On Dec. 11, close to 50 Haitians demonstrated at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in front of the New York headquarters of the United Nations to condemn foreign meddling and occupation in Haiti and to denounce the patently fraudulent on-going elections.

“Stop the Electoral Coup d’État in Haiti, Supported by Washington and the UN!” said the slogans on flyers the demonstrators distributed to passers-by. “End the UN Military Occupation of Haiti! Martelly Must Go! Haiti Needs New Elections, Truly Free, Fair, and Sovereign!”

In addition to the four hour protest from 1 to 5 p.m., the groups who organized the action took an open letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon “to demand the immediate withdrawal of United Nations troops from Haiti and the cessation of all UN involvement in the so-called elections being carried out under President Michel Martelly.” The occupation force in Haiti is known as the UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH). UN security guards refused to accept the letter or allow the demonstration’s delegation to deliver it. Instead, the letter had to be sent to Ban Ki-moon by certified mail.

The letter was signed by the same groups that organized the action, diaspora-based chapters of the Lavalas Family party (FL), the Dessalines Children Platform (PD), the Dessalines Coordination party (KOD), and the Committee to Support the Homeland (KAKOLA). The four groups were united as the “Haitian 11^th Department Coalition.”

The cordial, working unity of the militants, particularly those of two Lavalas currents which took part in the elections, the FL and PD, was unprecedented. KOD and KAKOLA did not participate in the elections, having predicted that free and fair polling could not be held under Martelly and MINUSTAH. All the groups worked fraternally together to call for genuine elections in Haiti with the a credible popularly-formed transitional government and an end to the occupation. One of the conditions of the unity was that no candidate’s pictures or names be part of signs or slogans.

“We’ve arrived at an unprecedented situation where drug dealers, kidnappers, and criminals are governing Haiti,” said Charlie Mérilus, who took a bus from Boston at 4 a.m. to come to the demonstration. “They function with the assistance of the big powers. Yesterday, we were supposed to be celebrating the day of the Declaration of Universal Human Rights, but the United Nations is violating that charter... We Haitians are the wretched of the earth, a people which is suffering, oppressed, humiliated, and exploited. While we may have thought that the UN was supposed to defend this people, today we see that the UN is an executioner, which represses, kills, and rapes our children in Haiti.”

Speakers included the FL’s Roland Sainristil and the PD’s Eugenia Charles, with a solidarity message from Greg Dunkel of the International Action Center (IAC). Also speaking were prominent activists Minouche Lambert and Fritzner Pierre of the Haitian community group KOMOKODA, which supported the rally.

Below is the letter sent to Ban Ki-moon by the Haitian 11^th Department Coalition.

Dear Mr. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon,

We, Haitians representing a broad coalition of political parties and organizations, are writing you to demand the immediate withdrawal of United Nations troops from Haiti and the cessation of all UN involvement in the so-called elections being carried out under President Michel Martelly.

Both foreign and Haitian observers have denounced the elections of Aug. 9 and Oct. 25 as patently fraudulent, and the Haitian people are in the streets to force the resignation of the current Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) and Martelly's government, to be replaced by a popular transitional government.

Leading candidates of the opposition have demanded that an independent commission be established to review the vote results. The CEP has refused or offered diversionary solutions. Opposition parties have now asked for Martelly's resignation if he does not overhaul the CEP and the police.

The head of the United Nations Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH) Ms. Sandra Honoré has assisted President Martelly's attempted electoral coup d'état by pronouncing the elections held so far as "acceptable." We demand the immediate withdrawal of Ms. Honoré from Haiti, even prior to MINUSTAH's disbanding, and the cessation of her involvement from Haiti's affairs.

In addition, the United Nations has been abetting the Martelly's regime electoral malfeasance by providing support in the domains of transportation (UNOPS), security (MINUSTAH), and financing (UNDP). In mid-November, Antoine Rodon Bien-Aimé and two other candidates for Parliament from President Martelly's own PHTK party (Parti Haïtien Tèt Kale) made dramatic allegations that UN personnel were involved in tampering with ballots.

All of these actions are in violation of the United Nations Charter, Chapter 1, Article 2 which states that: "Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state."

Furthermore, UN peacekeeping troops are only to be deployed, according the Charter's Chapter 7, Article 42 "as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security."

Haiti is not at war nor in conflict with any other nation, and hence the deployment of the MINUSTAH in Haiti is inappropriate and illegal.

The UN's complacency faced with the current situation denotes support for the Martelly regime's use of excessive force and repression to silence the Haitian people and to restrict their right to free expression. These UN-backed fraudulent elections have, as a result, claimed the lives of innocent Haitians and added to political prisoners, hence amounting to another violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Therefore, we call on you and all UN member states to respect and uphold the UN Charter and observe Haiti's right to safeguard its sovereignty.

Finally, your UN occupation troops, now deployed in Haiti for 11 years, introduced cholera into Haiti in October 2010, several scientific studies have proven. The result has been the world's worst cholera epidemic, which has killed close to 10,000 Haitians and sickened close to one million. MINUSTAH's budget must be reallocated to care for current cholera victims and prevent future ones.

As several lawsuits by cholera victims have petitioned, we demand that you and the United Nations admit responsibility for bringing cholera to Haiti, provide compensation and reparations to the victims of your negligence, and invest immediately and massively in the rebuilding and improvement of Haiti's water and sanitation infrastructure, rather that spending millions of dollars yearly to have foreign soldiers wasting gas and resources by riding around Haiti in trucks repressing legitimate protests, sexually assaulting Haitian boys and girls, and, particularly now, assisting electoral travesties.

We call on you to respect the calls of almost all Haitian political parties, the Haitian Catholic Church, the Conference of Haitian Protestant pastors, and Haitian human rights organizations such as the Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organizations (POHDH) and the Réseau National de Defense des Droits Humains (RNDDH), all of which have demanded a thorough review and correction of the results of the most recent elections.

This is not the first time the UN has assisted in undermining a Haitian election. Let us remind you that your MINUSTAH chief Edmund Mulet intervened forcefully in the 2010/2011 elections and facilitated Martelly's illegitimate rise to power.

Mr. Secretary General, your response to this current crisis will determine your personal credibility, and that of the organization you head, in the eyes of the Haitian people, the world, and future generations.

Signed:

James Derosin, Fanmi Lavalas

Eugenia Charles, Pitit Desalin

Berthony Dupont, Kòdinasyon Desalin (KOD)