By Dady Chery

Haiti Chery

One would think that, now that the despised 14-year long United Nations Mission for the (de)Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH) has been forced to shut down, Haiti would be on the road to some modest, sustained, recovery from the devastating January 12, 2010 earthquake. It is not. The Republic of Haiti has never been in greater danger than it is now.

From MINUSTAH to MINUJUSTH

The proverb, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far,” is actually West African. It should resonate with Haitians, who have lived with colonists long enough to know that they can tone down their rhetoric as they prepare to administer a coup de grace. Consider for example the US State Department’s press release on the inauguration of the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH) on October 16, 2017, one day after MINUSTAH’s departure.

“The United States is a longstanding partner of Haiti,” the press release coos.

but it goes on to prove that the old master has not become a partner, with another statement:

“We commend MINUSTAH for the contributions toward advancing Haiti’s long-term security, democratic development, and economic growth.”

This is not something anyone would say except a colonial master satisfied with his work.

According to the UN’s own situation report from May 2017, in Haiti, a country of about 10 million, more than 2.35 million people are “severely food insecure,” 143,110 are severely malnourished, 49,691 are still internally displaced from the 2010 earthquake, 4,200 are homeless since Hurricane Matthew, and 10,512 are prisoners. Seventy-one percent of those in prison have not been tried. A U.N. human rights report on Haiti cited the arbitrary arrests, abuses in detention, and complete lack of accountability.

The Occupying Armed Force

Formed Police Units

The smaller MINUJUSTH mission is more insidious than MINUSTAH. The troops have undergone a name change to Formed Police Units (FPU). Nevertheless they are an occupying foreign army, with all the attendant implications. At 980, the FPU far outnumber the 295 so-called individual police officers. This occupying force will merge with the Haitian National Police (PNH) and share the same facilities.

Military Experts

Another 351 military experts go by the softer title of Civilian Staff. This body provides the U.N. a means to insert members of private military and security companies (PMSC) like DynCorp into Haiti. Regardless of the sheep’s clothing, MINUJUSTH operates under the U.N. Charter’s Chapter VII, which allows the use of military force and is illegally applied in a country not at war. MINUJUSTH has no set departure date because it is permanent. Its real jobs are to change the Haitian Constitution and organize elections to undermine Haitian independence.

Haitian National Police

According to the U.S. State Department, MINUJUSTH will “focus on developing the Haitian National Police.”

Given the 15,000-strong domestic force that the U.N. and DynCorp have already built, this is a puzzling objective. That is, until one understands that the plan is to double, not the PNH, but its leadership from 1,649 to 2,349 so as to create a permanent corps of corrupt Haitians subservient to the occupation.

In keeping with the colonial mission, the new U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti, to replace Bill Clinton, is the Bush-Clinton approved globalist Josette Sheeran. The repression of Haiti crosses party lines in the U.S. In 2005-2007, during the Bush administration, Ms. Sheeran was the Under Secretary of State for Condoleeza Rice. From 2007-2012, when Clinton’s good friend Ban Ki-moon was U.N. Secretary General, Sheeran was the Executive Director of the U.N. World Food Program.

How many Haitians are there left?

To examine its handiwork, the international community, with World Bank support, will soon carry out its first census of the Haitian population since the 2010 earthquake. According to World Bank Country Director for Haiti, Anabela Abreu, this census will illustrate “the importance of Haiti’s partnership between the government and its development partners.” Oh yes, the word is partner instead of master.

Haiti has seen more deaths in the last eight years than at any other time, starting with the estimated 200,000 to 300,000 who died from the earthquake.

Subsequently more than 10,000 Haitians have succumbed to U.N.-introduced cholera epidemics.

Another 86,000 Haitians are HIV-infected. Some are actively being investigated by scientists for the Haitian Studies of Kaposi Syndrome and Opportunistic Infections (GHESKIO). These researchers appear to be involved in antiretroviral drug development. GHESKIO receives more USAID funding than any other organization in Haiti. To my knowledge, this research requires none of the oversights usually associated with medical studies on humans.

