Seven Campaigns to Re-establish Haitian Democracy
and Sovereignty
APRIL 1, 2004
"Men anpil chaj pa lou"
is the Kreyol phrase for "Many hands make light a heavy load".
WHAT: Campaigns to assist with establishment of rule of
law, justice, sovereignty and democracy to Haiti
WANTED: Organizational partners and Haitian Lawyers Leadership
Network Volunteers
CONTACT: Marguerite Laurent, Esq. at
Erzilidanto@yahoo.com
The Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network has, in collaboration with
grassroots pro-democracy groups in Haiti and in the U.S., identified
the following priorities and working agenda and is soliciting
organizational support and volunteers to help their ongoing work
on these campaigns. The Network is operating as liaison along
with many activists to direct information and press for action.
Our priorities and working agenda are as follows:
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CAMPAIGN ONE:
Stop the political oppression and criminalization of the mass
Haitian electorate. Mobilize so that there is security for
those persecuted to be able to safely return to their homes
with their families, be allowed to return to school, jobs,
daily lives - stop being intimidated, tortured and abused
by convicted felons, fugitives, ex-soldiers, former FRAPH,
opposition strongmen and street gangs capitalizing on the
Constitutional crisis for their own macabre benefit. Mobilize
human rights monitors, organizations, campaigns and media
exposure to pressure the perpetrators and their civilian and
governmental allies, including pressuring the UN/MINUSTHA
forces currently acting as an occupation force in Haiti, to
stop the killings in Haiti and to protect the internal refugees
in Haiti. Keep the stories of the post-Coup D'etat's brutal
political repression in the headlines as much as possible.
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CAMPAIGN TWO:
Identify and mobilize worldwide legal and humanitarian support
and aid for the fleeing Haitian refugees. The U.S. Coast Guard
automatically repatriates Haitians. Haitians who reach U.S.
shores are the only asylum seekers automatically repatriated
or indefinitely deprived of their liberty - indefinitely detained
without trial, charges or due process of law in the United
States of America.
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CAMPAIGN THREE:
Demand respect of the Feb. 7, 2006 vote. Pursue the claim
for an investigation of the Internationals' role (including
UN, OAS and Group 184) in diluting and undermining the Haitian
peoples votes, both in the 2006 Presidential and Legislative
elections; pursue the unconditional return and release of
all those sent into exile, or placed in prison, due to the
Feb. 29th coup d'etat, including President Aristide and the
Constitutional Government officials of Haiti and their allies.
Support the calls for an investigation of the February 29,
2004 Coup D'etat and investigation of U.S./Canada/European
Union funding of known Haitian human rights abusers and mercenaries
and the kidnapping of President Jean Bertrand Aristide and
his wife.
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CAMPAIGN FOUR:
Celebrate Haitian culture and Haiti's revolutionary legacy
as a pioneer in the human rights struggle.
Protect Haiti's cultural and revolutionary legacy, the Kreyol
language, and Kreyol literacy efforts. Defend Haiti's territorial
sovereignty (i.e. Mount St. Nicolas is not for sale or to
be taken as a U.S. companion base to Guantanamo bay), and
expose and counter the French/U.S. and other occupational
troops, their Haitian mercenaries and their "civilian and
ecclesiastic fronts" from looting Haiti's cultural and archeological
artifacts and defiling Haiti's Vodun heritage and way of life.
Part of the psychological warfare in the timing of the 2004
Coup Díetat, orchestrated by the U.S. and France in collaboration
with Haitian mercenaries, anti-Haitian and unpatriotic and
anti-black Black opportunists, is to stop the world from celebrating
the achievement of the African warriors who first put liberty
into application in the Western Hemisphere. Thus, this 2nd
U.S. orchestrated Coup Díetat against the Constitutionally
elected Haitian president makes it even more critical for
the African Diaspora, Haitians and authentic human rights
advocates the worldwide to highlight Haiti's 200-year old
struggle against debt, dependency and foreign domination and
to keep, at the forefront, what the Haitian ancestors fought
against, especially in light of Haiti's bi-centennial.
Campaign Four urges all to celebrate Haitian culture, support
Haitian artists and Haiti's revolutionary legacy as pioneers
in the human rights struggle. Haitian were the first freedom
fighters to abolish slavery, the first to win their independence
from European enslavement and colonialism in the Western Hemisphere.
Haitians living today are still paying for their ancestorsí
great human rights achievements. The majority of the Affranchis
or "free Blacks," distinctly known today as the Neocons or
Republican Blacks, are, as in olden slavery days, still used
as buffers for the exploitation of the Haitian masses, continuing
their historic, if nefarious and morally repugnant role and
work, by supporting U.S./Euro repressive economic and geopolitical
interests in Haiti. White as opposed to Ayisyen cultural standards,
mostly imitating right wing white society, and working, for
example, as Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Reginald Dumas,
Kofi Annan, Gerald Latorture and Andre Apaid, Jr. and the
like, as vociferous international adherents of neo-liberalism,
lawlessness in Haiti and against the one-person-one-vote-principle
and other such anti democratic views for the masses in Haiti,
the Caribbean and Africa. These mentally colonized, anti-democratic
Black opportunists and their civilian and military mercenaries
in Haiti and abroad still serve the Black masses up to the
neo-colonialists as evidenced by their role in the crippling
2004 Coup Díetat. Many, clothed themselves as "progressives"
solely because of their black skin color or alliances with
these sort of Blacks, but their actions in Haiti today, with
regard to reconciling with the former bloody Haitian military
and FRAPH reappearance and towards the one-person-one-vote
principle, show they are part of the old status quo reborn,
are neither humane, progressive nor do they have the interests
of the mass Haitian electorate at heart. This confusion must
be de-tangled, our whole history told and put into historical
perspective; the veil of these traditional "Black Buffers"
brought down so authentic progressives the worldwide may focus
on the real issues of imperialism's gluttonous greed, inhumanity,
venomous resentments and relentless injustices to be confronted
and countered, clearing the way for our Black ancestors' achievements
in Haiti to be promoted and celebrated despite the 2004 Coup
D'etat, Constitutional crisis and human rights abuses.
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CAMPAIGN FIVE:
The primary reason for the 2004 Coup D'etat was because Haiti,
is one of these rare Black countries that OWNED something,
still OWNS SOMETHING the powerful imperialists, their multi-national
corporations and Western governments want, haven't yet privatized
(colonized), but surely feel racistly entitled to take from
the poor majority in Haiti as a divine right! Thus, under
the US-backed government in Haiti between 2004 and 2006, the
internationals took the opportunity to commit Haiti's people
to a defacto UN protectorate (UN SC Res. 1608, Feb. 22, 2006
Accord) and sign endless illegal corporate agreements and
illegal World Bank accords - to fleece Haiti of what it owned,
load it with endless IMF/World Bank debt, and undermine Haitian
civil liberties by militarizing Haiti with their UN occupying
soldiers and politicized Haitian "police," trained
to repress the people of Haiti on behalf of foreign interests.
(See, Turning
Haiti into a Penal Colony). The bi-centennial coup's mission
was to install a Haiti Death Project regime, misnamed a Haiti
Democracy Project ("HDP") regime more interested
in the impoverishment disasters of neo-liberalism and globalization
rather than social spending for Haitian schools, literacy
programs, health care, roads, portable water, job development,
institutionalization of the rule of law, a justice system
and a Haitianist domestic economy. We shall continue the struggle
against financial colonialism by speaking up against privatization;
educating the populist as to the beneficiaries of the privatization
of water, utilities, state owned enterprises, the dumping
of corporate farm subsidized goods, and the radical right
wing agenda to maintain the old status quo of having the Black
masses produce, the Black buffering lighter Black minorities
serve, while the white privilege internationals direct, consume,
load Haiti with endless debt and run things from behind the
scenes in Haiti. In this 21st century these paradigms are
to be resisted, shattered - just as Haitians resist the abuses
of the sweatshops and Haiti simply being a service area for
the super rich to exploit and abuse Haitian labor and resources.
With Campaign Five our working agenda is to also continue
to identify labor law violators and set long term corporate
strategies to boycott or find other suitable economic strategies
against U.S. and other companies in Haiti violating Haitian
minimum wage, jeopardizing Haitian health, life and the Black
masses' civil and human rights.
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CAMPAIGN SIX:
Mobilize the Haitian-American and Caribbean-American vote
to push a platform for more conscionable and equitable U.S.
policy in Haiti and for Haitian refugees.
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CAMPAIGN SEVEN:
Keep alive and pursue the 21.8 billion (and counting) owed
by France to the Haitian people. Demand that the US also repay
the people of Haiti for the portion of this slave-trade debt
paid by Haiti to US banks from 1914 to 1947 under US military
force and a 19-year US occupation.
For the time being, these are our priorities, our working
agenda. The situation is fluid in Haiti and we shall adjust
as necessary to best meet the needs to expose the human consequences
of the February 29, 2004 Coup D'etat. We are asking for volunteers
with the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network to participate
in the campaigns outlined above and to develop their own and
collaborative action plans, Teach Ins, Petitions, and Days
of Action (May 18, August 14 and October 17th for the FreeHaitiMovement).
We are particularly interested to integrate these seven campaigns
with other action proposals and to collaborate with other
organizations. The task is to figure a way to keep this as
informal as possible, designing each campaign to be virtually
on automatic pilot while still having an over arching mechanism(s)
that will help coordinate action, evaluate results, produce
data and liaison with collaborating organizations and individuals
effectively. The Haitian Lawyers Leadership welcomes all constructive
feedback. We have put together a Haitian Leadership Working
Committee made up of ten Haitian Leadership Lawyers, artists
or activists with oversight responsibilities and are working
on putting in place coordinators for each of the seven missions,
five are already in place and may be contacted directly. But
we welcome and encourage more input, more volunteers, more
independent initiatives promoting the objectives of the campaigns
above noted, and as also reflected and summarized from, time
to time, in our Haiti
Resolutions.
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The "Men Anpil Chaj Pa Lou" Haitian Lawyers
Leadership Working Committee members are:
Henri Alexandre, Esq., CT, 1983
Picard Losier, LLM, Taxation; JD, Licensed NY 1984 &
PA, 1981
Maguy Duteau, Esq., NY, 1988 - HLLN's immigration specialist
Bob Celestin, Esq., Licensed NY 1985
Lionel Jean Baptise, Esq., Licensed IL, 1991
Ulrick Gaillard, Esq.
Darwin Beauvais, Esq., 1993
Professor Frantz Jerome, Executive Director of the Ezili
Danto Witness Project
Chantal Laurent, Graphic Artist, HLLN's Website Designer
and webmaster
David Laurent, Documentary Filmmaker, HLLN's Film and Video
Producer/Editor for The
Ezili Danto Witness Project and The FreeHaitiMovement
Men anpil chay pa lou.
(Revised, as of February 14, 2006)
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