Some 15,000 opponents of the Feb. 29th coup d’état in Haiti marched through the streets of Port-au-Prince on Friday, June 18 to demand the removal of Haiti’s de facto authorities and foreign military forces, and the return to power of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

It was one of the largest demonstrations since the February coup but was not marred by any serious violence, like that of May 18 (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 22, No. 10, 5/19/2004). Demonstrators denounced the campaign of arbitrary arrests, harassment and persecution against members of Aristide’s Lavalas Family party by the de facto government in concert with occupation forces.

Stepping off at about 10:30 a.m. from the Church of Perpetual Help in Bélair, the demonstration flooded through much of the capital including Delmas 2, Solino, Sans Fil, Fort National, and Montalais, Capois and Lalue streets. It ended up passing near the National Palace on its return to Bélair, the departure point. “We demand that the North American president George W. Bush roll back the coup d’état he carried out against our president Aristide,” demonstrators said. “Whether they like it or not, Aristide will return to the country to serve out the mandate we gave him on Nov. 26, 2000.”

Demonstrators denounced de facto Prime Minister Gérard Latortue as illegitimate and said it was absurd that certain Lavalas Family leaders were negotiating with him to take part in the Provisional Electoral Council while there continues foreign military occupation, illegal arrests, political witch hunts, and mass firings of Lavalas partisans from state posts. On May 31, about 1000 people were fired from Teleco – the state phone company – and the National Palace.

The masses of the Lavalas base who marched on June 18 taxed the Lavalas Family leaders wheeling and dealing with the coup government as opportunists. They emphasized their refusal to participate in any illegal and fraudulent elections organized by a coup government.

The demonstrators also denounced the brutal and illegal May 10 arrest of Annette “Sò Ann” Auguste, who remains imprisoned (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 22, No. 9, 5/12/2004).

Another Failed Washington Regime Change: Haiti’s Caricature of Democratic Governance

by Jessica Leight
Second of two parts

We continue this week with large extracts of an analysis by Jessica Leight, a research fellow with the Washington, DC-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, issued June 15.

Humanitarian Conditions Deteriorate
Not only is the legitimacy of Haiti’s interim administration highly questionable, it has presided over a significant decline in living standards in this already desperately poor country — a development that offers conclusive proof to those critics that had berated Aristide for his supposed ineffectiveness that Haiti’s deep-rooted economic, social and environmental problems are beyond the capacity of any one five-year term executive to address. Official unemployment, already at 75%, has increased still further due to the widespread looting of businesses and warehouses that provided low-wage, sweat-shop employment. Food prices have risen nearly 30%, placing essential staples beyond the means of Haitians already living on the brink of starvation, and shortages are expected as a result of the looting and destruction that occurred during the rebellion, a condition that will only worsen the health of a population where 50% already are malnourished.

Most recently, floods killed more than 1,400 people in Mapou and surrounding towns and left tens of thousands more destitute in a region now accessible only by helicopter. In the aftermath of the disaster, humanitarian organizations publicly considered buying bulldozers and building roads themselves, given the government’s inability to perform even this most basic of functions. In the face of these developments, Prime Minister Latortue and his cabinet have appeared utterly helpless and pathetically ineffective; many observers fear that worsening economic conditions will engender new rounds of popular unrest if no appropriate action is taken in the near future, further destabilizing the country and jeopardizing the current administration.

Meanwhile, the degree of commitment from the international community to the massive task of rebuilding Haiti remains highly tenuous, and much-needed and long-promised aid has once again proved slow to arrive.

On June 1, U.S. commanders officially turned over control of Haiti to the U.N. mission led by Brazil in the person of General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira, with actual command authority to be vested in the U.N. on June 20. However, at least for now, the U.N. presence is more symbolic than anything else, encompassing only a handful of soldiers who lack even a headquarters. Nonetheless, U.S. troops have begun to withdraw — taking with them crucial equipment, such as the helicopters that had been the only route by which food and other supplies could be rushed to flood victims in Mapou — though some of the Chilean, French and Canadian troops now present will remain under the U.N. force, along with a handful of U.S. soldiers. A larger contingent of American troops may also rotate through Haiti during this year in military exercises, according to General James Hill, chief of the United States Southern Command....

Secretary General Kofi Annan’s appeal for $35 million in emergency aid for Haiti has met with little enthusiasm from international donors already repeatedly hit by demands for Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan; only $9 million has been collected to date...

At the same time, the interim administration’s toleration of rampant human rights abuses and the U.N.’s abject failure to identify fully investigate accusations made regarding the fall of the Aristide government can be expected to heighten political instability and increase the chances of renewed violence — though the recent decision by the Organization of American States to launch an investigation into the circumstances of Aristide’s removal may help in shedding some light on this enduring and ugly controversy....