The International Action Center Statement in support of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide

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The International Action Center denounces any intervention by the Bush Administration against the legally elected government of Haiti and its President, Jean-Bertrand Arstide. We condemn the financial embargo of this Caribbean country by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. There's nothing spontaneous about the current disturbances in Haiti. Former army officers that served the decades-long Duvalier family dictatorship are playing a leading role in these bloody events. Behind the ex-Tonton Macoute torturers killing people today in Haitian streets is undoubtedly the CIA. One of Reagan's ambassadors to the Duvalier regime--Ernest H. Preeg--is a director of the misnamed "Haiti Democracy Project" that seeks to overthrow President Aristide.

None of these elements are strong enough by themselves to return eight million Haitian people to colonial servitude. Their aim is to provoke military intervention against the Haitian government, possibly under disguise of a United Nations "humanitarian mission."

Unlike the liar in the White House, who stole the 2000 U.S. election from African American voters in Florida, President Aristide was overwhelmingly elected twice--in 1990 and 2000.

Two hundred years ago the Haitian people established the second oldest republic in the Americas. For six decades--until the U.S. Civil War--the U.S. Government refused to recognize the Haitian Republic, which resulted from the only successful slave insurrection in history.

The reason why Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere is that it made so many other countries so rich. It was Haitian sugar--the product of slave labor--that fueled the industrial revolution in Britain and France. Without Haiti there would have been no French Revolution. French bankers and big business alone owe Haiti at $21 billion in reparations for a forced loan that took Haiti 120 years to pay off. Over the past few centuries, the Haitian people have also been punished for having the audacity to overthrow their slave masters.

This heroic country opened its arms to Bolivar, supplying the liberator with two ships and supplies needed to overthrow Spanish colonial rule. The only thing that Haiti asked in return was freedom for all the enslaved people in Latin America.

The United States Government has repeatedly intervened in Haiti. U.S. marines robbed $500,000 from the National Bank of Haiti in 1915. These stolen monies were then deposited in the National City Bank--now part of the trillion dollar Citibank octopus. A U.S. Marine officer assassinated the noble Haitian leader Charlemagne Peralte. At least another 3,250 people were killed.

In the words of James Weldon Johnson--NAACP leader and author of the Black National Anthem--the U.S. occupation of Haiti "...seized men where it could find them, and no able-bodied Haitian was safe from such raids, which most closely resembled the African slave raids of past centuries. And slavery it was, though temporary."

These crimes demand reparations. Instead the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have cutoff aid to Haiti.

The International Action Center demands: Hands off Haiti! Stop the financial embargo of this heroic country!