Haiti: Interview with Haitian activist Annette Auguste

Walter Turner: I think the thing that grabbed me the most as I looked
through the pictures and read through the news about Haiti was
specifically about the children. And so I wanted you, because I know
you work with women's organizations, you have done organizing there,
it just seems that the loss of life among children, the brutality
against women is a piece of the story that, aside from looking at the
Haiti Action Committee website and a few other websites, you don't
see.

Talk to us a bit about that.

So An: We can look at that as far back as from the 1915 period [first
US invasion], where we've seen the kind of brutality against women,
women were being raped, and that's what's going on today, and we can
see what has happened to the children. Many children have been killed,
and they are looked down upon, they look at them as if they are trash,
and they don't give them any value or worth in the society.

Now we can see that the current situation is that we have the marines
that have come into Haiti, we have the UN forces called MINUSTAH who
have come into Haiti, and they have seized the schools as bases for
their troops, and the children need to go to school yet their schools
have been taken over by armies.

When we look at Cite Soleil, for example, the schools aren't open, the
children are not going to school, the schools have been taken over and
are being used as bases for troops. So these children, not going to
school, what's going to become of them? They are going to be on the
street, turn into thieves, gangsters, because they have nothing,
nothing is available to them.

Walter Turner: The Haitian people, you don't see a lot in the news,
but they are in the streets every day. What do people in the United
States, what do people around the world who are concerned about human
rights, and specifically African-American people who knew that Haiti
was – some people say the United States was the first independent
republic, but Haiti is the first independent republic in the Western
Hemisphere…what do African-Americans, what do people who are concerned
of whatever background, what do they do to support change, human
rights, adherence to the constitution in Haiti?

So An: Things have been done by people outside, but more needs to be
done. One of the first things that we need is peace. If Haiti is at
peace, then a lot can be achieved. Every day when you wake up now in
Haiti there is one to fifteen people being killed, you hear that they
are killing the people, but who are they killing? They say they are
killing gangsters, but these are children being killed. They say they
are killing kidnappers, but these are children being killed. Kids,
small children. So what is going on there? These are many innocent
civilians, people who have nothing to do with anything.

We are not saying there are not gangsters or kidnappers in Haiti,
there is crime, but they come into poor neighborhoods and start
shooting indiscriminately, and the people who die are children,
innocent people, whereas there is a way to do things, they know the
areas where these gangsters are, and that's where they need to target,
to go there and do the undercover work and to try to localize these
people, and not to be coming in indiscriminately in poor neighborhoods
and shooting at everyone.

So what we want is for those people who have those big guns and big
tanks inside Haiti, we want them out of Haiti. Because the more they
are there, the more they are killing innocent people, the more there
is a state of chaos and not peace in Haiti. We want them out, we want
Haiti to have peace so we can have progress.

So what we need is actually schools, we need hospitals, we need more
health care centers, places where people can eat and find health care.
That's what we need, not tanks and armored men.

*Walter Turner is producer of Africa Today and a member of the Black Radical Congress.
The audio interview is available online at: http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=19144