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“EMPIRE’S LABORATORY”: HOW 2004 U.S.-BACKED COUP DESTABILIZED
HAITI & LED TO CURRENT CRISIS  
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Amy Goodman interviews Jemima Pierre
March 11, 2024
Democracy Now! [[link removed]]

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_ "The root of this crisis is not last week, it’s not this week,
it’s not even Ariel Henry. But we have to go back to 2004 with the
coup-d’état,” says Pierre. “the whole world is participating in
the occupation of Haiti unwittingly.” _

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AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Haiti, where fighting
continues between police and armed groups calling for the resignation
of the unelected Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Over the weekend, police
and palace guards worked to retake some streets in the capital
Port-au-Prince after armed gangs launched large-scale attacks on at
least three police stations. Haiti has been under a state of emergency
for the past week, with tens of thousands displaced amidst the
fighting. U.N. officials are warning Haiti’s health system is
nearing collapse due to shortages of staff, equipment and other
resources to treat a growing number of wounded patients.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said Sunday it conducted an overnight
mission to airlift nonessential U.S. staff out of Haiti and to boost
security at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince. Caribbean leaders
issued a call late Friday for an emergency meeting today in Jamaica.
They’ve invited the United States, France, Canada, the U.N. and
Brazil to the meeting. CARICOM, the 15-nation Caribbean bloc, said in
a statement, quote, “the situation on the ground remains dire.”

Ariel Henry was appointed prime minister after the July 2021
assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. Henry still has not
returned to Haiti after a trip to Kenya, where he was seeking a deal
for a long-delayed U.N.-backed mission to Haiti. Kenya announced last
year it would lead the force, but it has effectively been placed on
hold. Henry arrived in Puerto Rico Tuesday after he was unable to land
in the Dominican Republic, with the Dominican president saying Henry
was not welcome in the country for safety reasons.

For more, we’re joined by Jemima Pierre, professor at the Social
Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia in Canada and
research associate at the University of Johannesburg. She’s a
Haitian American scholar and co-coordinator of the Black Alliance for
Peace’s Haiti/Americas Team, which has been closely following the
crisis in Haiti. Her recent article
[[link removed]] for NACLA is headlined
“Haiti as Empire’s Laboratory.”

Professor Pierre, welcome to _Democracy Now!_ Can you start off by
describing what you understand is the latest on the ground, who the
armed groups are, and the different sectors of Haitian society that
are joining together with those armed gangs and calling for the
resignation of the unelected Prime Minister Henry?

JEMIMA PIERRE: Good morning. Thank you so much for having me, Amy.

One of the things that we need to just start off with is just these
are paramilitary forces. I think “gangs” is an insufficient name
for them, because a lot of them are former military and former police
officers, and they’re heavily armed. What’s happening is a bunch
of different groups coming together to say — and they call
themselves now “Viv Ansanm,” which is “Live Together,” a bunch
of different various — various armed young groups, young men in
groups — to say that they want to get rid of Ariel Henry.

Now, we hear that there are negotiations happening around the clock.
And apparently, there are supposed to be negotiations going on today,
I think, in Jamaica or by the CARICOM countries, that include the
U.S., France and Canada. The problem, though, is the fact that there
are all these negotiations going on outside of Haiti by many
foreigners with no main participation from the Haitian masses. And I
think, you know, we have to go back to understand that the root of
this crisis is not last week, it’s not this week, it’s not even
Ariel Henry, but we have to go back to 2004 with the coup d’état.

AMY GOODMAN: So, take us on that journey back. If you’ll give us the
historical context? In your piece
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as Empire’s Laboratory.” In it, you write, “Haiti has been and
continues to be the main laboratory for U.S. imperial machinations in
the region and throughout the world.” Explain.

