Category Archives: International Solidarity

By Kim Ives (from haitilibete.com)

On May 25, thousands again marched through the capital to demand Préval’s resignation, Aristide’s return and an end to the military occupation

The President of Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced on May 24 that presidential and parliamentary elections would be held on Nov. 28, 2010, the Constitutionally prescribed date. “The CEP is up to the task of organizing general elections in the country,” said Gaillot Dorsinvil, who is also the Handicapped Sector’s representative on the nine member council, handpicked by President René Préval. But tens of thousands of Haitians don’t agree and have been demonstrating in streets around the country in recent weeks to demand, not just a new CEP, but Préval’s resignation.

“Nobody has confi dence in Préval or his CEP to organize credible elections,” said Evans Paul, a leader of the Convention for Democratic Unity (KID) party and the political platform Alternative. Both groups, along with a number of other right-wing politicians and parties which supported the 2004 coup d’état against former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, have joined in an unlikely alliance with popular organizations at the base of Aristide’s party, the Lavalas Family. The alliance, called Heads Together of Popular Organizations (Tèt Kole Òganizasyon Popilè yo), has held three massive demonstrations of many thousands in the capital on May 10 May 17, and May 25, all calling for Préval’s resignation, Aristide’s return from exile in South Africa, and repeal of the “state of emergency law” that puts a foreigndominated council in charge of Haiti’s reconstruction, among other demands.

Nobody is more distrustful of Préval’s electoral supervision than Lavalas militants, who saw their party, Haiti’s largest, disqualifi ed last November by Dorsinvil’s CEP from parliamentary elections that were to have been held on Feb. 28, 2010. Radio Solidarité broadcast a long telephone interview with Aristide, in South Africa, on Nov. 25, 2010, the day after the CEP’s decision, asking for the Lavalas Family’s electoral inclusion and a passport for him to return home (see Haïti Liberté, Vol.3, No.20, 12/2/2009). Neither request was ever honored.

Fourteen other parties were also disqualifi ed. The Feb. 28 polling was cancelled after the Jan. 12 earthquake. A previous Préval-appointed CEP, containing fi ve members of the current one, also disqualifi ed the Lavalas Family from parliamentary elections held in April and June 2009. Those elections were massively boycotted, with less than 5% of voters turning out. On May 25, thousands of demonstrators, starting from three different locations, converged on the crumbled National Palace for the third time in two weeks. Lavalas marchers left from La Saline’s St. Jean Bosco, where Father Aristide used to preach, and St. Pierre Place in Pétionville, while organizations of “reformed” coup supporters, traditional political parties, and former “student” activists like Hervé Saintilus, stepped off from Jérémie Place, near Carrefour-Feuilles

Under grey and rainy skies, the demonstration was spirited but peaceful, although barricades to prevent marchers from demonstrating in front of the Palace were swept away by the crowd, which fi lled the broad street between the Palace fence and the earthquake victims’ tents on Toussaint Louverture Place.

With the announcement of elections, some politicians have stepped back from the anti-Préval mobilization. Sweatshop owner Charles Henri Baker, a former presidential candidate and the number two of the Group of 184, a procoup front in 2004, turned out for the May 17 march but dropped out from May 25. Other pro-coup politicians, hungry for elections, are expected to follow suit. A number of popular organizations support the mobilization but are extremely suspicious of the formerly pro-coup politicians’ involvement.

“We must not repeat the experiences of 1986 and 2004, where the big embassies replaced the fallen chief of state with the complicity of unscrupulous politicians,” warned the Democratic Popular Movement (MODEP) in a declaration. “In 1986, after Duvalier fell, the U.S. imperialists replaced Jean-Claude Duvalier with General [Henri] Namphy. In 2004, the U.S. and France were running the show. In both cases, the sneaky politicians and the bourgeoisie agreed to play in the imperialist’s dirty game. Today, we must learn our lesson and not be duped again. We should be alert for the doublecross, and we should join forces with those whose politics resemble our own.”

Meanwhile, on May 24, Brazilian soldiers of the UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH), the military occupation force, drove three military vehicles into the State University’s Ethnology College to arrest an outspoken anti-occupation student, Frantz Mathieu Junior. The soldiers’ illegal entry onto inviolable school grounds unleashed a fi restorm. Enraged students poured into the streets around the school, burning one vehicle and smashing the windshields of several others.

“Today, Préval has sent MINUSTAH troops to provoke us this afternoon,” one student demonstrator told Haïti Liberté. “Now we students are standing up to call for Préval’s removal, and the occupation forces must leave!”

