Haiti Justice Blog

Haiti and the Abolition of the Slave Trade

Last week I saw "Amazing Grace ", the movie about William Wilberforce and the fight to outlaw the slave trade in Britain. I found the film compelling and inspiring, but was surprised that it almost completely ignored Haiti (I caught one reference to the outbreak of Haiti's revolution), even though Haiti abolished slavery three years before Britain took the more limited step of outlawing the slave trade in 1807.

This week I came across an antidote, an article by Jamaican journalist and human rights advocate John Maxwell, "Missing: The Guest of Honor," in the May Issue of Caribbean Rights. Maxwell's piece addresses the larger issue of the neglect of Haiti during the celebrations of the bi-centennial of the abolition of the slave trade. 

 

Randall Robinson's Unbroken Agony

There have been a lot of good interviews around the release of Randall Robinson's An Unbroken Agony. The interviews, and the book, raise the expected issues surrounding Haiti's February 2004 U.S.-sponsored coup d'etat, to which Mr. Robinson had a front row seat. But they also do a good job discussing the broader context of racism in U.S Haitian relations throughout our countries' intertwined histories.

Links to Recommended Interviews: 

Flashpoints (KPFA Berkeley) interview with Randall Robinson, Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste, Jean St. Vil and Kevin Pina, February 16, 2007. Includes discussion of current context of continued  Click here.

C-SPAN’s Q & A, July 22, 2007 this is the longest (60 minutes) and most philosophical of the recent interviews. In addition to Haiti, it covers racism in America and a quick discussion of Cuba. Click here to watch or read transcript

Democracy Now!, July 23, 2007: Segment includes footage of plane trip from the Central African Republic to Jamaica two weeks after the coup, with President Aristide, Mr. Robinson and Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, among others, and segments on the roles of Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice. Click here for transcript/watch/listen. 

Fighting for the Rule of Law in Haiti- Interview With Mario Joseph

An exclusive Haiti Information Project interview with

Haiti's leading human rights lawyer, Mario Joseph

by Darren Ell

Mario Joseph became a human rights lawyer in the wake of Haiti's 1991 coup d'etat, helping victims prepare their cases and articulate their demands at a time when human rights law was not even taught in law school. In 1996, he joined the Bureau des avocats internationaux (BAI) which seeks to defend the poorest members of Haitian society. He is outraged by the hypocrisy of the Canadian, American and French Governments who were behind the 2004 coup d'etat; but he is determined to bring to justice all those who attempted to destroy Haiti's young democracy and who continue to violate the rule of law today. He spoke to Darren Ell from the offices of the BAI in Port-au-Prince.

We Can't Always Be Serious

Here's a great video from The Onion. It makes some serious points about perceptions and news coverage of Haiti, but makes us laugh too:  Something Is Happening in Haiti 

Interview With Jean-Bertrand Aristide

The London Review of Books just posted an excellent interview with President Jean-Bertrand Aristide available on  The LRB website and below. The interview explains recent events in Haiti within the larger context of the historic struggle of Haiti's poor for dignity and autonomy. It addresses many controversial topics, including the February 29, 2004 coup d'etat, violence by people who describe themselves as Lavalas supporters, the economic compromises made by Haiti's Lavalas governments (1994-2004), and the future of both the Lavalas party and Mr. Aristide.

The interview was conducted by Peter Hallward, who teached philosophy at Middlesex University in England. Mr. Hallward wrote  Option Zero in Haiti , one of the best analyses of the February 2004 coup, and his book: Damning the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment is expected out this summer.

We also have the Version Francaise and the Complete Transcript of the interview (in English).

What the Heck is "Social Justice"

We often speak about "Social Justice", without explaining what that means. Rose Marie Berger, a Catholic Peace Activist and poet, explores the meaning of social justice within the context of the biblical Sabbath Year of 2007 in a short, engaging article in Soujourners Magazine, call "What the Heck is "Social Justice"". The article is available on the Soujourners website, and below.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Haiti

I was up late last night looking for words of wisdom from Martin Luther King regarding Haiti. I couldn't find any quotes specifically mentioning Haiti (if you have any, please share them). But this morning I re-read "A Time to Break the Silence," delivered a year before his assassination, and realized Dr. King was talking about Haiti throughout. The whole speech, which I found on the Information Clearing House website, is below and worth reading. But some highlights are:

Working for just U.S. foreign policies is patriotic: "Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.  If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land." (see: "Haiti Legislative Priorities," Parts 1 and 2, below ).
The "Strange Liberators" section, including: "The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and  received regular promises of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now  they languish under our bombs and consider us .... the real enemy." (see: ""Deadly MINUSTAH Raid in Cite Soleil" , below and on IJDH's website).

On charity, not justice:" A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will  soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of   filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting  poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood."  See Haiti Needs Justice, Not Charity.

We'll give the last word to the mainstream press reaction to the speech. It is well worth comparing these words from 1967 with what is said about those fighting for justice in Haiti today, and what is said about Dr. King 30 years later:

Time Magazine: "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi"
The Washington Post: King has "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people" (today the Post calls for a day of community service to honor Dr. King).

U.S. Congress Should Make New Year's Resolution for Haiti

International Relations Center/Foreign Policy in Focus


New Year's Day has a history of hope for former slaves in the hemisphere: Haiti freed its slaves and declared its independence on New Year's 1804; 59 years behind its southern neighbor, President Lincoln issued the U.S. Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. But since then hope has been scarce in Haiti. This year the island nation rang in the New Year with a toll of alarm. A massacre in the urban settlement of Cité Soleil on Dec. 22 left over 20 dead and many wounded by gunfire from UN troops. In this article, human rights lawyer Brian Concannon discusses the need to clear up the past in order to move toward future peace. In particular, he urges the U.S. Congress to thoroughly investigate the role of the United States in the 2004 coup d' etat in Haiti. For more information on Haiti, see related articles (below). For more information on the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, a member of the IRC Americas Program U.S.-Latin America Relations Network, see http://americas.irc-online.org/am/3673.

For the full article, click: U.S. Congress Should Make New Year’s Resolution for Haiti

What Should a Billionaire Give, and What Should You?

Yesterday's NY Times Magazine had an excellent article about the relationship between the abundance in powerful countries and the poverty of countries like Haiti: What Should a Billionaire Give, and What Should You? . It discusses how the relationship in two directions: first, how our comfort is, to a large extent the result of unfair extraction of wealth from poor countries; but more important, that wealthy countries could eliminate the worst forms of world poverty without making any real sacrifices.

Here's the final paragraph, but the full article is very much worth reading: