Democracy Now

[bcholmes]

Well, here are the facts. No one disputes that the United States provided weapons, uniforms, steel pots, recoil-less rifles, rocket-powered grenades, all of that, to some 200 paramilitary forces that were trained in the Dominican Republic. The US armed and trained them. No one disputes that they crossed the border, went north, away from the capital, and stopped at Gonaive, at least a hundred kilometers north of Port-au-Prince, which was where they were spotted, verifiably, on the evening of the 28th and the morning of the 29th. They never came near Port-au-Prince. No one in Haiti would dispute that they ever posed a threat to the government. No 200 armed men could overrun a city of a million people that were hostile to them and supportive of the president.

The president won two elections, the last with 90% of the vote. If he were in Haiti today and he ran again, he would win overwhelmingly again. The United States provided money through the International Republican Institute to form a false opposition to Aristide in the country. The rich and the elites, who were threatened because he raised the minimum wage from $1 to $2 a day, threatened because he had proposed to banish the use of the word “peasants” on the birth certificate of poor black Haitians, threatened by a man who was loved by his people because he wanted to protect the interests of the poorest among them. And the United States overthrew that democracy. And it is so simply provable. The smallest investigation would prove what the United States has done in this case.

— Randall Robinson on Democracy Now!