HAITI and HONDURAS
END MILITARY COUPS and OCCUPATIONS
ADD YOUR NAME TO CALL ON
LATIN AMERICAN GOVERNMENTS TO STOP COLLABORATING WITH THE US COUP IN HAITI.

United Nations troops have been occupying Haiti since 2004, legitimising the US military coup that removed elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Sign below to demand that Latin American governments withdraw their troops from Haiti.

ADD YOUR NAME BELOW & CIRCULATE TO YOUR LIST:

 

United in our condemnation of the 2009 military coup in Honduras, we also condemn the 2004 US coup in Haiti and the UN occupation which carries on to this day.  As the UN mandate expires on 14 October 2009, we join with the Haitian people in calling on Latin American governments to withdraw their troops from Haiti.  Their presence legitimises the coup, prevents the return of democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and opens the door to other military takeovers.  

ADD YOUR NAME HERE and COUNTRY:

YOUR ORGANIZATION:

YOUR EMAIL:

 

SEND TO:

 

United Nations News Centre
pressanalysis2@un.org

 

MINUSTAH (UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti)
 minustah-procurement@un.org

 

US State Department, Hilary Clinton
2201C Street NW, Washington DC 20520 USA
Phone: 202-647-4000

 

USA Mission to the UN

usa@un.int

 

Please copy to: womenstrike8m@server101.com 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Issued by:

Andaiye, Red Thread, Guyana
Selma James and Nina López, Global Women’s Strike, UK
Margaret Prescod, Women of Colour in the Global Women’s
           Strike, USA
Pierre Labossiere, Haiti Action Committee, USA

 

List of signatories as of 6 October 2009

Vicente “Panama” Alba
Peggy Antrobus, DAWN Caribbean, Grenada/Barbados
Marie-France Arismendi,
       Latin American Canadian Solidarity Association  
       (LACASA), Canada
John Beverley, Professor University of Pittsburg, USA
Diana Bohn, Nicaragua Center for Community Action, USA
Errol Ross Brewster, Brewster Productions, Guyana
Abyssinian Carto, Guyana
Brian Concannon, Institute for Justice & Democracy in
         Haiti, USA
Consejo Nacional del Poder Popular (CNPP), Mexico 
Wim Dierckxsens, Observatorio Internacional de la Crisis,
          Costa Rica/Netherlands
Genevieve Delmas-Patterson, Canada
Jane Eiseley, Berkeley, USA
Zilpha and Keith Ellis, Canada
Joe Emersberger, Canuck Media Monitor, Canada
Norman Girvan, Jamaica
Maria Eugenia Rangel González, Mexico
Sherna Berger Gluck, USA
Javier Romero Gurich, Asociación de Solidaridad
          Bolivariana, Venezuela
Peter Hallward, Middlesex University, UK
Constance Harris, Ethiopia Africa Black International
          Congress, & Woman FreedomLiberation League
David Heap, People for Peace, Canada
Linda Helland
Joseph Israel, Westside Progressives, USA
Thomas Kocherry, World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP);
           Special Invitee, National Fishworkers' Forum
           (NFF); India National Alliance of Peoples  
           Movements (NAPM), India

Eusi Kwayana, Guyana
Alfredo Marroquines
Yorley Alejandra Mendez, Emancipation Support Committee, Trinidad 
Leddy Mozombite Linares, Secretaria-General de Sindicato
          de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores del Hogar de la
          Region de Lima Sinttrahol, Peru
National Council of Latin American and Caribbean Women
            of Canada (Latin@s), Canada
 Efrain Navarro, Circulos Bolivarianos de Noruega, Norway
Thais Ojeda, Venezuela
Enita Rayomah Okeme, Nigeria
Ivan Olsen, USA
Soledad Ortiz, Comité de Defensa de los Derechos del
          Pueblo (CODEP) & Comité de Defensa de los
          Derechos de la Mujer (CODEM), Mexico 
Donald Patterson, Canada
Jean Pauline, USA

Cecile Pineda, National Writers’ Union Vanda Radzik,
          Guyana
Shamila Indika, Rathnasooriya, Movement  for National
          Land and Agricultural Reform (MONLAR), Sri Lanka
Linda, Ray, UK
Maggie Ronayne, Lecturer, National University of Ireland,
          Galway, Ireland
Honor Ford Smith, Jamaica/Canada
Richard Solly, UK
Marcin Starnawski, Poland
Barb Thomas, Canada
Pedro Tostado Sánchez, Spain
Desmond Trotman, Working People's Alliance, Guyana
Alissa Trotz, Guyana/Canada
Pedro F Vargas, CTC/COMPA, Venezuela
Maria Páez Victor, Louis Riel Bolivarian Circle of Toronto &
          Hands Off Venezuela, Canada
Andrew Warren, UK
Charlene Wilkinson, University of Guyana, Guyana
Tanja Winter, USA
Marta Zabaleta, Middlesex University, UK

