Bill and Hillary Clinton: Friends of Haiti?
2012Marty Goodman 2012-12Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 4 →
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4 SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 2012 PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti—Bill Clinton and Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are called the “Friends of Haiti.” Oh, really?
After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, President Obama appointed Bill Clinton as U.S. envoy, partnering with the Katrina and Iraq criminal George Bush Jr., author of the 2004 CIA-backed military coup that overthrew the elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. After the earth quake, Bill headed relief agencies, while ignoring the role of Haitians themselves. Today, Bill is the UN envoy and the ac knowledged guiding hand behind inter national relief efforts.
Bill and Hillary are promoters of the World Bank’s low-wage assembly-based economic plan, angrily dubbed “the American Plan” by Haitians. Last year, Hillary signed an agreement committing $124 million tax dollars to the building of the Caracol sweatshop assembly park in the north of Haiti. Workers there are making the starvation wage of about $3.50 a day. On Oct. 22, Bill and Hillary were on hand for the inaugural ceremony in Caracol.
President Clinton appointed his close friend Ron Brown as Secretary of Com merce in 1993. In the early 1980s, Brown was a partner in the Washington law firm of Patton, Boggs & Blow and an attorney and lobbyist for Haitian dictator JeanClaude “Baby Doc” Duvalier and his fam ily. Brown was also personally linked to wealthy Haitian pro-Duvalier figures.
In 1983, Brown wrote a report ad dressed to the dictator detailing his suc cesses on Duvalier’s behalf in overcoming Haiti’s “unfair image,” not once mention ing Baby Doc’s appalling human rights record. As Commerce Secretary (19931996), Brown helped steer Haiti’s World Bank economic plan. Brown was named Democratic National Chairman in 1989.
As a first-time presidential candidate, Bill Clinton correctly called Bush Sr.’s Hai tian immigration policy “racist.” Bush in tercepted refugee boats in international waters as they fled a brutal CIA-backed military coup in 1991. Bush erected a racist U.S. naval blockade around Haiti to intercept refugees, in violation of U.S. and international political asylum law. The desperate refugees, dubbed “the Black (Above) Last January, Bill Clinton greeted former dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier.
Boat People,” were handed over by the U.S. to the military regime, which viewed returnees as “dissidents.” But once in office, Clinton dramatically intensified Bush’s racist blockade, which Aristide called a “floating Berlin Wall.”
In 1994, the deposed president, JeanBertrand Aristide, got Clinton to agree to restore his presidency with the U.S./UN military occupation that his supporters had lobbied for. Included in the occupa tion agreement was a World Bank eco nomic plan for Haiti based on assembly sweatshops, reconciliation with the coup makers, and the slashing of tariffs on U.S. goods—which soon destroyed domestic production of rice, a staple of the Haitian diet.
The Clinton administration pressured the Haitian government into accepting the reintegration of hundreds of former Haitian army thugs into the “new” Hai tian police. The CIA admitted openly re cruiting police trainees, including mem bers of the paramilitary goons in FRAPH, which was key to the 1991 coup against Aristide. Even Jan Stromsem, head of the U.S. police-training program (ICITAP) in Haiti, quit her post in 1999, after stating concerns that her staff was being forced to participate in CIA espionage activities.
It is well known in Haiti that Bill Clin ton has friendly relations with the coun try’s current president, Michel Martelly, who is linked to Duvalier-era thugs and their kin. Martelly became president in a sham election in 2011 engineered by the U.S. Wikileaks partially revealed the U.S. embassy’s involvement in the election, which surely included Clinton.
Witnesses inform Socialist Action (off the record) that at a private meeting with candidates, Clinton arrogantly told a leading candidate, Jude Celestin, that he could not run and then offered Celestin a job in return. Clinton lent credibility to a sham election that excluded Fanmi Lava las, the party of Aristide supporters.
Mario Joseph, a prominent Haitian hu man rights attorney, was asked by Social ist Action what he thought of the Clin tons. Joseph replied, “They call them the “friends of Haiti.” I don’t think so. They are the enemy.” Joseph also said that Bill Clinton must answer for the UN’s refusal to respond to suits by human rights orga nizations concerning the recent cholera epidemic, which killed over 7000. n
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By ANDREW POLLACK