The Siege of Casernes Dessalines: the Story of Alix Pasquet, Haitian Tuskegee Airman

This week the movie "Red Tails" makes its debut at the box office. By comparison, the story of The Haitian Tuskegee Airmen is virtually unknown. Not many people know that Haitian men were recruited to be pilots and to fight in WWII. One intriguing event involving a Haitian Tuskegee pilot is the story of Alix Pasquet, who laid siege on the Casernes Dessalines in an attempt to dislodge Haitian dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier.

Lieutenant Pasquet's attempted coup was the first of many against the hated dictator. It occurred less than one year into Duvalier's regime, when "the romance between the newly elected President and the people ended, causing the political opposition to gain much ground."

The whole dramatic story unfolds on the Fort Dimanche website. "[A] summary was sent to Fordi 9 in remembrance of the 48th anniversary of the events that took place on that day [July 28, 1958]. Submitted by Frantz Haspil"

A group of former Haitian military officers headed by Lieutenant Alix Pasquet gathered in Miami . On or about July 25, 1957, the group set sails on board a yacht called “Molly C” heading toward Haiti. On board were former Lieutenants Alix “Sonson” Pasquet, Henri “Riquet” Perpignan and Phillipe “Fito” Dominique (the brother in law of Pasquet). Accompanying them were five American soldiers of fortune whose names were: Arthur Payne (the leader), Dany Jones, Levant Kersten, Robert F. Hickey and Joe D. Walker (the boat captain). The Haitian officers had all been assigned while in the Army to either the Casernes Dessalines, or the National Palace and thus were very familiar with those two areas.

The Casernes Dessalines is a military barracks built in 1912, located behind the National Palace, which housed the 18th Battalion of the Haitian Armed Forces. The National Palace housed its own garrison called the Presidential Guard, mainly considered a ceremonial unit.

And since these officers had left the country some months earlier, they were confident that with the help of the soldiers they once had in their command, and the help of other officers still in the military, they could seize the moment, create an uprising and overthrow the Duvalier regime.

Read a full and dramatic account of the siege of Casernes Dessalines by Luitenant Alix Pasquet and the heart wrenching stories the victims of the Duvalier dictatorship at Fordi9.com.

Fordi 9 chronicles the thousands of individuals who, under the regime of both Duvaliers, were unjustifiably stripped of their undeniable rights and/or deprived unreasonably of their civil liberties. Many of these victims were incarcerated and subjected to physical and mental torture without cause or due process.

The Puppet, the Dictator, and the President: Haiti Today and Tomorrow

by BAR editor and columnist Jemima Pierre, PhD
Originially published at Black Agenda Report | 01/17/2012 - 20:13 — Jemima Pierre

There they were, at the official ceremony: the living, breathing banes of Haiti’s existence. “Rubbing shoulders on stage, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries were Haitian President Michel Martelly, former US President and UN Special Envoy, Bill Clinton, and, Jean Claude Duvalier,” the mass murderer and former dictator. The dictator is hoping for some kind of comeback, and the puppet president “will open up Haiti to permanent US occupation and economic exploitation while terrorizing Haitians who fight back.” Clinton oversees the whole process on behalf of imperialism.

The Puppet, the Dictator, and the President: Haiti Today and Tomorrow

by BAR editor and columnist Jemima Pierre, PhD

“Duvalier has been allowed to roam Haiti’s streets, even dining at the finest restaurants with the likes of Sean Penn.”

Lost amidst the heart-wrenching stories and photographs of the “poor Haitians” living in squalor and misery circulating on the second anniversary of the 12 January 2010 earthquake, another set of images appeared. Few people noticed these other images – they received little attention in the mainstream media – but they offer an insight into the prospects for Haiti’s reconstruction and, indeed, into the prospects for Haiti’s political and economic future.

