by Ezili Dantò
Haiti National Penitenciary- Warehousing Haiti men reminiscent of the slave ship condition
The forgotten and abandoned
The MAAFA – Haiti holocaust continues, 2012
Basic Haiti rights repealed
under newly amended Haiti Constitution, part 1
Article 297 of the 1987 Constitution that reinstated the basic human rights of Haiti masses is REPEALED by the combined efforts of the two Haiti governments (Preval and Martelly) under occupation, rule by Washington behind UN guns since the 2004 Regime Change.
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Basic Haiti rights repealed under two occupied Haiti governments
The new Constitutional Amendment, ratified under the Michel Martelly government makes several clandestine changes behind the public clamor that this amendment was about giving MORE rights, that is, dual citizenship to the Diaspora.
One such change is the repeal of Article 297 which had terminated laws propagated specifically against Haiti masses, particularly the Vodouist, Haiti’s own indigenous peoples.
For instance, the amendment reinstates the September 5, 1935 law that declared all Vodouist are asosyasyon malfektè – bad people, evil people. (See below copied: Constitutional Amendments and Religious persecution in Haiti. Kindly sign the on-line petition denouncing repeal of article 297 of Haiti Constitution)
This law led, in 1940-41, to the massive repression and slaughter of Vodouist in Haiti sponsored by the US government and Catholic churches’ “rejete” initiative. Rejete was the US and Catholic Churches’ brutal anti-superstition campaigns in the 1940s used as a pretext to take over Vodouist lands, subordinate the rival religion to Catholicism in Haiti. It imposed and consolidated, as a desired standard, the fanatical Christian evangelists’ demonization and corporate presence on Haiti’s Vodouist soil and soul for foreign profit, exploitation and Haiti pacification.
Part of this campaign led to massive deforestation as the Mapou and other great trees were clear cut because such were revered by the Vodouist and the overseas companies needed to comodify and commercialize them for their lumber export needs abroad. Today, trees are no longer sacred in Haiti, but used for charcoal. A direct result of the rejete campaign was the destruction of Haiti values and American re-branding of Haiti. (See Ezili’s HLLN Counter-Colonial Narrative on Deforestation http://bit.ly/4sb75J ; The Avatar Movie from a Black perspective http://bit.ly/6Jo64Y ; HLLN on the causes of Haiti deforestation and poverty and Avatar parallels: Warrior Mother, Vodun and the Sky People – http://bit.ly/6E02R3 )
The current re-branding begins again with the reinstatement of the Sept. 5, 1935 law that virtually outlaws the Vodouist and makes legal their dehumanization, arbitrary imprisonment and slaughter. This is the Haiti democracy, justice, stability and help the US and UN have brought to Haiti in 2012. The Haiti holocaust continues.
On August 18, 2012, Ougan Zaza (Frantz Jean Raymond) who was leading the Bwa Kayiman commemorations at Bwa Kayiman, Haiti, was abitrarily arrested during the ceremony under orders from Port au Prince (the Martelly/Lamothe government). The general charge mirrored the 1935 law, “asosyasyon malfektè.” (Listen, in Kreyòl, to the Lakou New York August 20, 2012 Broadcast describing the illegal arrest of Ougan Zaza, the Bwa Kayiman celebrant arrested on charges that he is at the head of a group of “evil people” – a direct product of the formerly repealed Article 297: Ti pale ak Yolande Pierre-Antoine epi ak Ougan Neite sou arestasyon Frantz Jean Raymond (Ougan Zaza) nan Bwa Kayiman. This Ougan Zaza arrest segment starts 13:00 minutes into broadcast.)
Ougan Zaza remains in jail today, at the Haiti Police at Baryè Boutey, Au Cap in the North, along with 8 other Haitians participants who were at the Vodouist ceremony honoring the great feats of the Haiti revolution. The occupiers message to the Desalin’s descendants is clear. (See Corruption uninterrupted in Haiti; and Foreign Investment means Death and Repression: A Historical Perspective ) Haitians are not free peoples, they live at the discretion of the current US-sanctioned elites. The Haiti masses are even forbidden to celebrate the Haitian revolution. (See below copied: Constitutional Amendments and Religious persecution in Haiti. Kindly sign the on-line petition denouncing repeal of article 297 of Haiti Constitution)
According to reports on August 18, three armed policemen accompanied by a judge arrested Ougan Zaza. A certain Pastor Henry-Claude Jean was the judge instruction on the scene who brought the warrant to arrest Ounga Zaza at gunpoint on August 18, 2012.
The September 5, 1935, August 2, 1977, July 28, 1975 and April 29, 1969 all restricted Haiti freedoms. These immoral dictatorship and occupation laws of censorship and apartheid have now been reinstated under the two US occupied Haiti government since the US 2004 regime change with the help of the Diaspora collaborators. Local Haiti rights and freedoms have been limited by their new amendment. This repeal is in direct contradiction of international human rights laws, Haitian laws. the UN General Assembly’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, September 13, 2007 and Obama’s adoption of the U.N. manifesto on rights of indigenous peoples).
