Neither OAS nor UN on Haiti’s Soil!
The Special Police Force is a conspiracy by the World Powers and their Puppet Capitalist Governments to invade Haiti for the Umpteenth time!
Statement of the Revolutionary Socialist Vanguard (RSV), Nigerian Section of the RCIT, 10.9.2022 https://www.communism4africa.wordpress.com
The popular uprising in Haiti shows no sign of losing momentum. The transitional prime minister, Ariel Henri, has called on the imperialists for a “special police force” to help quell the unrest before his brutal state corps get overrun. Although this bout of civil unrest are the aftershocks of the regime’s announcements to remove subsidy on petroleum products which in turn has hiked the prices of commodities and the general cost of living.¹ Haiti has never ceased to be a cesspool of revolutions and counterrevolutions with attendant political turmoil and economic instability.
This is because the Black island nation after freeing itself from slavery through a bloody decade long war from 1791-1804 which took almost half of its population in which faced off its French colonial masters, the British colonists and then again the French. It was consigned by the imperialist powers to spend roughly century and half after her enslavement as a debt paying vassal state to Western imperialism:
“In 1791, what today is Haiti became the scene of the largest slave revolt in history. Over the next 13 years, the rebels fought off three successive attempts to re-enslave them. The first was by local planters and French soldiers, aided by arms from the United States, whose president and secretary of state, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, were both slave owners horrified by the uprising. The second was by the British, at war with France and eager for fertile sugar land and slaves to work it. And finally, after he took power, Napoleon tried to recapture the territory as a French colony and restore slavery.
Ill-armed, barefoot and hungry, the rebels fought against huge odds: Britain dispatched an armada of 218 ships to the Caribbean, and its troops battled for five years before withdrawing; Napoleon sent the largest force that had ever set sail from France, losing more than 50,000 soldiers and 18 generals to combat and disease. The former slaves lost even more lives defeating these invasions, and no country came to their aid. This blood-soaked period also included a horrific civil war, periods of near famine, and the massacre or flight into exile of most educated people and skilled workers of any color. By the time Haiti declared independence in 1804, many of its fields, towns and sugar mills were in ruins and its population shrunken by more than half.”
“In 1825, a scant two decades after Haitian independence was declared, France demanded an indemnity of 150 million francs (roughly estimated at $20 billion in today’s dollars) for the property lost by French plantation owners during the quite bloody, quite fiery revolution—one that Haiti had won. Haiti was to compensate France not only for lost plantation lands and crops, but also for the loss of the Haitians themselves—i.e., for the right to be masters of their own bodies—since Haitian slaves had been France’s most valuable Caribbean asset.
The amount was far beyond Haiti’s meager means. Even the first installment was about six times the government’s income that year, based on official receipts documented by the 19th-century Haitian historian Beaubrun Ardouin.
The French king had given the baron a second mission: to ensure the former colony took out a loan from young French banks to make the payments. This became known as Haiti’s “double debt” — the ransom and the loan to pay it — a stunning load that boosted the fledgling Parisian international banking system and helped cement Haiti’s path into poverty and underdevelopment.” ²
By forcing Haiti to pay for its own independence the budding imperialist powers of the West had mastered debt slavery an integral component of neo-colonialism that is used unto this day. After the ruinous Double Debt came the 19 year long occupation of the US from 1915-34 which saw the total takeover of all institutions in Haiti for the purpose of super-exploitation. The Haitian people who knew too well what the purpose for any occupation could be began resisting the occupiers from day one but the US marines brutally put down any uprising. It is estimated that at 15,000 Haitians were killed during the two decades of US occupation.³
Due to almost a century and half of imperialist pilfering of Haiti, the country had become a byword for misery, privation, and at the same time its people had become accustomed to resistance. Furthermore, this state of affairs produced politicians who were exact replicas of the imperialist gangsters as shown by their thoroughly corrupt and depraved nature and what’s more they were for the most part of Haiti’s political history handpicked favourites of the White House.
It is impossible to overstate the overarching effects of heinous imperialist subjugation of Haiti. Decades of super-exploitation have left it in a quadrangle of foreign loans and at the mercy of thousands of NGO’s controlled by the same imperialists. Add to this the fact that Haiti is a victim of the worst effects of climate change manifested through devastating earthquakes in 2010 and 2015.
Gang violence is the product of recalcitrant recurrence of occupation and imperialist meddling in Haiti’s internal affairs. The ruling gangsters and their barons in Washington and Paris lack all moral justification to crackdown on the ganglings on the streets and in the ghettos of Haiti. For this cause, we denounce all attempts at a broad intervention of regional capitalist governments led by the US, whether through the Organisation of American States (OAS) or the UN.
We call on revolutionaries and progressives in Haiti to maintain an independent profile in their intervention in the crises in the capital; other commercial centers and the countryside. This means working with every and all forces in opposition to the Henri government and foreign intervention but in support of the even distribution of resources and democratisation of the movement. No doubt, such an approach will be applied in line with the concrete realities on ground.
No support to bourgeois opposition parties or strongmen. The goal is to end the reign of thieving gangs in power and their accomplices abroad not to replace them with new faces. The Haitian workers must organise with broad sections of youth, peasants, radicals and progressives to bring down the Ariel Henri government. Never has there been a time when the discourse for the workers and the popular masses to take power was so exigent. Workers, youth and other sections of oppressed Haitians must see themselves as the force that will usher in a new social regime that will center the masses in a national economic plan; crush the duplicitous ruling elite; and expropriate the bourgeois class with the multinationals; while defending Haiti from imperialist invasion.
France must repay the Double Debt. Britain and the US must also pay reparations for years of invasion and occupation of the island nation. Alas, reparations without dismantling the systems and structures of capitalism, neo-colonialism and imperialism will only lead down the same fox hole. For us, the salvation of Haiti lies in the victory of the international workers revolution in South and Central America since the Haitian struggle for independence and abolition of slavery was the seed of their own emancipation. Moreso, the ultimate freedom of the Black race is tied to the emancipation of the African continent from every imperialist stranglehold whether from the East or West. Thus, we call for linking the Haitian liberation struggle with liberation struggles in Iran, Palestine, Africa and all over the world.
* Down With the Connivance of the World Powers to invade Haiti with special police whether as OAS or UN! For an Indefinite General Strike to Bring Down the Henri Government! Put the Energy and Power Sector Under the Control of the Workers and Popular Masses!
* Yes to Reparations! No to Capitalism, Neo-colonialism and Imperialism! Massive humanitarian aid to Haiti paid for by the Western Imperialist Governments! For A Team of International Medical Experts to Fight the Cholera Outbreak and Other Diseases in Haiti!
* Cancel All Foreign and Domestic Debts! Free and Open Borders for All Immigrants from Central And South America!
* Form Action Committees and Self Defence Guards as precursory structures for Workers’ Seizure of Power in Haiti! Nationalise the Economic Mainstay of the Country by Expropriating the Big Banks, Multinational Corporations and Local Capitalists Without Compensation!
* For A Workers’, Youth and Poor Peasant Government in Haiti as a step to Constituting a Socialist Federation of Central American Republics!
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/books/review/haiti-the-aftershocks-of-history-by-laurent-dubois-book-review.html, www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-history-colonized-france.amp.html, www.alternet.org/amp/how-america-and-rest-world-ruined-haiti-2647274849
3. See 2. Above