Today is Thanksgiving Day in the States, but today in
Haiti we are not thankful. We are not thankful for the brutal
repression, the escalating violence, the targeting of those rendered
voiceless and nameless by poverty. We are not thankful for an occupying
force that observes human rights violations and beatings and does not
intervene on behalf of innocent civilians. We are not thankful for the
poverty and desperation which, coupled with the proliferation of
weapons, have left the urban areas crawling with armed gangs, available
to political groups who can afford their special low rates. We are not
thankful for the soldiers of the disbanded Haitian Army, who have taken
over the streets of Port-au-Prince where they are raping women and
young girls, and shooting street children for sport. The brutal,
painful and hopeless reports coming out of Haiti prove that this
country has reached its lowest point in ten years (1), and that we have
come out the other end of the tunnel we entered when 20,000 U.S.
Marines occupied the country and "restored democracy" in 1994. Here on
the other end we can't even see the light from the beginning. All we
see are the concrete results of the U.S. foreign policy towards Haiti
over the last ten years - the last two hundred years, really. [more]
Gunfire Erupts During Powell Visit to Haiti [more]
Pictured above: A
woman screams 'Down with the UN! Down with the government!' outside the
National Prison in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on December 2, 2004, a day
after a prisoner uprising took place where at least seven prisoners
died and some 50 were injured. The woman and hundreds of others
demonstrated outside the prison because authorities refused to tell
them if their husbands, brothers and sons were among those who died.
The riot occurred just hours after US Secretary of State Colin Powell ended his visit to Haiti. [more]