ckaihatsu
25th May 2017, 14:58
After MINUSTAH, UN Seeks to Keep an Armed Force in Haiti
IN VIOLATION OF HAITI’S CONSTITUTION
By KIM IVES
(excerpted, with permission, from Haiti Liberté, April 12, 2017)
The main thing you need to know about the April 11 speech to the UN Security Council of Sandra Honoré, the head of the United Nations military occupation force in Haiti, is that she is not talking about a complete pull-out but a “transition.”
MINUSTAH, or the UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti, is currently composed of about 3,200 soldiers and police officers, who cost $346 million this past year. First deployed in June 2004 (supposedly for only six months), the force’s current mandate ends on April 15.
In a March 16 report, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres proposed that MINUSTAH be renewed for a final six-month mandate, ending Oct. 15. However, this force would be replaced by “a smaller peacekeeping operation with concentrated focus on the rule of law and police development, … [and] human rights monitoring,” Honoré said.
The new armed force would be comprised of close to 300 UN police officers to “support political stability, [and] good governance, including electoral oversight and reform,” Guterres wrote.
Thus Honoré called on the Security Council to set in place “the transition from MINUSTAH to a new and smaller Mission,” which will have a new name.
There is only one problem. Other than the Haitian Army and Police, the Haitian Constitution explicitly forbids any “other armed corps [to] exist in the national territory.”
But Honoré ignored this illegality and spoke as if she were Haiti’s head of state, brazenly dictating Haiti’s direction. “The United Nations in Haiti look forward to intensifying our cooperation with all Haitian stakeholders as they identify and implement [their] national priorities,” Honoré said. “I am also encouraged by the calls from a broad cross-section of Haitian society for constitutional reform to, among other things, simplify the electoral cycle and strengthen legal oversight bodies with a view to stabilizing the country’s democratic institutions and reforming its governance.”
Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN and April’s Security Council president, echoed the stance taken by Honoré. “Peacekeeping has made a great contribution to Haiti,” she said. “Its support of the government has been essential in ensuring a secure and stable environment. It has also provided invaluable assistance in aiding the Haitian people in recovering from a number of natural disasters, including the 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew.”
She never mentioned that MINUSTAH caused one of Haiti’s worst disasters, the still-raging cholera epidemic. In October 2010, the UN allowed sewage from its cholera-infected Nepalese troops to pollute Haiti’s largest river, sparking an epidemic which, by some estimates, has killed 10,000 and sickened one million.
Haiti’s permanent representative, Denis Régis, was invited to speak at the Security Council meeting, but he made a completely vapid speech offering no push-back on the UN’s plan to keep an armed force of police officers in Haiti indefinitely after MINUSTAH’s withdrawal. On the contrary, he said that Haiti “supports the establishment of a new presence” and the “Haitian government endorses this [UN] vision and will continue to work in close collaboration with the United Nations.”
Régis spent the last half of his speech pleading with United Nations member states to “relaunch mechanisms of humanitarian aid” to Haiti to help with the post-Hurricane Matthew famine in Haiti’s southern peninsula and the on-going cholera crisis.
After partially admitting in December it unleashed cholera in Haiti, the UN has launched a campaign to raise $400 million over two years to eradicate cholera in Haiti. So far, only $2 million has been pledged. Haiti should point to the $346 million wasted in the last year to pay for UN soldiers who spend most of their time cloistered in heavily fortified bases, occasionally making pointless “show-of-force” sorties in huge armored vehicles.
On March 29, the 30th anniversary of Haiti’s Constitution, cholera victims and anti-MINUSTAH activists marched through the capital to demand reparations for the damage caused by cholera and the complete and immediate withdrawal of UN armed forces, including police. The UN’s current plans, supported by the government of President Jovenel Moïse, defy these demands, which most Haitians support.
* * * *
10 Reasons Why UN Occupation of Haiti Must End
By DADY CHERY
(excerpted, with permission, from Haiti Liberté, April 19, 2017)
The UN mission was brought into Haiti in June 2004 to serve as an occupation army after a foreign-sanctioned coup d’état; in keeping with this role, rapes, sex traffic, exchange of sex for food, massacres, and murders have been its mainstays. There are countless reasons to rid Haiti of this degraded, degrading, and unwanted occupation force. The following are, to my mind, the top 10.
