Haiti civic leaders and former US diplomat to House Foreign Affairs: ‘Haiti is a mess’
Kidnapped women and girls are gangs raped and subject to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. A federation of influential armed gangs has their demands met by the government, while illegal weapons, banned under a U.S. arms embargo, freely enter the country. Haiti is in the midst of a spiraling political crisis and a surge in crime led by armed gangs and for-ransom kidnappings.
Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in recent weeks to demand the resignation of the president, who has been ruling by presidential decree since last January and whose term, critics say, ended last month. Moïse, who immediately addressed the nation after the committee’s virtual hearing ended, has said he still has a year left in office.
With such a volatile social, economic and political crisis, elections organized under Haitian President Jovenel Moïse will not work and will not be seen as legitimate by the people, three Haiti-born civic leaders and a former U.S. ambassador to the country told the House Foreign Affairs Committee Friday. The virtual meeting came after Secretary of State Antony Blinken answered questions Wednesday during a hearing on U.S. foreign policy about Morse’s abuse of power during the 15 months he has been ruling by decree. Blinken expressed worry about the nation’s worsening predicament. It’s something that we are very actively looking at,” Blinking told Rep. Andy Levin, D-MI, who asked what Haiti policy could be expected to look like under President Joe Biden. “I share your concern about some of the authoritarian and undemocratic actions that we have seen, particularly this irregular rule by decree. ” It is difficult for me to imagine having successful elections this year in Haiti,” said White, who served in Port-au-Prince from 2012 to 2015 and was tapped by the Republican members of the committee to share her opinion of the situation. “Free and fair elections are important pieces in any democracy’s complex puzzle. But having an election will not transform Haiti— it never has and it never will.”
The panel’s Haitian witnesses also raised concerns about the continued deportation of Haitian asylum seekers by the Biden administration and called on the U.S. to distance itself from a planned referendum by Moïse this June to introduce a new constitution. They urged for a new way forward in U.S.-Haiti relations that starts with listening to Haitian civil society. The Biden administration, which supports Moïse when his presidential term ends, has repeatedly called on him to hold legislative elections as quickly as technically feasible to end his rule by decree. However, the U.S. has come under criticism for not being tough enough on Moïse, and for continuing to expel Haitians back to Haiti under Title 42, a health order from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Invoked by former President Donald Trump during the pandemic, Biden has continued to use it, returning more than 900 Haitians.
“As we are speaking there is a flight to Haiti carrying asylum seekers,” California-based immigration activist Guerline Jozef told the panel. “As we speak over 129 people are on a flight to Haiti, including what seems to be a newborn baby...it is unconscionable for us as a country, as a people of as this great United States of ours to continue the cruel, inhumane practice. ”On Friday, U.S. Senators Bob Menendez, D-N.J., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), ranking member of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, called on the Biden administration to re-designate Haiti for Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
Last month, 61 members of the House signed a Feb. 23 letter, spearheaded by Miami U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, to rescind the TItle 42 order for Haitian migrants. Weeks earlier, another group of U.S. lawmakers including House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks, other members of the committee, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the powerful president pro tempore of the Senate, called on the Biden administration to wash its hands of Moïse and back a transition government to run Haiti.While some members echoed his concerns, others pressed for solutions on what the U.S., which provided more than $150 million in humanitarian aid last fiscal year to the country can do. One member of the committee who did not chime in during the hearing was Miami Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar. According to Salazar’s office and a second congressional source, she did log in. As the witnesses testified, Haitians were reminded of the country’s menacing crime problem. Social media was flooded with a graphic video of a police vehicle going up in flames after an operation in the Port-au-Prince slum of Village de Dieu, Village of God, which left two cops dead.
During the hearing, Haiti Ambassador to the U.S. BocholtEdmond tweeted that the government was making investments in the Haiti National Police and that more than 4 million voters had been registered. He said the hearing was “a missed opportunity to hear from a representative, inclusive range of Haitian voices and hold a robust discussion. The Haitians who testified Friday disagreed, and at least one lawmaker, Levin, referred to Moïse as the country’s de-facto leader.“If you have elections with kidnappings and this crime level, I don’t know many people who will be able to join, the campaign, to participate in those elections and I don’t know who in the civil society is going to accept the results of those elections,” Douyon said. Her sentiments that elections would only further stoke the ongoing crisis was echoed by White. She called the planned constitutional referendum “extremely dubious” and wondered what election support there would be in the international community “for elections that are so tainted.” The last elections, which had to be rerun after widespread fraud allegations, cost over 150 million dollars.
“I do not see the U.S. government giving 33 million dollars as in 2016 considering the current chaotic atmosphere. The international community will have to draw some firm lines in the sand that will hold Haitian leadership accountable for both a smooth transition and vastly improved security. “It’s time she said that for the U.S. to get tough. Still, he left power in May 2015 without an elected successor after elections were denounced as fraudulent and had to be re-run. A transition government was put in place, which eventually led to the delayed vote that brought Moise to power and is now at the center of the constitutional dispute over when his presidential term-end.“If you’re not bringing the opposition to the negotiating table then you can’t make progress,” White said. “I assume they are doing that. I just do not know.
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