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migration
To Defend Haitian Migrants, Oppose the US Policies That Forced Them to Flee
Truly addressing the root causes of migration will require the United States to seriously reevaluate its own centuries-long role in stifling Haitian democracy and creating a crisis of forced displacement.
Oct 17, 2024
The racist lies against Haitian immigrants in the United States that have been dominating the news cycle are being delivered by Republicans, but they are built on bipartisan—and often racist—U.S. policies that drive Haitians from their home country to our borders.
While we are justifiably condemning the hateful and dangerous attacks against Haitians, we need to equally condemn U.S. government support for repressive and corrupt Haitian leaders, and insist on supporting Haitians’ efforts to reestablish a stable, prosperous homeland where they can live in peace and security.
Haitian migrants seeking refuge in the United States and elsewhere are fleeing a deep crisis generated by actors associated with the U.S.-backed Pati Ayisyen Tèt Kale (PHTK). PHTK founder President Michel Martelly came to power in 2011, after the Obama administration pressured Haiti’s electoral council to change the results of the 2010 preliminary elections. U.S. support continued for Martelly’s hand-picked successor, President Jovenel Moïse, who came to power through flawed elections, overstayed his constitutionally mandated presidential term, and tried to push forward self-serving, illegal constitutional reform. The Biden administration installed and then continued to prop up Moïse’s successor, de facto Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who ruled for nearly three years without a constitutional or popular mandate. Martelly, Moïse, and Henry—all three of whom are affiliated with the PHTK—enjoyed consistent U.S. support despite being responsible for spectacular corruption, state-sanctioned massacres, and the dismantling of Haiti’s democratic structures and accountability mechanisms.
The Biden administration consistently preaches the importance of addressing root causes of migration, even as it continues to support corrupt and repressive Haitian actors that stifle democracy and drive Haitians to flee.
This persistent U.S. support has already undermined Haiti’s transition—which hopes to lead the country out of crisis and toward stability and democracy—by placing many of the same PHTK-affiliated actors responsible for Haiti’s crisis at its center. For example, through a process overseen by the State Department, PHTK-affiliated groups were granted 3 of the 7 voting seats on Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council. Although an early attempt by those members to co-opt the transitional process ultimately failed, it left Haitians even more skeptical that the crisis could be resolved by the same U.S.-backed actors who created it.
The pattern of U.S. support for corrupt and repressive actors in Haiti follows a history of persistent destabilization ever since Haiti won its independence from France in 1804. The United States was afraid then that a stable and prosperous free Black republic would undermine the white supremacy upon which the U.S. system of enslavement—and attendant political and economic power—rested, and would inspire other Black people to fight for their freedom. Consequently, the U.S. government took steps early on to undermine Haiti’s development. These included refusing to recognize Haiti’s sovereignty until 1864 and occupying the country for nearly 20 years, from 1915 to 1934. During that time, marines stole gold from Haiti’s national reserves, took control of its financial and political institutions, and reinstated a system of forced labor akin to enslavement.
Significant Haitian migration to the United States began in the 1960s in response to the horrors inflicted by the U.S.-backed Duvalier dictatorships. For nearly 30 years, the United States supported Francois “Papa Doc” and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier despite their well-documented disregard for human rights and democracy, because they were a reliable vote against Cuba at the United Nations and the Organization of American States. The U.S. government labeled Haitians fleeing the brutality of the Duvaliers’ secret police “economic migrants” and detained and removed them, even as it welcomed those fleeing communist Cuba and Vietnam as “political refugees.”
Emigration from Haiti spiked when Haitians fled the brutal U.S.-backed military regime that took power after the 1991 coup d’état—also allegedly supported by the CIA—that overthrew Haiti’s first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It spiked again in 2004 after a U.S.-backed coup ousted Aristide a second time. The U.S. government used the period of extreme violence that predictably followed the coup it had orchestrated to justify sending in a U.N. peacekeeping operation, MINUSTAH. The peacekeeping mission lasted 13 years, cost over $7 billion, and was responsible for countless violations of Haitian rights and dignity. Meanwhile, the United States installed a series of undemocratic U.S.-backed regimes, including the PHTK-affiliated regimes described above.
The Biden administration consistently preaches the importance of addressing root causes of migration, even as it continues to support corrupt and repressive Haitian actors that stifle democracy and drive Haitians to flee. A recent resolution put forth by members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus calling for legislation that directly addresses U.S. policies contributing to forced migration—including the failure to stop the flow of weapons trafficking from the United States to Haiti—is an important step toward aligning U.S. practices with its rhetoric.
But truly addressing the root causes of migration will require the United States to seriously reevaluate its own centuries-long role in the crisis of forced displacement in Haiti. As long as we keep supporting the corrupt, repressive actors whose policies force Haitians to flee, they are going to keep arriving at our borders.
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Human Rights Suffered in 2023 Due to 'Transactional Diplomacy': HRW
"All governments can demonstrate human rights leadership to protect civilians," reads a new report. "The challenge—and the urgency—is to do so consistently, in a principled manner, no matter the perpetrator or the victim."
