Pan African Congress of North America
August 12, 2021
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Statement of the Global Pan African Movement, North America
Introduction
On Wednesday July 7, 2021, the President of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in his home in the capital, Port-au-Prince. His wife was injured in the attack. That the assassins of the president were able to access his home posing as agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) of the United States brought to the fore the intricate relationship between drugs, money laundering and mercenary activities in Haiti. Two days later the government of Haiti reported that the attack had been carried out by a team of assailants, 26 of whom were Colombian. This information that ex-soldiers from Colombia were involved brought to the spotlight the ways in which the society of Haiti has been enmeshed in the world of the international mercenary market and instability since the overthrow of President Jean Bertrand Aristide and the Lavalas movement in 2004.
France, the United States and Canada have been intricately involved in ensuring that the forces of the Lavalas Movement are excluded from the political arena. When the French Newspaper, Le Monde, recently stated that Haiti was one of the four drug hubs of the Caribbean region, the paper neglected to add the reality that as a drug hub, Haiti had become an important base for the United States military-information- surveillance activities, money laundering, intelligence, and criminal networks. No institution in Haiti could escape this web and currently Haitian society is reeling from the ecosystem of exploitation, repression, and manipulation. Under President Donald Trump, the United States heightened the opposition to the governments of Venezuela and Cuba. The mercenary market in Florida became interwoven with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) of the United States and the financial institutions that profited from crime syndicates that thrive on anti-communist and anti-Cuba ideas. Currently, Haitian society is reeling from intensified destabilization while the so-called Core group (comprising of the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Union, the United States, France, Spain, Canada, Germany, and Brazil) offers plans for “consensual and inclusive” government that will continue to exclude the majority of the citizens of Haiti from participating in the running of their country. The Biden Administration has refused to break with the alliances against the peoples that have been instituted by the leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States. In the Caribbean, the countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are calling for more profound changes that would empower the population while mobilizing international resources to neutralize the social power of the money launderers and oligarchs in Haitian society.
Haiti Since the Duvaliers
For the past thirty-five years, the peoples of Haiti have been struggling for a new mode of politics to transcend the dictatorship of the Duvaliers (Papa Doc and Baby Doc). The Haitian independence struggles at the start of the 19th century had registered one of the most fundamental blows to the institutions of chattel slavery and colonial domination. It is now accepted that the Haitian Revolution established one of the most important signposts for the Global Pan African movement. Throughout the 19th century the Haitian revolution gave diplomatic, military and political support to freedom fighters everywhere, especially to Simon Bolivar and the struggles for independence in South America. Since that revolution, France and the United States cooperated to punish Haiti for daring to resist white supremacy. The government of France demanded a 150 million franc indemnity to be paid by Haiti in claims over property. In reality the French imperial power demanded with gunboats compensation for the property loss of French slaveholders and landowners as a result of the struggles for independence. Haiti was forced to pay this indemnity for over 100 years up to 1947.
This onerous payment of “reparations” to France shaped the politics and economics of Haiti for a century and was compounded by US military occupation after 1915. Under President Woodrow Wilson, the racist ideals of the US imperial interests were reinforced in Haiti in a nineteen-year military occupation that was promoted by American business interests in Haiti. Genocidal violence from the Dominican Republic in 1937 strengthened the bonds between militarism and extreme violence in the society. Poor Haitian agricultural workers were treated as expendable beings and this tradition has resurfaced in the 21st century with the denationalization of Haitians who have lived for decades in the Dominican Republic. Martial law, forced labor, racism and extreme repression were cemented in the society. Duvalierism, named after the medical doctor Francois Duvalier, mobilized a variant of Negritude in the fifties to cement a regime of thuggery, aligned with the Cold War goals of the United States in the Caribbean. The record of the Duvalier regime was reprehensible in every form, but this kind of government received military and intelligence assistance from the United States in the region where the Cuban revolution offered an alternative. Francois Duvalier died in 1971 and was succeeded by his son, Jean Claude Duvalier, who continued the traditions of rule by violence (the notorious ton ton Macoute) until this system was overthrown by popular uprisings in 1986.
On December 16, 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide won the presidency by a landslide in what were widely reported to be the first free elections in Haiti’s history. Legislative elections in January 1991 gave Aristide supporters a plurality in Haiti’s parliament. The Lavalas movement of the Aristide leadership was the first major antidote to the historical culture of repression and violence. The United States and France opposed this new opening of popular expression so that military intervention supported by external forces in North America and the Organization of American States brought militarists and drug dealers under General Joseph Raoul Cédras to the forefront of the society. The working peoples of Haiti were crushed by an alliance between local militarists, external military peacekeepers and drug dealers. The noted Haitian writer, Edwidge Danticat, has written extensively on the consequences of repeated military interventions, genocide and occupation in the society while the population sought avenues to escape these repressive orders. After the removal of the Aristide government in 2004, it was the expressed plan of the local elites and the external forces that the majority of the Haitian population should be excluded from genuine forms of participatory democracy, including elections.
Repression, the Imperial NGO’s and Humanitarian Domination
The devastating Earthquake of January 2010 further deepened the tragic socio-economic situation in Haiti. An estimated 230,000 Haitians lost their lives, 300,000 were injured, and more than 1.5 million were displaced as a result of collapsed buildings and infrastructure. External military interventions by the United Nations, humanitarian workers and international foundations joined in the corruption to strengthen the anti-democratic forces in Haitian society. The Clinton Foundation of the United States was complicit in imposing the disastrous presidency of Michel Martelly on the society after the earthquake. The book by Jonathan Katz, The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster, provides a gripping account of the corruption in Haiti. So involved were the Clintons inside the rot in Haiti that Politico Magazine dubbed Bill and Hilary, The King and Queen of Haiti (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/clinton-foundation-haiti-117368/).
