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Haiti has suffered, and continues to
suffer, from the malign interference of foreign powers.
The question: Whose
fault is Haiti's devastation?
The earthquake was clearly an act
of God, but the mess which is the world's response to the disaster was a
genuine human débacle. Consequently justice and simple Christian
morality demand that those guilty of merciless attacks on the Haitians
for their supposed incompetence be identified and named for once. After
all, there has to be an end to two centuries of attacks on Haiti by
white westerners, many of whom presented themselves, and continue to
present themselves, as Christians.
Since Haitian independence in 1804 these people have been blaming, and today continue to blame. Haitians for the ills foreigners have
unmercifully imposed on them from outside. They have been attacked, militarily and politically, and verbally abused for their insolence in
trying to cast off the bonds of slavery which were put upon them by
their supposedly Christian colonisers. They resisted bravely. They
fought off the French who wanted to re-impose slavery, led by Napoleon's
brother-in-law Leclerc.
Under the inspired leadership of Toussaint
Louverture they defeated the British who had captured Port-au-Prince and
finally chased them away at Mole Saint Nicolas in 1799. Then the French
crushed them financially in 1830 with a vast debt for compensation to
slave owners which was not paid off till 1947 – yes 1947!
When in 2003
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide sought repayment with interest of the
$21.7bn exacted over the years from his countrymen, President Jacques
Chirac successfully plotted with Washington to have him exiled in the
Central African Republic.
Then the Haitians had the US to deal
with directly. The Marines invaded in 1911 posing as debt-collectors for
the US and couldn't be got out till 1934 despite the best efforts of
Charlemagne Péralte, the leader of the brave resistance. In a terrorist
campaign against Péralte US aircraft were used on civilians and the
official US record of casualties shows that 13 US soldiers and 3,071
Haitians were killed.
From then to now Haitian leaders have been
overthrown and Haitian institutions prostituted, its citizens kidnapped
on the high seas. There vessels were illegally destroyed and, equally
illegally they were imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay a decade before the
first Middle Easterners arrived. Having carefully wrecked Haiti for
years, Washington ludicrously claimed it was sending yet more troops "to
help stabilise the country".
Right down to this day US legislators,
conscious of the stain of slavery and racism in their own history and
frightened of the example the Haitians could set, have sought to crush
Haiti while slandering its citizens. In a clearly blasphemous statement
Pat Robertson, a US divine who claims to be a Christian, suggested the
other day that the earthquake was God's wrath on Haitians for having
negotiated with the devil to oust the French colonists in the 18th
century. (Preacher Robertson, a darling of US super-nationalists, is
also on record as having called for the assassination of President Hugo
Chávez of Venezuela.)
This month the chaotic arrangements of the
Pentagon, which seized Port-au-Prince airport and has since given
priority to landing aircraft carrying yet more troops over those
bringing relief supplies, have brought back memories of the confusion
Paul Bremer brought to Baghdad after the illegal invasion of Iraq.
Happily for Haitians there has been effective human help at hand. Their
immense contribution comprehensively boycotted by all the western media
except CNN, it is the Cubans who have been the real stalwarts in Haiti
these days. There were 374 Cuban medics working in Haiti a day after the
first shocks in three improvised hospitals, caring for victims
including providing major surgery. They are assisted by approximately
400 Haitian medical interns trained on scholarship in Cuba. Two Cuban
field hospitals were operational within 24 hours of the earthquake in
Port-au-Prince. Cuba has provided free public health care to the poor of
Haiti since 1989. The Cuban government may not call itself Christian
but it has been acting in a suspiciously Christ-like way.
It has shamed
many foreign relief workers who shout their faith from the rooftops.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/29/religion-haiti
January 29, 2010
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