Emigration versus deportation

The international occupation has encouraged the emigration of more than 170,000 middle class, educated, and mostly young Haitians since the 2010 earthquake. Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Mexico have joined the U.S., France, and Canada as the beneficiaries of this new brain drain. The incentive for Haiti’s Vichy government is that its diaspora remits more than $2 billion a year. This is roughly 20 percent of the country’s GDP and represents a yearly return of about $1,000 per exiled person. As a result, any threat to repatriate Haitian citizens, like U.S. President Donald Trump’s racist removal of the temporary protected status (TPS) of almost 60,000 Haitians, amounts to a tremendous arm-twisting of the occupation regime.

Simultaneously with the export of Haiti’s middle class, since 2015 the Dominican Republic, with U.N. support, has shipped into Haiti more than 192,685 people: mostly unskilled workers, many of whom speak only Spanish. With each passing day, the Haitian population is increasingly degraded: reduced to unskilled laborers, a military and police middle class, and a parasitic elite. The census numbers will tell none of these details but merely show a population with a slightly slower than predicted growth.

Elections are for fools and crooks

Back in January 2015, the Republic of Haiti had been so unraveled that, of an original 1,500 elected officials, the only ones left were the fraudulently elected President, Michel Martelly, and 10 non-functioning senators who lacked a quorum. In retrospect, that scenario was more benign than the current situation. In 2015-2016, a series of fraudulent elections populated, not only the presidency, but also the parliament and local executive positions with a gallery of rogues. Haitians fought to make the elections free and fair, but to no avail.

In effect the U.N., which handled the ballots, together with unscrupulous international observers, forced a series of mostly corrupt officials, highly vulnerable to blackmail, into office throughout Haiti’s entire territory. The current crew is at best a parody of a government. They allocated $8.5 million in 2018 for a new Haitian army to grow from 500 to 5,000 troops. These funds are supposed to come from Haitian coffers but are probably foreign. Mr. Jodel Lesage, a former colonel of the disbanded bloody 1995 army, heads the new military. As an insult to Haiti’s sovereignty, he marched a group of his camouflaged charges through Cap Haitien on the November 18, 2017 anniversary of the Bataille de Vertières.

My palace, my palace!

Former President René Préval died in 2017. Perhaps he will rest in peace. Immediately after the earthquake of January 12, 2010 he apparently lost his mind. He became a national joke after he went around screaming, “My palace, my palace!” He went on to promote a state of emergency that brought into existence Bill Clinton’s infamous Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (I-HRC). About $9.7 billion of international aid have disappeared into the I-HRC and are still unaccounted for.

The obsession with palaces continues in the political class, which saw fit to break new ground for a new national palace on the 8th anniversary of the earthquake. According to Haiti’s recently installed President, Jovenel Moise, the new building represents a “link between history, culture, and the future.”

Indeed it does. When Haiti was  independent, its national palace was a gingerbread house of purely Haitian design. The monstrous white concrete neoclassical plantation/palace that the earthquake destroyed was built in 1918, during the 1915-1934 U.S. occupation of Haiti. Then too, a Vichy administration needed a façade of power behind which to hide.

The unending revolution

Two hundred and fourteen years after Haitian Independence, Haitians  still pay the price for having fought slavery and won that fight. The former colonists, France and Spain, have returned to make Haiti a free for all. The United States and Canada are there too.

Almost every former European colony has had to fight for its independence more than once. Cuba fought Spain, Vietnam fought France, and then they had to fight again. Independence is never won with any finality. In Haiti, continuous struggle is the fabric of our history. If we were successful when we were enslaved, then we can certainly do it again. Besides, it is not a fight from which one can surrender.

Haiti has been a beacon for human rights. When everybody was paying lip service to the rights of men, our ancestors were those who stepped up and said most persuasively that there was no place for slavery in that discussion. Yet slavery persists. It was unacceptable in the late 18th century. It is insupportable now that the colonists have returned as an international gang.

Sources: News Junkie Post | Dady Chery is the author of We Have Dared to Be Free. | Photographs two, three, four and five from the archive of the UN Development Program; six from the archive of Y4UW; and seven by Kristina Just.

Discussion between Dady Chery and Utrice Leid on Leid Stories about Haiti’s eighth earthquake anniversary