JEMIMA PIERRE: Yes, definitely. You know, we say the crisis in Haiti
is a crisis of imperialism. In 2004, as has been revealed and admitted
to, the U.S., France and Canada got together and backed a coup
d’état against the country’s first democratically elected
president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. And the U.S. Marines flew into his
home, put him on a plane with his security officials, his wife and
aide, and flew them to the Central African Republic. And people can
actually go to the _Democracy Now!_ archives, which covered this live.
And I remember listening to this happening live.

And the point of this was that this coup d’état, which was led by
two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, was then
sanctioned by the U.N. when these same two members of the U.N.
Security Council — and that’s the U.S. and France — basically
pushed the U.N. Security Council into sending a multinational military
force to Haiti armed under Chapter VII deployment. And that itself was
illegal, because the original coup d’état was illegal. The U.S.
ambassador to Haiti and the deputy ambassador were in the process —
they’re the ones that named who the interim president would be, put
together a Council of Sages, and basically restructured Haiti’s
elected president. And back then we had 7,000 elected officials; today
we have zero. And over time, I say Haiti has been under occupation,
because it is this military occupation, the MINUSTAH occupation, that
went from 2004 to 2007, that established the Core Group, that
— it’s an unelected group of Western officials, including Brazil,
which led the military arm of the occupation in 2004 under Lula, which
led then — which has been controlling all the actions in Haiti, down
to naming who the prime minister would be, Ariel Henry, after the
assassination of Jovenel Moïse.

I have to quickly say, though, one of the key things that happened is,
in 2010, after the earthquake in Haiti that killed hundreds of
thousands, when the U.S. pushed the sitting president, René Préval,
to have elections — and the WikiLeaks papers revealed to us later
that Hillary Clinton actually flew to Haiti and changed the election
results, where Michel Martelly of the PHTK political party did not
make the first round, but the U.S. forced the Haitian election council
to actually make him — put him in the second round. And so,
establishing the PHTK, Michel Martelly, a neo-Duvalierist, as
Haiti’s president with under 20% of the people voting, with the
largest political party in Haiti, Lavalas, not being able to
participate, we set the stage for what we see today.

So, by the time we get to Ariel Henry being imposed on the Haitian
people by the Core Group, we had no elected officials, because Michel
Martelly, basically, under him, we lost a lot of — we didn’t have
many elections, and then he put in his protégé, Jovenel Moïse, who
was also unpopular and didn’t run any elections. So we actually
haven’t had any elections in Haiti since 2016, when Jovenel Moïse
was selected for us by the Core Group.

And so, to understand what’s going on in Haiti, we have to
understand how the original moment of the 2004 coup d’état led us
to the complete destruction of the Haitian state. And if we don’t do
that, we don’t understand these current flareups, where people are
saying that they want their democracy back and saying that whatever
negotiations that are happening outside of Haiti has nothing to do
with them because it has not included them.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, when we went to the Central African Republic in
a small plane with U.S. Congressmember Maxine Waters and the late
founder of TransAfrica, Randall Robinson, and a Jamaican MP, we flew
to the Central African Republic. They went to retrieve the Aristides,
who had been put there by the United States. And as we were flying
back over the Atlantic, they got word that Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice
and Colin Powell were saying that the Aristides were not to return to
this hemisphere, were not to return to Haiti, to which Randall
Robinson replied, “Whose hemisphere?” And so, he was not able to
land in Haiti and went into exile in South Africa, where you have also
taught for many years, for over seven years, and then we went to South
Africa when he finally returned to Haiti. And people can see all of
those reports at democracynow.org
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But I’m wondering — I wanted to talk about the latest news, the
_Miami Herald_ reporting
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that Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by phone Thursday with
Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry in a series of calls that officials
described as “tense.” This is the U.S. State Department
spokesperson Matthew Miller speaking Wednesday about the violence in
Haiti.

MATTHEW MILLER: As the situation on the ground grows increasingly
dire, we and CARICOM have continued to call on stakeholders, including
the prime minister, to make concessions in the interest of the Haitian
people. So, we are not calling on him or pushing for him to resign,
but we are urging him to expedite the transition to an empowered and
inclusive governance structure that will move with urgency to help the
country prepare for a multinational security support mission to
address the security situation and pave the way for free and fair
elections.