In response, MINUSTAH troops fi red rubber bullets, pepper spray, and large amounts of teargas, affl icting not only student demonstrators but patients in the nearby General Hospital and the whole Champ de Mars area. CNN reported that it was “one of the most serious confrontations since the quake.” The UN apologized for breaching the University’s grounds on May 25.

A similar MINUSTAH crackdown occurred on May 18 in Cité Soleil, in the area of Simon-Pele. Brazilian troops began fi ring their automatic weapons in all directions. Rosemond Aristide, the division inspector in charge of the Cité Soleil police station, was in a police vehicle but had to take cover. When he called offi cers under his command to come assist him, the Brazilian troops aimed their weapons at the Haitian policemen, forcing them to retreat, Rosemond Aristide said. The Brazilian soldiers arrested Aristide’s family members who were riding in his vehicle. The MINUSTAH troops said they had received orders to search all vehicles, including Haitian police cars.

The elections are also seen as occupation tarnished. Tellingly, Edmond Mulet, MINUSTAH’s civilian chief, while visiting the Central Plateau over the weekend, announced the Nov. 28 elections before CEP President Dorsinville. The Haitian people took note of the diplomatic gaff.

At both Monday’s student demonstration and Tuesday’s mass march, the most ubiquitous slogan after “Down with Préval!” was “Down with occupation!” Now the rains have begun in earnest and most earthquake homeless still remain under tarps and tents. Desperation and anger are at all time highs. Resentment over last year’s electoral fi ascos still runs deep. Major anti-Préval and anti-occupation demonstrations are planned for May 27 and June 1. If the mass mobilization does intensify and rock Préval’s power, May 18 and May 24 could prove to be just foretastes of the confrontations to come between UN occupation troops and the Haitian people.

Haïti Liberté Vol. 3 No. 34 • Du 10 au 16 mars 2010

For Immediate Release
June 1, 2010
Contact: Ajamu Baraka, 404.588.9761
http://www.ushrnetwork.org/

The US Human Rights Network today condemned Israel’s illegal assault on the Gaza flotilla in international waters and called on the Obama administration to demand that Israel release those arrested, provide medical care to the wounded, ensure that all humanitarian aid and supplies reach Gaza, and prosecute all those responsible. “Israel’s decision to attack a humanitarian mission showed a complete disregard for human rights and the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza,” said USHRN Executive Director Ajamu Baraka. “The Obama administration should not stand by and treat Israel’s crimes as business as usual”

The flotilla raid, which resulted in at least nine civilian deaths and the detention of almost 700 activists from more than 50 nations, including 13 Americans, has sparked global outrage. Heads of state from around the world have decried the commando-style raid. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, expressed “shock at reports that humanitarian aid was met with violence.” Criticism has also been voiced within Israel: Former Israeli Ambassador to Turkey Alon Liel called the raid a “disaster” and a “terrible mistake” with significant potential consequences.

The United States response to the raid, however, has been grossly inadequate. President Obama issued a one-paragraph statement yesterday regretting the loss of life and urging that “all the facts and circumstances” around the events come to light “as quickly as possible.” Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a trip to Washington scheduled for today.

The U.N. has called for an impartial inquiry into the events, but the implication in the President’s statement is that the U.S. will sit on the sidelines while others pursue the matter. This appears consistent with the administration’s inability or unwillingness to apply diplomatic pressure on Israel in recent months to advance the Middle East peace process. But given the administration’s stated commitments to human rights principles, the President’s best if not only viable option in this case is to stop tiptoeing around political landmines and insist without further ambiguity that such blatant contempt for human rights be addressed without delay.

Contact: cubaworkinggroup@gmail.com
View our documents at: www.blackeducator.org/cubasolidarity.htm
Press Release Contact: Ashaki Binta, Co-Convener 203-379-7711

National: The Black Left Unity Network (BLUN) announces the formation of it’s Cuba Working Group (CWG) today. The CWG is a national network of activists and organ-izers who are concerned about the ongoing attacks against the nation of Cuba despite President Obama’s proclamations of improving relations with the Cuban state in the Spring of 2009.

Most CWG members have traveled to Cuba and/or have been active in Cuban Solidarity work for many years and are familiar with the difficult challenges faced by the island over the last 50 years.

One of the latest attacks against Cuba was generated in the Black community late last year when a prominent group of African Americans signed on to a declaration originated by anti-Cuban activists in Latin America who accused the Cuban state of racism. Signers of the accusatory declaration include preeminent figures such as Dr. Julianne Malveaux, Dr. Ron Walters, actress Ruby Dee, film maker Melvin Van Peebles, Dr. Kathleen Neal Cleaver, and Dr. Cornel West among many others. A list of 60 notable African Americans signed on to the document.

