Port-au-Prince, September 15 — Several so-called progressive organizations held a sit-in at the Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) today to demand justice — reparations — for the victims of cholera. They also demanded the departure of MINUSTAH, the United Nations troops that have been occupying Haiti since 2004. It was these same troops that brought cholera to Haiti in 2010, 10 months after the devastating earthquake. Over 8,500 people have died, and 350,000 have suffered from the illness.
Dozens of cholera victims, the majority women and elderly, gathered at the entrance of MSPP. They travelled hours from the Central Plateau (epicenter of the cholera epidemic) and Carrefour, a suburb of the capital. They waited over an hour in the scorching sun for the “leaders” to arrive.
PLP members participated in this and other numerous anti-cholera, anti-MINUSTAH protests over the years to point out the racist nature of the UN and imperialist onslaught in Haiti. Our position is to demand mass solutions: vaccinations, cholera treatment centers and a total modernization of sanitation and water systems, paid for by UN and the imperialists, rather than individual solutions.
As important as winning those would be, they will not end the struggle of workers in Haiti to build a real future for the working class. We fight to give revolutionary leadership to the struggle, not to rely on the “good will” of the courts or ruling-class imperialists and their local lackeys. We brought signs and led chants, asking the crowd to radicalize the movement by blocking MSPP’s gate and stopping vehicles.
That’s a strong contrast to the young bourgeois opportunist politicians who promised the people benefits and made them believe in the possibility of receiving money from the UN. They didn’t chant and tried to move away from those who did, showing that these participants were motivated not by class consciousness but by the opportunity to gain some personal benefits.
These pseudo-leaders tried to behave like superstars, only talking to the press, and not allowing demonstrators to speak at all. They would never speak, as we did, to the workers of the world, calling for a united fight against the health problems and lack of care faced by oppressed workers worldwide. Despite their claims to be on the left, they have no revolutionary ideas. Cholera is a disease of poverty; bosses like these are seldom among the victims.
This kind of experience shows that only revolutionary communists can lead the fight against capitalism and imperialism. We will continue this fight against not only against the bosses but also against the corrupt opportunists who serve the bosses’ interests. In doing so we will sharpen the class consciousness of workers and students here in Haiti and throughout the world. We have an egalitarian, anti-racist, anti-sexist world to win.