TO THE PRESIDENTS OF THE LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES OCCUPYING HAITI

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 20 Oct 2008

Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network

Port-Au-Prince , October 16, 2008

Presidents of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala through their embassies in Haiti,

Since over four years, under the guise of the UN, military forces of Latin American countries under the leadership of Brazil have been occupying Haiti militarily. The arguments justifying their presence are always the same: the military occupation’s goal is to guarantee peace and stability in the country. However, this is far from the truth. Such talk about “humanitarian assistance” and economic aid is not intended to solve the Haitian people’s real basic needs. The real purpose is to defend the rich’s interests, as well as those of U.S. imperialism. Such occupations always result from a power
struggle whose outcome is far from respecting the peoples’ sovereign rights.

The true goal of the occupation in Haiti is to settle that the people here can’t independently debate and emerge with the solutions necessary to solve our own problems. Accordingly, force and repression are necessarily integral parts of such a policy: countless denunciations of assassinations, rapes, blatant violations of our democratic rights have been registered against the occupation forces in the country – all being the direct consequences of military occupation.

This is why we demand that the governments of all Latin American and Caribbean countries sending troops to Haiti  pull out immediately, according to the principle of respect for all peoples’ sovereign rights.

OCCUPATION FORCES, OUT NOW!
HAITIAN PEOPLE’S SOVEREIGN RIGHTS, FORWARD!
DOWN WITH FOREIGN DEBT SERVICES!
WE OWE NOTHING AND WON’T PAY!

Signed,
Yannick Etienne – Batay Ouvriye (Workers Struggle),
Carole Jacob – Haitian Women’s Solidarity (SOFA)
Camille Chalmers – Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA)
Guy Numa – Popular Democratic Movement (MODEP)
Emmanuela Paul – Dessalines University Students’ Association (ASID)

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 20 Oct 2008.

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