The images were taken during the official commemoration ceremonies at the hillside of Titanyen [pdf], north of Port-au-Prince, where former dictators Jean Claude Duvalier and his father, Francois Duvalier, discarded the bodies of their political opponents. After the earthquake, it became the gravesite of thousands of unidentified earthquake victims. During the ceremonies, local delegates and international diplomats paid their respects to the Haitians that lost their lives and pledged to help those who lived. But the most striking image that emerged during the ceremonies was that of an immoral triumvirate. Rubbing shoulders on stage, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries were Haitian President Michel Martelly, former US President and UN Special Envoy, Bill Clinton, and, Jean Claude Duvalier. To understand the future of Haiti, we have to shift our focus from the “poor Haitians” who dominate Haiti coverage and understand the significance of these three figures to the shaping of US imperial designs on Haiti.

“President Martelly is the face – and backbone – of a resurgent Duvalierism.”

“Baby Doc” Duvalier returned to Haiti after twenty-five years in exile on 16 January 2010. His arrival was supposedly a surprise, though it is becoming clear that he was given the go-ahead by France and the United States. The Obama administration’s relative silence around the return of Duvalier needs to be contrasted with the noise it made while it forcefully tried to prevent the return of Jean Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected President. The contrast smacks of duplicity. Let’s remember that under Duvalier (and his father, Francois) nearly 50,000 Haitians were killed, disappeared, and tortured by the reviled tonton macoutes, his private army. At the same time, Duvalier embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars, most of which sponsored an exiled life of grandeur. Despite the calls for his arrest and prosecution by Haitian survivors, lawyers, and international human rights organizations, Duvalier has been allowed to roam Haiti’s streets, even dining at the finest restaurants with the likes of Sean Penn.

What does Duvalier symbolize? For Haiti’s elite, he represents a form of totalitarian nostalgia. There is a cultish aura that surrounds Duvalier, a reminder of the era of “macoutized bourgeoisie,” as journalist Kim Ives has referred to it, when there was an alliance between the elite and the paramilitary forces of terror. But Duvalierism was also good for US politics and economics. In the 1960s, they needed Francois (“Papa Doc”) Duvalier to offset the rise of revolutionary communist Cuba. Under Jean Claude (“Baby Doc”), they were able to open up the Haitian markets and resources to US businesses, expand sweatshops, and lay the basis for the coming neoliberal economic policies.

“Duvalierism was good for US politics and economics.”

This is where the US-selected President Martelly and “Papa” Bill Clinton come in. As we’ve pointed out here on Black Agenda Report, right-wing candidate Martelly was handpicked by the Obama administration to become Haiti’s president in a forced election marred by irregularities and low voter turn out. More importantly, he is the face – and backbone – of a resurgent Duvalierism. His Duvalier affinities are well known as is his animus towards former President Aristide. He has historic ties with Duvalier loyalists, has called for “amnesty” for Duvalier, and is now in the process of reestablishing the Haitian army. Moreover, his erratic and belligerent interactions with his constituency and political colleagues – and, in particularly, his threats against Haitian journalists – are early indications of his repressive tendencies.

But he is a good puppet. As Ezili Danto of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network reminds us: “Martelly is merely a tool to be used by those ‘more schooled in the patterns of privilege and domination’ than any self-serving Haiti politician could ever dream to be. Martelly is the valve that releases accumulated surface pressure while reinforcing the ‘violent Haitian’ narrative. Brilliant US/Euro move. A no brainer.” In the meantime, he will open up Haiti to permanent US occupation and economic exploitation while terrorizing Haitians who fight back. As the U.S. attempts to consolidate its military presence in the Western hemisphere, control of Haiti is important. For many, this is one of the reasons explaining Haiti’s currently military occupation by the UN-led criminal force, MINUSTAH, the largest UN military force in a country that is not at war. It is also the reason for the massive new US embassy in Haiti, the fourth largest US embassy in the world.

“Clinton practically dictates Haitian policy.”

