Jan. 1 – Another Independence Day Under Occupation
“Recall everything I have sacrificed to fly to your defense – relatives, children, wealth, so that now the only riches I possess is your freedom. Recall that my name horrifies all those who are enslavers, and that tyrants and despots everywhere only bring themselves to utter it when they curse the day I was born. Remember, if you should ever discard or forget the law that the God who watches over your well being has dictated to me for your happiness, you will deserve the fate that inures to ungrateful peoples. ” — Janjak Desalin (Jean Jacques Dessalines), Haiti’s Founding father, quote from the Haitian Act of Independence, January 1, 1804
January 1, 2012 will make 208 years since Haiti abolished European enslavement, the Triangular Trade, force assimilation/ethnic cleansing, direct colonialism and became an independent Black nation. Since the assassination of Haiti’s founding father, Janjak Desalin in 1806, just two years after independence, Haiti has been struggling against neocolonialism.
Ours has been a long struggle. It started, 509 years ago in 1503 when the first kidnapped African captives set enchained feet on what is now known as Haitian soil.
As Bayyinah Bello says, “Ayiti’s mission is to create a land, a space, where all Black people who are in trouble anywhere in the world can come in and find refuge. So when you understand that, you also understand why, any nation with this kind of mission in this white supremacist world we are living in, will be, must be, continuously under attack from every corner. That’s normal. That’s natural.” (See also, Haiti the Rebel)
Back on Jan. 1, 1804, European/U.S. barbarity and savagery received its
greatest blow in the Western Hemisphere. We continue to face their guns, greed,
foreign germs and odious cruelties. But we also continue to celebrate our victories, humanity and determination not to be as shallow and violent as those who endlessly destroy our people for sport and greed. Haitians have been stigmatized and forced to pay with their lives and freedom for that achievement ever since.
Every Jan. 1st marks Haiti’s freedom day.
Oceans of our blood have poured and watered the soil to nourish civilized
co-existence on this planet Earth and continue, this very minute, to soak the
earth needlessly, simply because Haitians were the first to counter, in combat,
European/U.S. biological fatalism, destroy their myth of white superiority and
to do what even Spartacus could not.
How should Haitians mark this anniversary? Who should we confer with about our awesome burden, our plight, our long struggle to be treated as human beings by the European “discoverers” and settlers? About the U.N. soldiers” massacres, rapes of our women, importation of cholera and repression of Haiti’s defenseless poor? About this insane Western force that attacks all that is not like itself, even though it had no attackers? About Bartholomew De La Casas’ “New World,”enmeshed in its own armor of materiality, caged in centuries of self-serving lies that defends itself endlessly from the planet’s masses, bringing genocide it veils in false declarations of benevolence? (See full text of HLLN’s regular Jan 1st essay at Another Independence Day Under Occupation.)
“For 500 years the whites (settlers/colonists) have tried to erase us. Today they want us to believe they’re the only ones who can save us” — Edike by Daniel ‘Dadi’ Beaubrun (See HLLN’s Desalin page.)
| Another Independence Day Under Occupation, 2006: ******* In the book “Two thousand Seasons,” Ayi Kwei Armah writes: “How have we come to be mere mirrors to annihilations? For whom do we aspire to reflect our people’s death? For whose entertainment shall we sing our agony? In what hopes? That the destroyers, aspiring to extinguish us, will suffer conciliatory remorse at the sight of their own fantastic success? The last imbecile to dream such dreams is dead, killed by the saviors of his dreams.” And so it is an exercise in futility to go to the perpetrators and executioners of human rights crimes in Haiti in hopes of getting justice for our people. Those who ousted the constitutional government of Haiti – the U.N., which acts as proxy to maintain this international crime, the Haitian lackeys and their Roger Noreiga and State Department masters – are dead inside and cannot hear the cries of the Haitian masses. It’s not their mission or mandate. For they don’t represent life, liberty, democracy, development and decency, but its opposite. This officialdom, this authority, rains death, despotism, destruction, cruelty, inhumanity, injustice, and represents all that civilized peoples worldwide struggle to overcome. They write laws but are too “high tech” to live them. They mouth words of “justice” and fairness but their words are DEAD. To further quote Ghanaian writer, Ayi Kwei Armah: “Those utterly dead, never again to awake, such is their muttering.”(See full text of HLLN’s regular Jan 1st essay for Another Independence Day Under Occupation) |
Haiti’s freedom fighters fought alone. No country came to our aid. Outgunned, outnumbered, barefoot, hungry, burdened with 300-years of savage slavery, the people’s army fought against inconceivable odds. By January 1, 1804, Haiti’s freedom fighters, enmeshed in the Vodun Ancestral soul forces going back to the beginning of time, (Lè Marasa, Lè Mò e Lè Mistè) and facing the Euro/US Oligarchs’ false gods ensnared in physicality’s allure only, had beat back, in combat, the armies of the French, the Spanish, the English, their US mercenaries, a US embargo and the French again, twice. As spiritual beings, it was the spiritual armies within each warrior that allowed Haitians to defeat the barbarity of the insane and abolish slavery against impossible physical odds.
