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Aristide
Kidnapped by US Marines
Like Toussaint L'Ouverture by the
French
According to Maxine Waters and
Randall Robinson Sunday, February 29, 2004
Why has the Media Failed to Expose The
Illegal Arrest of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide by US Ambassador Foley and US
Marines?
It has been reported on New York City Radio
Station WBAI's Program "Democracy
Now", and from several independent sources
(including an ABC cameraman, who
declined to name himself out of fear, and a
guard whose was present at the Presidential Palace) that at
approximately 5:30 AM Sunday Morning, US Ambassador James B.
Foley accompanied with a contingent of US Marines entered the
Haitian Presidential Palace and left with President Aristide in
hand cuffs. To date, President Aristide has not been seen.
This unfolding news raises serious
questions regarding the major story coming out of Haiti that
President Aristide resigned.
The Friends of Haiti questions why this
kidnapping of a duly elected President has gone un-reported in
the media. The Friends of Haiti challenges the US media in
particular and the Western press in general to account for their
lock step acceptance of the "official" US State
Department's reporting of events in Haiti, which now clearly
appears to be covering up a gross violation of the United States
Constitution.
It should be remembered that what ever
questions that have been raised about isolated election
irregularities in Haiti's 2000 Presidential Elections, it was
the stated position of the United States Government in July of
2003, as represented by then Ambassador Brian Dean Curran
"The United States accepts President Aristide as the
constitutional president of Haiti for his term of office ending
in 2006."
It would now seem that the Bush
Administration decided at some point to violate international
law in the interest of known anti-democratic criminals and
murders who have a long history of bloodshed against the Haitian
People.
Source: Friends of Haiti / 456
Nostrand Avenue / Brooklyn NY 11216 / Phone (718) 398-1766
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PRESIDENT
ARISTIDE SAYS 'I WAS KIDNAPPED'
'TELL THE WORLD IT IS A COUP'
Monday, March 1st, 2004
On Democracy Now this morning while Amy
Goodman was interviewing Congressperson
Maxine Waters, the congressperson receive a phone call from
Aristede, the former Haitian president said he was kidnapped by US
military forces and forced out of Haiti in a coup, clearly a
different story than the one appearing in the mainstream press the
Aristede has "fled" his country.. Clearly this is a
violation of international
law and Mr. Bush needs to be held accountable for overthrowing a
democratically elected government. Please ask everyone to contact
their national representatives and media and demand an
investigation into this crime committed by the US government.
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* * *
Multiple
sources that just spoke with Haitian President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide told Democracy Now! that Aristide says he was
"kidnapped" and taken by force to the Central African
Republic. Congressmember Maxine Waters said she received a call
from Aristide at 9am EST. "He's surrounded by military. It's
like he is in jail, he said. He says he was kidnapped," said
Waters. She said he had been threatened by what he called US
diplomats. According to Waters, the diplomats reportedly told the
Haitian president that if he did not leave Haiti, paramilitary
leader Guy Philippe would storm the palace and Aristide would be
killed. According to Waters, Aristide was told by the US that they
were withdrawing Aristide's US security.
TransAfrica
founder and close Aristide family friend Randall Robinson also
received a call from the Haitian president early this morning and
confirmed Waters account. Robinson said that Aristide
"emphatically" denied that he had resigned. "He did
not resign," he said. "He was abducted by the United
States in the commission of a coup." Robinson says he spoke
to Aristide on a cell phone that was smuggled to the Haitian
president.
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AMY
GOODMAN: This
is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. Congressmember Waters, can
you tell us about the conversation you just had with Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide?
MAXINE
WATERS: I
most certainly can and he’s anxious for me to get the message
out so people will understand. He is in the Central Republic of
Africa at a place called the Palace of the Renaissance, and he’s
not sure if that’s a house or a hotel or what it is and he is
surrounded by military. It’s like in jail, he said. He said that
he was kidnapped; he said that he was forced to leave Haiti.
He
said that the American embassy sent the diplomats; he referred to
them as, to his home where they was led by Mr. Moreno. And I
believe that Mr. Moreno is a deputy chief of staff at the embassy
in Haiti and other diplomats, and they ordered him to leave. They
said you must go NOW. He said that they said that Guy Phillipe and
U.S. Marines were coming to Port-au-Prince; he will be killed,
many Haitians will be killed, that they would not stop until they
did what they wanted to do. He was there with his wife Mildred and
his brother-in-law and two of his security people, and somebody
from the Steel Foundation, and they’re all, there’s five of
them that are there.
They
took them where-- they did stop in Antigua then they stopped at a
military base, then they were in the air for hours and then they
arrived at this place and they were met by five ministers of
government. It’s a Francophone country, they speak French. And
they were then taken to this place called the Palace of the
Renaissance where they are being held and they are surrounded by
military people.
They
are not free to do whatever they want to do. Then the phone
clicked off after we had talked for about five--we talked maybe
fifteen minutes and then the phone clicked off. But he, some of it
was muffled in the beginning, at times it was clear. But one thing
that was very clear and he said it over and over again, that he
was kidnapped, that the coup was completed by the Americans that
they forced him out. They had also disabled his American security
force that he had around him for months now; they did not allow
them to extend their numbers.
To
begin with they wanted them to bring in more people to provide
security they prevented them from doing that and then they finally
forced them out of the country. So that’s where his is and I
said to him that I would do everything I could to get the word
out. . . . that I heard it directly from him I heard it directly
from his wife that they were kidnapped, they were forced to leave,
they did not want to leave, their lives were threatened and the
lives of many Haitians were threatened. And I said that we would
be in touch with the State Department, with the President today
and if at all possible we would try to get to him. We don’t know
whether or not he is going to be moved. We will try and find that
information out today.
