Demerara Waves Online News- Guyana Riding on the Crest of Truth
Last Updated on Tuesday, 10 October 2023, 19:30 by Denis Chabrol
A section of the protesters opposite the CARICOM Headquarters, Liliendaal, Greater Georgetown, Guyana.
A group of Guyanese picketed the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) headquarters on Tuesday denouncing the Kenya-led United Nations Peacekeeping mission to Haiti and calling for genuine grassroots consultations to decide on a transitional government.
“What we want is for general consultations in Haiti. So, far we believe that the current consultation set up by what they call the Eminent Persons Group, we believe they were fake. “We believe they were consultations of small elites who have vested interests in Haiti, not broad-based consultations,” said Guyanese Charlene Wilkinson, a university lecturer in languages and cultural studies. Prior to the passage of the United Nations Security C0uncil Resolution for a Peacekeeping Mission to Haiti, the three former CARICOM leaders had bemoaned the collapse of talks among Haitian stakeholders to form a transitional joint government to facilitate security stability, distribute aid and prepare the country for democratic elections. Ms Wilkinson said she was relying on “other voices” in Haiti to argue that there have not been genuine consultations with organised community groups rather than with the elite.
The placards read “No to more guns and more police! Yes to more schools, more doctors, more farms”, and “No to military intervention. Yes to genuine consultation.”
Activist Charlene Wilkinson
At least 12 persons held placards and a banner opposite the CARICOM headquarters, Liliendaal, Greater Georgetown to press their case for Prime Minister Ariel Henry to de-recognised on the basis that he is “planted” by the United States (US)-backed middle class. Another demand is for CARICOM to press the US to investigate how guns and ammunition were entering Haiti allegedly from Miami to be placed in the hands of death squads. “The US wants this destabilisation so they continue having an excuse to be there to protect their interests,” she said.
Ms Wilkinson contended that the UN Peacekeeping Mission’s aim was to suppress Blacks to the advantage of foreign interests and the middle class. The activist said Caribbean was being “fed a story of unruly Black people” to justify the need for external intervention. Expressing shock and dismay that CARICOM has endorsed the deployment of Kenyan police to Haiti, she said the region seemed unable to resist the US. “We believe that CARICOM is afraid to stand up to the US. We don’t understand why. We are coming from a history of Non-Alignment, we are coming from a history of condemnation of racist action in South Africa. Why has CARICOM suddenly become tools of the imperialists?” asked Ms Wilkinson who collaborates closely with a Haitian support group in Guyana.
Activist Sherlina Nageer
Though the former French colony has been wracked by months of deadly gang violence, long overdue elections and a severe shortage of food and water, Ms Wilkins0n insisted that Haitians must be allowed to solve their own political problems. “We are here again to stop another intervention into Haiti, which, in fact, we are calling an invasion mainly because there was no genuine consultation among the people’s community organisations of Haiti to send 1,000 Kenyan police, paid for by the United States, into Haiti,” she said.
Ms Wilkinson said most of the chaos was confined to Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, while the remainder of the country was largely intact and its population organised against imperialism.
A senior government official had said that a number of Guyanese police would be sent to Haiti to assist with training. French-Creole-speaking personnel from St Lucia and Dominica are to be sent to Port-au-Prince to assist with translation.
Artist and activist Desmond Alli
The ever-deepening socio, political and economic crisis in Haiti had in 2021 seen the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. A number of Haitian Americans and Colombian mercenaries had been held responsible for Moise’s killing.
A fuel and electricity supply crisis had gripped the nation after gangs had blocked access to a fuel wharf.
The US had intervened militarily in Haiti as far back as 1934 after the then Haitian President had been assassinated and again in 1994 and 2004 after coups in that former French colony. The latter intervention had transitioned to the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH, and lasted until 2017.
Guyana is among a number of Caribbean Community member-nations that have reinstituted visas for Haitians, amid concerns about human smuggling to French Guiana and the United States through Brazil. Haitian Prime Minister Henry in July 2023 asked other regional leaders to waive his country’s participation in the free movement of all categories of persons by March, 2024 because of the humanitarian, social and political crisis there.