Britain had sent an armada of 218 ships to the Caribbean, and its troops battled the African warriors in Haiti for five years before withdrawing. Napoleon had sent his own armada – the largest force to ever set sail from France, losing more than 50,000 soldiers and 18 generals. Spain constantly fought, and the US slave-owner interests were always hostile against the Haiti freedom fighters, soaking the Haiti mountains and the Caribbean sea red in the blood of Haitians who, knowing they had endured, for too long, a fate worse than death at the hands of the enslavers, determined to live free or die. Haiti lost 200,000 lives defeating their invasions.
On the occasion of the 208th anniversary of Haiti’s Revolution and Independence from European enslavement and colonization, we recall the price paid to create the sacred trust called Ayiti. We remember we are a BLACK nation as defined by Janjak Desalin (Jean Jacques Dessalines), with a Vodun culture from mother Africa. We remember Janjak Desalin, Haiti’s liberator and his three ideals.
Having no wish for this sacred trust called Ayiti (Haiti) to be a playground for Northerners. Or its best lands owned and enjoyed by other than the descendants of Desalin’s revolution while the indigenous Haitian masses of Haiti are used and exploited, like the rest of Caribbean Island folks, as collaborating political servants to the modern feudal moguls or as mere props, maids, butlers, gardeners, whores and sex receptacles for vacationers, or provide reason for the non-living-wage enslavers and poverty pimping NGOs to feed their greed, Ayiti’s struggle for sovereignty, its own entrepreneurial lakou/konbit/viv lifestyle and self-determination continues. (See also, Vodun Konbit and Vodun Lakou.)
Celebrating the Ancestors’ honor, humane values, struggles and triumphs, we remember Dessalines’ Law and that Blacks are the original peoples on planet earth, including Ayiti and the Americas. We re-MEMBER the Ayiti lives lost to earthquake 2010, crushed under the Bush bi-centennial occupation and now, with UN-imported cholera. We shall fight from one generation to the next to maintain our humanity and dignity against this merciless Western storm. In 2012 the Haiti revolution shall continue to survive, block and expose Avatar Haiti’s oppression by NGOs, paid-to-lose-progressives, Haiti opportunists/betrayers, US/UN/and their client nation’s false benevolence. Justice lives in the inner spaces Haiti colonizes. Ginen poze.
Thank you to Janjak Desalin and the indigenous Haiti army for our freedom from 300 years of European enslavement and torture won by the Ancestors on January 1, 1804, 208 years ago. Thank you Manman Defile. (Yon oun kokennchenn kouwòn pou Defile. Lè nou sonje Desalin, nou paka pa wè Defile. Kouwòn pou Defile.)
Mèsi Papa Desalin – Thank you Father Desalin
(Read Haiti’s famous and well-known poem: “Thank you Father Dessalines by Morisseau-Leroy.”)
Janjak Desalin rejected the European institutionalized concepts and established, for the African masses in Ayiti, a nation that rejected Bourgeois Freedom.
“Bourgeoisie Freedom is where liberty, brotherhood, equality and democracy exist alongside or even in virtually the SAME SPACE as slavery, genocide, exclusion, exploitation, intolerance and tyranny – notably Black enslavement, exploitation and disenfranchisement in the Americas.”
Haiti’s founding father, Jean Jacques Dessalines (JanJak Desalin), said, “I Want the Assets of the Country to be Equitably Divided” and for that he was assassinated.
That was the first coup dӎtat in Haiti (Ayiti).
The Haitian holocaust – organized exclusion of the masses, misery, poverty, endless debt and the impunity of the economic elite – continues with the Feb. 29, 2004 Bush bi-centennial regime change marking the 33rd coup d”état. Haiti’s peoples continue to resist the return of despots, tyrants and enslavers who wage war on the poor majority and Black, contain-them-in poverty through neocolonialism’ debts, unfair trade, privatization, UN occupation and foreign “investments.” These neocolonial tyrants refuse to allow an equitable division of wealth, excluding the majority in Haiti from power and from sharing in the country’s wealth and assets.
Following Janjak Desalin’s assassination in 1806, under the long Mulatto and
Eurocentric presidencies of Petion (12 years) and Boyer (25 years), the name
Janjak Desalin was execrated, declared loathsome, cursed, marginalized and not
allowed to be spoken. Neocolonialism had begun in Haiti, would be formalized
with Boyer’s “Independence Debt” – the $22 billion Haiti was forced, at gunpoint
to pay to France after already winning their freedom, with the last slave-trade
payment made in 1947 to the US, the richest country in the world by Haiti, the most defenseless and poorest.
