The UN's Occupation of Haiti:
A Structure of Global Complicity

 by Lorenzo Fiorito

The United Nations Security Council has renewed its military occupation of Haiti for another year. The body met on Oct. 14, 2014 and talked for 25 minutes before renewing the mandate of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) for another year.

Most people across the Americas are unaware that Haiti’s people live today under a UN military occupation, the only one in the Western Hemisphere. They are more likely aware of the recent passing of infamous dictator and president-for-life Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier than of the military force imposed on sovereign Haitian soil.

Duvalier, Haiti’s dictator from 1971 to 1986, died of a heart attack on Oct. 4, 2014. He was ousted by a popular uprising 28 years ago but retained wealth and cronies until his death. Although its spokespeople originally talked of an official state funeral, the neo-Duvalierist regime of President Michel Martelly backed away from the idea on Oct. 10 after it became clear that popular indignation, which still runs deep, would not tolerate such an honor for the dictator.

One week after Baby Doc's last breath, the Campaign to End the Occupation of Haiti (based in Toronto) held an informational picket to highlight the abusive role played by MINUSTAH to ensure a compliant and neoliberal Haiti.

MINUSTAH was charged with keeping order in Haiti following the coup that removed democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004. The coup had its origin in a 2003 meeting just outside of Ottawa with officials from the United States, Canada, and France plotting a post-Aristide Haiti.

MINUSTAH’s abuses against Haitians are legion: sexual assault of minors (for which, among other cases, 111 Sri Lankan soldiers and three officers were repatriated in 2007), political repression directed against rebellious neighborhoods, and extrajudicial murders. UN soldiers shot at men, women, and children, killing dozens, during a violent night-time raid on Jul. 5, 2005. As 41 armored troop carriers penetrated the coup-resisting slum of Cité Soleil, UN troops fired over 22,000 rounds of ammunition.

Adding insult to injury, the world’s worst cholera epidemic – originating in October 2010 at a MINUSTAH base – has thus far killed over 9,200 people and infected over 750,000. MINUSTAH soldiers bearing cholera from Nepal allowed their untreated sewage to flow into the Artibonite River, Haiti’s largest domestic and agricultural water source.

These infuriating truths are symptoms of an underlying power imbalance between Haiti and the world’s neo-colonial powers, principally the U.S., France, and Canada. These three nations proposed and champion the UN force, and MINUSTAH personnel are governed by extraterritoriality agreements, which make it difficult to prosecute foreign troops on Haitian soil. The sense of impunity these troops must feel – carrying a gun, absent any fear of legal consequence, psychologically molded in the global crucible of anti-Black racism – creates a culture of unrestrained disrespect among UN personnel.

Yet even this haphazard structure of terror serves a political and economic purpose. A classified diplomatic cable, revealed by Wikileaks, from U.S. ambassador to Haiti, Janet Sanderson, stated on Oct. 1, 2008 that "a premature departure of MINUSTAH would leave the [Haitian] government...vulnerable to...resurgent populist and anti-market economy political forces – reversing gains of the last two years."

Meanwhile, part of MINUSTAH's mandate is “to support the constitutional and political processes; to assist in organizing, monitoring, and carrying out free and fair municipal, parliamentary and presidential elections." However, the Fanmi Lavalas, Haiti’s largest political party, has been barred from all elections since the 2004 coup. Aristide once led the party and remains its spiritual symbol.

Haiti under Aristide was no longer content to be the world’s sweatshop, providing cheap labor to whomever would bring it capital. Haitians wanted to chart a course away from the neoliberal capitalist economic and social policy framework that had generated so much mass suffering during the Duvalierist and neo-Duvalierist regimes. Aristide was responsive to the people’s demands because they put him in power. He knew their living conditions from working and living as a priest in the capital’s slums during the 1980s.

Sanderson’s cables refer to another aim of the Aristide government: repayment  of the 90 million gold francs (now worth over $22 billion) paid by Haiti to France between 1825 and 1947 as compensation for the slave holders’ loss of property in enslaved Afrikans and land following the Haiti’s 1804 revolution. Aristide's demand for restitution of Haiti’s independence ransom infuriated France and spurred its help in helping to engineer the 2004 coup.

So Aristide was removed, and MINUSTAH moved in. But the Haitian people are unmasking the UN's façade of political neutrality. Duvalier may be dead, but his policies, administrative approach, ministers, and political descendants are alive and a part of the Martelly regime. The Duvalier dictatorship has morphed into an "elected" Martelly regime protected by international "stabilization forces."

Haiti’s ruling class, both foreigners and the local elite, are far removed from Haiti's social realities. They are untouched by the cholera, sexual abuse, and gunfire from the occupation troops and the surrogate Haitian National Police, which are used to keep down Haiti’s population.

The heirs of those whom CLR James called the "Black Jacobins" have another battle to fight. The responsibility for ending Haiti’s occupation is not only theirs, but that of politically engaged people from each country of the world –  Canada among them – represented in MINUSTAH.