The last time a Haitian president was assassinated, in 1915, US Marines occupied Haiti for 19 years, looted the country’s gold reserve, and backed a military dictatorship that killed an estimated 15,000 Haitians – just one of numerous interventions in the Black Republic by the US to ensure its interests are protected.
Dozens of protesters demonstrated outside the US Department of State offices in Washington, DC, on Thursday against US involvement in Haitian affairs, including the question still being weighed by the Biden administration about whether or not to deploy troops to Haiti, as the government there has requested.
In the aftermath of the July 7 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, who was allegedly slain in his home by a hit squad of 26 Colombian and two American gunmen, the acting government appealed to the United States and United Nations for help. While Washington has sent FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials to Port-au-Prince to evaluate how they can help, it has not yet decided whether it will deploy troops to the island nation, as it has done many times in the past – and often without the consent of the Haitians.
Erica Caines, a member of the coordinating committee of the Black Alliance for Peace and co-editor of the blog Hood Communist, told Sputnik that “regardless of the circumstances around the assassination, we do not want US intervention in Haiti.”
“They’ve been there before the assassination and they’re still there. And we know that most recently, the referendum for the constitution was pushed back, so we do understand that these are all major issues that are going to determine the livelihood of Haitians in Haiti and we’re here to say, unequivocally, that no US intervention and that the Haitian people are allowed and that they have the right to self-determine,” she added.
She pointed to the UN’s decision to recognize Claude Joseph, the former acting prime minister whose replacement was appointed just a day before Moïse’s assassination, as the country’s de facto leader as an example of this meddling.
Arturo Griffiths from the Claudia Jones School for Political Education in Washington, DC, said that the struggles of working-class people in Haiti and in the United States are directly connected, especially since there are so many Haitians working in DC, which is why his organization was protesting outside the State Department.
Indeed, just days after Moïse’s killing, protests erupted in nearby Cuba, where the US has been trying to overthrow the communist government since 1960. There are extremely strong indicators that the US helped orchestrate the demonstrations, which received extensive media attention in strong contrast to the mass demonstrations against Moïse’s government going on in Haiti for months before his death. Those protests, too, demanded the US not intervene in Haitian affairs.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
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