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01/27/2006:

"Haiti: A coup regime, human rights abuses and the hidden hand of Washington"

In a June 2005 Jamaica Observer column about the significance of the Haitian revolution, John Maxwell wrote, “the slaves of Saint Dominique, the world’s richest colony, rose up, abolished slavery and chased the slavemasters away.” Maxwell, one of the more astute journalists covering US foreign policy, added, “Unfortunately for them, they did not chase all of the slavemasters away, and out of the spawn of those arose in Haiti a small group of rich, light-skinned people – the elites, whose interests have fitted perfectly into the interests of the racists in the United States. Between them, last year, on the second centenary of the abolition of slavery and the Independence of Haiti, those interests engineered the re-inslavement of Haiti, kidnapping and expelling the president and installing in his place a gang of murderous thugs, killers, rapists and con-men.”

Vehement opponents of Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas party, the Bush Administration helped orchestrate the February 2004 coup which ousted the democratically-elected government of Haiti. Among other pro-poor social programs, the Aristide/Lavalas government’s doubling of the minimum wage was anathema to Washington’s “free trade” corporate agenda.
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