Showing posts with label Haiti. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 17, 2024

Hundreds of Kenyan police arrive in Port-au-Prince, establishing the latest foreign military occupation of Haiti

June 26, 2024 by Pablo Meriguet

The Kenyan officers arrived to Port-au-Prince to establish the UN-authorized Multinational Security Support Mission to fight against gang violence in Haiti

400 Kenyan police officers arrived on June 25 in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. The deployment of 600 more is expected to follow in the coming days and weeks. The arrival of the Kenyan police force was authorized by the United Nations Security Council, which last year approved the dispatch of foreign law enforcement forces to the Caribbean country. The dispatch occurred the same day that Kenyan police killed eight protesters in Kenya who were protesting the unpopular neoliberal Finance Bill 2024.

The armed mission in Haiti supposedly to stop the advance of gangs, which in recent months have controlled, according to some estimates, up to 80% of the territory of the capital and many other surrounding areas. Foreign police agents will be allowed to detain Haitian citizens with the local police.

Kenyan President William Ruto said a day before their deployment, “Our police officers’ presence in Haiti will give relief to the men, women and children whose lives have been broken by gang violence. We will work with the international community to bring lasting stability in Haiti.”

The mission was announced in a White House communiqué, which affirmed that the mission is fully supported by the United States and several other countries. The new military intervention in Haitian territory is intended, according to the same statement, to bring into Haitian territory about 2,500 police and security personnel: “I congratulate, and am deeply grateful to all the countries that have committed personnel and financial support for this mission that will eventually have a multinational staff of 2,500, led by Kenya and including Benin, Jamaica, Bahamas, Belize, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Algeria, Canada, France, Germany, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Spain. For our part, the United States is the largest financial contributor to this mission, providing more than USD 300 million and up to USD 60 million in equipment. And we will continue our diplomatic outreach to encourage more countries to join this effort because what happens in Haiti is in the interest of its neighbors, the region, and the world.”

Following the resignation of Haiti’s de facto president and prime minister Ariel Henry, who took over after the assassination of Jovenel Moïse, Ruto’s government had announced a temporary halt to the deployment but continued ahead shortly after.

Ruto challenged Kenyan courts to achieve deployment

Kenya’s president, William Ruto, who engineered the agreement, had to maneuver through several major legal obstacles to achieve the troop deployment yesterday. Diverse sectors in Kenya, especially the judiciary, had lodged serious challenges to his unilateral agreement. At the end of January, the High Court in Kenya declared the deployment of personnel to Haiti unconstitutional, ruling that the country’s National Security Council did not have the authority to deploy police officers outside the country. The order was the extension of interim measures first issued by the court in October, which Kenya’s parliament defied to authorize the mission. Ruto’s government obtained such authorization, but the Kenyan High Court stated that a “reciprocal agreement” is required for the sending of troops not to be considered a unilateral “invasion.” In the end, Kenya reached an agreement with Haiti on March 1, 2024.

Kenyan Lawyer Wallace Nderu, a member of the International Commission of Jurists (CIJ), had told VOA that despite having an agreement between the two countries, the act is problematic, as there are questions about the legitimacy of the President of Haiti: “The reason for this request is that when the then Prime Minister of Haiti was signing this agreement with Kenya, there was no recognized government in Haiti. The president [Jovenel Moïse] had been assassinated, there were no elected leaders in Haiti. So where does this lead, the mandate to negotiate an agreement on behalf of your country, Haiti, is in question.”

Set up to fail?

Another concerning aspect of the deployment raised by analysts is whether the Kenyan police will even be able to carry out effective operations in Haiti. The Kenyan officers do not know the territory and do not speak the language spoken by the local population. The gangs now have very established positions in the capital and other areas and it is possible that openly confronting the armed groups could lead to an exponential increase in violence and increased hardship for the civilian population. Notably, the vast majority of the weapons used by the gangs are smuggled from the United States.

