Cautious protest continues
International Viewpoint #249 October 1993
The dormitory building we visit is four-storeys high. From a dark stairway each floor has a long balcony where washing is hung out. It is open to the street on one side and on the other you enter rooms no more than twenty metres-square. There are up to five bunk beds (ten people) in each room. Behind the beds is a little pantry with cold water and a gas stove. There is no air-conditioning but for three fans in the ceiling.
For several months now, Wu has been trying to get an extra fan installed. "But nothing happens." He shows us where he thinks they should put it. The temperature in southern China during the summer can be between twenty-five and thirty-five
Men and women live apart, even if they are married. The women's rooms look nicer. It is only when you look into the men's rooms that you notice that the floors are bare cement.
Two weeks after our visit to Sai Heung a workers' dormitory in Shenzhen collapsed. The building fell to pieces during a night of heavy rain. Seventeen workers were killed, ten were seriously
Injured workers complained that they had to pay for their own food at the hospital and that the employer did not even come to visit them. An Associated Press report published in the bourgeois Hong Kong Standard was succinct: "It was the latest of several such accidents in recent months in southern China, where safety standards have been pushed aside in the rush to make money."
Everybody though is friendly. A boy — he is not shy — wants to join in the discussions. He is nine and still at school.
And what do you want to be when you
"A businessman", he replies with a happy grin. *
### Introduction
AS the following eyewitness report shows, the 3 July agreement between President Aristide and General Cedras has not led to a decrease in represThe ten-point agreement sets Aristide's return to Haiti for 30 October. Between now and then, a number of steps are to be taken: the nomination of a new prime minister and a new goverment, the suspension of international sanc tions and the renewal of internationa cooperation. Provision was made for the following noteworthy measures: the sending of UN personnel to "modernise" the army and create a new police force; amnesty for those behind the coup d'etat; the dismissal of Cedras from the army, and the nomination of a Since the new prime minister, the businessman Robert Malval, took his post on 2 September, and since the lifting of the embargo that followed, events have taken a dramatic tum in Port-auPrince. President Aristide, whose return may be in doubt, has even spoken of a "second coup d'etat" Malval, who has labelled his policy that of "national reconciliation", has called "exiles on the outside" to return to Haiti "without exception". Duvalierist leaders have quickly taken up the invitation, and this has only strengthened the determination of the police force's civilian auxiliaries (the "attaches) to hamper the functioning of the goverment and parliament. There has been a big increase in political assassinations. They have taken over state radio and television and are preventing ministers from carrying out their functions. Some have gone into hiding. The army are totally involved in these actions. Is this only an attempt to establish the worst possible relationship of forces for President Aristide and his supporters on the eve of their return to the country? Or, has the army — or perhaps certain sections of the American administration - decided to prevent him from returning? The coming weeks will provide answers to these questions. -Arthur Mahon *
The author, who is a member of the editorial board of the US socialist journal Against the Current, and teaches at the University of Michigan, traveled to Haiti in July of this year, on behalf of the Washington Office on Haiti as part of a civilianobserver delegation to investigate human rights abuses. ALAN WALD - 10 August 1993
N HIS 1937 appreciation of Jack London's novel "The Iron Heel' (1907), Leon Trotsky lauded the artist's "prophetic vision" of the authoritarian social order that would come to pass in Europe during the rise of fascism. The exiled Russian revolutionary was particularly struck by London's audacious use of "hyperbole" to bring "the tendencies rooted in capitalism: of oppression, cruelty, bestiality, betrayal, to their extreme expres sion."! Trotsky might have revised his judgement that characterised London's vision as "hyperbole" had he lived to see Haiti under the boot of oppression after the reactionary coup of 30 September 1991, when Lt. General Raoul Cedras overthrew democraticallyelected Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide
The majority of the population, over eighty percent, of this extraordinary country, the setting of CLR James's classic history "The Black Jacobins' (1938), now lingers in a netherworld of bare subsistence. Once "the greatest colony in the world", 2 and subsequently brutalised, raped and tortured by the French Empire, United States (US) imperialism (marines occupied the country from 1915 to 1934), and Haiti's own neo-colonial bourgeoisie, the island nation is the poorest country in the western hemisphere with an average annual income of four hundred dollars, an average life span of fifty-five years. and an infant mortality rate of eleven per-
1. Trotsky's remarks were written on 16 October 1937 and first appeared in print in New International, April 1945; they are reprinted in Paul N Siegel, ed., 'Leon Trotsky on Literature and Art' (New York: Pathfinder, 1970), pp 221-224
2. CLR James, The Black Jacobins' (New York: Vintage, 1989),p pix,
3. An excellent and recent brochure that excerpts crucia scholarly research and historical material on Haiti, is available as 'Haiti: A Look at the Reality', published by the Quixote Center, PO Box 5206, Hyattsville, Md. 20782.
