Posted on 18. Mar, 2011 by Ezili Dantò in Blog, News, Essays and Reflections
Aristide returned to Haiti today. I’ve not seen such genuine happiness on the faces of Haiti’s poor in over seven years.
Welcome President Jean Bertrand Aristide and family. Today is a good day for the poorest of the poor in the Western Hemisphere. Their struggle and unimaginable sacrifices and sufferings bore fruit and it makes them smile. We thank the universal good for this moment. Blessed be the endless Haiti revolution against the organized tyranny of the “civilized” and “schooled” peoples.
Aristide Returns to Haiti, March 18, 2011
Photo credit: Alexandre Meneghini / AP
Today, HLLN re-members the blessed Haiti revolution, Janjak Desalin and the indigenous Haiti army of today and yesterday.
On this day of the return, HLLN re-members the sacrifice of the warriors of Site Soley, Bel Air, Solino, Martissant who took up arms in self-defense against the occupation and coup d’etat. We re-MEMBER the most hunted Black man in the Western Hemisphere, who, alone, fought the most powerful armies on earth for two long years before he was assassinated by UN bullets, we remember the lynching and crucifixion of Dred Wilmè.
“On July 6, 2005, Dred Wilmè in his family where assassinated in cold blood by 1,440 heavily armed UN/US troops. With their tanks, helicopters and advanced weapons, 440 UN/US soldiers entered Site Soley in the dead of night (3am) while the community was asleep. One thousand (1000) other UN/US soldiers surrounded Site Soley to make sure no one could leave. Bombs where reported unleashed and dropped on the unarmed civilian community.
According to The Site Soley Massacre Declassification Project the UN fired over 22,000 rounds of ammunition into this thin-shacked, cardboard-house, poverty-stricken Black community of about 450,000 Haitians, most having been forced off their safer rural lands by US/USAID/WB/IMF policies in the 80s and 90s.”
All human beings have the right to life and to self-defense, including the poor in Haiti.
At the Aristides’ home, thousands of Haitians, who had waited seven long tortured years for the return of their beloved president and his family, waited a little longer to welcome them. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste
Today, we remember and say honor and respect to our fallen and faceless warriors- the beleaguered poor in Site Soley, Solino, Martissant, Bel-Air, Gran Ravine, et al… – ravaged by exclusion and color-coded NGO charitable distribution and allotments that slews human dignity, brings perpetual dependency. We recall the 20,000 slaughtered by the imposed Bush Boca Raton regime from 2004 to 2006, slaughtered with the complicity of UN/US firepower.
We pay tribute to Father
Gerard Jean Juste,
Lovinsky Pierre Antoine and all those who gave their life for this day of return of the people’s voice. We pay tribute to the ten thousands unknown Haitians, in Haiti and in the Diaspora, who never wavered.
We lift up Hazel and Randall Robinson for staying true throughout this long road and always, always supporting justice for the people of Haiti against all the odds. We lift up Minister Louis Farrakhan and
Danny Glover who stood with the poor majority in Haiti and advocated for the return of Aristide in Haiti when most of the U.S. Black intelligentsia turned away.
Joyfully, people surround Aristide’s car as he leaves the airport. They ran beside him all the way to his house. — Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste
We thank all those folks, from all the races and religions, who signed letters and advocated for this return. We pay tribute to all the small Haiti radio programs abroad and in Haiti who stood for justice, Mary at SF Bayview for standing firm and resolute. We remember the unknown
fanm vanyans, Haitian women like Alina Sixto who sacrificed so much, for so long without accolades and recognition and who never wavered.
We share this day by lifting up the work and life of our beloved John Maxwell. We pay tribute to the Africans, in Jamaica, in South Africa who stood in solidarity with the people of Haiti despite threats of repercussions from powerful international forces, those who even this week ignored the frantic calls from Barack Obama and the UN’s Ban-Ki Moon to again delay and destroy the will of the people of Haiti. Thank you.
This historic returns belongs to the poor suffering warriors of Haiti and to bless the spirits of those who perished too soon. Indeed it belongs to Haitian men like father Gerard Jean Juste, to all the women community leaders who where singled out and massacred at the USAID/IOM “Summer for Peace” soccer gathering on August 20 and Aug. 21st where Haitian youths were lured to their slaughter while attending a soccer game sponsored by USAID. Haiti’s young were brutally chopped up by UN/US-sanctioned coup detat police squads, working with their Lame Ti Manchet thugs and mercenaries.
This return belongs to Esterne Bruner, assassinated, Sept. 21, 2006 by members of the coup d’etat enforcers, Lame Timanchèt.
Before his death, the courageous Esterne Bruner provide Ezili’s HLLN with the names of the members who committed the Gran Ravine/USAID-soccer -for-peace massacres, the names of the death squad of Lame Ti Manchet. None of these pro-coup detat enforcers have been brought to justice in UN occupied Haiti because they helped demobilize the pro-democracy Lavalas movement.
