Haiti Action Committee is honored to publish this powerful statement from the Women’s Interdepartmental Coalition of Haiti. The statement, released to commemorate International Women’s Day, is a clarion call for solidarity, as women throughout Haiti support each other and resist the horrific attacks by the Viv Ansamn paramilitaries. The statement lays the blame for these assaults squarely at the feet of the PHTK, the right-wing party that has led Haiti into the crisis it now faces. We urge you to read this statement and circulate it widely.
WOMEN’S INTERDEPARTMENTAL COALITION OF HAITI PRESS RELEASE
We, the Women’s Interdepartmental Coalition of Haiti, consisting of several organizations in various regions of the country, are struggling for the respect of the rights of women who are suffering all forms of violence in Haiti. We ask for the collaboration of all women to condemn all the criminal acts that are inflicted daily on the population– especially, women and girls who are victims of rape. When we are kidnapped, they rape us and they kill us.
We condemn the criminal act that the gangs committed against a two-month-old baby. They snatched him from the arms of his mother, Eliana Telemaque, and threw him alive in a bonfire in front of his mother. His mother died a few days later, and we demand that the justice system do their duty.
As we see the rapid rise of insecurity, it is we who are always the victims as they burn down our homes and destroy our businesses. We ask that all countries that are friends of Haiti, human rights organizations, and women’s rights organizations, join us to help Haiti find a way out of this conspiracy hatched by the PHTK Neo-Duvalierist regime and its foreign accomplices to eliminate us and steal our wealth. We demand the arrest of all the people presently under sanctions by the United Nations because of their participation in providing the weapons that brought Haiti into this present-day situation.
Our children cannot go to school, they are burning down our homes, schools, hospitals, pharmacies and laboratories. We condemn how in 2004, the US, France, Canada and other countries were quick to send forces to Haiti when there was none of this chaos. We see where they have brought Haiti today after 21 years of occupation, when they overthrew a popular and democratic government. We need people-to-people international solidarity.
From 1994 through 2004, the Lavalas governments built more public schools, public parks and health care centers than any of the previous governments that we can count. We were living well and we had work. It is for this reason that the PHTK gave birth to Viv Ansanm to destroy all the good works that President Aristide had realized for our benefit.
We are asking for international solidarity to prosecute the criminals, who are financing the gangs in Haiti. We must expose these thieves wherever we find them in Haiti and abroad. We also condemn the US and the Dominican Republic for supplying all the weapons and ammunition that are terrorizing the Haitian people.
Today, we need the support of all people and countries who are friends of Haiti to help us remove ourselves from the claws of these PHTK criminal gangs.
Sanité BÉLAIR Catherine FLON
Henriette ST.MARC Marie Jeanne LAMARTINIÈRE