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International Viewpoint #249 October 1993
When the coup smashed the dreams and achievements of the seven month period under the leadership of Aristide and the Lavalas movement (lavalas means "the flood" and is the term for Aristide's supporters), much of the population receded to a state of demoralised torpor.4 The worst slums, such as Cité Soleil in Port-auPrince, are no longer sites of public cleanup campaigns but are heaped with rubbish as if to make a kind of public statement about the futility of any efforts toward improvement under the present regime. Our delegation visited the orphanage founded by Aristide, La Fanmi Se Lavi, firebombed at the time of the coup (three children were killed, two wounded); it now stands as a gutted hulk, harassment from neighbouring attachés (pro-military goons) having forced most of the children
Manifestations of overt protest still occasionally break out, however, in the form of small demonstrations, on the street or in churches, although they are almost always repressed with clubs and gunfire. But the population usually acts cautiously. Gatherings of more than three people are likely to be regarded as suspect, so organisations function underground and a significant amount of political communication takes place through the structures of the ti legliz, the people's wing of the Catholic
Life and death
The country itself is divided into nine departments with over five hundred units, each of the latter with its own section chief, most often a brutal thug who holds the power of life and death over the population in his district, especially the rural areas where most of the people live. Under Aristide there were efforts to create a functioning justice system, change the military and police leadership (a seven thousandperson combined force serves both purposes) by promoting officers committed to democracy, to improve prison conditions, and even dismantle the hated section chiefs. Since the coup such progress has been reversed, returning the country to conditions reminiscent of the worst days
In the office of the beleaguered Peace and Justice Commission in (downtown) Port-au-Prince, we were told of more than three hundred thousand people living in hiding. Two of the targets of repression were present. The younger man was a school director accused of being a "ring leader" of Aristide supporters by the local section chief. He was beaten and driven from his home. The second was an elderly 32 peasant, similarly accused, who was ordered by the police to turn his land over to a stranger. The stranger simply announced that he was a previously unknown son of the peasant's father, now come to claim his rightful inheritance. When the peasant asked for proof, the stranger pulled out a
Students at the state university in Portau-Prince, reeling from the effects of mass expulsions of themselves and their professors, were hesitant to meet with our delegation for fear that their identities might become disclosed to the police. Some of the purged faculty are drifting toward an alternative university, Quisqueya, a private institution with four hundred enrolled. We visited those who founded the institution in October 1990, mostly disgruntled pro fessors from the Agricultural Programme at the state university. Others, such as a pro-Aristide professor of history with whom we met, continue to teach students off campus.
### Umbrella
The situation on the other side of the island is even worse. In a rural town near Cap-Haitien, we discreetly linked up with fifteen peasant leaders following a Sunday morning mass, in a room near the church arranged by the priest. Photographs and tape-recordings were not allowed. There an umbrella organisation comprised of fifty-five groups (numbering between twenty-five and fifty members each) of women, youth, peasants, and co-operatives with a shared vision, was formed in 1990, after the resignation of General Avril. In the Aristide period, they succeeded in replacing the old section chief with a man they trusted, and the region even began to obtain good judges. Corruption diminished and wages of the peasants increased fitteen to twenty-eight gourds a day. Then came the coup. The old section chief returned and new judges began to be appointed. many activists went into hiding, where they remain. Thirty young activists tried to flee the country in a boat and were
In this town, the list of police and army abuses was endless. A young girl who refused to sleep with an associate of the section chief was killed, and no action was taken. The chief had a peasant activist arrested, beaten, and held nine months in jail. Another was promised freedom if he paid six hundred dollars; to raise the amount he was forced to sell his possessions. Two cousins were arrested and extorted for over one thousand dollars to gain freedom. Cattle belonging to peasants was illegally killed and sold. A pro-Aristide peasant was given the wrong papers for his cow, which was then confiscated. A woman activist was taken to a barracks and raped by ten men; the section chief then took payment from therapists and let
Members of a teachers union, the Federation of Associations of Teachers of the North and North-East (FAENNE), based in Cap-Haitien, told our delegation similar stories. The organisation was founded in 1986, after Jean-Claude Duvalier fled the country into exile in France, and is comprised of twenty-six associations of teachers, mainly in secondary schools. During the Lavalas period six new public schools were opened in seven months. Following the coup the private sector and Tonton Macoute (para-military rightwing bands) began to move against the Lavalas supporters, forcing leaders and activists in the popular organisations into hiding. Teachers were arrested, beaten and tortured. Forty-two members of the FAENNE in one high school were summarily sacked. One director of a primary school was struck seventy times and could not sit down for seven months. Another barely escaped and spent nine months in hiding. Students were killed and disappeared. One of the persecuted teachers with whom we spoke had applied for political asylum in the US, but, after several months, received back only a letter from the US State Department denying his request.
