Under a thin veneer of stability in occupied Haiti lies the violence of political repression and structural adjustment.

Before the 2004 US intervention, Haiti had begun the enormous task of building a popular democracy. During those ten years, Haiti’s poor majority had dignity and power, and the beginnings of a society based on human values. Schools, parks, health clinics, markets, literacy campaigns were built to address their needs; street children swam in the presidential pool and death squads were prosecuted.

That human achievement was too much for the United States, as it was too much in 1804 when Haiti overthrew slavery and welcomed escaped slaves to her shores. Then, as now, a blanket of silence and lies buried the truth - but not forever.

We must ask the question: how do you reverse a social revolution with a popular base of 8 million people? How do you suppress a people whose long fight for freedom is legendary?  It takes violence. It takes enormous calculated violence to put the genie of democracy back in the bottle.

You’ve heard some of the ways: by arming paramilitary troops who terrorized the north; by the direct intervention of US Marines who kick-started the coup by kidnapping the president and arresting key people like the popular leader, So An.

It took right wing forces like the Machete Army who massacred dozens of activists in broad daylight at a US-AID sponsored soccer game. It took hundreds murdered by police and former military troops, and 35,000 women and girls raped in the capital city alone. All of this while Haiti was governed by a regime imposed by the United States.

It took UN troops to shamelessly open fire on the poor under the guise of ending gang violence. Where are the gangs whose members are 4 and 6 year old little girls, mothers with infants in their arms, husbands, and grandfathers?

It took an occupying army of 9,000 UN troops who’ve imported sex trafficking to Haitian women and girls. Just this year, 114 Sri Lankans were sent home in a sex-for-pay scandal, where food was the currency and hungry young girls were the victims. As in the Congo, Kosovo, and elsewhere UN “peacekeepers” operate, these crimes are only the tip of the iceberg.

It’s no secret in Haiti that these events were underwritten by the United States of America using every counter-insurgency weapon in their arsenal. Do you think anyone has been punished for these crimes? Not a single one. Convicted human rights violators have actually been released. 

Meanwhile, Haiti’s prisons are filled with thousands who were rounded up during the coup. Politically motivated arrests were essential to US plans to crush resistance, and they targeted not only leaders but the entire population.

Elected members of President Aristide’s government and Lavalas leaders were jailed. As resistance to the coup mounted, as wave after wave of massive demonstrations demanded the return of Aristide, hundreds more were jailed. Many were jailed simply for being among the poor who form the base of support for the grassroots movement - you could be jailed for carrying an image of Aristide, you could be jailed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

After President Rene Preval’s election, there were hopes the political prisoners would be released. Mostly, that didn’t happen. Months of mobilizing finally led to freedom for a few high-profile figures. But countless others are still being held without trial four years after the coup.

Conditions inside can only be described as horrific. A starvation diet of imported white rice has led to an epidemic of Beriberi inside the National Penitentiary – where estimates put the population at three thousand. Severely overcrowded cells, lack of clean water and food constitute a death sentence for some. We will never know how many have died because their bodies are carried out at night when they can’t be seen.

Last year’s arrest of Rene Civil, a popular leader close to Aristide, brought fears that renewed political arrests were ahead. Civil is a very effective grassroots organizer who has mobilized tens of thousands of Haitians into the streets. He is an outspoken advocate for the poor, who spoke shortly before his arrest about ending the deadliest violence of all -- the violence of hunger, the violence of not having adequate shelter, the violence of not being able to go to school – that now confronts Haiti’s people.

These are disturbing facts, but they measure the relentless war that is being carried out by the US war machine and its allies against Haiti. Their goal is to return Haiti to a modern form of slavery.

The spirit of resistance is alive in Haiti, but the price Haitians have paid for daring to be free is already too high. As Haitian activists resist these renewed assaults on the poor, in a period once again dominated by foreign guns and foreign economic clout, they need international solidarity.

In the words of former political prisoner, So An:

We are a people of resistance
They have chewed us, but they cannot swallow
We are hard as rock
They have made us know the way to jail, shut us in their concentration camps
Slavery, occupation, nothing has broken us
We are a people of resistance

Excerpted from speech by Leslie Mullin at Nov. 10, 2007 Report Back, Berkeley, CA