Wednesday, February 17, 2010
 (One day from "A Chronology of Haitian Protest and Resistance since the Earthquake")
A resource produced by Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade

 

Angry demonstrators demand Sarkozy to pay up and return Aristide to Haiti
by Kevin Pina

Watch Video (4:05)


Port au Prince, Haiti - HIP — Thousands of supporters of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide took to the streets on Wednesday as French president Nicolas Sarkozy toured the earthquake ravaged capital of Port au Prince. Holding pictures of the ousted president aloft they chanted for France to pay more then 21 billion dollars in restitution and reparations and to return Aristide as Sarkozy's helicopter landed near Haiti's quake damaged national palace. ...

 

 

 

Angry demonstrators demand Sarkozy to pay up and return
Aristide to Haiti

By Kevin Pina

 

Haiti Information Project,
February 18, 2010

Source

Thousands of supporters of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide took to the streets on Wednesday as French president Nicolas Sarkozy toured the earthquake ravaged capital of Port au Prince. Holding pictures of the ousted president aloft they chanted for France to pay more then 21 billion dollars in restitution and reparations and to return Aristide as Sarkozy's helicopter landed near Haiti's quake damaged national palace. Their demands stem from a long held dispute over compensation a nascent Haiti was forced to pay French slave owners in exchange for recognition of their independence and France's role in ousting Aristide in 2004....

Before his tour of the destruction in Haiti's capital and during an address to Haitian dignitaries, French president Sarkozy offered $400 million dollars in emergency assistance, reconstruction funds, and support for the Haitian government's operating budget. This was in addition to France's earlier decision to cancel Haiti's debt of $77 million dollars.
 
Paulette Joseph, a member of the Lavalas Mobilization Commission and one of the organizers of the demonstration responded, "That's great that Sarkozy has come to give France's support to the Haitian people in this difficult moment after the terrible earthquake that killed so many of our people and now forces us to live in greater misery."

 

Joseph continued, "But $477 million dollars doesn't even come close to the damage France inflicted upon Haiti before the earthquake.  We were suffering from poverty before this crisis as a result of the debt Haiti was forced to pay the slave masters to recognize our independence. If our country is not equipped to handle this crisis and we are suffering more after the earthquake it is a direct result of that debt."

 

 

"We need Aristide to return!" shouted demonstrators as Haitian president Preval made a rare appearance on the lawn in front of Haiti's destroyed seat of government following Sarkozy's visit.

Waving photos of Aristide they also began chanting,
"If Aristide were here he would be suffering along with us!" as Preval turned his back on the crowd and withdrew to his luxury jeep amid tight security.

 

 



Manifestation
[Protest]
Pro-Aristide
 

Le Nouvelliste
(Haitian Newspaper)

View Video (2:29)

 

[Note: This protest occurred outside the Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince February 17, 2010.]

 
 

Mass protests greet Sarkozy visit to Haiti

By Alex Lantier

World Socialist Web Site, February 19, 2010 

Source

 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy traveled for a one-day visit to Haiti on February 17, amid rising popular opposition to the Western-backed Préval government and international tensions over how to rebuild the country. ...

 

Sarkozy, the first French head of state ever to visit Haiti, was greeted with street protests by thousands of Haitians demanding the return of elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ousted by a US- and French-backed coup in 2004, Aristide was flown to the Central African Republic, a former French colony. Aristide now lives in exile in South Africa. President René Préval, a former prime minister under Aristide in the 1990s, came to power in 2006 in elections supervised by the provisional government of Boniface Alexandre that was installed by the coup.

 

Préval tried to address the crowd outside the presidential palace. However, crowds shouted him down, and Préval left in a luxury Jeep, surrounded by bodyguards.

 

Protesters held pictures of Aristide aloft and demanded that Sarkozy repay $21 billion paid to France by Haiti, a former French slave colony. In 1825 warships under the orders of France’s King Charles X—soon to be toppled by the 1830 revolution—forced Haiti to repay 90 million gold francs in exchange for its freedom. In 1794 France's revolutionary government had acknowledged the overthrow of slavery in Haiti by the slave army under the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture. The armed ex-slaves repulsed Napoleon's military expedition of 1803, which aimed to restore them to slavery, and subsequently declared the independence of Haiti in 1804.

The ransom paid to Charles X, the equivalent of $21.7 billion today, devastated Haiti’s economy and took 122 years to repay. In comparison, it is estimated that the post-earthquake reconstruction of Haiti will cost $14 billion....

[Note and photo credit: A French translation of this article was published in Haïti Liberté (3 au 9 mars 2010).  The photo above appeared in that publication.]

 

 

Members of a social organization protest near the Presidential Palace during a visit by France's President Nicolas Sarkozy in Port-au-Prince February 17, 2010. Sarkozy arrived in earthquake-hit Haiti on Wednesday to support international relief efforts there in the first visit by a French head of state to the former French Caribbean colony.

Source

 

A man holds up a placard during a protest against the official visit by France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, outside the damaged Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince, February 17, 2010.

...

The placard reads,
"Down with Preval,
down with Sarkozy,
down with the government, incompetents".

Source

A woman yells slogans as residents protest during an official visit by France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, outside the damaged Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince, February 17, 2010.

Sarkozy arrived in earthquake-hit Haiti on Wednesday to support international relief efforts there in the first visit by a French head of state to the former French Caribbean colony.