Jan 11, 2024
"Transactional diplomacy" and world governments' refusal to consistently take strong stands in favor of defending human rights for all contributed to making 2023 "a year of some of the worst crises and challenges in recent memory, with deadly consequences," said international group Human Rights Watch in its annual report on Thursday.
The group's World Report 2024 was released as the International Court of Justice heard South Africa's case regarding the humanitarian crisis that's captured the attention of human rights and legal experts, lawmakers, and advocates around the world—Israel's bombardment and blockade of Gaza, which has killed more than 23,000 people in just over three months and forcibly displaced roughly 2 million.
But Tirana Hassan, executive director of HRW, said the alleged genocide in Gaza is just one of the crises stemming from the fact that world leaders "look the other way when universal principles of human rights are violated."
"The international system that we rely on to protect human rights is under threat," said Hassan. "Every time a country overlooks these universal and globally accepted principles, someone pays a price, and that price is sometimes peoples' lives."
The group called on world leaders to center the rights that all humans are meant to be guaranteed, rather than short-term security or political gains, and warned that "examples of transactional diplomacy abound."
In addition to giving financial backing to Israel to carry out its massacre of civilians in Gaza—and repeatedly defending the bombardment as an act of self-defense despite all evidence to the contrary—U.S. President Joe Biden "has shown little appetite to hold responsible human rights abusers who are key to his domestic agenda or are seen as bulwarks to China," such as the leaders of Saudi Arabia, India, and Egypt, HRW said.
Other leaders have similarly placed their short-term interests over taking principled positions on human rights—potentially setting the stage of future inflamed tensions as they condemn vulnerable people to suffering in the present day. European Union member states, noted HRW, pushed asylum-seekers and migrants "back to other countries" last year and struck deals with "abusive governments like Libya, Turkey, and, most recently, Tunisia to keep migrants outside of the European bloc."
European countries including Italy and France have also garnered condemnation for punishing those who try to help asylum-seekers who arrive by boat.
"Even normally rights-respecting governments at times treat these foundational principles as optional, seeking short-term, politically expedient 'solutions' at the expense of building the institutions that would be beneficial for security, trade, energy, and migration in the long term," Hassan wrote in a keynote essay accompanying the report.
At a press conference announcing the release of the report, Hassan warned that in conflicts like the ongoing assault on Gaza as well as wars in Ukraine, Myanmar, and other countries, the question of whether to hold governments accountable for crimes against humanity is too often treated as "a political decision."
"Human rights violations—the killing of civilians, the killing of children, the targeting of hospitals, the killing of humanitarian workers, the killing of journalists in armed conflicts—the only way that this is going to stop is if there is accountability for those crimes," said Hassan. "And that takes will from states."
Conflicts around the world have made clear that governments, particularly those with the most power, like the United States, express "selective outrage," as with statements of condemnation against Hamas for its attack on southern Israel in October that are followed, in many cases, by approval of Israel's assault on Gaza, which has disproportionately killed civilians despite Israel's claim that it's targeting Hamas fighters.
"Governments' unwillingness to call out Israeli government abuses follows from the refusal by the U.S. and most European Union member countries to urge an end to the Israeli government's 16-year unlawful closure of Gaza and to recognize the ongoing crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians," reads the report.
Selective outrage and attention have also left civilians in Sudan ignored by much of the world, HRW said, amid an armed conflict that broke out in April 2023 when two military leaders began fighting each other for power. The United Nations "closed its political mission in Sudan at the insistence of the Sudanese government, ending what little remained of the U.N.'s capacity in the country to protect civilians and publicly report on the rights situation."
"All governments can demonstrate human rights leadership to protect civilians," reads the report. "The challenge—and the urgency—is to do so consistently, in a principled manner, no matter the perpetrator or the victim."
In addition to human rights violations in conflicts, HRW pointed to rising inequality around the world, including in the E.U.—where poverty rates in Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, and Latvia exceeded 25%—and the United States, as well as in the Global South.
The report also notes that the intensifying climate emergency, which is disproportionately affecting people in low-income countries even as wealthy governments bear the most responsibility for planetary heating, is creating new humanitarian catastrophes and leading policymakers to violate climate activists' right to protest.
"Enhanced civic engagement to meet the urgency of the climate crisis has triggered the nefarious use of vague laws to target activists to make it harder to express dissent," said Hassan. "Across Europe, in the U.S., Australia, and Vietnam, governments are imposing harsh and disproportionate measures to punish activists and deter the climate movement. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of the world's largest oil producers, hosted the U.N. Climate Conference (COP28) in 2023... People trying to speak out about the UAE's record face risks of unlawful surveillance, arbitrary arrest, detention, and ill-treatment."
The human-cause climate emergency made 2023 the hottest year since records began in 1880, "and the onslaught of wildfires, drought, and storms wreaked havoc on communities from Bangladesh to Libya to Canada," said HRW.