1) Common criminals in the UN mission enjoy immunity from prosecution.
Though over 100 troops have been expelled from Haiti for child prostitution, human trafficking, and related charges, these soldiers have enjoyed immunity for most of their crimes, including their numerous gang rapes of Haitians, and the suffocation in August 2010 of a Haitian teenager working on a Nepalese UN base.
2) The UN mission serves as an occupation force.
Together with Haitian paramilitaries, these troops ambushed and gunned down over 4,000 Fanmi Lavalas partisans soon after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was deposed in 2004 in a coup plotted by the United States, Canada, France, and Haiti’s elite.
3) The UN mission has operated as a large gang that preys on the poor.
The troops have shot and beaten countless Haitians who were merely protesting for food, jobs and homes. They have conducted numerous raids on slums such as Cité Soleil to kill civilians. In some of these raids the soldiers have fired tens of thousands of rounds at dwellings and schools.
4) The UN mission subverts democracy.
On behalf of the US, Canada and France, the UN mission fixed the 2010-11 presidential and legislative elections to exclude 80 percent of the electorate and bring Michel Martelly to power. As part of these elections, the head of the mission, Edmond Mulet, threatened to depose then-President René Preval when he balked at withdrawing his party’s presidential candidate, Jude Célestin, from the second round. In 2015, elections financed and largely managed through the UN Development Programme (UNDP) were discovered to include a zombie vote of 77 percent.
5) UN troops have neglected Haitians during disasters and in fact showed spectacular cowardice in some cases.
During the first 36 hours after the earthquake of January 12, 2010, the troops hardly assisted Haitians and instead searched for each other. After Hurricane Matthew in October 2016, the troops did not lift injured Haitians to Port-au-Prince by air for treatment but mostly watched them.
6) The UN mission harbors vectors of disease.
The UN introduced a cholera epidemic from Nepal into Haiti in October 2010 and another epidemic from Bangladesh after 2012, which have killed over 10,000 Haitians. There has been no amend for these deaths. Instead, the UN has exploited the epidemic to promote the sale of oral cholera vaccines by friendly pharmaceutical companies.
7) By every measure, civic life in Haiti has deteriorated since the UN occupation.
The rates of violent crime and incarceration in Haiti are low, but they have steadily climbed since the introduction of the UN force. The UN occupation has assisted the destruction of Haiti’s agricultural economy and the promotion of greater than 85 percent unemployment, abject poverty, and even famine.
8) The presence of UN troops on Haitian soil is illegal.
Haiti’s UN mission is the only UN Chapter 7 force in a country that is not at war. Chapter 7 of the UN Charter gives the UN Security Council the power to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace” and take military and nonmilitary action to “restore international peace and security.” Participating countries have boasted about Haiti being a place where they could test their police methods and military equipment for urban warfare on an unsuspecting population.
9) The UN has trained a massive paramilitary force of Haitians.
Together with embedded personnel from the private military and security company DynCorp, the UN has already trained a so-called Haitian police force (Police Nationale d’Haiti, PNH) of more than 15,000 to replace its mission at the highest level of personnel it had achieved in Haiti.
10) The Haitian people despise the UN mission.
The perfidious UN occupation continues in Haiti because, through three presidential elections, the UNDP has conveniently arranged for winners who agreed to renew the mission’s mandate. For more than a decade, Haitians at home and abroad, young and old, have made clear that they want the mission out.
- - - - - - - -
(Dady Chery is the author of “We Have Dared to Be Free: Haiti’s Struggle Against Occupation.” The original version of this article was printed on Dady Chery’s blog Haiti Chery.)
The Organizer (ISSN 1059-2369) is published 10 times per year by The Organizer, P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94103. Periodicals Postage Paid at San Francisco, Calif.
Our website is: www.socialistorganizer.org
You can reach us at Tel. 415-216-5346 or by email at: <[email protected]>.