In addition, the Kenyan police have been singled out and accused by several human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, of having committed excessive acts of repression and extrajudicial executions in Kenya. The police carried out brutal repression against the ongoing anti-government protests on the same day that the first units landed in Port-au-Prince. According to the International Peoples’ Assembly, “The deployment of the Kenyan police force, who are trained by Israel, comes at a moment when the people of Kenya are mobilizing against the neoliberal policies of the US-backed government in the country.”

No to foreign military occupation

The mission has also been widely condemned by movements and organizations in Haiti, Kenya, and across the world as another instance of foreign intervention in the Caribbean country.

In a statement released by ALBA Movimientos, they said, “All of the missions that entered Haiti have left negative results. They brought economic setbacks and deepened the social crisis of the Haitian people. Only the Haitian people will decide the solution to the current situation and only a democratic and sovereign resolution to the crisis, without meddling, can guarantee peace, stability, and well being for the majority. We make an international call for the defense of Haiti and respect to the self determination of its people: out with any ‘mission’ of occupation.”

Haiti has a long history of foreign invasions that have failed to solve the serious problems the country has faced since it was isolated and forced into debt by western powers, such as France and the United States, immediately after its anti-slavery and independence struggle (1791-1804).

Almost a century later, in 1915, Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States, ordered the invasion of Haiti to protect the interests of the companies that invested money in the Caribbean country. The presence of the Marines lasted until 1934, a period during which the occupying US armed forces carried out several massacres of peasants and anti-colonial political leaders.

Between September 28 and October 8, 1937, around 15,000-20,000 Haitians were killed by the army of the neighboring Dominican Republic under the rule of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. From 1957 to 1971, Francios Duvalier, better known as Papa Doc, governed Haiti as a dictator with the open support of the United States. His son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Baby Doc, succeeded him in office until 1986.

In 2004, former US Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, proved that the US and Dominican Republic governments were involved in supplying weapons and military training to several Haitian rebels, which would provoke political and social chaos that served as a pretext for the 2006 UN Blue Helmets occupation of the country until 2017. The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) was responsible for grave atrocities, including massacres, mass rape and the introduction of cholera into the country, leading to the death of 30,000 people.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Kenya halts police deployment to Haiti after resignation of de facto Prime Minister

By Tanupriya Singh

The government of president William Ruto has suspended the deployment of 1,000 Kenyan police officers as part of a US-backed mission to Haiti. The news followed a day after Haiti’s de facto PM, Ariel Henry, announced his resignation to pave the way for the appointment of a “Transitional Presidential Council” amid rising insecurity in the country.

Kenya has suspended a police deployment to Haiti to be part of a US- and UN-backed mission, shortly after the de facto prime minister and president of the Caribbean country, Ariel Henry, announced his decision to resign on March 11.

Abraham Korir Sing’Oei, the principal secretary of Kenya’s foreign ministry, stated on March 12 that the deployment would be “contingent on the ground situation, and the critical ground situation is that there has to be an authority that can be the basis for a police deployment, that enjoys constitutional authority in Haiti”.

Henry had assumed power in the aftermath of the assassination of former president Jovenel Moïse in July, 2021. The transition, which took place without the consent of the Haitian people who at the time had been organizing mass protests against Moïse’s attempts to prolong his term in office, was quickly sanctioned by western powers including the United States.

The following period saw a surge in violence by armed groups in Haiti, causing mass displacement especially in the capital of Port-au-Prince. Even as people in the country were taking to the streets to protest the government’s failure to respond to issues of poverty and insecurity, social and political movements in the country had repeatedly warned that the situation must not be used as a pretext for foreign intervention in the country.

Especially given the role that countries like the US had historically played in undermining Haiti’s sovereignty, through the 2004 coup and direct occupation, and the fact that much of the weapons being used by groups in the country had flown in from the US.

