Gorilla Radio blog: ABCs of Haiti Election Violence

Saturday, October 24, 2015

ABCs of Haiti Election Violence

The ABCs of Election Violence in Haiti

by Ezili Dantò’s - Ezilidante.com

Elections under US occupation behind the UN humanitarian front and Martelly dictatorship are illegitimate.

In order to pick the next Haiti president, the US-Euro colonists must go to the process of holding “Haiti elections.”

It doesn’t matter that the US overpaid $38 million for the August 9th Parliamentary masquerade; doesn’t matter the first round garnered a mere 4-5% voter participation, were heavily criticized and roundly denounced as an electoral travesty.

The US-World Bank resource-mongers need a facsimile of elections to legitimize all those decrees and new “laws” they have Martelly and his un-elected Transitional Team signing without a Parliament. So, to cower the people, thinking that they can use the chaos to put in their own candidates, and to check the opportunistic politicians and control these selections, the US-Euro imperialists with the tiny Haiti billionaire oligarchs must strum up FEAR and violence this Sunday.

This past weekend’s pre-election massacres of 15 to 20 people in Site Solèy by the specialized police unit called Brigade of Operation and of Departmental Intervention (BOID), is a preview.

Haiti human rights activists, witnesses and radio commentators charge that the newest US-Martelly special police unit are doing the bidding of the US status quo as represented by Martelly’s political party (PHTK) and revealing itself to be in the vein of the old Duvalierist Tonton Macoutes. BOID, a 254-officer police unit formed by the Michel Martelly team in June, is charged, by activists, with the killing this last week of at least 15 to 20 people with gunfire.

Four men were also reported decapitated with machetes by BOID. Their bodies found Oct 16, 2015. HLLN sources charged them with indiscriminately stopping groups of Haiti residents, in the Site Solèy and other areas, brutally throwing residents to the ground, manacling them and putting them in the back of their pick-up trucks before speeding off.

On Sunday, October 25th, the first round of presidential elections and the second round of Parliament elections are to be held.

The candidates in the Haiti elections know they won’t win with a clean campaign. The vote is foreign financed, the ballot system foreign made and foreign counted. Without foreign support and/or force, one cannot win. For its part, the Martelly dictatorship and un-elected transitional government is methodically stifling dissent in the prelude to the October 25th (s)election by gerrymandering areas along the coastline to add 19 new Deputy seats, increasing taxes, intimidating opposition supporters, using government funds to bribe and push their PHTK candidates, signing whatever law the World Bank and US Embassy wish them to in exchange for military protection, destroying voting centers in the populous areas where Martelly and the US are seen as repugnant tyrants using the law as a tool of repression.

Just like during the Latorture Boca Raton regime days (2004 to 2006), the brutal police are jailing political opponents and killing activists as part of a broader pattern of neocolonial repression that’s especially more visible at election time. To date, among the Site Solèy residents killed by BOID were two pregnant women and a 10-year-old child.

The BOID unit that is raining death and destruction upon Haiti’s poor was trained by the UN/MINUSTAH and United Nation Police (UNPOL). Formed June 2015, the foreign-trained Haiti militarized death squads are given functions that overlaps the missions of the SWAT and the National Haiti Police force (UDMO) teams, except it seems BOID is to cover more regional and departmental assignments. The overlap itself strums internal divisions, corruption and competition. Doesn’t the UN have an obligation to the people of Haiti not to unleash death squads upon them like BOID, or tolerate these human rights violation under their watch? See our past human rights actions at the Ezili Archives on the matter.

For instance back in 2006 at “HLLN Letter urging UN to Protect civilians and human right workers in Gran Ravine/Martissant”; or, at this Associated Press, 2006 report “15 officers to face the bar of justice for brutal murders” or at our 2006 essay titled, “Both Lame Timanchèt and UN say their job in Haiti is to kill “bandits”: The failures of the UN and Haitian Police Chief, Mario Andresol” and the UN massacres on July 6, 2005 in Site Solèy by Èzili Dantò. HLLN has been denouncing the UN complicity with Haiti police killings and the criminal failures of the UN mercenaries in Haiti for over eleven years.