No interest
The next day we took a copy of this letter to the Cap-Haitien office of the US Catholic Conference, the organisation contracted by the US government to process such applications. the young attorney there from the US showed no interest in reconsidering the case, but mainly insisted that he had received much satisfaction from the "success stories" — although the teachers with whom we spoke claimed that they were unaware that any of their beleaguered colleagues had actually received an
Those sections of the church who have chosen to ally with, and lead the life of the people, are oppressed as well. The persecution extends to Europeans as well as native Haitians. In another rural area out-
4. Analyses of the coup and its consequences can be found in the following reports by Arthur Mahon in International Viewpoint. 'Night of the generals', No 215, 28 October 1991; One year after the coup', No 236, 12 October 1992; The people and the President, No 243, March 1993 An informative critique of the Clinton administration's policy toward Haiti appears in "An interview with Cecelia Green: Haiti, Clinton and the movement, Against the Current, No 44, March/April 1993
5. This is the opinion of George Packer in 'Choke hold on Haiti, Dissent, summer 1993.
International Viewpoint #249 October 1993 side of Cap-Haitien we visited the modest compound where Father Marcel, a fiftyyear-old Belgian priest who came to Haiti in 1989, formerly resided. A nun described how Marcel had assisted the peasants in building roads and improving their fishing practices. Following the coup, the police began to target him and on 9 November 1991, fired guns into his bedroom. Fortunately Marcel was not at home, but out caring for a sick peasant. Driving back to his home, Marcel passed the police in his jeep and saw that their guns were out. He refused to respond to their demand that he stop, leading them on a wild chase through the backwoods roads that he had come to know so well. Finally, he manoeuvred them into a ravine where they crashed, dumping their guns and hand-grenades among the trees. Marcel lived clandestinely for a period while the police wrecked his home, smashing his typewriter and mimeograph machine. When Marcel was finally captured, they pulled his beard and made him sit for three days on a bench in a military barrack. He was released only on condition of leaving the country.
### Missions
Since February 1993, the Organisation of American States and the United Nations (OAS-UN) have placed Missions throughout the country to monitor human rights.6 A variety of personnel from various countries have been hired a six-thousand dollars a month (72 thousand dollars a year, worth two and a half times that much in current Haitian dollars) to staff the missions. At Cap-Haitien we visited the Mission, located in the centre of town between the Mayor's office and the Ministry of the Interior. In our interview with a dozen staff members, who had been there varying lengths of time, we were stunned to discover that no one had ever heard of the Teacher's Union or of its repression. "No one has come in here with that information", a young University of Wisconsin graduate explained to us. When we pointed out that many of the teachers were in hiding, and that one had even fled to the Dominican Republic, she replied: "Well, we can't go to the Dominican Republic to find them, can we?" Acknowledging that the location of the Mission, so near the authorities, might intimidate some of the persecuted from stopping by, members of the Mission pointed out that they did make forays into the region. What about the peasants' organisation that we had met?, we asked. Its leaders had claimed that the OAS-UN Mission met with the police in their region, but had failed to show up to a meeting with their representatives, who were ready and waiting. Members of the Mission confirmed that this had occurred, but offered no explanation as to why the situation had not been remedied in subsequent weeks.
### Prisoners
Later, we met with a local Cap-Haitien group called Friends of the Prisoners. This had been founded in 1976 by a French nun whose brother had been jailed in France, and who decided to organise to obtain the right of prisoners to attend mass and participate in a choir, and also for the Friends to deliver gifts of food to the incarcerated. Under Aristide, the delegations of Friends actually began to receive assistance from the state and were allowed in the cells. After the coup, however, the situation deteriorated horrendously so that prisoners were sometimes so crowded into cells that they could only sleep in shifts, dead bodies were left to decay in cells, and food so sparse that the prisoners devised a rotating system involving fast days for some that would allow others to eat more substantial meals. When asked if the Friends had reported such conditions to the OAS-UN Mission, members of the group were horrified. They knew from experience that, due to the "neutrality" of the Mission, complaints would be checked with the police, which would lead to the persecution of the Friends themselves. Referring to a case that we later confirmed at the OAS-UN Mission at Port-au-Prince, the Friends described a visit by the Cap-Haitien Mission to a prison where a prisoner did complain of conditions, only to be beaten nearly to death upon their departure.
Under such circumstances, it was hardly surprising that few of the Haitians we met put any faith in the Accord signed by Cedras and Aristide on Governor's Island, New York, in early July. "How can anyone make the army respect any agreements?", one of the Friends of the Prisoners asked. Among the glaring inadequacies of the Accord are its failure to address the illegal parliamentary election of January 1993 that gave a majority to anti-Aristide forces, and the apparent amnesty it gives to the murderous coup-leaders and supporters.? Still, what hope exists among the people we interviewed is pinned on the return of Aristide and the inspiration to struggle that may be provided by his presence in the presidential post. "To this end," one of the members of the peasant's organisation said, "the population will gladly suffer the effects of any embargo or boycott of Haiti," even when they know that the rich are escaping the effects (some may even be prospering from it), and "even if it drives us back to age of the donkey."*
6. On 3 June 1993, the International Civilian Mission of the UN and the OAS issued a fifteen-page Interim Report covering 9 February to 31 May 1993. It is available from the UN.
7. The Quixote Center, the address of which is given in note 3 above, has also published an excellent critique of the Accord, The Challenges Ahead. Grassroots newsletter
A newsletter is now being issued every two weeks by supporters of the grassroots democratic movement, available for a subscription of $18 a year:
Haiti Info, Haitian Information Bureau c/o Lynx Air, Box 407139, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida 33340, USA.
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