Why You Should Come to Haiti: We are not Thankful

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]