[R-G] None Dare Call it Genocide

[Anthony Fenton]

None dare call it Genocide
COMMON SENSE
JOHN MAXWELL
Sunday, June 29, 2008
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20080628T020000-0500_137242_OBS_NONE_DARE_CALL_IT_GENOCIDE_.asp

It may come as a surprise to many more Europeans than to American  
white people that a great many intelligent and sophisticated people of  
African ancestry are convinced that there are important classes of  
whites who are conspiring to wipe them off the face of the Earth.
JOHN MAXWELL

This may be the most pervasive conspiracy theory of all because it is  
made more credible by an impressive history of genocidal attacks on  
black people and other non-whites. Advocates for 'Indians' of the  
Amazon say the natives believe they are threatened not simply by  
greedy ranchers and gold miners but by missionaries from the United  
States, hoping to clear oil-rich areas of the indigenous populations  
as in Darfur. In Bolivia, for example, the recent attempt by some  
provinces to disaffiliate themselves from the rest of the state is  
seen as a kind of proto-genocide aimed at separating the richest land  
from control by the majority Indian populations.

The slave trade was itself a genocidal operation as well as a  
plutocratic enterprise, and there are those who say that the damage  
done by the slave trade has been grievously underestimated, in order  
to deprecate the importance of Africans and their civilisations and  
therefore their worth in the world.

King Leopold's 'civilising' assault on the Congolese, described by him  
as a charitable endeavour comparable in intent to the Red Cross, was  
able to kill 10 million Congolese in 20
years, suggesting that the toll of the slave trade may have been
grossly underestimated.

In South Africa, the 50-year Apartheid regime was not only explicitly  
anti-African, but in its terminal stages was frantically developing  
biocidal agents to eliminate and exterminate black people all over the  
world. Dr Wouter Basson, a cardiologist, was the lead scientist in the  
attempt to sanitise the world for white people. He still practises  
medicine in South Africa.

The United States has always had a bad reputation in race matters.  
Although a black Barbadian, Crispus Attucks was the first American  
military casualty of the Revolutionary war, and blacks from Haiti,  
including the later Emperor of Haiti Henri Cristophe, fought for  
American Independence, blacks were infamously defined as only three- 
fifths human when the new state proclaimed its freedom and independence.

It was probably no surprise that 20 years later the new state of Haiti  
proclaimed its own independence, that the Haitians, having fought for  
freedom over three centuries, thought it so precious that they  
implemented the first universal declaration of human rights, valuing  
every human being, male and female, adult and child, as essentially  
entitled to the same rights.

Ever since then the Americans and the Haitians have been at odds over  
freedom and human rights and the United States has felt able, whenever  
it chose, to 'intervene' to put the Haitians in their proper place.

There is not enough time to detail the various methods used to pacify  
the restless natives of Haiti, including dive-bombing peasants in the  
1920s, installing a cruel and corrupt army in the 1930s and watching  
paternally as the army and the elite, empowered by the US, wreaked  
their sadistic and oppressive will on the Haitian people.

Having tolerated and fostered the wicked Duvalier dictatorships for 30  
years, the US and its elite clients were not about to let democracy  
loose on the Haitian people.

And when the Haitians decided to reclaim their freedom under the  
leadership of Jean Bertrand Aristide, the Americans first sabotaged  
and then aborted the Haitians' dreams of democracy, first by blackmail  
and then at gunpoint.

ROCK STONE A' RIVER BOTTAM

If the Americans had left the Haitians to their own devices they would  
probably be just as poor but a lot less miserable.
When Jean Bertrand Aristide took office in Haiti in 1990 it was with  
the enthusiastic approval of the Haitian people, who saw in him the  
man of their dreams of emancipation, the little black priest who knew  
them and what they wanted to do. The Duvaliers and their successor  
military rulers allowed the parasitic elite, Haitian/American  
businessmen and other foreigners with 'dual citizenship' to rape and  
pillage Haiti. Aristide meant to build paradise on the dung-heap their  
oppressors had created. That was not the American/elite plan.

They threw him out after a few months but relented under pressure to  
accept him back in 1994 to serve out the few months left of his term.  
When he campaigned again for re-election after the Preval interregnum  
(Haitian presidents are limited to one term) the Americans directed by  
the International Republic Institute and US AID poured millions into  
Haiti to set up anti-Aristide movements.
It didn't work, but they continued with campaigns of lies, slander and  
political doublespeak designed to discredit him internationally, if  
not in Haiti.

