Games’ video title “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City,” which has already made the company $260 million richer. The intellectual effect of this video game will be to create a generation literally ready to kill Haitians because they were taught to do so at a very early age.

But “killing all the Haitians” will not be so easy. The Spaniards killed an estimated two million of the first Haitians – Taino indians – whom they found on the island they renamed Hispaniola in 1492. Then Europeans brought new Haitians – enslaved Africans – beginning in 1503. For three centuries, they cruelly eliminated hundreds of thousands by hanging, drowning, and shooting. Some were even burned alive.

They were unable to destroy the Haitians in 1685, 1789, and 1791. They could not stop our Proclamation of Independence on January 1, 1804. But because of that achievement, they have starved us, killed us, and drained our blood.

Then in 1825, the French sent a fleet of 19 battle ships, 15 frigates, and seven other vessels with a total of 900 cannons to give us an ultimatum that we pay them 150 million gold francs or be blown in pieces. We paid...

They were unable to destroy the Haitians in 1915, when U.S. Marines invaded and occupied the country.

They were unsuccessful in stigmatizing Haitians as “carriers” of the AIDS Virus in 1990. But the disease has succeeded in killing one percent of our population over the past two decades.

Despite all the atrocities, lies, and false accusations over the years, they’ve failed to destroy the Haitians or to stop their ongoing effort to celebrate 2004. They have killed some men and women. But they could not and will not kill the dream of a peaceful, democratic, flourishing Haiti, for the dream is stronger than life itself. They won’t succeed in killing Haitian pride and glory.

Today, they are teaching the 20 million kids who have already purchased the racist video game “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” to pursue an extermination that they’ve been unable to realize for centuries. They want to pass on their hatred and cruelty to a new generation of the human race.

What have Haitians done? What is their crime? Why is it death-row for all Haitians?

Is it because Haitians gave to the world the first and only successful slave revolution, the first army to defeat Napoleon Bonaparte’s military machine, the first independent black nation, the second nation of the Americas, the first country to abolish slavery, the first country where every man was a man regardless of his color? Is it because the Haitians tremendously contributed to help free the rest of the continent: Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru?

Criminals of the new millennium, leave the Haitians alone! If “killing all the Haitians” was impossible in 1492 and 1503 and 1915, it will not occur today.

Haitians might be momentarily defeated but cannot be destroyed. Today, you are distributing millions among our hungry brothers and sisters to pit them against each other, to kill and deceive one another. But one day, perhaps even today, Haitians will grasp this reality.

Haitian brothers and sisters, in unity, there is strength. Such is our national motto. We must stop this infernal machine, this relentless propaganda, this war of another kind against our people, our dignity and our country.