In 2015, Jovenel Moïse was elected President in a very flawed process, but was only able to take office in 2017. From the moment he entered the Presidency, his administration became immersed in the anti-people traditions that had kept the ruling elites together with the more than 10,000 international NGOs that excluded Haitians from participating in the projects for their own recovery. President Moïse carved out political space in Haiti with the support of armed groups who were deployed as death squads with the mission of terrorizing popular spaces and repressing supporters of the Haitian social movement. In a society where the head of state did not have a monopoly over armed gangs, kidnappings, murder (including killing of school children) and assassinations got out of control. Under Moïse Haiti had become an imbroglio where the government and allied gangs organized a series of massacres in poor neighborhoods known to host anti-government organizing, killing dozens at a time.
Moïse and the Extension of Repression in Haiti
Moïse remained President with the connivance of diplomats and foundations from Canada, France and the United States. These countries and their leaders ignored the reality that the Haitian elections of 2017 were so deeply flawed and violent that almost 80 percent of Haitian voters did not, or could not, vote. Moïse, with the support of one section of the Haitian power brokers, avoided having any more elections, so Parliament became inoperative in January 2020, when most legislators’ terms expired. When mayors’ terms expired in July 2020, Moïse personally appointed their replacements. This accumulation of power by the President deepened the divisions within the capitalist classes in Haiti. Long simmering tensions between the mulatto and black capitalists were exacerbated under Moïse who mobilized his own faction on the fact that he was seeking to empower and enrich the black majority. Thugs and armed gangs were integrated into the drug hub and money laundering architecture that came to dominate Haiti after 2004.
After the Trump Administration intensified its opposition to the Venezuelan government, the political and commercial leadership in Haiti became suborned to the international mercenary and drug systems that were being mobilized in conjunction with the military intelligence elements in Florida and Colombia. President Moïse was one of the Caribbean leaders who traveled to Florida to pledge support for the destabilization of Venezuela. It was not by chance that one of the biggest scandals of the regime was the robbing of billions of dollars that had been pledged to Haiti under the Petro Caribe scheme to assist Caribbean countries. President Jovenel Moïse’s term, fed by spectacular and intense struggles between factions of the looters was scheduled to come to a legal end in February 2021. Moïse sought to remain in power, notwithstanding the Haitian Constitution, the electoral law, or the will of the Haitian people.
Since the removal of Aristide and the marginalization of the Lavalas forces from the political arena in Haiti, there are indications that the United States has been more focused on strengthening the linkages between the Haitian drug lords and the money launderers in Colombia, Florida, Dominica Republic, and Venezuelan exiles. It was therefore not surprising that the mercenary industry with its linkages to financial forces in Florida have been implicated in the assassination of President Moïse. The Pentagon has confirmed that some of these Colombians involved in the assassination had benefited from training sessions offered by the United States Army at the time when they were engaged in the Colombian forces.
Working for Democratic Transition in Haiti
Within one month of the assassination, the usual handlers of Haitian repression created the CORE group. Canada, France and the United States had historically been implicated in the mismanaging of Haiti along with the United Nations. Now, the three countries have mobilized the OAS (with its checkered history), Brazil and the European Union to add their weight to a new transition that will continue to exclude the majority of the people of Haiti. There can be no quick transition process in Haiti. It has been clear that under the current system of destabilization and violence, social stability and peace will be necessary before elections can take place in Haiti.
Continuous infighting among the Haitian ruling elements after the assassination was temporarily resolved at the end of July when Ariel Henry was confirmed by the United States and France as Prime Minister. Henry had been designated as Prime Minister by Moïse days before his assassination. The popular groups in Haiti that had opposed Moïse considered the confirmation of Ariel Henry as a slap in the face because they had been demonstrating for the past four years for a more robust change to the political landscape. These organizations mobilized in what they called the Commission, (a gathering of civil society groups and political parties with more than 150 members), had been holding marathon meetings to publicly work out what kind of transitional government they would want to see. According to the New York Times, rather than a consensus, the Core Group of international actors had imposed a “unilateral proposal” on the people of Haiti (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/world/americas/claude-joseph-haiti-stepping-down.html).
Haiti is a member of CARICOM. The Caribbean community has proposed a longer transition period overseen by CARICOM for the return of Haiti to democracy. With the experience of the UN in Haiti, CARICOM through its representative on the Security Council at the UN has proposed the mobilization of the peacekeeping resources and capabilities of the UN to be deployed to CARICOM in order to organize a credible transition to democracy in Haiti.
The Global Pan African Movement of North America supports the process for a transition that is being proposed by the Caribbean community.
The nature and manner of the assassination of the President has brought further urgency on the need for genuine reconstruction and support for democratic transition in Haiti.
Finally, the Global Pan African Movement (GPAM) is calling for an end to the support and training of paramilitaries by the United States government. More importantly, the GPAM is calling on the Biden Administration to rein in the money laundering and drug running networks that support white extremism in Florida. The Core group of Canada, France and the United States have not once sought to deploy the resources of the International Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to penetrate the interconnections between politicians in Haiti and the international money laundering and mercenary market. The focus of FATF must be directed towards these criminal elements.
