{"id":144420,"date":"2019-10-07T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2019-10-07T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=144420"},"modified":"2019-11-19T10:55:10","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T10:55:10","slug":"why-haitians-are-protesting-en-masse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/10\/why-haitians-are-protesting-en-masse\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Haitians Are Protesting En Masse"},"content":{"rendered":"

30 Sep 2019 – Mass protests in Haiti have reached a fever pitch. Their target: the country’s venal political class and its self-serving, US-backed president.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

President of Haiti Jovenel Mo\u00efse addresses the United Nations General Assembly on September 27, 2018 in New York City.
John Moore \/ Getty<\/p><\/div>\n

An Associated Press<\/em> photographer and a security guard\u00a0were both injured<\/a>\u00a0when a Haitian senator pulled out a gun and started firing outside the parliament this week. Suddenly news outlets around the world remembered Haiti. The \u201cif it bleeds it leads\u201d adage was proven right once again.<\/p>\n

But the Haitian people have been bleeding for years now.<\/p>\n

The shooting was just one more incident in a crisis that arguably\u00a0began long before President Jovenel Mo\u00efse took office<\/a>\u00a0in February 2017. The only notable difference on September 23 was that the victim worked for a foreign news agency.<\/p>\n

Haitian journalists, demonstrators, and bystanders have been shot, beaten, and arrested in the capital during\u00a0the fourteen months of on-again, off-again anti-government protests that have wracked the country<\/a>. But in August, a three-week gasoline shortage \u2014 caused because the government, which purchases gas on behalf of distributors,\u00a0owes suppliers<\/a>\u00a0$100 million \u2014 led to outrage.<\/p>\n

Since September 16, the capital of Port-au-Prince has been mostly \u201clocked down\u201d \u2014 in Creole, the saying is\u00a0l\u00f2k <\/em>\u2014 with schools, banks, and businesses mostly closed. Cars, trucks, and motorcycle taxis seeking gas blocked roads, angry crowds pelted drivers with rocks, and protestors blocked streets with burning tires or some of the tons of uncollected garbage lining most of the city streets.\u00a0Alterpresse<\/a><\/em>\u00a0reported that at least five people, including a young man shot in the neck by police officers, were killed in protest-related incidents during the first three days of that week alone.<\/p>\n

Some gas has been delivered, but protests have continued, with attacks on politicians and ministers almost commonplace. The senator who shot up the yard outside parliament, Jean-Marie Ralph Fethi\u00e8re, claimed he pulled out his pistol because he was being rushed by opposition protesters. Since then, angry crowds have allegedly torched the clinic of\u00a0another senator and carjacked a government minister\u2019s vehicle as she left a swank hotel<\/a>\u00a0in the hills above the capital.<\/p>\n

And last week, hundreds of protesters\u00a0sacked<\/a>\u00a0the office of the deputy representing the port city of St Marc, denouncing the country\u2019s 19 percent inflation and generalized corruption, as well as demanding the president<\/a> step down. They dragged furniture, a file cabinet, and papers into the street and torched them.<\/p>\n

Uprising a Long Time Coming<\/strong><\/p>\n

The country has been in a state of almost constant upheaval \u2014 or more accurately, \u201cuprising<\/a>\u201d \u2014 for over a year. Starting in July 2018\u00a0thousands have repeatedly marched in the capital<\/a>\u00a0and in many smaller cities to demand the president step down.<\/p>\n

Originally sparked by the government\u2019s\u00a0announcement<\/a>\u00a0that it was going to cease subsidizing gas and diesel and thus add to the already-crushing poverty, angry marchers soon also focused on a massive corruption scandal involving members of the previous and current government, including the president.<\/p>\n

Journalists, human rights groups, and a state auditing body have all issued hundreds of pages of reports documenting how up to\u00a0$2 billion<\/a>\u00a0from the Venezuelan fuel assistance program PetroCaribe\u00a0has been diverted<\/a>\u00a0into politicians\u2019 pockets. Fed up with the corruption, in the summer of 2018, first one activist and then hundreds and then thousands began to protest, hold press conferences, and organize against the government as part of\u00a0what has become known as the\u00a0\u201cPetroChallenger\u201d<\/a>\u00a0movement.<\/p>\n

Listening to news radio in the capital, it appears that PetroCaribe money is not the only illicit cash circulating, among parliamentarians at least. Every day on the air, elected officials sling accusations of kickbacks and graft at one another. More recently, several senators even admitted to taking $100,000 bribes in exchange for a \u201cyes\u201d vote to approve the president\u2019s proposed prime minister, Fritz-William Michel, who is also among the accused. Last week a coalition of human rights groups\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0a list of Michel\u2019s agriculture and fisheries projects and claimed\u00a0he was at \u201cthe head of a corruption machine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even the staid Chamber of Commerce of the West \u2014 which represents businesses in the capital region and typically measures its words so as not to impact its members\u2019 profits \u2014 recently denounced the president and other officials, albeit cryptically. In a note\u00a0published on September 13<\/a>,<\/u>\u00a0the Chamber said it was \u201calarmed\u201d at the \u201cineptitude\u201d of the president, various prime ministers, ministers, and parliamentarians in their \u201cuse public funds in an \u2018unusual manner\u2019\u201d while they \u201cleave the population to fend for itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The recent gas shortage further escalated the ongoing protests. The desperate situation also caused at least two deaths: a motorcycle driver and his female companion, transporting a container full of gasoline on the bike, were burned to death after colliding with a truck. The morbid video, which showed a blackened dead man and a dying, writhing woman, circulated on WhatsApp for hours accompanied by comments all asking a variation of \u201cWhat\u2019s next?\u201d<\/p>\n