And then there’s Bill Clinton. Clinton provides the “kind” face of US control of Haiti. With his push to turn Haiti into a Western tourist paradise while Haitians become cheap sweatshop labor for making Western goods, Clinton is the arbiter of a new phase of neoliberalism. Clinton practically dictates Haitian policy. In fact, in one of the more absurd and nepotistic twists of Haiti’s political history, Haiti’s Prime Minister, Gary Conille, is Clinton’s former chief of staff. Conille also has a long family history with the Duvaliers: his father was a minister to Baby Doc. As @dominique_e recently said on twitter, everything is set to “kill Haiti with neoliberalism.”

Last week, Glen Ford remarked that in the US media, “Haiti is most often spoken of as a tragedy – when it is actually the scene of horrific crimes, mainly perpetrated by the United States over the span of two centuries.” With the puppet, the dictator, and the president on the scene, it is hard to imaging a more sinister cohort guiding Haiti down the path of US exploitation.

Jemima Pierre can be reached at BAR1804@gmail.com.

Haiti, Raped by the U.S. Since 2004, and Still Bleeding

by Glen Ford | originally published at Black Agenda Report

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

The horrific squandering of Haitian lives and earthquake relief and aid dollars by the occupying powers over the past two years are direct consequences of previous imperial crimes. “Since 2004, Haiti has been methodically stripped of its sovereignty, made into a protectorate of the United Nations,” which is merely a front for the United States. “The earthquake of January 2010 was a natural phenomenon that happened to take place while a rape was in progress.”

“The United States has flexed every superpower muscle to prolong Haiti’s agony.”

In the American media, Haiti is most often spoken of as a tragedy – when it is actually the scene of horrific crimes, mainly perpetrated by the United States over the span of two centuries. For the past two years, since the earthquake that shook the life out of hundreds of thousands of already deeply wounded people, the United States has flexed every superpower muscle to prolong Haiti’s agony.

Half a million people are still homeless, two years after the quake, despite the billions in relief and recovery aid pledged by international donors. Sixty percent of the rubble has yet to be removed from the capital and its suburbs, and 6,000 people have died from a cholera epidemic brought into the country by United Nations troops. The UN has still not seen fit to apologize for being the vector of disease, because the UN is not accountable to the people of Haiti – only to the United States. The Americans used a huge chunk of their so-called aid money to reimburse themselves for the cost of their military occupation of the country. Dead, dying, sick, starving, homeless Haitians are made to pay for their own imprisonment in their native land, while Washington gloats that it is Haiti’s last, best hope, and that the catastrophic earthquake might have been a good thing, a chance for a “new beginning” under Washington's firm guidance.

Millions were spent to choreograph crooked elections that brought to office a government with no power, even less money, and not a shred of dignity – a puppet regime held in absolute disrespect by its American puppeteers.

“Washington gloats that it is Haiti’s last, best hope, and that the catastrophic earthquake might have been a good thing.”

Meanwhile, Haiti’s most popular political party remains, for all official purposes, an outlaw, effectively banned from civic participation. The Haitian people are not allowed to speak. And this is the heart of the crime, from which all the grand and petty assaults on the Haitian nation, flow. This week’s anniversary of the killer earthquake is full of morbid statistics on physical destruction, death and disease, but the appalling numbers cannot separate these two years of horror from the crimes that came before: the isolation and armed extortion of Haiti by United States and Europe following her 1804 victory against French slavery, leaving the Black republic with a debt that was not paid off until the 1940s; the 26 separate invasions of Haiti by the United States from 1849 to 1915, followed by a nearly 20-year occupation that lasted until 1934; and the U.S. overthrow of Haiti's popularly elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, in 2004, the 200th anniversary of Haiti's independence. Since 2004, Haiti has been methodically stripped of its sovereignty, made into a protectorate of the United Nations, which is merely a front for the real rulers, the United States and its junior partners, France and Canada.

The earthquake of January 2010 was a natural phenomenon that happened to take place while a rape was in progress. The rapists in Washington take their greatest pleasure in Haiti's degradation. Haiti needs nothing from the United States, except to be left alone, as a free nation in the world, to make friends as it chooses. It is not natural disaster that holds her back, but naked U.S. aggression – because all people have the capacity to rise, unless they are held down by overwhelming force.

