About 150 people, many of them Haitian, attended the Vigil for Haiti on the steps of St Martin in the Fields Church (Trafalgar Square, London).  The Vigil was called by the Global Women’s Strike to press for urgent relief and rescue for Haitian people, not occupation.  As US military blocks supplies getting through, health providers estimate that 20,000 people perish daily whom they could save*.  Placards called for the return of Haiti’s elected president Jean-Betrand Aristide, removed by a US Coup in 2004.

We urge you to donate to the long established Haiti Emergency Relief Fund, dedicated to helping grassroots people.  Funds go directly to those in immediate need, beginning with women and children – no NGO takes an “administrative cut”.

*See: Haiti hit by second strong earthquake http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/20/haiti-hit-by-second-earthquake

Tel:0207 482 2496, www.globalwomenstrike.net

 In 2004 a US military coup removed Haiti’s democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The US was backed by Canada and France. UN forces have occupied Haiti ever since.

o     In 2008 four consecutive hurricanes devastated Haiti, killing over 1,000 people. Many more later died because two-thirds of the people were left starving and homeless.

o     UN troops did not help hurricane victims. Despite their technology and a $535m yearly budget, saving lives from starvation, drowning and homelessness was not part of their mandate. Well-funded NGOs did little.

o     The Free Market has devastated Haiti.  98% is deforested.  Even fruit trees were cut down. Soil is then washed away in floods and mudslides.  US-subsidized rice destroyed local farms which had sustained Haitians for centuries.  When the price of staples went up in 2008, people starved.  Women made ‘mud cakes’ to stave off hunger.

o     78% of Haitians live on less than $2 a day. US and Canadian corporations and Haiti’s elite profit from sweatshops, as people are forced to work for slave wages.  Before the earthquake Bill Clinton, UN special envoy to Haiti, was promoting yet more sweatshops as the route to ‘development’.

The extent of this catastrophe is being blamed on Haitians having a ‘failed state’.  But who failed?  Not the people of Haiti who have shown extraordinary courage and resilience.

For over two centuries Haitians have survived much more than natural disasters.  They have been demonised and victimised for their 1804 revolution in which they freed themselves from the imperial powers.  Their enormous contribution to humanity as the first to abolish slavery is kept largely hidden.  With gunships in the harbour, France imposed a crippling ‘debt’ to ‘compensate’ its slave owners; while the US invaded and occupied, imposing economic blockades and dictatorships. 

But people have never given up. In 1991 and again in 2000 they elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a liberation theology priest, with a 60% and 91.8% mandate; they have been campaigning for his return from forced exile in South Africa, and an end to the occupation. Aristide prioritised food security, health, education, and raised the minimum wage.  He encouraged reforestation and agricultural co-operatives.

Even before the present crisis, Haitians made it clear that they want Aristide back. In 2009, they boycotted elections which banned Aristide’s party Fanmi Lavalas from standing – 97% of people did not vote!

The Global Women’s Strike holds regular Vigils and other actions for Haiti in London, Guyana, Los Angeles and San Francisco.  With the Haitian grassroots, we are demanding the return of disappeared human rights activist Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine who worked tirelessly with women and children who have least, and of President Aristide.