“Our consideration is that the accusation of racism against Cuba is disingenu-ous and is in fact intended to weaken solidarity between the African American commu-nity and Cuba which has historically been very strong.,” said Alberto Jones, a member of the CWG and a native Cuban residing in Miami.

“A further consequence of this attack would then be to increase the unjustified pressure on the Cuban state to abandon its socialist character and eliminate the cru-cial gains of the 1959 Cuban Revolution in providing education, healthcare, affordable housing, and a healthy cultural life for the Cuban people,” the group said.

According to the CWG, the US government’s historic blockade and ongoing programs to foment internal dissent within Cuba contribute significantly to weakening the island nation’s ability to improve and advance the political, social, economic, and cultural gains of the revolution including the elimination of all forms of inequality and lingering remnants of slavery.

Despite this, says the CWG, Cuba has abolished institutional racism and has considerably improved the lives of all it’s citizens since the revolution including nearly eliminating illiteracy and vastly improving infant mortality rates to levels lower than those in the US, especially among African Americans. The Cuban nation has officially acknowledged that more than 60 percent of its citizens are of African descent. “We believe that those who are concerned about racism in Cuba should be in-creasing pressure on the US government to end the blockade and other illegitimate attacks against that country, rather than signing on to specious accusations that do nothing to help the people of Cuba,” the group said.

The Black Left Unity Network (BLUN) was formed in May of 2008 to strengthen and revitalize the Black Freedom Movement in the United States. The BLUN Cuba Working Group was instituted in January this year to help educate the African Ameri-can community about the importance of Revolutionary Cuba in the international fight against all forms of discrimination, exploitation, and oppression and about Cuba’s historic solidarity with the struggle for freedom of the African American people.

Press Release Announcing Formation of the CWG

Seven U.S.Physicians trained in Cuba return from service in Haiti (photo from www.ifconews.org)

Despite President Obama‟s declaration of his administration‟s desire to “seek a new beginning with Cuba”, and to “learn from history, not be trapped by it” in April of last year, Cuba has remained under attack by the U.S. In January, new US air security policies included Cuba on a list of countries whose air passengers would get extra security screening as they enter US territory. And Cuba remains on the State Department‟s list of state sponsors of terrorism‟, notwithstanding the lack of any evidence of Cuban involvement in acts of terrorism. Cuba has vigorously protested all of these unconscionable attacks. In fact, Cuba‟s policies of internationalism have arguably been the most politically advanced in the world. From the direct military intervention to help in the defeat of Apartheid in southern Africa in 1988 (Cuito Cuanavale, Angola) to direct medical aide and solidarity with Haiti (before the earthquake).

Since the earthquake, western media has been suspiciously silent on the exceptional role Cuba has played in support of Haiti with more than 900 health care providers on the ground, the largest and most organized contingent on the island. Yet, one of the most disturbing new attacks against Cuba occurred late last year when a host of prominent African Americans signed on to a so-called “…Declaration of African American Support for the Civil Rights Struggle in Cuba”. This misguided “declaration” accuses the Cuban State of racism. It cites the imprisonment of a Dr. Darsi Ferrer, an active critic of the Cuban government, as an example of racism in Cuba. Dr. Ferrer was reportedly accused of attempting to establish a private medical clinic outside of Cuba‟s world-renowned medical system, by receiving illegally obtained construction materials.

Whatever the case, Dr. Ferrer‟s situation should immediately bring to mind the 50 year history of attempts by the US to subvert the Cuban Revolution through internal dissent and direct attack harkening back to the Bay of Pigs invasion and so on. Certainly the struggle against racism anywhere in the world is of paramount importance to all of humanity.

But can this attack against Cuba under the guise of fighting racism really be justified? We think not. Many African Americans may not know about some of the unique features of Cuban history even though African Americans and Cubans have a deeply rooted history of solidarity with each other.

For example, during Cuba‟s first War for Independence from Spain in 1868, plantation and slave owner Carlos Manual de Cespedes freed and armed the slaves on his plantation and called on them to join the struggle for Cuba‟s independence. The Afro-Cuban General Antoneo Maceo emerged as one of Cuba‟s most renowned revolutionary leaders of all time.

As a result of this struggle, slavery was abolished in Cuba by 1886. What a contrast to US history where the maintenance of slavery was a pre-condition of unity between the colonies in the American fight for independence from Britain. Although more than 5,000 Blacks fought in the American Revolution, legalized slavery continued for nearly another 100 years. And the US has historically played a role in maintaining racism in Cuba.

The US intervention and occupation of Cuba starting in 1898 during Cuba‟s second War for Independence (1895) and where more than half the fighters were Black, re-established institutional racism in Cuba. Under the intermittent US occupations there, Afro-Cubans and women, as well as the poor, were barred from voting, holding elective office, owning businesses, land, and etc. Sound familiar?

