In a promising departure from the norm, the March 7 edition of the Houston Chronicle published an article leading with a quote from the director of a Haitian human rights organization. Pierre Esperance of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights and the Haitian Human Rights Platform (POHDH) tells the Chronicle, "We don't need a leader. We don't want any more saviors. We need a structure put in place to satisfy the needs of the population."
Last week we expressed our hope that the armed groups that both supported and opposed President Aristide would quickly disappear from the Haitian scene. Now that hope has moved into the category of an urgent necessity.
During the past week there have been many reports of threats and killings, the majority involving attacks on supporters of the deposed president. Then, today, armed men--apparently Aristide supporters--visciously attacked a demonstration of the ex-President's opponents, killing six and injuring many more.
As you've seen, Haiti has quickly fallen off the priority lists of the international editors at the major media outlets. That probably makes it more important that we continue to try to shed what light we can on the situation here.
"Here" has changed from our last posting. I'm now in Palo Alto, California at the annual gathering known as the Global Philanthropy Forum. The GPF brings together a cross section of international philanthropists, including many of the leaders of this country's most influential foundations. We at Grassroots suffer no delusions about our relationship to the philanthropic elite, but we feel that we must try to take our message to anyone who will listen to it. This year, the conference theme is, "Building Partnership Across Sectors."
Last night, World Bank President James Wolfensohn opened the conference with a reflection on the challenges he sees before the international philanthropic community. Not surprisingly, he declined to mention the case of Haiti in his presentation. I had a question ready for the Q & A, but mine was not one of the questions recognized by Mr. Wolfensohn.
So....I'll use this log to pose the question to you, and I'll send the question to the Public Relations Unit at the World Bank to see if I can get a reply.
Forty-eight hours have now passed since the announcement that Jean Bertrand Aristide had left Haiti. This is a very dangerous time in Haiti as armed groups and individuals continue to operate in the context of very little security presence. International peacekeepers are arriving in Haiti as I write this, but they have not yet established any security presence beyond the National Palace, the airport and the seaport. The Haitian National Police have apparently reappeared, but they are unlikely to be any more effective in maintaining security than they have been over the past few weeks.
Our communications with our partner organizations has been very limited since Sunday. Making contact is difficult and we expect that these organizations are extremely busy right now. As soon as we hear anything of substance, we will share it in this log. We have just posted an analysis of the pre-Sunday situation by the Papaye Peasant Movement. While it is, in a sense out of date already, it provides important insights into how this influential organization will approach the post-Aristide period.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide is no longer the issue in Haiti. Under intense international pressure and threat of a rebel attack on the capital, Aristide left Haiti today. While many will celebrate his departure, the failure of the Aristide experiment cannot be cause for celebration for any supporter of the Haitian people. There will be ample time to debate his legacy, but now is not that time.
Many observers have noted that the possibility of even greater violence is very real now in the presence of a power vacuum that many will move to fill. That the armed rebels have not yet consolidated control over the entire country is positive from this perspective. It is now the responsibility of the U.S. and the international community, in general, to do whatever they can to support the formation of a stable transitional government leading to new elections as soon as possible.
As Grassroots International, we will make every effort to step up our support for those social organizations that we have been supporting since 1991.
In that context, several principles bear mention:
The situation in Haiti worsens with each passing day. Political chaos is creating economic chaos for a people whose lives were already a daily struggle for survival. Predictably, the opposition has rejected the peace plan that would have kept Aristide in office, preferring to insist on the president's departure as a starting point for a negotiated solution to the crisis.
With a new sense of urgency, the U.S. government sent a delegation to Haiti this weekend with the task of working out a deal with President Aristide that the opposition would accept. They managed to work out a deal very similar to the one worked out at the CARICOM meeting two weeks ago. That deal never amounted to anything, and this one might face the same fate.
This past weekend, a former leader of FRAPH, the Haitian paramilitary organization famous for doing the dirty work of the military leaders that overthrew Aristide in 1991, apparently led a group of ex-military men as they shot their way into several towns on Haiti's central plateau. These towns included Hinche, the main population center in the region, where ex-military men killed the police chief and several other people in taking over the police station.
Hinche also happens to be only a few miles from the main base of operations of the Papaye Peasant Movement, GRI's largest and oldest partners in Haiti. FRAPH members were authors of many atrocities against the MPP during the coup period, and their re-emergence in the Central Plateau is a direct threat to the activists of the MPP...not to mention any other pro-democracy activist on the Plateau.
Asked whether or not the U.S. had any plans to intervene in Haiti, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said just that on the 2/12 broadcast of NPR's "Evening Edition." The U.S., of course, has contingency plans for another invasion of Haiti, but has no plans to use those plans. Such talk makes Haitians nervous, and it should.
If you've seen any recent news reports from Haiti. You know that mass demonstrations against the Aristide government have become a regular occurrence. You also know that armed supporters of the government have often attacked those demonstrations.
As I said in the previous post, Grassroots International got involved in Haiti to help those Aristide supporters trying to do underground work against the military leaders who overthrew Aristide in the early 1990s. During that period, we did our part in the creation of an almost messianic aura around Aristide. Our support went to grassroots organizations and activists committed to building democracy, but that work necessarily projected Aristide as the democratic alternative for Haiti.
Now most of those same organizations and activists are calling for his resignation. One organization, the Haitian Human Rights Platform, has steadfastly guarded its political neutrality, but has consistently been outspoken in its criticism of the government for its failure to protect basic human rights in Haiti.
That's how the National Coalition for Haitian Rights described Haiti in their press release on this past weekend's vicious gunfight between the "Cannibal Army" and the police in Gonaives, Haiti. The death toll is increasing daily and the situation is clearly out of control. NCHR is calling on all armed groups to respect the human rights of citizens living in the areas under their control. (Click here to read NCHR's statement, in French.) Clearly, the situation is going from bad to worse...quickly.
Nisrin Elamin at the World Social Forum is a tough act to follow. I hope that those of you who had comments on Nisrin's posts from Mumbai will send them directly to her or to "Grassroots Journal" via the link provided to the left. I hope you will also continue to check out our list of links, where we will be placing other analysis and reflections on this year's World Social Forum.
I'm Kevin Murray, Executive Director of Grassroots International. In the spirit of sharing GRI's experiences as a social change maverick among international NGOs, I will, over the next couple of weeks, reflect on our experience working in Haiti.