Since they couldn't move his people they hit on a brilliant idea. They  
would make it impossible for him to govern.

"The prevalence of disease and malnutrition is staggering in Haiti.
The country is plagued by the highest HIV rates in the hemisphere,  
representing nearly 60 per cent of the known HIV infections in the  
Caribbean. Tuberculosis remains endemic and is a significant cause of  
mortality. Malaria-nearly non-existent in many other Caribbean  
countries-remains a deadly problem in Haiti. Even simple prevention  
measures, such as childhood vaccination for tuberculosis, are woefully  
lacking.

"Water-related diseases are also rampant throughout Haiti. For  
example, in 1999, infectious diarrhoea was found to be the second  
leading cause of death in Haiti. The World Health Organisation (WHO)  
estimates that 88 per cent of diarrhoea cases in the world result from  
the combination of unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and  
improper hygiene. In the same 1999 study, gastro-intestinal infection  
was the leading cause of under-five mortality in Haiti."

'WATER IS LIFE'

If Haiti could manage to bring clean water to the people, that alone  
would revolutionise the country. It would be a powerful means of  
raising health standards generally and preventing epidemic infant  
deaths. It would, by itself, be a new dawn of freedom.

The Inter American Development Bank agreed, and in 1998 said it would  
lend Haiti some money to set up modern water supplies in two cities  
for a start. To get these loans Haiti cleaned up its debts to the  
international financial institutions and got ready for some progress.

They are still waiting. The water supplies, intended to reduce disease  
and infant mortality were repeatedly blocked by the United States and  
its accomplices. The George Bush administration intervened illegally  
to stop the IDB distributing the pittance, and the other members of  
the Bank including France and Canada went along with the fraud. And  
countries like Jamaica, Trinidad and the rest of the hemisphere, caved  
in like terrified pimps and said not a word.

Meanwhile Aristide was getting help from Cuba to build a medical  
school; Dr Paul Farmer's Boston-based Partners in Health was  
revolutionising the management and treatment of HIV/AIDS which had  
been decimating Haiti, and Aristide built more schools in three years  
than had been built in Haiti for the past 200.

He had to go.

Worthies such as the Jamaican-descended Colin Powell swallowed the  
propaganda of the elite and their fascist North American friends.  
Luigi Einaudi, the American deputy secretary General of the  
Organisation of American states, was heard to say that all that was  
wrong with Haiti was that Haitians were running the place.
They would soon fix that.

Some of the most fantastic lies began to be spread about Aristide. He  
was a devil worshipper, a dictator, a hater of democracy, a tyrant, a  
terrorist, a murderer. And one fine morning in 2004, almost exactly  
200 years after the world's first declaration of human rights on the  
soil of Haiti, the American ambassador came to President Aristide with  
a message. You'd better leave old chap, or there are people here with  
some coffins for you and your wife.

So, the dream was over. Aristide was gone. And, best of all, the poor,  
disease-ridden Haitians would not get their water supplies, would have  
to forget that they were human beings deserving of rights and respect,  
and would still be dipping water from gutters and puddles.

There is a report out this last week which chronicles this bestial  
farce in excruciatingly painful detail. It is published by a coalition  
of NGOs: the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Centre for Human Rights, the  
Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice and its affiliate the  
International Human Rights Clinic at New York University's School of  
Law, and Partners in Health, now the largest health care providers in  
Haiti with its sister organisation in Haiti, Zanmi Lasante, treating  
almost two million patients last year, building houses and treating  
malnutrition as well as AIDS and TB and the report is in English but  
is called in Haitian creole Wòch nan Soley : The Denial of the Right  
to Water in Haiti.

Woch nan soley may be loosely translated into Jamaican Creole as "Rock  
stone a ribba bottam neva know sun hot."

It is an irresistible true story of some of the most depraved mischief  
ever visited upon any people anywhere by another people. It may be  
downloaded from the web at the websites of any of the authors.  
Partners in Health may be found at www.pih.org. The RFK Centre at www.rfkmemorial.org 
  and the Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice at chrgj.org
Read it and weep with rage.

Copyright© 2008 John Maxwell
jankunnu at gmail.com