Students and Faculty Voice Concerns About Civil Unrest in Haiti

The Haiti Woodly Aurelus remembers is one of beautiful beaches, neighborly love, delicious fruits and "a la campagne."

"A la campagne means the countryside," said the senior media study major. "In the summer time when you go there and you get to drink a lot of coconut water and you eat a lot of avocados and oranges and sugar cane and you get to ride horses and eat honey."

"Summertime was the best," he reminisces with a chuckle.

The country of Aurelus' carefree youth has fallen on difficult times; civil unrest and political turmoil are the words most recently associated with Haiti these days.

Haiti has been enveloped by violence since rebels rose against then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Aristide, a former Catholic Priest who became Haiti's first democratically elected president in 1990, was overthrown in a rebellion in 1991, brought back to power under the Clinton administration in 1994 and was elected into a new term in 2000, as outlined in a Feb. 29 2004 CNN.com article.

Aristide's political opponents claimed the elections were fraudulent, and rebel forces turned Haiti's major cities into a battle-zone with Aristide supporters. U.S. agents escorted Aristide out of Haiti on Feb. 29 2004, under conditions that he claims were against his will.

While many news sources and U.S. officials say Aristide's departure is in the best interest of Haitian democracy, some people feel differently.

"I feel that that's really sad because it's not even a mostly political issue it's mostly a social issue," said Aurelus commenting on the unrest. "Aristide is a former priest and he loved poor people because he was a poor guy. (Haiti used to be ruled by) a military government and the bourgeoisie, people who are rich controlled the country and Aristide became the first freely elected president."

Wesly Jacques, a junior civil engineering major, said underlying social issues have come to a head in the form of the civil unrest that is playing out in Haiti.

"Whether the President is elected or whether they cheat their way into office, when the people don't like the President, they tend to rebel," he said.

As a native born Haitian, Jacques said the situation in his country has never been this bad, and is concerned about what the protests are doing to the nation's already fragile state.

"When the people don't like something, their way of showing it is by burning things down. Major banks, hospitals and other important places are what get burned down," said Jacques with a concerned tone.

The citizens of Haiti, a small nation in which 80 percent of the population lives below the poverty line according to the 1998 estimate posted in a fact sheet at www.worldpress.org, have never been strangers to struggle, with political and social issues threatening to come to the forefront for some time.

"When I was younger, I always remembered hearing my parents talking about it and that shows that these problems have been going on for a while," said Nelly Josil, a senior social sciences major.

While U.S. officials had hoped that Aristide's departure would be the first step toward peace in Haiti, Aristide loyalists, along with the Caribbean nations that make up the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are not convinced that removing Aristide from power was in the interest of Haiti or democracy.

"Even with the fig leaf of constitutional cover with which Aristide's removal was deposed, it was, in the view of most rational people, nothing short of a coup. For as CARICOM said, these circumstances set a dangerous precedent for the removal of democratically elected governments everywhere," stated a March 4 editorial in The Jamaica Gleaner, a privately owned, independent paper published in Kingston, Jamaica.

Aristide is currently residing in Jamaica, one of the 15 Caribbean countries that make up CARICOM.

CARICOM is not alone in crying foul about the dealings in Haiti.

Aurelus said he believes the insurrection stemmed from the bourgeoisie's dislike of Aristide in conjunction with foreign influences in Haiti.

"The US and France pressed Aristide to leave, for some reason I don't think the Bush administration likes Aristide that much. I don't know if he left on his own or they pushed him to leave," he said.

The political turmoil taking place in Haiti now has been cause for the U.S to deploy close to 1,800 of its troops to Haiti's capital, Port Au Prince to help restore order and to help the new Haitian President, Gerard LaTourte, rebuild the country, according to a Newsday.com article.

Khalil Nieves, an adjunct professor in the African American Studies Department, said he believes what is happening in Haiti is an example of why U.S. foreign policy should be a cause for concern for everyone.

"It goes on everywhere, whoever the U.S. wants to come (into power) the U.S. will give them aid because they are the people most favorable to the U.S.," said Nieves, of why he believes Aristide was forced to leave Haiti and a new president put into play.

Nieves is one of the organizers of an April 3 conference entitled "Standing Against Empire; Creating a Just and Equitable World," that plans to discuss U.S. foreign policy.

While many believe the foul play of foreign countries was a factor in the happenings in Haiti, others believe change for the better lies in the hands of the Haitian people.

"All I can say is that what is going on over there is crazy and if the country plans to improve, the people have to unite," said Jacques.