Meanwhile, the 2021 Montana Accord— a product of consultations among hundreds of civil society organizations, popular movements, political parties, and individuals to devise a solution out of the present crisis from within the country— was largely sidelined.

“We have to organize the elections, organize the bases to solve the problem of insecurity in the country and reorganize the judicial system. But the United States and other imperialist powers have blocked the [Montana] agreement because it also provides for the end of interference by foreign powers in Haiti,” Jean Waltés Bien-Aime, a journalist with Radio Resistencia and the Haitian Popular Press Agency, told Brasil de Fato.

In October 2022, Henry requested the international community for a “specialized armed force” to be deployed to the country, sparking protests in the country. In October 2023, the UN Security Council voted to authorize a “Multinational Security Support” (MSS) to Haiti, with abstentions from Russia and China. Kenya offered to lead the mission, pledging to deploy 1,000 police officers.

The MSS would not be a UN mission, which had itself had an over decade long military presence in Haiti through its “stabilization mission” MINUSTAH, which raised concerns of accountability.

The US announced USD 200 million in funding for the mission, announcing an additional USD 100 million on March 11, while the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin and Chad formally notified the UN of their intention to provide personnel for the deployment.

Meanwhile, at the end of January, the High Court in Kenya declared the deployment of personnel to Haiti unconstitutional, ruling that the country’s National Security Council did not have the authority to deploy police officers outside the country. The order was the extension of interim measures first issued by the court in October, which Kenya’s parliament defied to authorize the mission.

Progressive forces within the country, particularly the Communist Party of Kenya (CPK) had vehemently rejected the deployment, reiterating that “Haiti requires no foreign intervention; this crisis is orchestrated by the core group of the US, Canada, and France, aiming to maintain hegemony and settle scores with Haiti for its historic slave revolution against French rule”.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Haitian Prime Minister Henry Agrees to Resign as CARICOM Announces Formation of Presidential Council

By Jake Johnston

In a prerecorded message released on social networks just after midnight, Ariel Henry, who has held de facto power in Haiti since shortly after the 2021 assassination of Jovenel Moïse, agreed to resign. Sort of.

Henry has been holed up in Puerto Rico for a week, unable to return to Haiti as coordinated attacks from armed groups shut down the airport. Once the US pulled its support last week, he was left in limbo and had not issued any public statements until early this morning. It is unclear to what extent he was under pressure from the US to remain out of the country and to stay quiet.

WaPo Wants US ‘Beacon’ for Ukraine Refugees—but Not for Haitians

JULIE HOLLAR

It’s a fair comparison: Migrants from both countries seek protection in the United States because they fear for their lives in their home country. While Ukraine is actively at war, Haiti’s violence and instability have ebbed and flowed for decades, a result largely of foreign exploitation and intervention, compounded in recent years by devastating earthquakes and hurricanes; neither can provide a basic level of safety for their citizens today.

All have the right under international and US law to seek that protection, including at the US border, where they are required to be given a chance to apply for asylum. Under Title 42—an obscure and “scientifically baseless” public health directive invoked under Donald Trump at the start of the Covid pandemic, and largely extended under Joe Biden’s administration (FAIR.org, 4/22/22)—that right has been violated, as Haitian (and Central American) asylum seekers have been summarily expelled without being screened for asylum eligibility.

One might imagine that this trampling of rights, more actively nefarious than the foot-dragging on resettling Ukrainian refugees, would prompt more, not less, outrage among media opinion makers. Yet the opposite is true for the Post editorial board, which has written about both situations repeatedly.

‘These could be your children’

WaPo: Why isn’t Biden taking in refugees from Ukraine?

A Washington Post editorial (3/4/22) in support of Ukrainian refugees calls attention to the fact that “these could be your children.”