On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Haiti: Island of the Blamed

The Economist's online blog has addressed the cholera lawsuit filed against the UN by The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) in a blog.

Should Haitians be grateful for this belated attention to the disastrous outbreak? -- that a major U.S. publication, The Economist has seen fit to address this most inconsequential of issues -- the untimely death of thousands of Haitians?

Well, it's not such an afterthought as they would make it. The reason the issue merits The Economist's intention at all is because they calculate the death of thousands in terms of the millions of dollars such a lawsuit represents. The Economist clearly regrets the UN's impending economic loss. So it is no wonder that the writer (P.B.?) titles the blog - "The UN in Haiti - Damned if you do." The meaning is clear: the "damned" are not the over 500,000 Haitians infected by cholera, the over 800,000 The Lancet predicts will be infected, nor the (conservatively) almost 7,000 recorded dead.

The Economist admits there may be culpability on the part of the UN. It's unclear whether such clarity would be forthcoming if the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) did not exist. They have the UN's back -- though they make it clear they don't want to be downstream from that rear end.

The experts “found that it was not possible to determine conclusively how cholera was introduced,” said Kieran Dwyer, a spokesperson for the UN’s peacekeeping operations. “On the scientific evidence, we don’t know if it was the UN troops or not.”

A close read of the panel’s report, however, suggests otherwise. The experts pinpointed the origin of the outbreak to the Meille River, a tributary of the region’s main water source, near a peacekeeping base where sanitation conditions “were not sufficient to prevent faecal contamination” of the river. They noted that the battalion was deployed from Nepal shortly after endemic cholera had flared up in the Kathmandu Valley, and that asymptomatic soldiers, who can still carry cholera, were not tested. They cited epidemiological studies showing genetic similarities between Haiti’s strain of cholera and the South Asian strain endemic in Nepal. And they dismissed every other alternate theory on the origins of cholera in Haiti.

-- The UN in Haiti - Damned if you do by P.B | The Economist (blog)

More deaths in Haiti from the "peacekeeping" mission of MINUSTAH than casualties of "war" suffered by the U.S. and its allies in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The UN damned and Haitians -- blamed. How sad that some would marginalize the poor and disenfranchised. They consider them to be just so much garbage that must be swept out of parks and public squares.

What are the elements that make a disaster worst and favor the spread of a pandemic, the UN experts know -- they've conducted the studies and they've done the surveys (pdf):

"The sheer scope of the socio-economic impacts of natural disasters is at last slowly bringing about a shift in approach away from disaster relief and toward disaster prevention, with risk reduction increasingly considered as a priority development tool in its own right. There is a growing realization
in the international community that risk reduction, disaster relief and sustainable development are closely related. Vulnerability to disasters is linked to poverty, and vice versa."

-- Disaster Preparedness and Mitigation UNESCO’s role

by United Nations' Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

The UN should have tested those Nepalese soldiers, who came back from an outbreak in Katmandu, Nepal last year and evidently contaminated the Meille river with fecal matter from a leaky latrine. Since they did not, and since they continue to deny their responsibility for the cholera outbreak, one could conclude that - the UN is not in Haiti to mitigate the impact of the January 12, 2010 earthquake. It's evident from their deeds and words that the UN is in Haiti for political reasons. The protection of the people of Haiti is not of "interest" to them. The people's deaths, while inconvenient, does not pose a significant concern for the "international community" when measured against the goals of the occupation.

The place was ripe for a pandemic and the very international entity tasked with preventing such a thing shipped in a bunch of people from disparate lands and backgrounds with diseases that are not endemic to the area, and (predictably) caused the spread of a disastrous pandemic.

The UN is in Haiti to carry out the agenda of the U.S. The U.S. wishes to suppress and destroy the most popular political party, Lavalas. The Lavalas party was founded on the theory of Liberation theology. It's very dangerous to advocate a Christian belief in social, economic and political justice -- you'll be crucified.