Ezili’s HLLN again denounces these gross and blatant violation of basic Haiti and International human rights law by the internationals, the tiny Haiti oligarchy and the repugnant Diaspora collaborators.
We demand the restoration of Haiti sovereignty, human rights, release of Zaza and the Bwa Kayiman prisoners, all the political prisoners indefinitely detained and the END OF THE US OCCUPATION OF HAITI behind UN guns as well as an end to all their clandestine activities throughout Haiti where they are carting out Haiti’s mineral wealth, evicting peasants for their rich and fertile lands, especially in Plateau Central, all over the North, at Jacmel, La Visite Park and at Caracol. Free Haiti now.
Both the UN and Obama, who supposedly reversed Bush’s policy and adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples are in violation of their own pronouncements in Haiti. As well as being in violation of the UN charter, OAS charter along with a whole host of other national and customary international laws. The repeal of article 297 under the US tutelage of Haiti, violates Haiti indigenous peoples, and especially the besieged Voduist masses’ right to self-determination and to live free of discrimination based on culture and tradition.
Here is the article that is REPEALED by the combined efforts of the two Haiti governments (Preval/Martelly) under occupation, rule by Washington behind UN guns)
ARTICLE 297 in the 1987 Constitution:
All laws, all decree laws, all decrees arbitrarily limiting the basic rights and liberties of citizens, in particular:
a. The decree law of September 5, 1935 on supertitious beliefs;
b. The law of August 2, 1977 establishing the Court of State Security (Tribunal de la Sureté de l’Ãtat).
c. The law of July 28, 1975 placing the lands of the Artibonite Valley in a special status;
d. The law of April 29, 1969 condemning all imported doctrines;
Are and shall remain repealed.
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Under the current US occupation of Haiti, Article 297 has been clandestinely repealed! Haitian basic rights to freedom of religion, Right to own the private property they’ve lived on for decades, freedom of association, even freedom of thought denied, censored and made illegal!!! (See, the original 1987 Haiti Constitution )
The Maafa – Haiti Holocaust continues, it’s Obama Time
In 2012, the MAAFA in US occupied Haiti, making it a penal colony for the masses of Haitians is represented by this national penitentiary photo. The image of Black men crowded in a tiny cell like sardines, virtually naked and with no room to move expresses a reality reminiscent of chained Africans in the hull of a slave ship bound for the Carolinas. Haiti prisoners without human rights, guarded by the world arbiters on human rights, the United Nations. This is how prisoners are treated, many have never been convicted of a crime, are indefinitely detained in such conditions without a hearing or sentencing – some since the 2004 US regime change/coup detat in Haiti. Forgotten.
In February 29, 2004, there were less than 3000 prisoners in Haiti as a whole. Most had seen a judge and were convicted of a crime. Today there are over 8700 prisoners in Haiti, most are indefinitely detained without convictions. Clinton’s foundation is building more prisons, one superstructure on the way to Mirebalais.
That “investment” not made to help liberate those Black men wrongfully accused, but just to warehouse more, living in cruel and horrific circumstances.
The Carnival plays on.
Obama is president, Bill Clinton runs Haiti through the UN. Sean Penn and Paul Farmer bring heroic help dependency with Farmer’s partner at the World Bank. Strongman Paul Farmer pushes through financing of short term vaccines for dying Haitians to digest on empty, hunger-ravaged stomachs. No matter. The same UN denying who imported cholera to Haiti that’s killed over 8,000 in two years and infected over 600,000 Haitians, the same UN that has denied the cholera victims, hired Farmer as their envoy to Haiti.
Haitians in the Diaspora helped approve the rewrite of the Constitution to legally provide Haiti lands, mines, oceans, mineral wealth to Clinton’s foreign corporatocracy.
The Diaspora is taxed on remittances and phone calls to Haiti supposedly in order to finance free schooling for Haiti children. But school opening has been postponed… Not the expensive carnivals though. The carnival plays on.
Who remembers the abandoned Black men in this photo or Ougan Zaza, the celebrant at Bwa Kayiman, indefinitely detained, or even those Haitians who are convicted but living in crowded, inhumane and cruel conditions? Haiti is open for US tourist to enjoy. Cholera is just a disease of the poor. The poor masses in Haiti are not people, they are bad, they are Black. They are asosyasyon malfektè – associated with evil. The Middle Passage re-instituted.
Obama is president. Haiti is occupied by US behind UN guns.
What time is it? The time where the one-percenters use the space provided by the Obama presidency, the Black Haiti diaspora faces and Susan Rice, Cheryl Mills, Bill Clinton, Sean Penn and Paul Farmer to cover up the horrors going on in Haiti and the repeal of basic Haiti human rights behind the US/UN/NGO/missionary/ evangelist invasion. It’s Haiti re-enslavement time.
Ezili Dantò of HLLN
August 24, 2012
(Update July 18 2013: Ougan Zaza was finally released 11-months later without ever having had a trial or being convicted of any crime. He suffered enormously, contracted tuberculosis while indefinitely detained and is in bad condition. Others remain in prison in similar arbitrary and capricious conditions)
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Forwarded by Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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[ezilidanto] August 19, 2012
Haiti: This is sooo LOW!: Martelly/Lamothe government orders the arrest of 9 Bwa Kayiman main celebrants on vague charge of “associating with bad people!”