When the Russian invasion of Ukraine sparked a mass exodus of refugees, the board (3/4/22) quickly and passionately urged the Biden administration to “welcome Ukrainians with open arms”:

The images linger in your mind: Ukrainian children pressed against the windows of a bus or train sobbing or waving goodbye to their fathers and other relatives who remain behind to try to fight off an unjustified Russian war on Ukraine. It’s easy to imagine this could be your family broken apart. These could be your children joining the more than 1 million refugees trying to flee Ukraine in the past week.

The board argued that accepting Ukrainian refugees would be a “way to truly stand with the brave and industrious Ukrainian people and our allies around the world”—and “also provide more workers for the US economy.”

Less than two weeks later, the Post (3/16/22) returned to the issue, forcefully demanding that Biden’s inaction on bringing Ukrainian refugees to the US “must change” and suggesting that the Department of Homeland Security “step up” and grant them entry under a humanitarian parole system. “At the moment, it’s hard to think of a cohort of refugees whose reasons are more urgent,” the board wrote.

A few weeks after Biden’s March 24 announcement that the US would admit 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, the Post (4/19/22) found the idea “heartening,” but called the lack of implementation “an embarrassment to this country.” This was at a time when, as the board noted, most Ukrainians who managed to make it to the US/Mexico border were being allowed entry under the parole system the Post had favored.

Later, the Post (6/22/22) celebrated that its exhortations had been followed: “The US Door Swings Open to Ukrainian Refugees.” In that editorial, the board explicitly highlighted that the Ukrainians who had thus far entered the US had done so “in nearly all cases legally.” They wrote: That tens of thousands of them have successfully sought refuge in this country over about three months, with relatively little fanfare—and even less controversy, considering the toxicity that attends most migration issues—is a reaffirmation of America’s commitment to its values as a beacon to the world’s most desperate people. That commitment must be sustained as the war in Ukraine drags on, which seems likely.

But the Post board doesn’t want that beacon to shine too brightly for all the world’s most desperate people—such as Haitian asylum seekers.

‘Inhumane to incentivize migrants’

WaPo: Biden’s mixed messaging on immigration brings a surge of Haitian migrants to the Texas border

A Washington Post editorial (9/20/21) on Haitian refugees takes President Joe Biden to task for suggesting he would “relax the previous administration’s draconian policies” toward Latin American asylum seekers.

After the Del Rio incident, the board (9/20/21) expressed umbrage that “Haitian migrants, virtually all Black, are being subjected to expulsion on a scale that has not been directed at lighter-skinned Central Americans.”

Yet this was quickly balanced by the Post‘s indignation at Biden’s “on-the-ground leniency” toward migrants that “led many or most of [the Haitians at Del Rio] toward the border.”

The board wrote that Biden had suggested he would “relax the previous administration’s draconian policies” for “others, especially Central American families with children, tens of thousands of whom have been admitted to the United States this year,” thereby encouraging Haitians to come but then expelling them by the thousands. “The policy is inhumane,” the board lamented; “equally, it is inhumane to incentivize migrants to risk the perilous, expensive journey across Central America and Mexico.”

To be clear, the Biden administration expelled migrants under Title 42 in more than a million encounters in 2021; however, a change in Mexican policy meant the US could no longer expel Central American families with young children (American Immigration Council, 3/4/22). What the board is suggesting here is that the policy of sending away migrants who have a right to seek asylum in the US, and will almost certainly face a dire situation upon arrival in their home country, is equal in its inhumanity to reducing the use of that policy—because that incentivizes more people to exercise their right to seek asylum.

So what’s the answer to this conundrum? Ultimately the board pinned the blame on “partisanship in Congress” that has “doomed” attempts at comprehensive immigration reform. Setting aside the absurdity of the idea that both parties are equally at fault in stymying immigration reform, that analysis implies that any sort of immediate relief for actual Haitians is not a priority for the Post editorial board, regardless of their suffering.

