(Français)
The five-hour visit of U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to Haiti on Sep. 5 does not surprise anyone. Don’t they say that the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime?
Indeed, like a colonial-era proconsul, Blinken announced that the outgoing Biden Administration will give the pathetic sum of $45 million in humanitarian aid to Haiti and passed orders to his servile Transitional Presidential Council (CPT) and to the de facto Prime Minister Garry Conille.
A caravan of armored vehicles transported Blinken to the meetings, which were held, not at any Haitian government building, but at the fortified U.S. Embassy and U.S. Ambassador’s residence. This was an egregious trampling of diplomatic protocol and Haitian sovereignty, exposing the complete failure of the Washington-financed Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission to establish any kind of security in Haiti since it was blessed by the UN Security Council on Oct. 2, 2023 or since the first 200 Kenyan cops arrived on Jun. 16, 2024.
Nonetheless, Blinken had the audacity to thank Kenya’s police and President William Ruto for improving the security climate in Haiti by reopening of the Port-au-Prince airport and allowing the resumption of commercial flights there. Only one problem: the airport was opened before the arrival of the first Kenyans!
Also maybe Blinken doesn’t know that car traffic is still banned from Martissant to Gressier going south out of the capital, from Canaan to Cabaret going north, and that displaced populations from the metropolitan area still can’t return to their homes; even the Interior Minister can’t sit in that ministry’s office on Rue de la Réunion.
In short, there is no reason to thank the Kenyans, because the situation is getting worse. Non-state armed groups don’t feel worried at all and show up “Live” on TikTok with their thousands of subscribers almost every day while the U.S. military collects mud in the Pedernales River on the border with the Dominican Republic in search of rare earth minerals.
Proconsul Blinken’s orders to his subordinates were to form an electoral council, organize a referendum on a new constitution, and organize national elections, regardless of the security climate.
We say “no” to any reform of the Constitution. On the contrary, we demand the application of the 1987 Constitution. With no elected government, we oppose any bogus referendum on the Constitution and any election under foreign military occupation. Our struggle is for Haiti’s liberation from the imperialist domination of the U.S., France, and Canada. It is criminal and racist to plan elections in the conditions that Haiti currently finds itself; they would only strengthen imperialist domination over Haiti. The popular masses of the cities and shanty towns are impoverished, small farmers are ruined, and alienated youth only aspire to leave the country at the first opportunity.
Blinken was greeted by his Haitian counterpart, Ms. Dominique Dupuy, on the tarmac of the Maïs Gâté airport. He met Conille and the CPT’s rotating President Edgard Leblanc Fils at U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Dennis Hankins’ official residence in Pétionville. He also summoned Rameau Normil, chief of the Haitian National Police (PNH) to the U.S.-built base housing the 380 Kenyan policemen of the MSS. Finally Blinken invited the leaders of his complicitly servile political sectors – ranging from Martelly’s Haitian Bald Headed Party (PHTK) to Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas Family to Moïse Jean-Charles’ Dessalines’ Children – whose representatives make up the CPT, to the U.S. Embassy in Tabarre. Blinken also highlighted the renewal of the HOPE/HELP law, the U.S. tax-waiving legislation which makes Haitian sweatshops profitable, even though the industrial park is almost not functioning due to the insecurity gripping the metropolitan area.
After his “doctor’s visit” to Haiti, Blinken flew to the Dominican Republic and spent the rest of the day there.
What an outrage! Haiti does not have a suitable place to receive the equivalent of the U.S. Foreign Minister. Haiti’s non-elected officials were only there to present their personal files, as if they were Blinken’s guests and not vice-versa. They did not lay out the burning matters of the insecurity that is ravaging the metropolitan area and the Artibonite Department and/or the humanitarian crisis that the country is going through with the masses’ growing impoverishment and chronic unemployment, the non-existence of basic social services, etc., etc..
A few weeks earlier, we watched the macabre, humiliating spectacle of Taiwanese officials handing over 400 bulletproof vests, emblazoned with the Taiwanese flag, to Conille and Normil.
Expatriate Haitians contribute more generously when Haitian authorities have requested it. Didn’t Haitians expats purchase for and ship to Jean Ernest Muscadin, the government commissioner of Miragoâne, a private armored vehicle?
The Haitian authorities know that they have no legitimacy and did not even dare to raise the revival of certain economic agreements made in the past between the hemisphere’s two oldest nations, particularly the reactivation of the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), established by the Trade Act of 1974, under which Haiti is supposed to be able to import its products into the U.S. without paying tariffs.
At this turning point in our history, if we are not scandalized by these insults and revolt, we are not true Haitian men and women. So it is time to create the new Haitian, through a socialist revolution to reform our character, restore our dignity and patriotism, and break forever with the imperialist domination of the U.S., France, and Canada, and establish diplomatic ties with the BRICS countries and other nations of the Global South for healthy cooperation and sustainable economic and social development.
Haitian progressives, let us unite for Haiti’s national liberation!
Liberty or Death! Homeland or Death!