Most Cuban historians and scholars agree that the Cuban Socialist Revolution in 1959 abolished legalized institutional racism in Cuba. Cuba‟s revolutionary constitution outlawed racial discrimination while open and public debate and education since the revolution have tackled Cuba‟s history as an Afro-Cuban nation. However, the legacy of 500 years of slavery, racism, and all forms of discrimination is difficult to completely eradicate in just 50 years, especially while also under the US led attacks and blockade against Cuba.

Even so, the conditions of all Cubans have improved under the covenant of the socialist revolution in Cuba which has provided free education, free health care, land for poor farmers, reduced cost rent and utilities, the elimination of unemployment, and so on.

Racism, institutionalized or otherwise has not been abolished any place in the world. Yet Cuba, in our view, remains a hopeful beacon in the western hemisphere that humane societies can be constructed that provide the basis for the elimination of all forms of discrimination, exploitation, and oppression.

Ashaki Binta For the “Cuban Working Group” Black Left Unity Network. www.blackeducator.org/cubasolidarity.htm

You may contact the working group at: cubaworkinggroup@gmail.com

Documents from the Cuba Working Group may be viewed below.

The Big Lies Against Cuba

“This is Cynthia McKinney and I’m speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to
Gaza, building supplies – and even crayons for children, I had a suitcase full of crayons for children. While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to
deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.

At the outbreak of Israel’s Operation ‘Cast Lead’ [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one day’s notice and tried, as the US representative in a multi-national delegation, to deliver 3 tons of medical supplies to an already besieged and ravaged Gaza.

During Operation Cast Lead, U.S.-supplied F-16’s rained hellfire on a trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became full scale outright genocide. U.S.-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs – new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel’s onslaught that Gaza had become Israel’s veritable weapons testing laboratory, people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.

The world saw Israel’s despicable violence thanks to al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international water … It’s a miracle that I’m even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.

The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime … I am now known as Israeli prisoner number 88794. How can I be in prison for collecting crayons to kids?

Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else’s children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza’s children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.

I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint
after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I
am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza’s children
could color & paint, that Gaza’s wounded could be healed, and that Gaza’s
bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.

But I’ve learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First
of all, it’s incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also
had a dream … like my cellmates, one who is pregnant. They are all are
in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They
had a dream that their lives would be better … The once proud, never
colonized Ethiopia [has been thrown into] the back pocket of the United
States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation.
Ethiopians must free their country because superpower politics [have]
become more important than human rights and self-determination.

My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the
exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held
promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was
arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn’t cheap. Many of them represent their family’s best collective
efforts for self-fulfillment. They made their way to the United Nations
High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of
identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They
are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel only after they
arrived Israel told them “there is no UN in Israel.”

The police here have license to pick them up & suck them into the black
hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious and
proud women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel
tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick
marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and
safety for the world’s first Jews and Christian. I too believed that
marketing and failed to look deeper.

The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now
trapped in Ramle’s detention facility. And what are we to do? One of my
cellmates cried today. She has been here for 6 months. As an American,
crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be
better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8 trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that hope, change, and ‘yes we can’ were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfillment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.

It was a slick marketing campaign as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel’s marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.

We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to
represent us. I have read and re-read Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s
letter from a Birmingham jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have
ever imagined that I too would one day have to do so. It is clear that
taxpayers in Europe and the U.S. have a lot to atone for, for what
they’ve done to others around the world.

What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I
am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other
people’s children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I’m experiencing the harsh
reality which is why people need dreams. [But] I’m lucky. I will leave
this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?

Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I
see being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask
yourself:] what are you willing to do?

Let’s change the world together & reclaim what we all need as human
beings: Dignity. I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of
Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the
guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes. I appeal to the
United State’s Department of State to include the plight of detained
UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel country report in its annual human
rights report. I appeal once again to President Obama to go to Gaza: send
your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the
elected choice of the Palestinian people.

I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free
Palestine, and to the women I’ve met at Ramle. This is Cynthia McKinney,
July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.”

an audio version of this statement is available at:

http://freegaza.org/it/home/56-news/984-a-message-from-cynthia-from-a-cell-block-in-israel

Cynthia McKinney is a former U.S. Congresswoman, Green Party presidential
candidate, and an outspoken advocate for human rights and social justice.
The first African-American woman to represent the state of Georgia,
McKinney served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, from
1993-2003, and from 2005-2007. She was arrested and forcibly abducted to
Israel while attempting to take humanitarian and reconstruction supplies
to Gaza on June 30th. For more information, please see
http://www.FreeGaza.org