AMY GOODMAN: For more on the second anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti, we’re joined by Randall Robinson, law professor at Pennsylvania State University, author of a number of books, including An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. Randall Robinson is the founder and past president of TransAfrica. He joins us discuss his most recent book, as well, his second novel. It’s called Makeda. Set at the dawn of the civil rights era, it follows a young man coming of age in segregated Richmond, Virginia. Through his blind grandmother and her visions, he discovers his roots in Africa.
Randall Robinson, welcome to Democracy Now!
RANDALL ROBINSON: Thank you. Very nice to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you back with us. Let’s talk first, briefly, about Haiti and what it faces on this second anniversary. I was with you on the journey back from the Central African Republic, when you and Congress Member Maxine Waters and others took a small plane to the Central African Republic to try to retrieve President Aristide after the coup of 2004. It is, what, seven years later. A horrific earthquake kills more than 300,000 Haitians, and we hear about the billions that perhaps never made it to the people of Haiti to relieve their suffering.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, we can’t trust what we’re being told by official Washington. We have every reason not to. We were on that plane to the Central African Republic to rescue the Aristides, because the president and his wife had been abducted by American Army people, personnel, and taken there against their will. That was never reported. The New York Times reported that he fled to South Africa, as if that never happened. And so, you were on the plane, and you knew what happened, but it was not reported in the United States. When we look at the WikiLeaks cables, it’s stunning evidence of the collaboration between the United States and the U.N. to first slander President Aristide, to collaborate with the Haitian police in contaminating the new police force by infusing it with hundreds of paramilitaries who had preyed upon the Haitian people belief—just terrible things that the U.S. was doing behind the scenes, and presumably continues to do. And so, I’m not surprised that the reconstruction efforts are not going well, because I don’t think the United States, officially, ever wanted anything to go well in Haiti, and more recently, of course, tried vigorously to obstruct President Aristide’s return to his country, which is a violation of international human rights law.
AMY GOODMAN: By the way, speaking of his return, in March of last year, we covered ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide when he ultimately did return to Haiti from South Africa, seven-and-a-half years after he had been ousted in 2004. When he landed in Port-au-Prince, he was greeted by thousands of supporters. He addressed the crowd in a number of languages. When he spoke English, he said, "Exclusion is the problem, inclusion is the solution," indirectly referencing his party, Fanmi Lavalas, which was excluded from the latest presidential election. But when he addressed the Haitians in Creole, in their language, he was much more explicit.
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: [translated] You are right. If we don’t salvage our dignity, our dignity will be gone. Yes, you are right, because the problem is exclusion, and the solution is inclusion. The exclusion of Fanmi Lavalas is the exclusion of the majority. The exclusion of the majority means that you are cutting off exactly the branch that we are all sitting on. The problem is exclusion. The solution is inclusion of all Haitians, without discrimination, because everybody is a person.
AMY GOODMAN: That was President Aristide upon landing on Haitian soil with his wife and two girls, his children, after seven-and-a-half years in exile, talking about how the majority party of Haiti had been excluded from the presidential election.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, one has to wonder how the United States, including of course President Obama, can embrace an election that excludes the largest party in the country and then to call it democracy. It is not democracy. And no democracy should be supporting that kind of exclusion. It’s unthinkable that the U.S. would embrace and endorse and validate something as terrible an outcome and as unfair an outcome as that one has been.
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/13/2_years_after_devastating_earthquake_haitis
