It’s the new lucrative business that is pushing the population further into rejection of the situation in Haiti now. Kidnapping starts at the top. The executive office has been kidnapped by Jovenel Moise who has arrived at the end of his legal mandate since February 7. A de facto president has kidnapped the office with the help of a rogue police chief and the Core Group of international diplomats assigned to Haiti, led by the U.S. State Department. All the other branches of government have been silenced, and at the level of the judicial branch the highest court has also been kidnapped by the de facto president who arrested one of the sitting judges despite the latter’s immunity from arrest, and illegally dismissed three of the judges in that court, the Cour de Cassation, which is Haiti’s Supreme Court. So at two of the highest level of government, the executive and the judicial, Jovenel has kidnapped the power using force, but his hold on the country is tenuous at best.
The opposition is fueling resistance to the coup d’Etat by pushing mobilization and stoking the fire smoldering beneath the surface. As of this writing calm has returned to most towns in the provinces with a few school children in the streets after a Sunday where demonstrations brought out huge crowds in the streets in many towns. That day in Port-au-Prince a battle raged on the Delmas road when police barred the planned demonstration from going past Delmas 33. The bulk of demonstrators turned into Delmas 32 to make their way to Bourdon, but rocks started to rain on police, or I should say men in uniform because they are supporting an illegal action, and they fired tear gas everywhere around. This battle lasted until it seemed that the men in uniform retreated under a hail of stones and left the area to militants who promptly lit tires, barricading the road, claiming a short lived victory.
As of this post, in Port-au-Prince students are demonstrating and setting up barricades in front of the Universite de Port-au-Prince on Rue Rivière, and the Faculte de Linguistique Appliquee on Rue Dufort because their peers have been kidnapped. For the past three days students at the Universite of PAP on Rue Rivière, a small private university, have burned tires, set up barricades and had tear gas thrown at them by police because a popular Professor at the school was taken by bandits. Since then, students from the school have braved the pavement to demand the release of the educator. As usual, men in uniform have tossed tear gas in the area, while shooting in the air.
At the Faculte de Linguistique Appliquee, a branch of the Universite d’Etat d’Haiti where I taught journalism for over six years, students are demanding the release of Ti Neg, one of their peer who was kidnapped with two citizens of the Dominican Republic, while working on a media shoot. The street in front of the Faculte is blocked with chairs, rocks and burning tires. All these young people are demanding that Jovenel Moise leave the Office of the President of Haiti because his mandate is up. Anarchy is slowly overtaking all semblance of normalcy, and Jovenel is unable to hide it from the world.
The de facto president embarrassed us Haitians once again by visibly lying to a skeptical audience of diplomats, while on a zoom session with United Nations Representatives. Jovenel tried to say that everything was going great and under control, but with some pointed questions from those attending he looked like a liar. He was made to look small. The Core Group is running the show for the government of Haiti, and this pitiful performance by Jovenel Moise only reinforces that. And this is the guy with no worthwhile skills who wants to become a dictator for the next decades; as he said before only God can take this power away from him. It is up to Haitians everywhere to prove him wrong and save what’s left of our home and of our pride.
In Gonaives, resistance to the kidnapping of the country is strong, with Raboto at the center of the rejection of Jovenel Moise. This morning men in uniform tried to enter the neighborhood to suppress the movement there to no avail. Shots were heard all morning, according to media reports, and the cops had to retreat. It is a harbinger of what will come to the persons trying to install dictatorship in the country. Whether from Gonaives and its militants, the students in Port-au-Prince hitting the pavement, as they did on Monday, or militants from the Petro Challenge on Champs de Mars, or also lawyers in towns the country, resistance to this illegal kidnapping of our country will not let up. Everyone needs to join the struggle as much as they can to form a huge movement for our second independence.
Dèyè Mon 