This return that eases the insult of the bicentennial coup d’etat belongs to the hundreds of Haitians, sealed in containers and dumped off the Coast of Cap Haitian to drown, as US-supported thugs, still roaming Haiti free behind UN protection today, took over the North. It belongs to those forced onto mysterious U.S. ships, off the shores of Haiti, held and tortured in secrecy, some for two years, because they voted Lavalas or held positions in the popular government of President Aristide.
It belongs to Haitian men like Emmanuel Dred Wilmè who never left his people, never even left his neighborhood, he never attacked anyone, he simply defended his community from attack from the coup detat overseers, from UN and US guns and sycophants who hired thugs, like Labanye, to kill innocent civilians simply because they voted for Jean Bertrand Aristide and advocated for their country’s own domestic interests as opposed to the interests of the internationals, their Haiti billionaire oligarchy and poverty pimping USAID-NGO subcontractors.
There will always be more Dred Wilmés, more Father Jean Juste, more Lovinsky Pierre Antoines, more Esterne Bruners in Haiti as long as there is misery and exclusion imposed on Haiti by the powerful nations.
Most of all today, we say honor and respect to the Ezili HLLNetwork members, of all the races and nationalities, a 10 thousand strong network against the profit-over-people folks, reaching three million per post, and on our blogs, who stood with the voiceless and disenfranchised in Haiti for these last seven years against all the odds, against all the naysayers.
This historic moment belongs to all of you who stood with the indigenous Haitians at HLLN who work to make a space for Haiti’s authentic voices without Officialdom’s approval. It’s a harsh journey.
It could have been a six-hour trip to Brazil and then just a few hours to Haiti. But it took 18 hours because the “benevolent internationals” interested in our “democracy and stability” wouldn’t allow former president Aristide, the symbol of the poor’s empowerment in Black Haiti, to travel through their territories.
Etched on the older people’s faces is the truth of this woman’s sign, “We suffered greatly, but we had faith you would return home.” Thousands of Haitians died during the past seven years at the hands of the U.S. and U.N. forces occupying Haiti, compounded by the over 300,000 who were killed in the earthquake and over 4,600 killed so far in the cholera epidemic. – Photo: Etant Dupain, brikourinouvelgaye.com
It took 18 hours for Aristide to reach Haiti. Going from South Africa to Northern Africa in Senegal took 10 hours, while from Senegal to Haiti took another eight hours. I hear England wouldn’t allow a landing either.
That long, long road is symbolic of the Haitian struggle. That long road Ezili’s HLLN has shared with you and with your support and forbearance. Unlike colonial celebritism with Sean Penn, no one will give us accolades for a mere six months journey in Haiti. Ours is a centuries-long journey. We overstand. The struggle continues.
A new era begins for us here at HLLN. We ask you help us define it. For we know the empire will strike back. We expect it and thus avoid the surprise blow. As usual, we shall take the road less traveled towards healing Haiti’s poor majority with dignity, human rights, self-sufficiency, justice and inclusion. We won’t sell out. Haiti and indigenous Haitians want justice not charity, not Clinton/Farmer UN/US paternalism. It’s a desperately humiliating, bumpy, wholly disemboweling, wholly healing and fulfilling ride. Against all odds, Ginen poze.Kenbe la – hold on. (See, Don’t be distracted by Aristide in Haiti by Ezili Dantòand Avatar Haiti.)
Pierre Labossierre, Alina Sixto, Lavarice Gaudin, Jafrikayiti, Guy Antoine, Harry Fouche, Fritz Pean, Yves Point Du Jour, Jean Ristil Jean Baptise and too many others to name, congratulations on this day. Only we know what we’ve withstood in helping to overcome not one but two Bush coup d’etats on the poor majority in Haiti.
Sometimes the fierce guilt of surviving, the endless stretch ahead, the soul and psychic wounds wrought on by the shame and humiliation of powerlessness and lack of material resources to do more, are too heavy a load. It’s too ugly and desperate to articulate the bullying and blows metered out by the most educated, most wealthy and most powerful on the most defenseless and non-violent people on earth.
Their collective suffering and deaths shall not be in vain. Justice will prevail, beauty will win, eventually. If not in our lifetime, then in the next. We are the Haitians, the indigenous Haitians. From generation to generation, from the womb to the tomb, our lives are about struggle. Today, for a moment, we’ll smilethrough the sorrow because in this shining and eternal moment that must see us through what will come at us next, we anti-Duvalierist-Haitians managed to survive whole with dignity and to witness that against all odds, we beat back the elite’s rabid rage.
Ayibobo
The Haitian resistance against the Western bicentennial re-colonization of Haiti lives on.
Ezili Dantò
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN)
March 18, 2011
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Demand Justice not Gestures
