Mass protest on anniversary of reactionary coup

Over 10,000 supporters of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide marched in Port-au-Prince on Feb. 29 from Aristide’s church to the Parliament and the ruins of the National Palace, passing through most of the city’s poor neighborhoods, bastions of his support.

Aristide, a former priest elected twice to the presidency by the vast majority of Haitian voters, had been overthrown on Feb. 29, 2004, by a military coup organized and supported by the U.S., Canadian and French governments.

Ghetto-Unis, a coalition of parties including Aristide’s party, Fanmi Lavalas, and other allied groups, had called this Feb. 29 action. As they marched, the demonstrators chanted, “Down with Martelly!” “Down with his secret army!” and [current President Michel] “Martelly must show his passports to Parliament!” (Agence Haitienne Presse)

Some progressive Haitian politicians have charged that Martelly has a U.S. passport, which under Haiti’s Constitution would make him ineligible to be president. The Feb. 29 protest was the biggest anti-Martelly demonstration since the U.S. pushed his candidacy through the second round of vote counting in May of 2011.

Martelly ran on a promise to reinstate the Haitian army, which Aristide disbanded in 1995. Reuters and other press services have documented the presence of training camps where there are men dressed in khakis practicing with light and medium weapons around Port-au-Prince and other cities.

The Haitian army, created under the first U.S. occupation of Haiti in the 1930s, has from the beginning served as a weapon of Haiti’s rulers against the poor, the peasants and the workers.

While this demonstration raised its demands against the politician Martelly, the growing misery of the Haitian people underlies the march. A half-million Haitians are still living in temporary camps under tattered tarps and cardboard, two years after the earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince. The already poor sanitation is worsening as is lack of access to clean water.

Most who have left the camps have returned to buildings so badly damaged they can’t be repaired, though they are still standing. A project to clear the most prominent camp, the one in front of the National Palace, offers residents money to leave, but provides no place to go. Thus, by the time the hurricane season starts, at least 701 camps of the 702 total will remain.

So few Haitians have steady work that the unemployment figures are meaningless. Most people work as day laborers. If they don’t find at least some work in a day, they go hungry.

The cholera that the U.N. forces brought into Haiti last year still continues to spread, a little more slowly in winter. Given the total lack of public sanitation, warmer weather will again make cholera a virulent scourge.

The demonstrators’ anger was aroused partly because the Martelly regime was hinting that it might reinstate spurious charges of fraud and drug trafficking against Aristide, charges that were first raised by the post-2004 coup regime. No audit was done then — necessary in a fraud case — nor was there any evidence presented. Even the post-coup’s kangaroo courts found the charges so far-fetched that they didn’t pursue them. (Haïti-Liberté, Feb. 29).

The reaction to the charges in Haiti and from overseas Haitians was so vehement and quick that the Martelly government made haste to issue a formal denial of the “rumors” the day after they surfaced.

The Haitian people made their presence and their needs felt with the major demonstration on Feb. 29. Ghetto-Unis is planning on three more demonstrations in March: on March 8, International Working Women’s Day; on March 18, the anniversary of Aristide’s return; and on March 29, the day in 1987 that Haiti signed its Constitution.