The colonial formula doesn’t change

The colonial formula doesn’t change. The US will manufacture rivalries and get the armed groups to do their dirty work for them. The violence is intended to suppress voting in populous areas and other neighborhoods, where candidates of the party in power, owned by the US and the Haiti mercenary families, are less popular.

The game is called “killing the bandits” in the poor and populous voting areas. It works like this: the US-Euro arm-dealers and complicit Haiti mercenary families (oligarchs) make sure there’s plenty of guns and ammunition anonymously shipped in containers to Haiti for the big event.

Their puppet Martelly government arm local police, special units or just plainclothes out- -of-work-men or family members in it for the quick buck, that they will call “the bandits” to news outlets, “police” or “everyday, loyal supporters” to the Operatives’ face. Assign them out to conduct political assassinations or to instill fear for the purpose of getting control of voting centers for Martelly’s candidates. Simultaneously, the said Martelly government also sends the specialized police units in to wipe out his government’s hired guns (the evidence). As Haiti human rights organizer Pierre Esperance notes “…the national police..are in cahoots with armed gang(s).” BOID is terrorizing the population. Think about it like this: when the US government plotted, in 1968, to assassinate Martin Luther King, Jr., the United State Government had the mafia do the hit with back-up US army Green Berets there just in case their bandits missed. (See, MLK assassination Martin Luther King assassinated by US Govt: King Family civil trial verdict).

Similarly, in Haiti, as elsewhere overseas, the US military industrial complex has got backup US-UN sniper riflemen miles away to shoot at Haiti policemen, the ones (like BOID) they’ve trained. This done to ramp up the chaos and to make sure these Haiti special forces shoot at the places the US-Euro plotters need them to shoot to take out an annoyance to Empire or to start the eruption of Haiti violence Empire feeds on. There are also paid Haiti criminal gangs, and out-of-uniform military and fake police, some flying in for the weekend from US cities – with rolling or multiple allegiances – used to loot the voting centers, stuff ballots, vote multiple times, intimidate opposition party members and supporters. In the US, Lee Harvey Oswald, a disposable CIA operative with no clout, was used and framed as the ultimate fall guy. It is against this background analysis we shall better understand the pre-election massacres and the violence to come this Sunday, Oct 25th, 2015.

Back in 2011, the US financed the Martelly group responsible for election violences to counter the Preval government candidate choice and resources.

The new US-UN police financed Martelly death squads called BOID are all set and ready to instill fear during the upcoming Sunday, Oct 15, 2015 US selections. It is against this analysis we shall better understand that:

“More than 12 people were reported killed over the weekend in clashes between rival gangs in Haiti’s capital, a spate of violence blamed on groups battling for control over voting centers ahead of the country’s election on Sunday…According to Pierre Esperance of the National Human Rights Defense Network, groups close to the government distributed weapons to Jean-Pierre in January 2015.” —Recent Murders in Port-au-Prince Are a Bad Omen for Haiti’s Election

Martelly’s political organization, Mouvement Tet Kale (MTK), was the main group responsible for the election violences to counter the Preval government presidential choice, Jude Celestin, which the US did not want. MTK, rioted and vandalized Haiti’s largest cities when the Electoral Council announced Martelly did not make it to the runoff. To reward these rioters, after the US pushed to overturn the 2010 election, USAID gave the political movement backing Martelly support worth $100K. Their violent demonstrations were used by Hillary Clinton to rationalize changing the election results in favor of Martelly. On the other hand, time and time again, the people’s years of peaceful mass demonstrations to end the sexist and crude Martelly dictatorship has not persuaded the US to do the right thing. Stop empowering Duvalierist thugs and Martelly criminal activities John Kerry once decried.

The “Vote” is an Instrument of Empire

The sociopathic White Dominance System uses “the vote” as an instrument of empire to give society the illusion of inclusion while the ruling psychopaths get bolder and more and more degenerate.

The UN troops are making half-a-billion dollars, ($500,080,500) per year, in Haiti. Supposedly to “strengthen Haiti’s Government institutions and rule-of-law-structures, as well as to promote and to protect human rights.”

But they are the ones promoting illegality. Committing human rights abuses that include killing over 10,000 Haitians, making 850,000 sick with cholera, pushing sham elections, endorsing lies and turning a blind eye to the brutal deeds of their trained police units. The 20 Haitians reported killed by the BOID politicized police unit, did not benefit from the UN presence in Haiti.

