Demonstrators march during a
protest against the government
of President Michel Martelly in
Port-au-Prince, on December
12, 2014

Someone sent me today an article called Haiti: Anti-government demo turns violent I a little taken back. Haitians are very kind, spiritual and peaceful people. When I read the article I realized the violence was on the part of the government police and UN Occupying Powers on people demonstrating against the attempt of the US elected and supported government to return the country to dictatorship.

Before I went to Haiti with a SOAWatch delegation in October of 2011, ten months after the devastating earthquake, I was warned that I would fall in love with people of Haiti and I did. Despite living in extreme poverty they were kind, loving and spiritual persons. I saw no signs of the millions and millions of dollars given to Haiti after the earthquake. The money had not made it way down to rebuilding new roads or new housing in Port-au-Prince where we visited. The money had gone to US military, NGO’s (Non Government Organizations) and US contractors. (See Where Earthquake money for Haiti did and did not go. People were still living in makeshift camps although the NGO’s had pulled out of helping them survive. When the UN military forces, soon after our visit, brought in cholera to the country spirits of the people were still high.

However, you can only persecute and suppress peoples in their own country when they will finally break out and demand freedom. That could be with violence against the oppressor or, as in Haiti, with nonviolence against the oppressors. You cannot defeat a people in their own country, be it Vietnam, Iraq or Haiti, a lesson the USA seems to have not learned.

So the present violence is by the puppet government that will not allow free and democratic elections and is prompt up by US, Canadian, UN and other governing bodies as well as NGO’s. If anyone can keep the struggle for freedom nonviolent it is the Haitian people. They have suffering so much since they won their independence from France I think there is no going back now. I pray and hope that Haiti will soon become another example of how the spiritual power of nonviolence overcomes the violent powers of tyranny.

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