[Peace-discuss] more US-backed chaos in Haiti

[Ricky Baldwin]

Hey folks-

For those of you not following it, the situation in
Haiti is deteriorating rapidly as elections there have
been put off a second time since the US-backed coup. 
Half the polling places have apparently been shut
permanently, and even before the recent hurricanes
this meant most of the population would have a
near-impossible time showing up to vote.  (What?  The
US involved in overthrowing a government?  Questions
about the elections?  You don't say!)

Last week, Jordanian soldiers in Haiti with the UN
mission apparently rammed down the gate to the Larco
soft drink factory, barged into the plant, forced
people to lay flat on the ground, beat them and
humiliated them. They also entered the ECEM industry
and did the same thing.  The independent labor
organizing group Batay Ouvriye is saying this is
symptomatic of the UN presence there.  An independent
filmmaker Kevin Pina has documented the UN standing by
while police and others commit heinous atrocities --
and this isn't just about Aristide and his supporters
(some of them have been involved in killings, too).

Unfortunately, I don't think even "Democracy Now!" is
doing the Haitian situation justice (see article
below, decide for yourself).  It's hard to sort out, I
know, especially if it isn't an area you keep up with
much, but it's our "backyard" and I encourage folks to
try to find out more.  I recommend the website of the
Haiti Support Group.

-Ricky


Haitian Labor Group Confronts US Lavalas Backers

NEW YORK, Nov. 11 2005

Long-standing differences in the Haitian left began to
emerge as an 
issue 
among US progressives this fall as the well-known
Haitian labor 
organizing group 
Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle") responded to what
it called a 
"slander" 
from US supporters of the Lavalas movement of deposed
Haitian president 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

During an "International Tribunal on Haiti" in
Washington, DC on the 
weekend 
of Sept. 23, a panelist charged that Batay Ouvriye had
been funded by 
the US 
Agency for International Development (USAID) as part
of a program for 
"creating 
a leftist opposition" in Haiti in the months leading
up to Aristide's 
overthrow in February 2004. The money came through the
AFL-CIO's 
Solidarity Center 
and was part of a $3 million package for subverting
the Haitian 
government, 
according to Jeb Sprague, an independent journalist
and a graduate 
student at 
California State University at Long Beach. Batay
Ouvriye was "working 
with 
co-conspirators overthrowing a democratically elected
government," 
Sprague said.

The tribunal was organized by several large left and
solidarity groups, 
including International ANSWER, the International
Action Center and the 
Latin 
America Solidarity Coalition. Sprague's presentation
was aired in New 
York on Sept. 
28 on WBAI-FM's popular morning program, "Wakeup
Call."

Batay Ouvriye responded on Oct 1 [see below]. The
group ridiculed the 
idea 
that it had been paid to be part of "an unholy
alliance fabricated by 
the State 
Department." In fact, the statement said, Batay
Ouvriye has a long, 
very 
public record of opposition to "the Lavalas leaders,
who we certainly 
exposed to be 
reactionaries, swindlers, complete frauds,
anti-popular and 
fundamentally 
anti-worker." Sprague--who claimed to have conducted
30 interviews in 
his 
research--"never once contacted our organization for
information," 
Batay Ouvriye 
charged.

Batay Ouvriye has worked with a number of
international solidarity 
groups 
over the years, including the National Labor Committee
and the Campaign 
for Labor 
Rights. Among its best-known campaigns were
unionization drives at 
Grand 
Marnier and Cointreau plantations in northern Haitian
and the recent 
unionization 
of a Dominican-owned factory in a "free trade zone" by
the Dominican 
border in 
Ouanaminthe. During the Ouanaminthe struggle Batay
Ouvriye received 
$3,500 
from the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, in response to
public appeals for 
funds to 
help fired workers. This was apparently the funding
Sprague was 
referring to.

Stressing that it focuses on grassroots struggles
"against the 
bourgeoisie 
concretely in the factories, sweatshops, plantations,"
Batay Ouvriye 
asked why 
the International Tribunal had chosen to target it
rather than a number 
of much 
less militant Haitian unions that "closely
resemble...the 
pro-imperialist and 
pro-bourgeois Confederation of Venezuelan Labor
(CTV)," a major force 
in the 
2002 US-backed effort to overthrow Venezuelan
president Hugo Chavez.

Batay Ouvriye noted that two of its supporters were
killed in northern 
Haiti 
in May 2002 by goons led by a local Lavalas mayor.
Aristide's 
government 
responded to the anti-union violence by arresting
several Batay Ouvriye 
organizers 
and two journalists; some were held in the National
Penitentiary until 
December 2002, when they were released following an
international 
campaign to press 
the Lavalas government for their release.

The controversy between Batay Ouvriye and US
supporters of Lavalas 
comes at a 
time when many US progressives are beginning to
question the picture of 
the 
Haitian situation presented here by both mainstream
and alternative 
media, 
including the well-known national radio and television
program 
"Democracy Now!"

The image of Lavalas as a unified militant force on
the left has been 
shaken 
recently by disarray within the movement over
elections scheduled to be 
held 
in December by a US-backed interim government. A
number of "grassroots 
leaders" 
in Port-au-Prince neighborhoods are supporting the
presidential 
candidacy of 
former president Rene Preval, a personal friend of
Aristide's. Many 
former 
Lavalas office-holders, meanwhile, are backing former
World Bank 
official Marc 
Bazin, a cabinet minister in the government of deposed
dictator 
Jean-Claude 
Duvalier ("Baby Doc") and a longtime proponent of
US-backed neoliberal 
economic 
programs for Haiti. Meanwhile groups around the New
York-based weekly 
Haiti 
Progres are calling for a boycott of the elections.
All factions are 
claiming the 
support of the Lavalas base.

------
A Batay Ouvriye organizer, Yanick Etienne, will be in
New York the week 
of 
Nov. 21. She will be speaking at a public forum,
sponsored by the 
Grassroots 
Haiti Solidarity Committee, on Friday, Nov. 25, at 6
pm, at the Church 
of the 
Evangel at 1950 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. Etienne
will be available 
for 
interviews during the week. Grassroots Haiti*, a New
York-based group 
of long-time 
Haitian and North American activists, is also
organizing a delegation 
of 
activists and independent journalists to visit Haiti
in February to 
solidify contacts 
with Batay Ouvriye and other grassroots organizations.

David Wilson - Nicaragua Solidarity Network and the
Grassroots Haiti 
Solidarity Committee


* www.grassrootshaiti.org


___________________ 

Forwarded as a service of the Haiti Support Group -
solidarity with the 
Haitian people's struggle for human rights,
participatory democracy and 
equitable 
development - since 1992. 

Web site: www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org




		
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