So, when a majority party senator pulled out a pistol and started firing earlier this week, it was nothing but the latest chapter in the drama.<\/p>\n

After\u00a0a month of silence<\/a>, President Mo\u00efse finally addressed the nation on September 25, two days after the shooting. But he did so at 2 AM, when almost everyone is asleep \u2014 not to mention when few have electricity. In his fifteen-minute address,\u00a0Mo\u00efse called for a \u201ctruce\u201d and \u201cgovernment of national unity,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0but offered nothing else that would address the multifaceted crisis, nor did he appear ready to step down.<\/p>\n

And so, as soon as the sun came up, so did the barricades. Port-au-Prince was l\u00f2k\u00a0again.<\/p>\n

Clinging to Power<\/strong><\/p>\n

Haiti has seen its share of upheaval, but never a president who lasted this long in the face of such dire conditions, according to Haitian human rights advocate Marie Yol\u00e8ne Gilles.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt my age, I\u2019ve seen a lot of crises,\u201d Gilles, fifty-nine, explained. \u201cThis is the worst I have ever seen. This is the first time I\u2019ve seen a completely ungoverned country. All of the state institutions are sick.\u201d<\/p>\n

The director of the human rights advocacy group\u00a0Je Klere Foundation<\/a>, Gilles is no stranger to political unrest, violent coups d\u2019\u00e9tats, and foreign occupations. A former journalist, she remembers the end of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986, the fall of interim governments, and two coups against Haiti\u2019s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in 1991 and 2004.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first time I\u2019ve seen a president successfully cling to power like this,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cEven though people are dying, people are disappearing, people are suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like many Haitians, she blames the United States, which has been implicated in Haitian politics and in propping up or helping bring down governments in Port-au-Prince since the nineteen-year occupation by US Marines beginning in 1915.<\/p>\n

Last January at the Organization of American States,\u00a0Haiti voted with the United States<\/a>\u00a0against its longtime former benefactor, Venezuela\u2019s Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. The resolution said the body did not recognize the Maduro government, noting it was concerned \u201cabout the worsening political, economic, social and humanitarian crisis\u201d and \u201cthe breakdown of democratic order and serious human rights violations.\u201d It was part of a gambit to legitimize opposition leader Juan Guaid\u00f3\u2019s\u00a0claim to power<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The vote was a quid pro quo, according to Gilles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe US is supporting Mo\u00efse because of the vote against Venezuela,\u201d she noted.<\/p>\n

Whether or not the vote is a main reason, it is clear to any Haiti observer that Mo\u00efse \u2014 who came to power in races\u00a0where only about 21 percent<\/a>\u00a0of the population even bothered voting \u2014 has remained in office only because of the support of Washington and its partners.<\/p>\n

And, not surprisingly, the US-dominated OAS has yet to meet officially about the Haitian crisis \u2014although there was a secretive and unofficial US-led trip<\/a>\u2014even though conditions on the ground are pretty close to the circumstances decried in the January resolution on Venezuela.<\/p>\n

Haiti is clearly in the midst of a \u201cbreakdown of democratic order\u201d and \u201chumanitarian crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than half the population is \u201cchronically food insecure and 22 percent of children chronically malnourished,\u201d\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to the World Food Program. Institutions like the judicial system and public hospitals are barely functional.\u00a0The National Police has been accused<\/a>\u00a0in connection with numerous cases of brutality, including the November 2018\u00a0\u201cLa Saline Massacre<\/a>,<\/a>\u201d<\/a>\u00a0which included multiple rapes and the torture and murder of at least twelve people. And the word\u00a0\u201cchaos\u201d<\/a>\u00a0appears in more and more news stories.<\/p>\n

Washington Is the \u201cBwa Bannan\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Photographer Georges Harry Rouzier, thirty-five, has been following the PetroChallenger movement. He said that he and his generation, who came of age around after the devastating January 2010 earthquake, used to have hope for the future, especially when they heard all the reconstruction-related promises from foreign donors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought we were on the verge of a new era,\u201d he remembered. \u201cIt would be a new start.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ten years later, with parts of the capital in worse shape than they were after the disaster that killed tens of thousands, and after months of protests and denunciations have brought no change, he is fed up.<\/p>\n

So long as we have parliamentarians who are only looking out for their own interests, the country will not advance,\u201d Rouzier said.\u00a0\u201cWe have bad policies and we have politicians who play on the population\u2019s ignorance and who are in power just to make as much money as they can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Gilles, Rouzier also blames the Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can anyone look at our situation and not see the misery in the streets?\u201d he asked. \u201cIt\u2019s clear \u2014 they wanted Maduro to fall but they want [Mo\u00efse] to stay in power.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his presidential campaign, Mo\u00efse was known as\u00a0N\u00e8g Banann\u00a0<\/em>or \u201cThe Banana Man,\u201d because he headed a banana export business, also implicated in the PetroCaribe scandal.<\/p>\n

As any banana grower in Haiti knows, every banana tree needs a\u00a0bwa banann <\/em>\u2014 a piece of wood holding the tree up as it gets heavy with fruit.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody supports Mo\u00efse \u2014 not the people. He came to power without popular support,\u201d Rouzier said. \u201cBut he has the US as his bwa banann, so he stays in power.\u201d<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/p>\n

Republished from <\/em>NACLA<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

Jane Regan is award-winning investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker, and community and alternative media scholar. She co-launched and then served as coordinator and executive editor of three community- and student-based newsrooms: one in Somerville, Mass., and two in Haiti, where she lived and worked for almost half of her thirty-five-year career. <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 jacobinmag.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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