Haitians are blamed and called "ungrateful" for seeking redress for all the injustices they've suffered at the hands of the American empire and its nation state partners who form the proxy occupying force, deployed to keep real democracy from developing a foothold in Haiti.

One is forced to conclude that there's no way to do an injustice to Haitians -- no matter that the UN military occupation has committed massacres, murders, rapes (women, children, young men... what fate has befallen the stolen goats?), and other crimes against humanity since the beginning of the occupation in 2004. Haitians are blasted for their temerity in demanding accountability and justice... even when scientific studies/medical evidence, video/audio testimonials exist, which provide abundant proof of the numerous indignities and injustices Haitians have been subjected to.

The UN has a budget of over $800,000,000 in Haiti -- this is a profitable occupation for their member states... a chance to make a substantial profit and at the same time pander to empire's wishes. In Brazil's instance (they've lead the occupation from the start), it's a bid to be invited to join as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Has a single dollar of this UN occupation been spent to find a sustainable solution to the cholera outbreak? The solution seems too obvious; send the troops home and provide sustainable clean water infrastructure. However, this would mean that the Clinton Foundation would not make a profit from "cholera insurance," the pharmaceuticals could not make millions from selling a "cholera vaccine" and countless NGOs would not make a living from providing social services (socialized medicine? How ironic!) for a preventable and curable water-bourne disease.

The UN has spent resources to assure that they have clean water in their self-contained tribal compounds. There would be no lawsuit if the UN had made an effort to mitigate the effects of the cholera infection -- if they had, the outbreak would not be the worst in the world. Instead, Edmond Mulet said the Mirebalais Nepalese base had disposed their waste in a manner that was not only up to international standards, but to EPA standards, a baseless lie.

It's ironic that this occupation is being lead by Brazil. This time the descendants of the indigenous natives of South America and Black Africans who make up the military force are playing the role of the settlers, cowboys... of the European immigrants. Do they know that Francisco de Miranda and Simon Bolivar came to Haiti for help in mounting the South American revolutions that liberated four countries from colonial occupation? Haiti made just one stipulation for providing help - Bolivar must also free the slaves. There's a statue of Simon Bolivar in the Haitian capital -- it survived the earthquake, as did all the statues in the capital. But did Bolivar deserve that honor? It's doubtful. Bolivar turned his back on Haiti. Bolivar, very crudely, did not invite Haiti to the Congress of Panama. The good news is that Brazil has announced they are leaving and ending their leadership of the UN occupation of Haiti. It can't happen too soon for Haiti's sake.

MLK said: "the arc of history bends toward justice... and injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. Those are not platitudes. They ring true today. There is hope for a better future. There is hope in the Occupy movement - which is why the police have acted like stormtroopers to protect the interests of empire.

On a lighter note, it's heart warming that worldwide people are rallying to protest social-economic inequities, injustice and political corruption. Hopefully, it signals the beginning of a new way of sharing ideas and building concensus -- horizontal leadership, general assemblies and people over profit.

There is also hope in the announcement that the US occupation of Iraq may be ending soon -- haven't heard how many "advisors" will stay. The U.S. decided to leave because the Iraqis would not give them immunity from prosecution. The circumstances are similar to those in Haiti -- the other regime change.

Haitian should not be bound by the SOFA agreement, which purports to give the UN immunity -- or is it impunity? It's so hard to distinguish the difference. Wasn't this document first signed by the Bush installed puppet government of Gerard LaTortue? As a so-called "interim" president, Latortue did not have the constitutional right to commit Haiti to such a contract. The other sticky matter is that Haiti's first democratically elected government was removed in U.S. backed coups in 1991 and 2004. Can a country like Haiti where the "international community" wields so much socio-economic and political power be said to be sovereign and independent, especially in light of the outside interference by those who plotted the coups? It's a question of legitimacy. Haiti should not be held to agreements made under an illegal occupation.