Friendly Neighborhood Comrade Oct 16 • 18 tweets • SpiritofLenin/status/1581681025293291521 @SpiritofLenin As the US is preparing to militarily intervene in Haiti yet again remember that for more than a century Haitians have been robbed of their right to sovereignty by the US. Here is a thread which documents this either via coups, invasions and occupations. In 1915, US Marines invaded Haiti beginning a brutal 19 year occupation, which ki!!ed 15,000. The Americans looted Haiti’s wealth, stole 100,000s of acres of land & secured harsh control over the country for US business interests. The US created chain gangs to build roads & other construction projects & built military camps throughout the country. In 1920, Herbert Seligman wrote in The Nation that Haitians were shot on sight by US Marines & “machine guns have been turned on crowds of unarmed natives.” The brutal occupation led to an insurgency & US Marines took a picture of the ki!!ed Haitian rebel, Charlemagne Peralte, who they strung up naked in a loin cloth. This photo was dropped from planes across the country as a warning to those resisting US occupation. The US-installed a puppet governments & a brutal army & police force—modeled on the US occupation force—to replace the Marines after they left in 1934. The US occupation set off a century of US invasions & exploitation. On 30 Sep 1991, US backed a coup against Haiti’s 1st ever democratically elected president, the populist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Aristide campaigned on programs to benefit the poor. He was elected due to remarkable organizing by everyday people throughout Haiti. Aristides implemented effective reforms & improved the conditions in Haiti. He cut corruption, halted atrocities & drug trafficking. His disobedience to US demands was deemed unacceptable. US began falsely claiming he was an authoritarian & was committing human rights abuses US set up fake human rights orgs that helped destabilize his gov. Then, after 7 months, US- backed a coup & installed a brutal military junta The CIA was present at Haitian army headquarters during the coup & the key individuals behind it received money & training in the US On 20 Sep 1994, US invaded Haiti to reinstall President Aristide, under the condition that he open up Haiti to US economic domination. The US had previously supported a coup against Aristide in 1991 who had promised to develop Haiti & improve the lives of the the country's poor The US-backed candidate lost badly, so 8 months later the US installed a brutal military junta that ki!!ed 5,000 people. Following an international outcry to the savagery of the US-supported Junta, the US allowed Aristide to become president, after he agreed to accept the neoliberal position of the US- supported candidate of Haiti’s 1990 election, Marc Bazin, who got just 14% of the vote. This opened up Haiti to the continued exploitation by US corporations & produced an economic disaster. In 2010, Clinton confessed that Haiti lost the ability to feed its people because of the polices he imposed. The Perils of Humanitarian Intervention | OZY It’s been 20 years since an “immaculate invasion” by U.S. Marines booted out a junta and restored a democratic leader. Heroic or hubristic? You decide. https://www.ozy.com/flashback/the-perils-of-humanitarian-intervention/33795/ In 2004, US military forces abducted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide & forced him out of the country as part of a coup, which included a US/UN occupation & the ki!!ing or disappearance of 8,000 of Aristide’s supporters. This marked the 2nd US-backed coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide; the first was in 1991. Aristide was Haiti’s 1st democratically elected president. He championed the poor and called for France to pay $21 billion to Haiti for their colonial crimes. The US undermined Aristide by blocking vital humanitarian aid to the country & by funding his political opposition, as well as armed rebels, who helped oust him in 2004. The UN occupation of Haiti is still on going. Leaked US cables show the US saw the UN force as an important way to prevent “resurgent populist & anti-market” forces from gaining power. It described the UN force as, “an indispensable tool to realize US policy interests in Haiti." Some of Aristide’s achievements were: increasing health care/education, improving literacy, prohibiting human trafficking, improving human rights/political freedom; doubling the minimum wage, instituting land reform/aid to farmers, & providing low cost food/housing to the poor. • • • For more information with regard to the coup which overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide I recommend reading this.