AMY GOODMAN: But Jacqueline Charles, the _Miami Herald_ reporter, said
that the U.S. was pushing Ariel Henry to resign. What do you
understand, Professor Pierre, about the latest, and also even where he
is? Is he still in Puerto Rico, unable to get back to Haiti?

JEMIMA PIERRE: Yeah, he’s in Puerto Rico under FBI’s protection.
He had to leave the hotel he was in when he first landed, because
Haitian people living in Puerto Rico were protesting his presence in
the state. And so that’s important.

You know, the U.S. government is being extremely hypocritical here,
because in 2004, when the U.S. Marines landed at Aristide’s house,
put him on a plane and told the world that he resigned, before the
plane even landed in Central African Republic, and basically put in
power a whole new government, and now they’re saying that this
unelected prime minister that they put in place refuses to resign,
where he actually has no legitimacy and no mandate whatsoever.

I also want to say quickly, just to touch back to the question
earlier, is, the reason I say Haiti is a laboratory, because this is
the first coup d’état that was sanctioned by the U.N., and Haiti
was ruled by a multilateral coalition of all these countries. And so,
the U.N. occupation of Haiti, through MINUSTAH and through the Core
Group, is multinational, multiracial, and it almost seems as if this
is a humanitarian effort as opposed to a coup d’état that has been
successful. And so, the whole world is participating in the occupation
of Haiti unwittingly, because — and this is how — we have to
remember how the U.S. will work, and they will use their proxies to do
the dirty work for them.

And I want to say what’s happening today on the ground with CARICOM
is also a problem, because back in 2004, P.J. Patterson, who was the
leader — who was the president of CARICOM, was very much against
the removal of Haiti’s sitting president. In fact, he refused to
acknowledge the imposed government that the U.S. put on us. But now
CARICOM is playing a different role where they’re bringing the U.S.,
France and Canada, the people who did the original sin, to pick our
leaders again.

And so, the problem is, if this goes on and if they don’t take into
account other solutions that Haitians have been putting together —
you know, in early 2021, you had La Fanmi Lavalas come up with Sali
Piblik, which means that we need to start over and change the system.
We had the Montana Accords. We have local groups that actually had a
solution before the Moïse assassination. The U.S. government was
trying to protect Moïse and basically ignored all these local
solutions. And so, now they cannot say that they’re here to help
Haiti, as much as trying to figure out how to put in place another
unpopular and illegal government, and so then we’ll have the same
problem a few years down the line.

The other thing I want to quickly say — I know, in a hurry — is
that the people funding these armed groups are part of the oligarchy.
And most of the guns and ammunition are coming from the U.S. People
must remember that in the late 2022, in early 2023, the Canadian
government sanctioned three of the richest oligarchs in Haiti.
That’s Gilbert Bigio, Reynold Deeb and Sherif Abdallah. The Canadian
government also sanctioned former President Michel Martelly and other
— and Laurent Lamothe, his prime minister, all of them because they
— for drug trafficking, but also for funding these armed groups. And
so, in the news we get, you get these guys that look, you know, like
raggedy — ragged and poor, but then the people really funding them,
because Haiti does not manufacture guns, are these elites that are
behind all the violence. And so I also want to put that into very
clear context so that we know that this is a very complex problem
that’s very much set up by the 2004 coup, but also perpetuated by
the oligarchy and the U.S., which work together to keep Haiti
unstable, so that we can say Haiti is ungovernable and we need to come
in and save it.

JEMIMA PIERRE: Right, and this is very important. Thank you for asking
this. Guy Philippe was around in 2004. In fact, Guy Philippe was
trained by the U.S. in Ecuador and spent a lot of time training in —
living and training in the Dominican Republic. So, in the lead-up to
coup d’état against Aristide in 2004, what you had is — all the
fall of 2003, what you had, Guy Philippe and his armed groups would
ransack — would cross into the border and ransack and attack police
stations and so on and so forth. Back then, which is fascinating, if
you look up in the news, the Western media portrayed him as a freedom
fighter. He was the hero standing up against the evil Aristide,
according to the West. And so they supported him. And he would say
later that he was actually being funded by the CIA and so on.