After the Del Rio incident, the Biden administration cleared out the migrant camp the Haitians were staying in, and most were flown to Haiti or fled to Mexico to avoid that fate. Many Democrats criticized Biden for the treatment of the Haitian migrants, but the Post (10/13/21), in its next editorial on the subject, argued that those critics “fail[ed] to acknowledge the political, logistical and humanitarian risks of lax border enforcement.”

The headline of that editorial, “How the Biden Administration Can Help Haitian Migrants Without Sending the Wrong Message,” clearly signaled the board’s priorities; when advocating for helping Ukrainians, the Post never betrayed any concern that such help might send the wrong message.

While it’s “easy to sympathize with the impulse behind” calls to end Title 42, and to grant Haitian refugees asylum if they are judged to have a “reasonable possibility of fear,” the board wrote, “the trouble is that it would swiftly incentivize huge numbers of new migrants to make the perilous trek toward the southern border.”

They argued that their concern wasn’t theoretical; it was “proved” by the “surge” of Haitian asylum seekers “driven in large part by the administration’s increasingly sparing use of Title 42″—implying that the human rights of Haitian migrants must be judiciously balanced against the supposed threat of a “surge” of them at the border. The board members concluded that “Americans broadly sympathize with the admission of refugees and asylum seekers, but a precondition of that support is a modicum of order in admissions.” First comes order, then come the Post‘s sympathies.

Two months later (12/30/21), they argued that the mass expulsion of Haitian migrants was “deeply troubling,” quoting a UN report that Haitians are “living in hell.” And yet they found themselves unable to forcefully condemn the Biden administration’s continued use of Title 42 to prevent Haitians from exercising their right to seek asylum, arguing that the policy is “politically defensible,” since “Americans do not want to encourage a chaotic torrent of illegal immigration.” The strongest umbrage they could muster was to call the situation “worth a policy review, to say the least.”

‘Main export is asylum seekers’

WaPo: As chaos mounts in Haiti, the U.S. takes a tepid stance

The Washington Post (5/7/22) calls for a “vigorous US policy” to oppose Haiti “chaos.”

The Post editorial board is clearly very aware of the plight of Haitian refugees. As they pointed out in an editorial (5/7/22) calling for a “concerted, muscular diplomatic push” to address the Haitian government’s lack of legitimacy, they wrote that for those deported to Haiti, their “chances of finding work are abysmal, but the possibility that they will be victimized amid the pervasive criminality is all too real.”

The board has been vocal (7/7/22) about calling for US policy change toward Haiti to reduce the “human misery”—and the “outflow of refugees”—arguing that “deportation is a poor substitute for policy.” Recently, it has ramped up its rhetoric, even suggesting (8/6/22) the idea of a military intervention in Haiti; in its most recent call for intervention, the board argued:"It is unconscionable for the Western Hemisphere’s richest country to saddle the poorest with a stream of migrants amid an economic, humanitarian and security meltdown. But it’s the country, not its people, at the center of concern here. At no point in the piece are those people, or the impact of US policy on them, described. (Certainly it’s never suggested that “these could be your children.”) Worse, the board calls Haiti a “failed state whose main export is asylum seekers,” reducing those asylum seekers to objects. (One might add that comparing Black human beings to “exports” shows a callous disregard for Haitian—and US—history.)

The board wants intervention in Haiti in part to relieve the “humanitarian suffering” in the country (9/22/22)—but it’s not ashamed to put “death and despair” in the same sentence as “a steady or swelling tide of refugees” as the two things the Biden administration should be seeking to prevent via such an intervention.

The source of the discrepancy between its position on Ukrainian and Haitian refugees seems to be that the Post editorial board sees them as fundamentally different problems. Ukrainians fleeing violence and instability are themselves at risk and need help; Haitians fleeing violence and instability are a risk to the US.

That framing of the problem was perhaps most clear in their editorial (2/10/21) condemning Biden’s support for Haiti’s “corrupt, autocratic and brutal” then-President Jovenel Moïse: "As with Central American migrants, the problem of illegal immigrants from Haiti can be mitigated only by a concerted US push to address problems at the source." Haitian migrants are, to the Post, more a problem for the US than human beings with problems of their own.