AMY
GOODMAN: Did
President Aristide say whether or not he resigned?
MAXINE WATERS: He did not resign. He said he was forced out, that the coup was
completed.
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* * *
RANDALL
ROBINSON:
The president called me on a cell phone that was slipped to him by
someone - he has no land line out to the world and no number at
which he can be reached. He is being held in a room with his wife
and his sister's husband, who happened to be at the house at the
time that the abduction occurred. The soldiers came in to the
house and ordered them to use no phones and to come immediately.
They were taken at gunpoint to the airport and put on a
plane.
His
own security detachment was taken as well and put in a separate
compartment of the plane. The president was kept with his wife
with the soldiers with the shades of the plane down and when he
asked where he was being taken, the soldiers told him they were
under orders not to tell him that. He was flown first to Antigua,
which he recognized, but then he was told to put the shades down
again. They were on the ground there for two hours before they
took off again and landed six hours later at another location
again told to keep the shades down.
At
no time before they left the house and on the plane were they
allowed to use a phone. Only when they landed the last time were
they told that they were in the Central African Republic. Then
taken to a room with a balcony. They do not know what the room is
a part of, maybe a hotel, maybe some other kind of building, but
it has a balcony and outside they can see that they are surrounded
by soldiers. So that they have no freedom.
The
president asked me to tell the world that it is a coup, that they
have been kidnapped. That they have been abducted. I have put in
calls to members of congress asking that they demand that the
president be given an opportunity to speak, that he be given a
press conference opportunity and that people be given an
opportunity to reach him by phone so that they can hear directly
from him how he is being treated. But the essential point is
clear. He did not resign. He was taken by force from his residence
in the middle of the night, forced on to a plane, and taken away
without being told where he was going. He was kidnapped. There's
no question about it.
AMY
GOODMAN:
How does he actually know, Randall Robinson, how does president
Aristide know that he is in the Central African Republic?
RANDALL
ROBINSON:
He was told that when he arrived. As a matter of fact there was
some official reception of officials of that government at the
airport when he arrived. But, you see, he still had and continues
to have surrounding him American military.
Read more at
Democracy Now!: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/01/1521216
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|
The Impact of the
Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World
Reviewed by Mimi Sheller
The slave revolution
that two hundred years ago created the state of Haiti
alarmed and excited public opinion on both sides of the
Atlantic. Its repercussions ranged from the world commodity
markets to the imagination of poets, from the council
chambers of the great powers to slave quarters in Virginia
and Brazil and most points in between. Sharing attention
with such tumultuous events as the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic War, Haiti's fifteen-year struggle for racial
equality, slave emancipation, and colonial independence
challenged notions about racial hierarchy that were gaining
legitimacy in an Atlantic world dominated by Europeans and
the slave trade. The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the
Atlantic World explores the multifarious influence—from
economic to ideological to psychological—that a revolt on a
small Caribbean island had on the continents surrounding it.
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Fifteen international scholars,
including eminent historians David Brion Davis, Seymour Drescher, and
Robin Blackburn, explicate such diverse ramifications as the spawning of
slave resistance and the stimulation of slavery's expansion, the opening
of economic frontiers, and the formation of black and white diasporas.
Seeking to disentangle the effects of the Haitian Revolutionfrom those
of the French Revolution, they demonstrate that its impact was
ambiguous, complex, and contradictory.—Publisher,
University of South Carolina
Press
David P. Geggus is a
professor of history at the University of Florida in Gainesville and a
former Guggenheim and National Humanities Center fellow. He has
published extensively on the history of slavery and the Caribbean, with
a particular focus on the Haitian Revolution. He is the author of
Slavery, War and Revolution: The British Occupation of Saint Domingue,
1793–1798 and an editor of
A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean.
Geggus lives in Gainesville.
* * * * *
 |
Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804
A Brief History with Documents
By Laurent
Dubois and John D. Garrigus
This is the
most succinct, convenient and accurate history of
the Haitian Revolution currently available. It fills
a significant gap in the historiography between
monographs and general histories on one side and
novels and creative literature on the other. The
authors have produced an intelligent and highly
useful collection of documents, many virtually
inaccessible, and conveniently translated them for
the English-speaking audience. Their ability to
contextualize the events of the revolution briefly
is simply exemplary.' - Franklin Knight, Johns
Hopkins University, USA 'This is the most amazing
document collection I have ever read. It is
emotionally gripping, intellectually stimulating,
morally provocative, action-packed and full of
points of comparison to histories of slavery and
freedom everywhere. It has a terrific narrative flow
and inherent pathos. . . .This is a wonderful
achievement for which all sorts of teachers will be
most grateful.—Evan
Haefeli, Tufts University |
This volume details the
first slave rebellion to have a successful outcome, leading to
the establishment of Haiti as a free black republic and paving
the way for the emancipation of slaves in the rest of the French
Empire and the world. Incited by the French Revolution, the
enslaved inhabitants of the French Caribbean began a series of
revolts, and in 1791 plantation workers in Haiti, then known as
Saint-Domingue, overwhelmed their planter owners and began to
take control of the island. They achieved emancipation in 1794,
and after successfully opposing Napoleonic forces eight years
later, emerged as part of an independent nation in 1804. A broad
selection of documents, all newly translated by the authors, is
contextualized by a thorough introduction considering the very
latest scholarship. Laurent Dubois and John D. Garrigus clarify
for students the complex political, economic, and racial issues
surrounding the revolution and its reverberations worldwide.
Useful pedagogical tools include maps, illustrations, a
chronology, and a selected bibliography.—Publisher,
Bedford/St. Martin's
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update 6 May 2010 |