And then, as soon as, you know, what happened, once they removed
Aristide, what you have is they tried to integrate these former armed
military groups into the Haitian National Police, because Aristide had
disbanded the army. And so, what you have is — that’s why I say we
have to call these “paramilitaries,” because these are former
armed groups that actually were funded by outsiders to oust our
democratically elected president.

And here we are. Guy Philippe was arrested by the U.S. and put in
prison for drug trafficking. And we have to understand this, because
even during his trial, there are certain things that were kept secret
because it implicated the U.S. government. And so, he served six years
in prison as a criminal in the U.S., and now the U.S. dumped him in
Haiti in November 2023, after serving six years of a nine-year term.
And so now he’s back running around saying he wants to be president.

And he’s getting — you know, you’re saying Haiti’s — you
know, everyone pretends that Haiti — you know, are saying that Haiti
is at war, and so on and so forth, but the reality is, Guy Philippe is
giving interviews to all the mainstream press. Guy Philippe gives more
interviews than the local people who are organizing against
repression. We don’t hear them in _The Washington Post_, but we hear
Guy Philippe. But I wonder what the U.S. role is for Guy Philippe
right now. And as far as I’m concerned, he should be tried for
treason, because he was behind — he worked with the U.S. to
actually remove our elected president. And so, we have to be very
careful about what the U.S. is bringing, what the mainstream media is
bringing to us as real and as the situation, when we know the
situation is actually very much controlled by the U.S. and the Core
Group when it comes to Haiti.

AMY GOODMAN: And Chérizier, known as “Barbecue,” the leader of
one of the most powerful armed groups, explain his role right now and
the alliance that has been formed between the armed groups. And also,
really, is it true, for the very first time, sort of forming an
alliance with the elite. as well, at least agreeing that Ariel Henry
should be ousted?

JEMIMA PIERRE: Yes, apparently, it seems like Chérizier has joined in
with all the other groups that they were having trouble with. And so,
it is a combination of all kinds of groups that had worked against one
another, that have fought against one another, and now they’re
coming together to get rid of Henry. And I think part of the problem
is, I think they’re afraid of this supposedly Kenyan-led, but
U.S.-pushed, Kenyan mission of a thousand police officers coming in,
another foreign invasion, and they’re worried about their position
in Haitian society.

I do think the elite have to be brought into this, the oligarchs of
Haiti that are funding this and supporting this, because this nonstop
ammunition comes from somewhere. They’re coming from these ports
that are owned by the elites. And so, there might be a — you know,
we don’t know the machinations behind these gangs, who’s paying
for them. You know, we know that they broke into the ports and emptied
some containers. We don’t know what they took. But we know that the
ports are not owned by the people, they’re owned by the oligarchs.

And so, what’s going on in Haiti is actually very important, because
it’s — I don’t think it’s a plan that the U.S. wanted, which
is why they rushed Henry to Kenya to sign this bilateral agreement,
after the Kenyan courts said that it was unconstitutional for Kenya to
send its police to Haiti. But I think things changed faster than they
anticipated, and so now they’re scrambling for a new plan in Haiti.
And in the meantime, what’s happening is our people, that are the
people — the poor people on the ground, are the ones suffering.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Jemima Pierre, we want to thank you so much for
your analysis, professor at the Social Justice Institute at the
University of British Columbia in Canada, was before that at UCLA and
is research associate at the University of Johannesburg, a Haitian
American scholar and co-coordinator of the Black Alliance for
Peace’s Haiti/Americas Team, which has been closely following the
crisis in Haiti. We’ll link to your piece
[[link removed]] in NACLA, “Haiti as
Empire’s Laboratory.”

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States License [[link removed]].
Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some
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