The report also points to a number of victories achieved by popular movements and institutions that centered human rights. Brazil's Supreme Court upheld Indigenous people's rights to lands, while the British Supreme Court ruled that the right-wing government could not move forward with a plan to deport refugees to Rwanda.
"These victories," reads the report, "highlight the tremendous power of independent, rights-respecting, and inclusive institutions and of civil society to challenge those who wield political power to serve the public interest and chart a rights-respecting path forward."
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'Left to Drown': MSF Slams EU Sea Migration Policies
"How many more deaths in the Central Mediterranean will the European states wait for before they halt their hostile and inhumane approach?" asked a search-and-rescue representative.
Nov 22, 2023
Doctors Without Borders on Wednesday called out European countries for "dangerous" policies and practices that have already made 2023 the deadliest year for migration in the Central Mediterranean since 2017.
The group, known globally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), put out "No One Came to Our Rescue": The human costs of European migration policies in the Central Mediterranean, a report featuring medical and operational data as well as testimonies of people saved at sea.
"MSF has been running search-and-rescue (SAR) activities since 2015 as a direct response to European Union (E.U.) policies of disengagement and nonassistance along this stretch of the sea," the report states. The organization launched operations with the ship Geo Barents in May 2021 and has since saved at least 9,411 lives as of September.
"For more than two years, MSF teams on board Geo Barents have treated the physical and mental health impacts of European migration policies," said SAR representative Juan Matias Gil. "Patients' wounds and stories reflect the scale of violence to which they were subjected in their country of origin and along their journey, including in Libya and Tunisia."
"We documented numerous cases in which Italy and Malta failed to lawfully coordinate rescues and ensure assistance to those at risk of drowning, leading to delayed rescues or no rescue at all."
Of 3,660 medical consultations conducted on the ship this year, most patients had "conditions directly related to long journeys at sea," but MSF also saw 273 people affected by serious violence, with "scars from gunshot wounds, broken and severed limbs, and scars and bruises caused by recurrent violent beatings with metal bars, electric cables, baseball bats, machetes, and knives," according to the report.
"In addition to physical injuries," the publication continues, "these conditions include mental health conditions and the direct consequences of sexual and gender-based violence such as sexually transmitted infections (STIs), unwanted pregnancies, and female genital mutilation (FGM), among others."
The report says that "our teams have seen firsthand the manifold ways in which E.U. states have gradually withdrawn from their SAR obligations and have simultaneously enabled third countries to forcibly return people to unsafe places such as Libya, where many are either trapped in inhumane conditions or have no choice but to take to the sea due to a lack of safe and legal options."
A 19-year-old from Cameroon, rescued by MSF in June 2022, told the group that the previous November, the Libyan Coast Guard "caught me at sea and sold me to the jail of Roshofana." There, guards beat prisoners, "and they were filming and taking pictures while doing so," said the man, who worked for his freedom. "Sometimes, when people were wounded, they piled them up in one place and filmed them."
Europe has given the Libyan government millions of euros, and "since 2017, more than 120,000 people have been intercepted at sea by the E.U.-trained Libyan Coast Guard with E.U.-donated vessels, and illegally pushed back to Libya," MSF pointed out.
"Tunisia has overtaken Libya as the main departure point for people on the move, with nearly five times more arrivals than last year," the group noted. In response, the E.U. has "expanded its Libya strategy," providing millions of euros to "curb undocumented migration—including through incentives, trainings, and material support to increase interceptions at sea."
MSF highlighted that along with enabling interceptions, E.U. governments have directly neglected and hampered SAR efforts.
"In 2022 and 2023, we documented numerous cases in which Italy and Malta failed to lawfully coordinate rescues and ensure assistance to those at risk of drowning, leading to delayed rescues or no rescue at all," the group said. "They have left a deadly void in which people at risk of drowning are either left to drown or forcefully returned to unsafe countries."
While MSF and other groups "have faced frequent harassment by the authorities, including criminal charges, inspections, and prolonged detainment," the publication explains, "November 2022 marked the beginning of a new phase of escalation in the obstruction of NGO-led search-and-rescue activities" led by a new Italian government.
"Italian authorities prohibited Geo Barents and two other SAR ships from stopping in their territorial waters, and eventually facilitated only those considered most vulnerable to disembark," the document details. "The 'selective' disembarkation lasted for three days and eventually, following intense media coverage, political pressure, and the intervention of medical specialists on board the rescue ships, all survivors could eventually disembark in Italy."
Then, in January, "the Italian government introduced a new set of rules applying exclusively to civilian rescue vessels," which "has had a very tangible effect on the presence of NGO ships at sea and their ability to rescue," the report adds. Gil stressed that "while the new Italian rules target NGOs, the real price is paid by those fleeing across the Central Mediterranean, who are left without assistance."
"How many more deaths in the Central Mediterranean will the European states wait for before they halt their hostile and inhumane approach?" he asked. "We urge the European Union and its member states, especially Italy and Malta, to immediately change course in order to prioritize the safety of those seeking sanctuary at European shores."
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