November 18th, 2024
Please join Haiti Action Committee to condemn the Biden administration’s relations with gangs/death squads in Haiti who rape women, kidnap, massacre people and destroy entire neighborhoods
Contact your House Representative and your Senators
- Tell them to Stop the flow of US weapons to Haiti and the Financing and Support for gangs/death squads
- Tell them to Oppose US Intervention in Haiti and the Financing/ Support of Foreign Occupation
- Tell them to Stop the Deportation and persecution of Haitian Refugees in the US and in the Americas
Nearly 220 years ago, on November 18th, 1804, Haitian revolutionaries under the command of the legendary General Dessalines fought against the French army sent to restore slavery. A courageous Haitian commander, Francois Capoix, exemplified bravery by charging a fortification in the face of massive cannon and gunfire. Napoleon’s army was finally defeated in this Battle of Vertieres, securing Haiti’s independence. Today, marking this anniversary, join forces with the Haitian people and their allies throughout the world in demanding an end to US intervention and foreign occupation.
The US government, the main purveyor of the violence in Haiti, is now engaged in a series of deceptions. While the Biden Administration has been playing a lead role in mobilizing and financing an expanded foreign occupation of Haiti– including the deployment of Kenyan police– in order to allegedly combat “gangs,” the Administration has not stopped the flow of US weapons into the hands of these paramilitaries. While the US has put out a reward for the capture of “gang leaders,” in early October 2024, it has been widely reported inside of Haiti that US ambassador Dennis Hankins has been secretly meeting with Jimmy Cherizier, aka “Barbecue,” head of the largest paramilitary (“gang”) alliance, Viv Ansam, at the US embassy in Haiti. International media and US religious figures have also recently met with “Barbecue” and other paramilitary leaders when their whereabouts are supposedly unknown so that these leaders cannot be apprehended. Haitians are condemning these secret meetings which appear to have emboldened Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier and the death squads in committing more brazen atrocities at the same time as police and intervention forces are standing down.
While this charade continues, the impoverished majority population is being subjected to relentless massacres perpetrated by paramilitaries. These death squads are financed by members of Haiti’s upper class heavily armed by major weapons flowing into Haiti from Florida. The death squads attack the popular neighborhoods of the poor that are bases of pro-democratic grassroots activism, such as Site Soley, Belé, Solino, Fo Nasyonal, Lasalin, where they massacre people of all ages and burn houses down, forcing a massive exodus. In one neighborhood alone, over 1500 women have been subjected to rape and sexual violence in just the past few months. Death squads have perpetrated these crimes in collusion with the US-installed PHTK (Haitian Tek Kale Party) regime, as with the notorious Lasalin Massacre in 2018. In the Pont-Sondé Massacre this past October 3rd, targeting a peasant community, the death toll has now risen to 115. According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, as of this October, more than 700,000, half being children, are now internally displaced.
Twenty years after the US-backed coup against the democratically elected President Jean Bertrand-Aristide and the popular Fanmi Lavalas government, Haiti remains under US/ UN occupation. There is not a single elected official left in the country. Hunger in Haiti has reached a historic high, with 50% of the population now facing acute hunger. According to UNICEF data, by 2023, “nearly one in four children in Haiti also suffer from chronic malnutrition, known as stunting, which has long-lasting physical consequences.”
The leadership of Fanmi Lavalas, the political party in Haiti based in the poor majority, has referred to this violence and suffering as a slow motion genocide.
Haitians who flee this are being subjected to ruthless deportations, both from the US under the Biden Administration and now, by the tens of thousands, from the Dominican Republic and from other Caribbean nations, following the lead of the US. There refugees are being forced to return to the life threatening conditions from which they fled.
This call to action on November 18th is also being made by people in the Caribbean who have issued this statement in solidarity with the people of Haiti.
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For more information on how to directly donate to and support Haiti’s popular movement, go to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund.