The Avatar Movie from a Black perspective
http://bit.ly/6Jo64Y
“Once upon a time, trees were sacred things in Haitian/African culture, looked upon as living energies that provided strength to the people. Thus, cutting down trees was relatively a taboo. But these core Africanist values were scorned and desecrated by the influences of Western colonialism and Christian missionaries on traditional Vodun. These core values were uprooted during the anti-Vodun Rejete campaigns (1940-41) as a means for the Catholic Church to get rid of Vodun as its rival religion and philosophy in Haiti and as a way for the US to clear peasant Haitians off lands they wanted to acquire for their agricultural initiatives in Haiti in the 1940s during the post-U.S.-occupation presidency of Elie Lescot (1941-46).
The Catholic Churches’ brutal anti-superstition campaigns in the 1940s, which made it alright to destroy trees that holds up not only the land but a culture, adds to deforestation in Haiti. For, once these core values were broken down and substituted with foreign ideals (senility?) – foreign psychology irrelevant to Haitian survival, things in Haiti for the vast majority, as Chinua Achebe, would put it: began to “fall apart…” (Ezili’s HLLN on the Counter-Colonial Narrative on Deforestation, See also – HLLN on the causes of Haiti deforestation and poverty and Avatar parallels: Warrior Mother, Vodun and the Sky People)
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Ezili’s HLLN Counter-Colonial Narrative on Deforestation
http://bit.ly/4sb75J
“Environmental Minister Jean-Marie Claude Germain indicated in an AP article titled Haiti’s Efforts to Save Trees Falters, “reforestation projects and efforts to preserve trees in three protected zones were set back by the violent rebellion that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 and prompted the U.N. to send in thousands of peacekeepers to restore order. Even though there were agricultural laws, the laws were not respected,” Germain said.” (See also – HLLN on the causes of Haiti deforestation and poverty -http://bit.ly/lxjoB .)
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HLLN on the causes of Haiti deforestation and poverty
http://bit.ly/lxjoB
“Haiti’s poverty is the result of the theft and exploitation of Haiti by the world’s wealthy countries and their corporations.”
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“The right to own property does not extend to the coasts, springs, rivers, water courses, mines and quarries. They are part of the State’s public domain.” – Haitian Constitution, Section H, Article 36-5.
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Illusion is reality
Justice a triviality
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Haiti: They don’t have bread? Give ”em Carnival
http://bit.ly/PWrNw9
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Corruption uninterrupted in Haiti
http://bit.ly/HbrRW3
“Will Desalin’s descendants also shamelessly, completely ignore Desalin’s Law:
“No white man of whatever nation he may be, shall put his foot on this territory with the title of master or proprietor, neither shall he in future acquire any property therein”¦” (Jean Jacques Dessalines, Haiti founding father, 1805 Haitian Constitution, Art. 12.)” http://bit.ly/HbrRW3
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– Constitutional Amendment under this second US occupation in Haiti repeals basic human rights and religious freedom | Vodun under attack in Haiti
KONFEDERASYON NASYONAL VODOUIZAN AYISYEN
K.N.V.A.
Le Péristyle de Mariani, Mariani, Haïti, Tél: (509) 3458-1500
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN HAITI
PETITION
1. On June 19, 2012, President Martelly of Haiti promulgated in the official journal “Le Moniteur” an amendment prepared under President Préval, voted in secret and approved by the Senate and the House of Representatives.
2. This amendment is catastrophic since it repeals Article 297 which in effect declared the cessation of all laws and government decrees that arbitrarily restricted citizens” fundamental rights and liberties, “notably: a) the Decree law of September 5 dealing with superstitious beliefs”.
We stress the fact that the 1935 law had managed to establish that everything having to do with Vodou was subversive, this for an excruciating fifty-two years.
3. The arguments presented by the Government are misleading. The government decree issued by President Aristide in 2004 declaring Vodou a national religion by no means protect those living in the most secluded areas of our land and who have been historically persecuted, oppressed and subject to the subjectivity of local officials (CASEC).
4. The proof of what we present here is that since this amendment was issued, many attacks have been perpetrated against Vodouists, in particular the arbitrary and unjustified detention of Hougan (Spiritual leader) Jean Raymond, known as Zaza, Guardian of the sacred Bois Caïman site, August 14th, 2012.
We, the signatories of this petition, demand:
· That full dignity be returned to Vodou immediately as the cultural and religious tradition of the Haitian people.
· That the Bois Caïman site be finally officially designated as the place of materialization of the souls of our ancestors who forged the nation of Haiti:
· An end to the hysterical and unnecessary persecution of imported religious sects that trample the right to life and hospitality offered to them, being well received all over the territory of our country:
· The removal of this infamous revocation.
· The immediate release of all Vodouists unjustly imprisoned under false pretenses with such vile and malicious intent.
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Kindly also sign the on-line petition denouncing repeal of article 297 of Haiti Constitution
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