And the editorial board’s use of the term “illegal immigrant”—a dehumanizing and inaccurate slur the widely-used AP style guide nixed ten years ago—is also telling. The board repeatedly refers in its editorials on Haiti to “illegal border crossings” and “surges.” But as mentioned previously, Haitians, like Ukrainians—and the Central American migrants the Post dreads in the same breath as Haitians—are legally entitled to come to the US border and seek asylum. In fact, to request asylum, migrants are required to present themselves on US soil. The only thing that makes their crossings “illegal” is Title 42, which itself is clearly illegal, despite judicial contortions to keep it in place. Yet it seems the moral (and legal) imperative to offer the opportunity to seek asylum must always be balanced, in the Post‘s view, with their fears of an unruly mob at the border.

‘An enduring gift to their new country’

Early in the Ukraine War, some journalists came under criticism for singling out Ukrainian refugees for sympathy, in either explicit or implicit contrast to refugees from non-white countries (FAIR.org, 3/18/22). CBS‘s Charlie D’Agata (2/25/22), for instance, told viewers that Ukraine: isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European—I have to choose those words carefully, too—city, one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that, it’s going to happen.

They seem so like us,” wrote Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph (2/26/22). “That is what makes it so shocking.”

Both journalists were white; it is perhaps worth noting that nine of the ten members of the Washington Post editorial board are likewise white. (Post opinion columnist Jonathan Capehart, who is Black, is the sole exception.)

WaPo: Don’t forget the Afghan refugees who need America’s support

The Washington Post (4/28/22) shows no fear of a “surge” of Afghan refugees.

And yet the differential treatment it accords migrant groups may go beyond racism or classism for the Post; in April, the board (4/28/22) published an editorial headlined, “Don’t Forget the Afghan Refugees Who Need America’s Support.” In it, the board asked, “Why can’t the administration stand up a program for US-based individuals and groups to sponsor Afghan refugees to come here, as it has done for Ukrainians?”

Earlier, the board (8/31/21) had argued that Afghan refugees “will become as thoroughly American as their native-born peers, and their energy, ambition and pluck will be an enduring gift to their new country.”

The Afghanistan case illustrates that the Washington Post doles out its sympathy on political, not just racial, terms: Afghans, like Ukrainians, are presented as victims of enemies the Post has devoted considerable energy to vilifying—the Taliban on the one hand, Russia on the other. The plights of Haitians (and Central Americans), by contrast, can in no small part be traced back to US intervention—something the Post has little appetite for castigating.

And Afghans, for the most part, have not been arriving at the US/Mexico border, which is clearly a site of anxiety for the board, with its fear of “surges” and lawlessness.

The humanization and sympathy the board offers to both Afghans, and especially the Ukrainians that “could be your children,” is never offered to Haitians. Their circumstances are described, sometimes in dire language, but they themselves—their “pluck,” their “children pressed against the windows of a bus or train sobbing or waving goodbye to their fathers and other relatives who remain behind”—remain invisible and, ultimately, unworthy.

Saturday, July 10, 2021

Haiti Assassination Raises Red Flags Among Observers Fluent in History of US Intervention

"It's quite striking that the arguments being made for a U.S. intervention in Haiti are so alike the ones that were used to justify the 1915-34 occupation."

BRETT WILKINS

July 8, 2021

In the wake of Wednesday's assassination of Jovenel Moïse, the unpopular, corrupt, and increasingly authoritarian U.S.-backed Haitian president, observers fluent in the history of foreign interference in the hemisphere's first truly free republic sounded the alarm over the same sort of calls for intervention in the name of "stability" that preceded so many previous American invasions of Haiti.

THE BROOKS BLACKBOARD: Race, Politics & Social Change