The legacy of the impunity and undemocratic offenses of this one class and sector of Haitian society, continues to this day.
This Haitian economic elite with their foreign allies cannot accept the principal of
one citizen-one vote because it would mean that they would lose their
privileges and influence. Hence, the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d’etat and current UN
protectorate under neo-Duvalierist Martelly which pursues the interests of
foreigners and their black overseers in Haiti. (See, I Pay This Price for You and Video: Haiti the Untold Story.)
On this Jan. 1st Independence Day under occupation, Ezili Dantò/HLLN ask all
free peoples to demand France pay back the $22billion Independence Debt it
forced Haiti to pay at gunpoint. Please sign our on-line petition demanding
France pay Haiti back the $22 billion for the Independence Debt.
In addition to the Independence Debt that Haiti was forced to pay to France,
back in 1915 during the first US occupation, “Ayiti was the only country, at
that time in the Americas, that didn’t have its money backed by the US dollar.
Our money was backed by gold. Our entire gold reserve was taken away (by the US
Marines in 1915) for “safekeeping” we were told and brought to Fort Knox. It
has yet to be returned back home. This was 1915. When some white person says “I
want to go help the poor people in Ayiti. So I am going to bring a little
bread and a little water for them.” Ask them: “Why don’t you just ask your
government to give them back their gold?” — Bayyinah Bello.
Dessalines’s descendants hold a sacred trust. Our mission is to live free,
not as dead zombies, corporate or U.N. sell-outs, servile to gluttonous and
inhuman greed.
“Kanga Mundele,” said the spirit archetype Ezili Dantò, the African warrior mother which spoke through that great mambo Cecile Fatiman, on Aug. 14, 1791 at Bwa Kayiman, the ceremony that began the great Haitian Revolution. Kanga Mundele means “kill the stranger” in Kikongo – “kill the stranger within,” “amongst us” – and also means “long live freedom.” (Haiti Epistemology)
Indeed our freedom and the masses’ indomitable spirit and thirst for justice
lives. Despite 509 years of almost incessant grief, Haitians are still here ”
standing on truth, living without fear. Nou La. We don’t get much press, but
we’re here.
Desalin our healer and greatest teacher said, “I only want the braves to stay with me. Those who wish to become once again French slaves can make their way out of this fort. Those on the contrary who wish to die as free men may take their place around me” (Jean Jacques Dessalines, Haiti’s founding father, speaking at the battle of Cr ête-Ã -Pierrot, March 11, 1802.)
Our history of survival is our greatest asset and rallying point. We exist
still because we have ALWAYS defined ourselves, extended ourselves, given value
to ourselves, our life, strengths, ancestors, history and heroes, when the
world’s greatest armies, media and superpowers have not.
Today’s indigenous Haitians who have refused US/international occupation and meddling since before 2004, also fight on alone, are disdained and ostracized. But like the warriors of the great Haitian Revolution they are not deterred by the odds.
Not deterred that two years after the apocalyptic January 12, 2010 earthquake, there’s been no systemic relief. Instead, half-a-million Haitians – 500,000 – have been infected with UN-cholera and 7,000 Haitians are dead from the UN/US/international “help” that brought the most virulent strain of the cholera bacteria into Haiti. Not deterred that the empire had struck back during Haiti’s 2004 bicentennial to return the Duvalierist collaborating overseers back to power and they are milking the $2billion in Diaspora remittances, prioritizing re-mobilization of the bloody Haiti army, as the poor masses suffer endlessly. Not deterred that the foreign NGO/charity industry, USAID special subcontractors and most of the donor countries kept most of the billions in earthquake relief collected under Obama/Clinton/UN oversight. Not deterred that this newly US-hobbled-Haiti is now the “hot” place for the super rich, the wannabe humanitarians, their adrenaline-addicted celebrities, adventurers and the paid-to-lose-progressives to set up shop, take on their right wing counterparts with a hustler’s wink and for the Kim Kardashian ilks to come for spa treatments and acquire exotic “tribal crafts.” (See, Haiti: Seven Places Where Earthquake Money Did and Did Not Go.)
There are things worse than this death: the acceptance of these abominations without dissent.
The Kepler satellite has so far catalogued 2000 planets in just the tiny patch of space its telescope is focused on. There are two hundred billion stars in this galaxy alone. Our galaxy is unimaginably immense. But from the perspective of the universe, it is just part of a cluster of galaxies.
