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Features
Let Haiti be Haiti
Jacques Depelchin
2010-01-14, Issue 465
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/61425
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There are 9 comments on this article.
To all those who have lost loved ones, please accept our most sincere condolences. Our deepest sympathies to the entire Haitian population and in particular to those who, prior to the earthquake were already suffering too much, simply because they were continuing a struggle started more than two centuries ago. To those who departed, we wish them eternal peace and the most warm welcome by the Creator and the ancestors.
We would like to express our solidarity for Haiti a country where, from 1791 to 1804, Africans unchained themselves in the name of fidelity to humanity. Africans, ahead of their time, had then given a lesson to those who usually assigned themselves that role, self-proclaimed revolutionaries of a revolution, we are told, prepared by the philosophers of the Enlightenment. But as Louis Sala-Molins amply demonstrated in Le Code Noir, not a single philosopher ever uttered a word on the Black Code, launched in 1685 and terminated in 1848.
The destructions caused by nature are little compared by those created, inflicted, calculated, distilled by the godfathers of a system which has become today so predatory that the biological and ideological descendants (of the enslavers), as if on automatic pilot, can do no better than react through charitable gestures orchestrated by a deformed conscience dominated by a mindset sharpened by the constant search of ways to rape humanity, while giving it the impression of loving it.
In the coming days, the suffering from the consequences of the destruction caused by nature will bury even deeper those caused by the predators and their admirers. But the fidelity to the truth that ‘tout le monde est monde’ shall always be stronger than forgetfulness. That kind of fidelity does not satiate its thirst from the crocodile tears poured by media correspondents who rehash statistical tables accumulated by humanitarian organisations whose task is to cover up the outcomes of a crime against humanity by empathising on the fate of ‘the poorest country of the planet’. That fidelity has resisted, is resisting and shall resist against the most brutal and softest forms of torture, imagined by those who in the name of capital’s liberty, are programming the slow liquidation of humanity.
The same press correspondents, with tears in their eyes, point out Haiti’s ‘political instability’ while refusing to get into the root causes, direct and indirect, for if they were to dig further into such causes, they would have to recognise that, in Haiti, despite the reverses, fidelity to the values of liberty, equality, fraternity continues as vibrant as ever.
In the face of such immeasurable tragedy, Haiti can best heal by being whole again. President Jean Bertrand Aristide must be allowed to go back among his compatriots. For it is in the face of such a tragedy that one must call for solidarity to rise above political and ideological divisions and cleavages. Haiti has suffered more than its share. It deserves to be whole again and it deserves the most generous gestures of solidarity as a Nation. Let all of its members get back together to rebuild their lives. How far shall one let Haiti bleed?
It is difficult, in the forthcoming days and weeks, not to ask those organisations which wrap themselves in humanitarian clothes in order to avoid fidelity to humanity, to let us know of the fate of Pierre-Antoine Lovinsky who had been kidnapped for calling with persistence for the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS
* Jacques Depelchin is co-founder of Otabenga Alliance for Peace, Healing and Dignity in the DRCongo.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.
Readers' Comments
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Those who need a brief/crash course on the History of the gallant people of Haiti can contact me at michaelwilliamsa AT yahoo DOTcom. I will send you news, views, historical pieces and day to day alternative readings on Haiti. Information which CNN, BBC, NBC and the rest of the Western media does not cover.
Michael, Friend of Haiti
Thank you for the article Mr. Jacques Depelchin. We are those Haitians who have been struggling with occupation before Jan 14, 2010 when the US came out from behind the UN coattails to show its real hand. Those who wish to know the truth about Haiti, may go to Ezili/HLLN's website. All info on our advocacy is under the "law" menu up top. For current articles not on the website yet because we are coordinating Haitian-led, Haitian capacity building relief with dignity and human rights, please goole: Ezili Danto blog. Read letter to Farmer but especially "We are the Haitians : From the womb to the tomb our lives is about struggle. Feel free to repost. Donate to our relief fund which is on the front page of ezilidanto.com . We need an army of the Black woman's children to stand against Leopold's new ventures in Haiti bringing death, destruction and domination. Please do not let us stand alone.
Ezili Dantò,
Pitit Ginen depi lan Ginen and
Pres. Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
(HLLN)
Ezili Danto
This recent article "Haiti - a history of intervention, occupation and resistance" may also be of interest to readers here. http://anarchism.pageabode.com/andrewnflood/haiti-history-slave-intervention-occupation-resistance
Jonathan, ZACF
Please let us hear more about the history of Haiti. I have looked at the pictures and the people of Haiti look just like us here in Africa. Their social economic situation appears to be much worse than that of many African countries. What led to this situation. And this 21 Billion levied by Franch for losing Haiti, who paid for it? Why was it paid? Lets hear more please
Nyambura Kithaka
For those seeking to know more about the situation in Haiti, there is a very good analysis and statement (which in part takes a similar tone to the article above) on the recent earthquake here: http://www.anarkismo.net/article/15497
Another two very informative articles on Haiti, including its history, are to be found here: http://www.anarkismo.net/article/14980
and here: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/88040
Jonathan, ZACF
I would greatly appreciate some brief historical background of Haiti beginning with the slave trade to the current devastating earthquake. What I have so far gathered are snippets of information that do not add up to something coherent. Given that the population there is as predominantly African as can be found in any Sub Saharan African country, I am wondering what African governments think of the country and if we had followed Nkrumah's vision for a united Africa, what the position of Haiti in this vision would have been.
ActionAid Kenya
"The fidelity to the truth that ‘tout le monde est monde’ shall always be stronger than forgetfulness. That kind of fidelity does not satiate its thirst from the crocodile tears poured by media correspondents who rehash statistical tables accumulated by humanitarian organisations whose task is to cover up the outcomes of a crime against humanity by empathising on the fate of ‘the poorest country of the planet’. That fidelity has resisted, is resisting and shall resist against the most brutal and softest forms of torture, imagined by those who in the name of capital’s liberty, are programming the slow liquidation of humanity."
Well said. Thank you. Also, happy to see the progressive action plan for Haiti posted here by Ms. Patel.
teachergirl
1) Grants, not loans.
2) Keep corporations and corporatist policies OUT. Stop disaster capitalism in its tracks.
3) Cancel ALL Haiti's debt to the Inter-American Development Bank.
4) Let Aristide return to Haiti.
5) Lift the ban on Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas political party.
6) Rip up the neoliberal pre-earthquake Clinton-Obama program for Haiti: tourism, sweatshops, privatization, deregulation.
7) Do not allow US military or UN "peacekeepers" to point guns at desperate Haitians.
8) Allow all Haitians in the US to work, and remit money home.
9) Release all 30,000 Haitians held in US jails for deportation, and grant them Temporary Protected Status.
10) Demand that France start repaying the $21 billion it extorted from Haiti in 1825, to "compensate" France for loss of Haiti as a slave colony.
Shailja Patel
Thank you for enlightening us! These past days, I have thought what have Haitians done to deserve this... and kept telling myself that these humanitarian organizations should stop shedding crocodile tears, and let Haiti be Haiti, coz all Haiti is asking is to be whole again.
Could you please make a brief article on the history of Haiti after JB Aristide was elected? to refresh us?
Georgia Tech University