Olivier Martelly’s reported arrest in Florida

Worst, last month, in early September 2015, the disturbing news that President Michel Martelly’s son, Olivier Martelly was placed under arrest in Florida continues to reverberate. Writing on the matter on October 18, one US money laundering and financial crimes expert, wrote:

“Much has been made in Haiti about the fact that, although Olivier Martelly, the son of the President of Haiti, was arrested in the United States, all details of his arrest have been sealed and concealed from the public. When information, and relevant details, of important criminal cases are deliberately and efficiently hidden from access, compliance officers at American and Canadian banks are left in the dark, and may, unwittingly, enable, or facilitate money laundering.

The blackmail opportunities here are staggering. Sealing information regarding this alleged arrest from the Haiti public, is as shocking as the U.S. cover-up of the stolen 2010 elections. Moreover, we know now (according to the Hillary emails) that the Associated Press had prior knowledge but failed to report the news that Martelly was not the winner of the 2010 Haiti elections. In the same manner today the mainstream media stays, along with the Obama Justice Department, blind, deaf and dumb about the reported US arrest of Martelly’s son.

Some Haitians wonder if Martelly is signing all the decrees he’s currently signed -that are in the interests of foreign businesses – because the US is giving the family these special favors? Such as, altering official records about his US citizenship? Remaining silent about his son’s arrest in September 2015 so that Martelly and his un-elected transition team may be the faces of the US orchestrated corrupt October 25 elections? May continue to preside over election season violences, the rise in killings, arrests, terrors and other state-sponsored acts meant to dissuade residents, in the populous areas, from voting who are more likely to vote against the US-approved candidates? Is this Martelly favor in exchange for the US keeping Olivier Martelly out of jail? Giving him bail?

The lack of U.S. transparency is responsible for the public questions, uncertainties and chaos in Haiti about this. Would the US embassy protect the Martelly legal bandits, such as the BOID police unit, to safeguard fake elections and the carte blanche control over Haiti resources that Bill Clinton’s Interim Haiti Recovery Commission provided the Internationals? Most Haitians believe they would. (See the Free Haiti Movement Declaration: All Martelly decrees since he came into office in 2011 are NULL and VOID, cannot bind the sovereign people of Haiti.)

How can anyone possibly give legal credibility to these sham elections? How can there be free, fair, inclusive and transparent elections in Haiti when the 2010 US-UN interventions to delete the people’s vote and put Martelly in office is still so clear in Haitian minds but never addressed by either the Obama Administration nor UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon? How can there be free, fair, inclusive and transparent elections in Haiti when everyone knows US aid monies fund elections to advance US interests and to protect the Haiti economic elites who are subcontractors for the transnational corporations?

The UN mission in Haiti is mostly funded by the United States to protect the interest of the United States, the NGOs and the Haiti oligarchy. It acts as an occupying force and works hand-in-hand with corrupt police, criminal gangs, kidnappers and arms traffickers.

There’s nothing transparent, fair, moral, valid or honest about the unjust US-UN occupation in Haiti, nor its fake elections. First off, NGO aid in Haiti is used to feed sectors in the population that agree with the US occupation and to starve-out the sectors, like in the West Departments in Haiti where 40% of the registered Haiti electorate, reside. Second, US and international aid in Haiti, since the US occupation behind UN guns began in 2004, have mainly focused on building luxury hotels and sweatshops for foreign businesses with earthquake monies meant for the homeless; or on refurbishing deep water ports and energy infrastructure to service foreign mining, foreign land-grabs and other extraction interests. Third, the Internationals main priority is about their own security in Haiti, which, for the Black populace, means the Internationals are busy building up prisons, police academies and various Haiti police units such as BOID. (See also, The October 25th US election masquerade in Haiti by Yves Point Du Jour; A Massacre Foretold by Harry Comeau; and, Three Haiti questions all Haitians and world citizens should have an answer for.)

The election season police and death squad executions in Port-au-Prince continue the neocolonial impunity of the wealthy and powerful in Haiti. The militarized and trained Haiti police, along with the United Nation soldiers, are sanctioned to shoot Haiti demonstrators mostly with total impunity. These assaults on democracy -these internationally-run elections – are not worth the extinguishment of one single Haiti life.