Scientist conservatively estimate that our Milky Way galaxy may be home to at least two billion Earthlike planets. Yet, the small-minded, irrational Western “New World” rulers, zombies rooted in only what they can see, wage war for resources that are in abundance for the use of all, inventing reasons to trigger naked aggression, killing and depopulating millions of earth people to secure the world for their tiny Oligarch inbreeds and destroying diversity, rainforests, environments – the very water and air we breathe along with destroying, degrading, debasing other ethnic groups, cultures and peoples, calling this insanity the ultimate in civilization. They bray like donkeys about democracy, equality and tolerance while feeding off the blood, bodies, sweat and sufferings of the more compassionate, like Haiti’s courageous masses for centuries.
This US second occupation of Haiti will, like slavery in Haiti, like the first US occupation from 1915 to 1934, also fail. There are still indigenous Haitians fighting for the good of all humanity on planet earth.
Standing on truth, living without fear, we-Haitians shall overcome these forces again, just like the indigenous Haiti people’s army that reached for inner source, refused to be zombies rooted to corporeality, without a soul, without conscience.
Ezili Dantò of HLLN
January 1, 2012
Website and Website/blog
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Please donate to support Ezili’s HLLN work and Zili Dlo – Dlo pwòp pou tout moun/Clean water for everyone in Haiti
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Featured COMMENT:
From Guy S. Antoine on Jan. 1, 2012:
“They have totally brainwashed some Haitians into feeling ashamed of the
Massacre of the French which took place in Haiti starting on January 2, 1804. I
repeat TOTALLY BRAINWASHED. Personally, I am a pacifist and I have always been on the side of Peace in this world. But if you take the time to read
Dessalines’ proclamation on January 1, you realize that he completely explained
his rationale for ridding the New Nation of their former slave masters, and his
belief that there were so many spies on the island that our independence was at
stake if that very unfortunate step was not taken. I deplore the loss of lives,
but I do know that: 1) Dessalines’ supposed cruelty never reached the level of
the sanguinary Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte and that of General Rochambeau whose memories are still celebrated in France; 2) that the French people have
committed far greater crimes against the Blacks in Saint Domingue, Guadeloupe,
etc. and in the territories that they have controlled and continue to control
to a certain extent in Africa; 3) that no American President has had the gall
to justify in such detailed manner the massacres that they have perpetrated
against Native Americans, against Japan, against Vietnam, against Cambodia,
against Iraq, etc. They always conduct their massacres and let their propaganda
mask their selfish motives. Yet, they have shamed many of our contemporaries
who do not know how to read the History of Nations into assuming that we
Haitians are the worse of the lot. To all of my compatriots who are still
ashamed of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, all I can say is GROW UP AND LEARN YOUR HISTORY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT.” — Guy S. Antoine, Jan. 1, 2012
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Dessalines’ Law:
“…Never again shall colonist or European set foot on this soil as master or
landowner. This shall henceforward be the foundation of our constitution.”
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“We are looking at a country that has set a model for Black countries. The
only country which had a Constitution which was in accord with the purpose of
the people. We cannot have Black people enslaved or colonized and then when
we’re free we say “Oh, our colonizers are our best friends. They teach us the
laws we should have in our books. We’re going to take their books to have the
schools. We’re going to get their doctors to come in and build our hospitals.”
Why the hell then…then why don’t you just stay in slavery or in
colonization!. –Bayyinah Bello (For more from Bayyinah Bello, go to Ayiti
– HLLN links on another Jan 1st Independence Day under US/UN occupation,
featuring Haiti warrior Bayyinah Bello. )
Proclamation of Haiti’s Independence by General Jean Jacques Dessalines
(English translation) *** Libète Ou La Mò (French) and (Kreyòl)
Deklarasyon Endepandans Ayiti Premye Janvye 1804 Gonayiv, Ayiti
November 29, 1803 – Haiti’s First Declaration of Independence was signed only by Black generals: Clerveaux, Desalin and Henry Christophe who held the greatest power through, not foreign support, but their connections with the rebel indigenous peoples army.
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Forwarded by Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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More recommended HLLN Links
The Story of JanJak: The Greatest Hero to ever live
Haiti Epistemology
Three Ideals of Dessalines
The Haitian struggle – the greatest Goliath vs. David battle being played out
on this planet
Zili Dlo – Clean Water for Everyone in Haiti (Zili Dlo photos on Facebook and Flickr. FANMVO art work for Zili Dlo)
What’s in a name? Some names horrify enslavers, tyrants & despots,
everywhere
Audio recording of pòem read by Feliks Moriso Lewa
English translation to come.)
Performance piece: Seismic Shifts: Haiti Freestyling to murder Tarzan, Jane & their Uncle Toms
Avatar Haiti
HLLN 2011/2012 FreeHaitiMovement Demands
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