Joint statement of the Freedom Socialist Party, Corriente Internacional
Revolucionaria and Unidad Internacional de los Trabajadores (en español)
January 27, 2010
The multinational corporations and the governments that caused
the misery must pay for Haiti’s reconstruction!
The tragedy in Haiti has shocked people everywhere. It is feared that there
could be more than 100,000 dead and many more wounded or maimed.
Millions lost their homes and schools and hospitals collapsed. Practically
all the infrastructure in Port-au-Prince was affected.
A week after the earthquake, the help announced by bourgeois
governments has not reached the victims. The people of Port-au-Prince
still face having many of their dead in the streets and the wounded lack
medical attention. Survivors are still without drinking water, food, or a roof.
Meanwhile, for North American imperialism the priority is to consolidate
the military occupation and it has sent thousands more soldiers who have
the support of Latin American governments led by the
Brazilian President “Lula.”
Male and female workers all over the world must immediately stand by the
Haitian people, who need our support to find and heal their wounded,
rebuild their homes, reactivate the production apparatus, and recover
every human being’s basic rights: a job, a good home, education, and
health care.
Colonialism, a more devastating yoke than natural catastrophes
This natural disaster adds to the deadly consequences of hundreds of
years of colonialism. Eighty per cent of all 10 million Haitians live in
extreme poverty. The rate of child mortality is 80 out of 1,000 births. Life
expectancy has decreased to 49 years of age. Illiteracy is higher than
70% in rural areas. Drinking water and electricity are luxury items. Ninety
eight per cent of forests are deforested. Their lands are sterile. Four per
cent of the population controls 64% of the wealth. This is the price that the
owners of capital imposed on this dignified nation, which brought about the
only anti-slavery revolution in the world, and who attained its national
independence at the end of the XVIII century against the French Empire,
before any other Hispanic American nation.
We repudiate the imperialist intervention
We repudiate the conduct of Barack Obama’s administration in the USA
and Nicolas Sarkozy’s in France. They are putting on a show of “solidarity”
but in reality, they are deploying their air and naval military forces instead
of taking care of the population’s true problems. Imperialism’s first priority
is military occupation, thus expanding MINUSTAH (foreign soldiers
sponsored by the UN). They are looking to impede the Haitian people to
be the architects of their own destiny.
Five years of U.N. military occupation have only permitted repression
against the protests of the Haitian masses based on fair demands. An
example is the demand for a salary increase in recent months, led by
students and workers. Also, the MINUSTAH have been known to
permanently violate human rights. On December 22, 2006, the MINUSAH
forces opened fire against demonstrators and killed 30 persons including
women and children. In May 2008, the Haitian Congress passed a law to
increase the minimum salary from two to five dollars per day. The
national oligarchy and President René García Preval’s government
opposed this law, which was approved by the legislative powers. Bosses
threatened to fire close to 25,000 workers in the manufacturing sector. A
group of university students and Haitian organizations mobilized in support
of the workers. Local police intervened, along with the MINUSTAH,
repressing the protests brutally. In June of the same year, after the death
of a local political leader, hundreds of people attended his burial. Men
from the MINUSTAH opened fire against the funerary cortege, killing and
wounding many more people.
We denounce the maneuvers of the super powers and their puppet
governments for taking advantage of the current calamity to increase their
military occupation of Haiti, with the excuse of offering humanitarian aid.
We demand the immediate departure of all foreign forces that are now
occupying that small and ailing country.
Payments of foreign debt must be suspended in order to pay for the
reconstruction
If the foreign governments that occupy Haiti really wanted to assist that
country, they would turn their military expenses into humanitarian aid.
Also, they would forgive Haiti’s gigantic foreign debt, as well as that of
other Latin American countries, and they would use it for reconstruction.
We appeal to President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, President Raúl
Castro of Cuba, President Evo Morales of Bolivia, President Rafael Correa
of Ecuador– and to all of Latin American governments–to suspend their
foreign debt payments and to use those funds for food, medicine, housing,
and the reconstruction of Haiti.
Solidarity with the Haitian nation
The support must be channeled and delivered directly to the Haitian
population through genuine and legitimate organizations and not through
any pro-imperialist intermediaries, much less through Preval’s government,
his NGO’s or the MINUSTAH occupation forces.
Those in charge of the key aspects of our (the signers of this statement)
solidarity work will be committees of workers and the people instituted in
each one of our nations including unions and popular and student
organizations. It is our purpose to start contact with Haitian organizations
and those in the Dominican Republic who are performing independent and
autonomous solidarity action.
Labor confederacies, labor unions as well as peasant, neighborhood, and
youth organizations can create assemblies to discuss the serious
situation of this Caribbean nation and to vote for aid measures and against
the imperialist occupation.
We also appeal to the global revolutionary movement to perform
these tasks and to help rebuild independent grassroots
organizations as an alternative to the decadent power structure of
the Haitian privileged classes and occupation forces.
We call on leftist organizations in Haiti to encourage democratic
organizing among workers, students, youth, women, peasants and the
masses, in order to face the consequences from the earthquake. If they
are democratically organized at the grassroots level, and centralized at the
national level, they could channel the resources that arrive in Haiti from all
over the world and they could even gain the capacity to alleviate their
country’s national problems.
Our Call for Justice for Haiti
We demand the pardoning of Haiti’s foreign and internal debt. The
money spent on Haiti’s military occupation and the foreign and
internal debt must be used for solidarity and for the reconstruction
of Haiti!
We demand that the world’s labor federations allocate financial and
human resources to solidarity with Haiti!
We demand the Dominican government grant work visas to Haitian
immigrant workers and to recognize their children’s Dominican
citizenship!
No more deportations of undocumented Haitian immigrants!
Troops of MINUSTAH, Yankees, and other imperialist countries
OUT NOW!
We demand respect for the sovereignty of the Haitian nation!
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