Rates: To subscribe for one year, send $20 to The Organizer, P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140. FOREIGN RATES: $40 per year.
IN VIOLATION OF HAITI’S CONSTITUTION
By KIM IVES
(excerpted, with permission, from Haiti Liberté, April 12, 2017)
The main thing you need to know about the April 11 speech to the UN Security Council of Sandra Honoré, the head of the United Nations military occupation force in Haiti, is that she is not talking about a complete pull-out but a “transition.”
MINUSTAH, or the UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti, is currently composed of about 3,200 soldiers and police officers, who cost $346 million this past year. First deployed in June 2004 (supposedly for only six months), the force’s current mandate ends on April 15.
In a March 16 report, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres proposed that MINUSTAH be renewed for a final six-month mandate, ending Oct. 15. However, this force would be replaced by “a smaller peacekeeping operation with concentrated focus on the rule of law and police development, … [and] human rights monitoring,” Honoré said.
The new armed force would be comprised of close to 300 UN police officers to “support political stability, [and] good governance, including electoral oversight and reform,” Guterres wrote.
Thus Honoré called on the Security Council to set in place “the transition from MINUSTAH to a new and smaller Mission,” which will have a new name.
There is only one problem. Other than the Haitian Army and Police, the Haitian Constitution explicitly forbids any “other armed corps [to] exist in the national territory.”
But Honoré ignored this illegality and spoke as if she were Haiti’s head of state, brazenly dictating Haiti’s direction. “The United Nations in Haiti look forward to intensifying our cooperation with all Haitian stakeholders as they identify and implement [their] national priorities,” Honoré said. “I am also encouraged by the calls from a broad cross-section of Haitian society for constitutional reform to, among other things, simplify the electoral cycle and strengthen legal oversight bodies with a view to stabilizing the country’s democratic institutions and reforming its governance.”
Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN and April’s Security Council president, echoed the stance taken by Honoré. “Peacekeeping has made a great contribution to Haiti,” she said. “Its support of the government has been essential in ensuring a secure and stable environment. It has also provided invaluable assistance in aiding the Haitian people in recovering from a number of natural disasters, including the 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew.”
She never mentioned that MINUSTAH caused one of Haiti’s worst disasters, the still-raging cholera epidemic. In October 2010, the UN allowed sewage from its cholera-infected Nepalese troops to pollute Haiti’s largest river, sparking an epidemic which, by some estimates, has killed 10,000 and sickened one million.
Haiti’s permanent representative, Denis Régis, was invited to speak at the Security Council meeting, but he made a completely vapid speech offering no push-back on the UN’s plan to keep an armed force of police officers in Haiti indefinitely after MINUSTAH’s withdrawal. On the contrary, he said that Haiti “supports the establishment of a new presence” and the “Haitian government endorses this [UN] vision and will continue to work in close collaboration with the United Nations.”
Régis spent the last half of his speech pleading with United Nations member states to “relaunch mechanisms of humanitarian aid” to Haiti to help with the post-Hurricane Matthew famine in Haiti’s southern peninsula and the on-going cholera crisis.
After partially admitting in December it unleashed cholera in Haiti, the UN has launched a campaign to raise $400 million over two years to eradicate cholera in Haiti. So far, only $2 million has been pledged. Haiti should point to the $346 million wasted in the last year to pay for UN soldiers who spend most of their time cloistered in heavily fortified bases, occasionally making pointless “show-of-force” sorties in huge armored vehicles.
On March 29, the 30th anniversary of Haiti’s Constitution, cholera victims and anti-MINUSTAH activists marched through the capital to demand reparations for the damage caused by cholera and the complete and immediate withdrawal of UN armed forces, including police. The UN’s current plans, supported by the government of President Jovenel Moïse, defy these demands, which most Haitians support.
* * * *
10 Reasons Why UN Occupation of Haiti Must End
By DADY CHERY
(excerpted, with permission, from Haiti Liberté, April 19, 2017)
The UN mission was brought into Haiti in June 2004 to serve as an occupation army after a foreign-sanctioned coup d’état; in keeping with this role, rapes, sex traffic, exchange of sex for food, massacres, and murders have been its mainstays. There are countless reasons to rid Haiti of this degraded, degrading, and unwanted occupation force. The following are, to my mind, the top 10.
