The Haitian people are back in the streets, leading a true popular rebellion, defending their right to life and self-determination.
The so-called “international community” debates a new military and police occupation, in addition to its permanent political occupation, arguing the need to control the action of the gangs that it itself manages.
From the International Socialist League, we share the open letter issued by different Haitian organizations to the Secretary General of the UN in the face of the current repressive interventionism in Haiti. We invite you to add your signature in the link below.
Port-au-Prince, September 22, 2022
Mr. Antonio Guterres
Secretary General of the United Nations (UN)
Mr. Secretary General,
The Haitian people in struggle were very surprised and shocked to learn that you have expressed on channel France 24, regarding the current just and legitimate protest movement, a set of false information that tends to confuse, criminalize and discredit the struggle for a sovereign, livable and just Haiti. Contrary to your claims, these popular protests are part of a struggle for a Haiti freed from suffocating foreign interference, from gangsterization, from this manufactured extreme misery and from an anti-national, illegitimate and criminal political regime established by the Core Group, of which The UN is part. This puppet regime that operates under the dictates of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has just struck the people with the decision to increase by more than one hundred percent (128%) the price of oil derivatives that have already suffered, in less of a year, having produced a vertiginous increase that has led to doubling and tripling in some cases, the prices of basic necessities and others. Note that in July 2022, according to data from the Bank of the Republic of Haiti (BRH), the inflation rate has already reached 30.5%. It has already been announced that it will reach more than 50% in November if this rise in the price of oil derivatives continues.
You will agree that accepting this new criminal increase in the prices of oil products is at the same time admitting the doubling of prices that were previously doubled or tripled and thus increasing the ordeal of the suffering Haitian people. This new decision, taken to the detriment of the interests of the people, has aroused their anger and has also intensified a protest movement already underway whose objective is the recovery of our sovereignty, the recovery of Haiti’s destiny in the hands of Haitian men and women, and the establishment by them of a legitimate government capable of defending the interests of the people and facing the various challenges of the moment.
Here is, among other things and briefly, what motivates this general protest movement that ignites the entire country and that takes crowds of revolted citizens the streets everywhere, outraged by the unacceptable actions of a criminal, corrupt power that is supported by the imperialist powers, the Core Group and the UN in particular. So, Mr. Secretary General, you have probably been misinformed.
This is undoubtedly the reason why, very flippantly, you declared on the French channel France 24 that what is currently happening in Haiti is a matter of gangs that have invaded the entire country and that this gang movement is infiltrated by political sectors and business men/women. In doing so, you have completely distorted the reality on the ground and given the exact opposite version of what is happening in real life. The truth is that the gangs in Haiti that are political appendages of the current de facto power, the Core Group -which operate silently and under their command- have tried to infiltrate the popular protest movement, under the orders of their bosses, to confuse you, discredit you and thus provide the international community and you in particular with a pretext to criminalize you.
Contrary to what you have dared to allege without any proof, it is the gangs – whose federation was presented to you as a reducer of homicide cases by Mrs. La Lime, your current special representative – who, prior authorization and prior request, tried to infiltrate the popular mobilization to sow confusion and try to distort it. Fortunately, however, many seasoned observers had already understood the game and have invited the Haitian people to be cautious and, therefore, to take all necessary precautions to avoid this harmful infiltration and its perverse effects.
Mr. Secretary General, your unfounded statement challenges us and leads us to produce a set of relevant questions, namely:
Did your special representative in Haiti, Ms. Helen M. La Lime, who is responsible for briefing you, under-inform you or simply misinform you about what is really going on in Haiti?
Furthermore, do you have a clear awareness of the pernicious role that the UN has played and continues to play in the criminal process of gangsterization in Haiti, questioning respect for the fundamental rights of the Haitian people?
In addition, a very serious fact already underlined in a position taken by various Haitian organizations, the current representative of the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) is considered the instigator of a federation of armed gangs with terrorist practices throughout the country. To be convinced of this, it is enough to refer to your report dated September 25, 2020. Have you measured what the involvement of your special representative in the gang federation scandal represents, in terms of public morals? Gangs that are federated with the purpose of feeding and reinforcing insecurity to the point of chaos.
You also specified that “at the UN level, a plan to strengthen the Haitian National Police (HNP) and send a robust or brutal military force to combat the gangs would be under study.” Mr. Secretary General, the United Nations has been growing its Missions in Haiti since 1993 (UNMIH). Specifically, you should recall the undeniable failure of various UN missions in Haiti over the last eighteen years (2004-2022). Far from helping to improve the situation, they all contributed to making it worse. What we are asking for is not the dispatch of a military Mission but the establishment of an independent Commission of Inquiry responsible for evaluating the concrete results of the various UN Missions already dispatched on the ground and, in particular, the latest one, BINUH, directed by its representative endowed with incomparable cynicism, Helen M. La Lime.
Furthermore, why consider sending a military force to thwart the criminal action of the gangs when we know that the gangs are servants operating under orders, in particular under the orders of the current power, the Core Group and its special representative?
You also stressed, adhering to the infernal logic of the IMF and with the aim of supporting the criminal decision to once again increase the price of oil derivatives, that “the Haitian State should not subsidize oil derivatives but preferably subsidize families.” It is essential to remind you that it was always for the benefit of families that these products were subsidized and when the State, by order of the IMF, is forced to no longer subsidize them, it is unfortunately to the detriment of the interests of these very families that you are talking about.These families that have a fixed monthly income will have to face, as a result of this irresponsible decision, a very complicated, highly precarious and concerning situation.
Under these conditions, how do you expect families to sit idly by in the face of this malicious and ill-timed decision by the illegitimate Prime Minister that penalizes them so terribly?
Do the families or the popular masses in this case need the gangs supported by the UN that massacre them and kidnap them daily to get them off the streets?
To conclude, Mr. Secretary General, we want to assure you that the people, this time, will only leave the streets with the installation of a transitional government elected by the Haitians with a road map, a global program that goes in the direction of satisfying their legitimate claims. This necessarily happens due to the resignation of Ariel Henry, whom you and the other actors of the international anti-Haitian community intend to support at all costs in the criminal work of destabilizing our country, which he carries out to their entire satisfaction.
We, the undersigned organizations, invite you to retract and show respect for the struggle of the Haitian people and repair the enormous wrongs committed against them with their derogatory actions and words. We are also convinced, as was already indicated in the correspondence of last July, that the time has come for relations between Haiti and the United Nations system to be defined on a new basis, given the negative and disastrous results of the Missions of the UN deployed in Haiti since the 1990s.
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