Vigil for Haiti & Honduras – London Wednesday 14 Oct
 

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

The universal condemnation of the military coup in Honduras by Latin American governments is unprecedented.  Everyone is clear that if this dictatorship is allowed to stay in power, no democratically elected government is safe. Just as we were finally leaving behind decades of dictatorships imposed or backed by the US, massacres and disappearances; just as President Obama promised a more respectful relationship between the US and the rest of America – we are faced with another coup with US military complicity.

But while the Hondurans’ struggle for the return of their elected and then deposed president Manuel Zelaya receives the support it deserves, the Haitians who struggle to regain their elected and then deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide have been denied that support. 

 

In 2004 President Aristide, a liberation theology priest with a 91.8% mandate (2000 election), was forced into exile by a US military coup backed by Canada and France.  Two months later UN forces occupied Haiti legitimising the coup.

 

Some of the governments now working for the return of Zelaya have been collaborating with the occupation of Haiti.  The UN occupying forces are headed by the Brazilian military and include troops from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Only Caricom (the English-speaking Caribbean) and Venezuela have refused to be involved, along with Cuba which has continued to provide doctors.

Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine

Aristide was removed because he dared to try to bring Haitians ‘from destitution to poverty’.  His policies did not suit the elites of Haiti and the US which profit from sweatshops, privatization and the import of rice which has destroyed local agriculture and brought starvation.  Like Zelaya in Honduras and Chávez in Venezuela (who also faced a coup in 2002), Aristide increased the minimum wage, and invested in food security, health and education. 

 

The UN occupation has been responsible for many rapes, disappearances like that of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, and murders, more recently in June 2009 when they opened fire on mourners at the funeral of Father Jean-Juste, another liberation theology priest, killing one of the mourners.

In February 2009 we wrote to President Evo Morales of Bolivia to respectfully ask that he withdraws his troops from Haiti. We felt that as an Indigenous president who has faced huge racist attacks because he represents a grassroots movement determined to eliminate poverty and discrimination he would be most likely to respond to the people of Haiti.  See letter at: www.globalwomenstrike.net/Haiti/lettertoEvoMoralesMarch09.htm

 

The letter was delivered to President Morales via his sister Esther Morales Ayma and by the Bolivian ambassador to London, Ms Beatriz Souviron.  We have received no reply to date.

 

We urge you to endorse and circulate this letter.  We urge you also to write to other Latin American governments which are collaborating with the occupation of Haiti. 

 

The world owes a great debt to the Haitian people, whose 1804 revolution overthrew slavery, making way for emancipation in the region and for liberation and anti-colonial movements everywhere.  Haitians have never given up.  Their determination was in evidence once again when they boycotted the June 2009 elections from which President Aristide’s party Fanmi Lavalas was banned.  Despite huge US funding to get out the vote, only 3% voted – a triumph of organization and solidarity from which we can all learn!

 

Commenting on recent US involvement in Honduras, President Chávez said, “Obama is a prisoner of the Empire.”  Argentina’s president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has referred to “interests that may want to change the direction” begun at the Summit of the Americas (April 2009 Trinidad & Tobago).  Some suspect that Honduras may be a US military coup against not only Zelaya but Obama too.  Others worry that Obama has given in to the military and their Washington hawks.  We know that friends of the Clintons have been speaking for the coup in Honduras, and that the US has announced the building of seven additional military bases in Colombia, to the condemnation of the whole region.

 

It is clear to us that after the people of Venezuela defeated the coup against their president in 2002 both the imperialist and the national racist elites were weakened.  But the acceptance of the 2004 coup in Haiti allowed them to regroup.  The Honduras coup would have been less likely if Latin American governments had refused to collaborate with the US in Haiti. 

 

Let’s use Latin America’s new-found unity on Honduras to demand the return not only of Zelaya but of Aristide.  Invest in caring not killing.

Vigil in front of Parliament, London, 30 September 2009

Vigil in front of Brazilian consulate, Los Angeles, 30 Sept 2009