1) Common criminals in the UN mission enjoy immunity from prosecution.
Though over 100 troops have been expelled from Haiti for child prostitution, human trafficking, and related charges, these soldiers have enjoyed immunity for most of their crimes, including their numerous gang rapes of Haitians, and the suffocation in August 2010 of a Haitian teenager working on a Nepalese UN base.
2) The UN mission serves as an occupation force.
Together with Haitian paramilitaries, these troops ambushed and gunned down over 4,000 Fanmi Lavalas partisans soon after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was deposed in 2004 in a coup plotted by the United States, Canada, France, and Haiti’s elite.
3) The UN mission has operated as a large gang that preys on the poor.
The troops have shot and beaten countless Haitians who were merely protesting for food, jobs and homes. They have conducted numerous raids on slums such as Cité Soleil to kill civilians. In some of these raids the soldiers have fired tens of thousands of rounds at dwellings and schools.
4) The UN mission subverts democracy.
On behalf of the US, Canada and France, the UN mission fixed the 2010-11 presidential and legislative elections to exclude 80 percent of the electorate and bring Michel Martelly to power. As part of these elections, the head of the mission, Edmond Mulet, threatened to depose then-President René Preval when he balked at withdrawing his party’s presidential candidate, Jude Célestin, from the second round. In 2015, elections financed and largely managed through the UN Development Programme (UNDP) were discovered to include a zombie vote of 77 percent.
5) UN troops have neglected Haitians during disasters and in fact showed spectacular cowardice in some cases.
During the first 36 hours after the earthquake of January 12, 2010, the troops hardly assisted Haitians and instead searched for each other. After Hurricane Matthew in October 2016, the troops did not lift injured Haitians to Port-au-Prince by air for treatment but mostly watched them.
6) The UN mission harbors vectors of disease.
The UN introduced a cholera epidemic from Nepal into Haiti in October 2010 and another epidemic from Bangladesh after 2012, which have killed over 10,000 Haitians. There has been no amend for these deaths. Instead, the UN has exploited the epidemic to promote the sale of oral cholera vaccines by friendly pharmaceutical companies.
7) By every measure, civic life in Haiti has deteriorated since the UN occupation.
The rates of violent crime and incarceration in Haiti are low, but they have steadily climbed since the introduction of the UN force. The UN occupation has assisted the destruction of Haiti’s agricultural economy and the promotion of greater than 85 percent unemployment, abject poverty, and even famine.
8) The presence of UN troops on Haitian soil is illegal.
Haiti’s UN mission is the only UN Chapter 7 force in a country that is not at war. Chapter 7 of the UN Charter gives the UN Security Council the power to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace” and take military and nonmilitary action to “restore international peace and security.” Participating countries have boasted about Haiti being a place where they could test their police methods and military equipment for urban warfare on an unsuspecting population.
9) The UN has trained a massive paramilitary force of Haitians.
Together with embedded personnel from the private military and security company DynCorp, the UN has already trained a so-called Haitian police force (Police Nationale d’Haiti, PNH) of more than 15,000 to replace its mission at the highest level of personnel it had achieved in Haiti.
10) The Haitian people despise the UN mission.
The perfidious UN occupation continues in Haiti because, through three presidential elections, the UNDP has conveniently arranged for winners who agreed to renew the mission’s mandate. For more than a decade, Haitians at home and abroad, young and old, have made clear that they want the mission out.
- - - - - - - -
(Dady Chery is the author of “We Have Dared to Be Free: Haiti’s Struggle Against Occupation.” The original version of this article was printed on Dady Chery’s blog Haiti Chery.)
The Organizer (ISSN 1059-2369) is published 10 times per year by The Organizer, P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94103. Periodicals Postage Paid at San Francisco, Calif.
Our website is: www.socialistorganizer.org
You can reach us at Tel. 415-216-5346 or by email at: <[email protected]>.
Rates: To subscribe for one year, send $20 to The Organizer, P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140. FOREIGN RATES: $40 per year.