Oppressors only need apply

As Haiti descends into political violence, the US government is insisting that it will not accept large numbers of migrants fleeing the chaos at home.

More than 60,000 people fled in the early 1990s. Most were forced to return.

The Haitian community in Miami, 250,000-strong, is asking that family members and those affected by violence be allowed some sort of asylum in the US, but President George W Bush has ruled that out.

The US lawyer representing the government of Haiti charged today that the US government is directly involved in a military coup attempt against the country’s democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ira Kurzban, the Miami-based attorney who has served as General Counsel to the Haitian government since 1991, said that the paramilitaries fighting to overthrow Aristide are being backed by Washington.

“I believe that this is a group that is armed by, trained by, and employed by the intelligence services of the United States,” Kurzban told the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!. “This is clearly a military operation, and it’s a military coup.”

“There’s enough indications from our point of view, at least from my point of view, that the United States certainly knew what was coming about two weeks before this military operation started,” Kurzban said. ” The United States made contingency plans for Guantanamo.”

If a direct US connection is proven, it will mark the second time in just over a decade that Washington has been involved in a coup in Haiti.

Who is the Opposition? Like the so-called opposition to the Chavez government of Venezuela, Haiti’s opposition represents only a small minority (8 percent of the population according to a 2000 poll). With no chance of winning through democratic elections, they rely instead on armed violence to foment a political crisis that will lead to the fall of the government. Using their international business connections, especially ties to the corporate media, the opposition has manufactured an image of itself as the true champion of democracy in Haiti.

The gangs that have placed thousands of Haitians under siege are reportedly armed with US-made M-16s, recently sent by the US to the government of the Dominican Republic.

The gangs are directly linked to two groups financed by the Bush Administration: the right-wing Convergence for Democracy and the pro-business Group of 184.