[Haiti News\U.N. Protest]
Thursday’s protest is organized by the Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti (KOMOKODA)–and will start at 3:pm at the US Mission to the United Nations 799 UN Plaza at 45th Street & 1st Avenue in Manhattan.
Photo: KOMOKODA
Thursday, December 19th, KOMOKODA will be protesting from 3 pm – 6 pm outside the US Mission to the UN in New York City to denounce the United States and the “Core Group” countries who have in the past 215 years turned Haiti into Donald Trump’s “Shithole”.
Thursday’s protest is organized by the Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti (KOMOKODA)–and will start at 3:pm at the US Mission to the United Nations 799 UN Plaza at 45th Street & 1st Avenue in Manhattan.
Thursday’s protest will occur amid the current mass mobilization of Haitians, in Haiti, calling for Haitian President Jovenel Moise to resign amid cries of corruption and state-sponsored violence. For months, demonstrators have called on him to step down. Moise has continued to cling to power.
The cries for the resignation of President Moise have gotten louder since the Lasalin Massacre of November 2018.
Recently, California Congresswoman Maxine Waters spoke out against the Lasalin Massacre and expressed concern about the ongoing violence in Haiti.
“In April of this year, I led a delegation to Haiti, which met with residents of the Lasalin neighborhood of Haiti’s capital and surrounding areas, who described acts of unconscionable violence that occurred in November of 2018,” said Congresswoman Waters. “The Lasalin massacre resulted in the deaths of at least 71 civilians, in addition to the rape of at least 11 women, and the looting of more than 150 homes. Survivors expressed concern that government-connected gangs, working with police officers, carried out the attacks to punish Lasalin for participation in anti-government protests.”
Congresswoman Waters also denounce the corruption of the current Haitian government–and America’s Haitian foreign policy.
“The protests in Lasalin – as well as many other anti-government protests throughout Haiti since the summer of 2018 – were sparked by the disappearance of millions of dollars of assistance provided to Haiti by Venezuela under the PetroCaribe program,” said Waters. “Through PetroCaribe, Venezuela sold oil to Haiti and allowed them to defer the payments for up to 25 years and pay a low rate of interest on the debt. Haiti was supposed to sell the oil and use the money to pay for social programs. Instead, at least $2 billion went missing. That is almost a quarter of Haiti’s total economy for 2017. The corruption in government was confirmed in a report delivered to the Haitian senate by official auditors on May 31, 2019. This corruption occurred under the leadership of Haiti’s current president, Jovenel Moise, as well as his predecessor, Michel Martelly. Haitians began demonstrating against this government because they knew that they never saw the benefits of the PetroCaribe program.
“Tragically, the response of President Moise’s government to the protests has been escalating repression. In the months since my trip to Haiti, credible investigations of the Lasalin massacre by Haiti’s National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), the United Nations (UN) Mission for Justice Support in Haiti together with the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR), and Haiti’s national directorate of judicial police have all consistently pointed to politically motivated violence. Furthermore, the judicial police investigation report named two senior officials from the administration of President Moise in the list of alleged perpetrators…Unfortunately, the U.S. State Department continues to support the current government of Haiti without regard to either official corruption or human rights violations.”
