Jan 25th – HAITI DEMONSTRATION – AID THOSE WHO NEED IT MOST AND DO IT NOW!

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Published: January 23, 2010Posted in: BALASC News, HaitiTags: ,
Jan 25th – HAITI DEMONSTRATION – AID THOSE WHO NEED IT MOST AND DO IT NOW!
Denounce U.S. for militarizing & stalling relief effort!
Tell the Pentagon: Don’t do to Haiti what you did to New Orleans!
Get water, food & medical treatment to the people now!

Monday, January 25th – 5 p.m.

Powell & Market, San Francisco [Powell St. BART]


Consider these facts:

1. U.S. forces refused to allow aid planes to land at the Port au Prince and Jacmel airports. Planes from the Caribbean Community, France, World Food Program and Doctors Without Borders — some loaded with desperately needed medical equipment and field hospitals – were repeatedly turned away by U.S. Marines. Unloading military gear and “securing the perimeter” was the Pentagon’s priority. French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet could not contain his outrage: “This should be about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti.”

2. By one week after the earthquake, the U.S. had only airlifted 70,000 bottles of water into Port au Prince…a drop in the bucket for an estimated 3 million dehydrated people in the Haitian heat. [USA Today, Jan. 19]. The U.S. military is denying port and airport access even to established aid organizations, leading a Haiti-based aid group to conclude: “Right now the U.S. is blocking [water, food and medical] aid.”

3. The Pentagon’s first response was to send in reconnaissance drones. Destroyers steamed toward Haiti. Aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up in Haiti, with Sidewinder missiles and helicopters…but without any emergency relief supplies! [www.gregpalast.com]

4. The U.S. occupying force, obsessed with “security,” is holding back aid. Defense Secretary Gates “wouldn’t send in food and water because, he said, there was no ‘structure…to provide security.’” [www.gregpalast.com] Yet the President of faraway Iceland ordered rescue teams in the air almost immediately. Rescue teams from Cuba, Venezuela and China moved to provide relief right away without waiting for “security.”

5. “Aid is sitting at the airport – while millions suffer. Why? People are afraid to give it out for fear of provoking riots.” [Bill Quigley] Yet the overwhelming response of Haitians to this tragedy is one of sharing and caring for each other, showing “remarkable levels of patience and solidarity on the streets.” The main source of “violence” is the 12,000-strong U.S. occupying force which is allowing thousands to die by withholding aid.

6. The media show “images of poor people searching for food, calling them ‘looters’, when in fact mass starvation occurs as shotgun-wielding security guards attempt to cordon off…the larger markets.” [www.haitianalysis.com]

7. On 1/20, eight days after the quake, hard-hit areas like Carrefour and Leogane “still hadn’t received any food, aid or medical help.” [Telesur] A large refugee camp at Champs de Mars reported ”no relief has arrived; it is all being delivered on other side of town, by the U.S. Embassy.” Washington Post reported U.S. rescue operations focused on places frequented by foreigners, such as U.N. headquarters, Montana Hotel and Caribe supermarket. [P. Hallward, www.haitianalysis.com]

8. ”Most Haitians have seen little humanitarian aid….What they have seen is guns, and lots of them. Armored personnel carriers cruise the streets, and inside the well-guarded perimeter [of the airport], the US has taken control,” reported Al Jazeera. “It looks more like the Green Zone in Baghdad than a center for aid distribution.”

The massive U.S. military operation in Haiti comes 6 years after invading U.S. forces overthrew the democratic Aristide government, and replaced it with a brutal coup regime. Meanwhile, the Haitian people – many of them dying from lack of water and medicine, starving while food supplies sit on the airport tarmac — are demanding the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to his homeland.
It is time to hit the streets and express our outrage at the shameful actions by U.S. military authorities in Haiti. To withhold aid desperately needed by the people - so reminiscent of their behavior in New Orleans after Katrina - is a monstrous crime.

Donate to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund:

www.haitiaction.net

Join us in raising these demands:

  • Get the people of Port-au-Prince clean water, food, and medical treatment now.
  • Allow President Aristide to return to Haiti from forced exile in South Africa
  • Respect Haiti. Do not criminalize people who need water, food and medical help.
  • End the foreign military occupation of Haiti.
Sponsored by Haiti Action Committee   www.haitisolidarity.net