PORT-AU-PRINCE, February 18 — The ruling class is stepping up its attacks here. The government has turned its fascist power against the students, especially those at the State University of Haiti, and particularly the Faculty of Ethnology, invading the campus and brutally assaulting the students. However, the students fought back with rocks, sending Haitian President Martelly running off with his personal guards while a large force stayed.

At 3:00 p.m. on February 17 a Toyota with tinted windows pulled up to the Ethnology Faculty. An envoy from Martelly had come to announce his imminent arrival. This was the same campus — the most militant left-wing campus in Haiti — where Martelly had organized a December 27 raid to win over certain students and divide the rest.

Anti-Martelly students vowed not to let him on the campus as had happened in December when the pro-Martelly “pink” student-mercenaries (as they are known) took advantage of student vacations to open the gates for him. Now again they and his militia thugs were prepared to invade the Ethnology campus.

Martelly arrived at the head of a crowd in a Carnival-like entrance as performer “Sweet Micky” (Martelly’s stage name as a pop singer), shirt unbuttoned, urging on his thugs. After two turns around the campus shouting slogans (“Martelly, the country belongs to you, show your buttocks as you want. Micky is not afraid of anything!”).

Well-Planned Assault

Martelly tried to enter the campus grounds by force, along with his armed men. It was all well-organized. People in civilian clothes carrying guns, machetes, knives and clubs broke down the fence and invaded the courtyard. Eighteen windows on cars belonging to students and faculty were totally smashed. Dozens of students were manhandled and clubbed by the thugs who brutalized them with their batons and anything that could wound or kill.

All this occurred under the gaze of the well-armed security forces, who simultaneously used their heavy weapons to prevent the students from escaping. Those with heart conditions or asthma had trouble breathing. Many were taken to the hospital.

The cops took some students away after having beaten them nearly to death. The police fired their heavy weapons to scare off the students. Thus, the armed forces protect the profits of the criminal leaders who want to hang on to power!

Workers in the Ethnology department office, where some students had taken refuge from tear-gas attacks, were pushed around by Martelly’s thugs, who broke everything they couldn’t steal. They burglarized the office of everything of any value. Martelly’s armed gangsters in civilian clothes surrounded the campus until the last students left, ransacked and bruised.

This organized criminal act made certain students targets of Martelly’s thugs, one being attacked by a pro-Martelly “pink” criminal. The massacre targets this campus to erase any denunciation of those in power, who lie and make false promises to the people and use mercenaries to divide them.

This recipe for fascism shows clearly that the rulers plan to re-institute dictatorship in its most ferocious form. All this explains the massive presence in the Martelly government of Duvalierist-Macoute forces (murderous holdovers from the former Duvalier dictatorship). Down with fascism! Long live communism!J

Editor’s note: The above eyewitness account came from a student at the scene. We thank him and his comrades for fighting back and giving leadership to the international class struggle against fascism. As the 1930s Spanish communists said of Franco’s fascists, “No pasaran!” (“They shall not pass.”) We would add that Haiti’s rulers are a local capitalist ruling class who are clients of U.S. imperialism, not simply the gutter fascist Martelly and his thugs.

From an international perspective, this student struggle is an antiracist one. The fact that Haiti is being left to rot as a pool of reserve cheap labor for the region, and a possible military asset in the U.S. imperialists’ battles with their rivals, is a gross racist assault on all workers and students in Haiti. Antiracism, too, is an international fight.

[Note: An international petition campaign is being organized to condemn this raid and support the students’ struggle. Please sign it at www.ipetitions.com/petition/condemn-raid-on-haiti-university-campus. The students in Haiti will use it there.]