Source

 
A woman yells slogans during a protest against the official visit by France's President Nicolas Sarkozy outside the damaged Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince February 17, 2010.
 

REUTERS/
Carlos Barria
 

Visit Source

Residents protest during an official visit by France's President Nicolas Sarkozy to the damaged Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince February 17, 2010. ...

REUTERS/
Carlos Barria

Visit Source

 

 

Scenes from Haiti, Six Weeks After (part II)
By Kim Ives
Haiti Liberte, March 3 - 9, 2010
 
At the Champ de Mars' [tent settlement] southwest entrance is a small windowless concrete bunker that houses the office - really just a bare cinder-block room - for the park's security and maintenance crew. Junior Mercifreres, 35, an earnest and intense man with dread locks, has pitched his tent on the steps just behind the bunker. He lives in it with his wife and two young children. He was able to snag this choice spot because he is one of the park's guardians. Now Junior lives exactly seven paces from his "office."
 
On his tent, under plastic, is taped a large picture of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who remains in exile in South Africa almost six years after the Feb. 29, 2004 U.S.-backed coup d'état that deposed him.

"After God, it's Aristide who guides us," Junior explains. He talks about the demonstration held in front of the crumpled National Palace on Feb. 17 when French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Haiti for a few hours. Several hundred demonstrators called for Sarkozy to honor Aristide's 2003 request that France restitute Haiti $21.7 billion for the 90 million gold francs France extorted from Haiti between 1825 to 1947. Instead, Sarkozy offered about $447 million in aid and debt cancellation. His gesture didn't appease Junior.

 
"If Aristide was here, Sarkozy wouldn't be able to come like that; there would have been conditions," Junior said. "The French stole from us. They took all our labor and our natural resources and then on top of that, they made us pay for our independence. Today they don't want to pay that back. If they paid the restitution and reparations that Aristide asked for, we wouldn't need the pittance of aid they are offering. Instead of giving reparations, they gave Aristide a coup."
 
The demonstrators' other principal call was for Aristide's return. Despite President René Préval's election in Feb. 2006 (thanks to the base of Aristide's Lavalas Family party) and Barack Obama's election in Nov. 2008, neither president has made any move to facilitate Aristide's return.
 
"If Aristide returned, that would be a second earthquake for Haiti because it would be a deliverance for us," Junior says. "He is the number one leader for Haitians. Others might come along later and develop, but for the moment, it's Jean Bertrand Aristide."

 

Apprendre la leçon des colonisés!
 [Learn the lesson of the colonized!]
Haïti Liberté, 24 février au 2 mars 2010

[Rough translation]
Lavalas activists have taken over the initiative to launch an initiative for the restitution of over 21 billion dollars from the U.S. and France and for the return of President Aristide...

Indeed, hundreds of demonstrators assembled at the National Palace, with posters and photos in hand...  Slogans outside the National Palace were very clear and distinct.   "Vive Restitution!  Reparation!  Vive the return of Jean Bertrand Aristide to Haiti!"...

While the French Parliament recognized, in 2002, that slavery is a crime against humanity, nothing has been done by the French government to redress the wrongs, and to try to heal the terrible wounds inflicted on this race of men during two centuries of criminal history. The crumbs offered by France in times of major disasters are nothing compared to demands for "return and reparations"....  President Aristide and the experts who measured the total amount that France must pay in restitution to Haiti, calculated in 2003 that it was more than 21 billion.... The colonialists and slave traders of today must pay the price for the suffering, humiliation, exile, misery and death....  [I]n their immeasurable misery, Haitians yearn to fight for the repair of historic wrongs.

The message of the people must be more assertive, acting in a collective will to fight. The Haitian people should not follow the path of those who endorse major social ills and refuse to open the dark pages of history to sunshine and to release the truths that lie dormant. Today it is time for colonisers to learn their lessons from the colonized!

 







 

 

Source

 

Sarkozy visits Haiti, unveils major aid package

February 17, 2010

By Pascal Fletcher
Source

 

In a sprawling tent city housing thousands of quake survivors in front of the palace, a group of demonstrators, supporters of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, staged a protest against Preval's government and against the French president's visit.

 

Ni restitution, ni réparation

Le Nouvelliste, February 26, 2010
By Frantz Duval

Source
 

Il y a eu une manifestation de quelques centaines de partisans de Jean Bertrand Aristide devant le palais national que visitaient Sarkozy et René Préval le président haïtien, et une attente muette d'un tournant dans les relations entre Haïti et la France.

 

Même ceux qui ont conduit ou soutenu la bataille de la France contre Aristide en 2004, espéraient une image forte, un engagement significatif.

 

Cela n'est pas venu.

 

Les trois centaines de millions d'euros annoncées ne font pas le poids. Ce ne sera ni la restitution, ni la réparation. Rien que quelques notes dans la valse des millions qui berce le malheur des Haïtiens depuis le tremblement de terre meurtrier du 12 janvier 2010. 

     

 La façon dont le président Sarkozy a détourné une question sur le sujet en indiquant que la France a effacé la dette d'Haïti, comme pour demander qu'Haïti en fasse de même, a provoqué un rire jaune. Deux pays aussi imbriqués l'un dans l'autre depuis quatre cents ans et une dette de 56 millions d'euros, cela n'éclaire que le peu d'intérêt que la France a en Haïti, pour Haïti.

 

Wednesday, February 17, 2010
 (One day from "A Chronology of Haitian Protest and Resistance since the Earthquake")
A resource produced by Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade