The battle between Kenyan troops and the Haitian people is about to begin
Under the auspices and headquarters of the Department of Colonial Affairs in Washington, also known as the Organization of American States (OAS), Gandy Thomas, Acting Ambassador of Haiti to the OAS, and Lazarus O. Amayo, Ambassador of Kenya to the United States, on Friday, June 21, 2024, signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which sets out the parameters of the Multinational Mission for Security Support (MMSS). The Kenyan officers will pose as the commanders of the MMSS, even though they are actually following the orders and directives of their sponsor, Washington.
The primary purpose of the SOFA is to protect the U.S.-mandated force from prosecution for the crimes it will almost certainly commit in the coming days as it attempts to stifle Haitian resistance to its illegal deployment in Haiti. “All MMSS staff, including locally recruited staff, shall enjoy immunity from legal process in respect of all acts performed in the exercise of their official functions (including words spoken or written).”declares SOFA (our emphasis). “This immunity shall continue to be in force even when they are no longer members of the staff or employees of the Mission and after the expiration of the other provisions of this Agreement.”
In other words, the MMSS could drop bombs on densely populated slums, machine-gun protesters, poison rivers and lakes with sewage and chemicals, or rape young Haitian boys and girls, yet the Haitian people would be unable to do anything about it… legally.
After all, the MMSS immunity provision has almost exactly the same wording as that of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which did all of the above when it occupied Haiti from 2004 to 2017.
As a result, when Nepalese MINUSTAH troops carelessly dumped cholera-contaminated sewage into the upper Artibonite River in late 2010, the UN initially tried to downplay and cover up this criminal negligence, but it then resulted in a decade-long epidemic that killed more than 10,000 Haitians and sickened nearly a million.
Lawyers have sought redress for the cholera outbreak, first through the United Nations system and then in U.S. courts, but have gotten nowhere. The U.N.’s “immunity” (Haitians call it “impunity”) has been defended tooth and nail by Washington’s legal teams.
Similarly, Brazilian troops who firebombed Cité Soleil and shot dead scores of protesters, as well as Sri Lankan and Uruguayan troops who raped children, have not been prosecuted in Haiti, as have many other crimes committed by MINUSTAH forces.
Meanwhile, a battalion of 400 Kenyans wearing white helmets finally landed in Haiti on Tuesday, June 25, despite a High Court order last January barring their deployment. The Kenyan contingent of the MMSS is expected to eventually number some 1,000 officers, supplemented by smaller numbers from Benin, Chad, Senegal, Burundi, Chile, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Barbados, Ecuador and the Seychelles, for a total of about 2,600.
On the same day, thousands of Kenyans stormed parliament in Nairobi, the latest in months of mass protests against fuel subsidy cuts and proposed $2.7 billion tax hikes, all so Kenya can continue paying the IMF interest on its crushing $48 billion debt it will never be able to repay. Protest leaders have been abducted and at least two protesters have been killed by police in recent days.
The Kenyan police are the most brutal and corrupt in all of Africa, many human rights groups and even UN special rapporteurs have been saying for years. They run their own death squads, and less than a year ago, in July 2023, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said it was “deeply concerned about widespread violence and allegations of unnecessary or disproportionate use of force, including the use of firearms,” by police during protests in Kenya. According to reports, up to 23 people were killed and dozens injured during last week’s protests.
Other documents governing the MMSS, such as the Concept of Operations (CONOPS) and the Rules of Engagement, have yet to be published, although they are being finalized. “They are trying to keep a lot of things secret,” an anonymous source from the United Nations Office in Haiti (BINUH) told Haiti Liberté. “That is the problem with the whole plan.”
As the Kenyans arrived in Haiti, a psychological operation was launched on June 25 against the Viv Ansanm alliance of Haiti’s armed neighborhood committees. In an anonymous audio recording circulated on Haitian social media, a man claims that Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier had fled his lower-class neighborhood of Delmas and gone into hiding.
“I’m stressed, man,” the man says in the recording. “I’ve been calling and calling all morning trying to find General Barbecue, but he seems to have fled lower Delmas…”
« “This is the voice of someone who broadcast this message with the aim of destabilizing the Viv Ansanm alliance,” Cherizier told Haiti Liberté when asked about the recording. “By saying that I had fled, he is trying to make the other guys from Viv Ansanm flee. This is an effort to destabilize us.”
Some accounts, mostly anonymous, on social media suggested that the Viv Ansanm alliance would either disband or plead to reach an agreement with the Conille government. In this vein, the daily Le Nouvelliste headlined: Jimmy Chérizier, known as Barbecue, wants to talk.
In a long interview on June 25 with YouTube journalist Ralph Laurent during his popular show Tanbou Vérité, Chérizier responded at length to these accusations. I tell the Haitian people to keep their strength. Haiti will not remain dominated forever. One day, the Haitian people will proceed to their liberation so that Haiti can take the path of development.
“People who have military or police training know that there is never an eternal war. Russia is fighting against Ukraine, but sometimes there are negotiations and diplomatic steps to see how to achieve peace. In the same way, we in Viv Ansanm are patriots and nationalists who love this country, contrary to what some people think. We can always denounce many mistakes that have been made, acts that have disrupted society. And that’s why I – I don’t need people to praise me – but one day this nation will know the sacrifices that I’ve made for it, because every day I fight with the guys from Live Togethertelling them: “ If you want to make a revolution, see the country develop, if you fight to improve the living conditions of the poorest, there are a certain number of acts that you should not commit.”
“Some will note that in recent days, the rate of kidnappings has decreased – I am not saying that the kidnappings have stopped – but that is the result of the work that Jimmy Cherizier has done. It is neither the State nor the police who have put in place a structure to reduce the kidnappings. It is the result of our work, where we discuss among ourselves within Live Togetherand now a number of things that used to be done are no longer done.
“Now, when Le Nouvelliste says that “Jimmy Cherizier wants to dialogue.” I have always been open to dialogue. Some journalists… say that we are afraid… We are not afraid of anyone. We are the children of Dessalines… But if we can avoid a bloodbath, we will see what we can do to avoid it. Because people are dying and causing too many victims in the country. The more we can sit down and talk, we will sit down and talk.
“But Viv Ansanm, in general, and in particular Jimmy Cherizier “Barbecue”, has not taken any personal initiative to speak with anyone within the government. I take this opportunity to denounce a certain number of opportunists, individuals who want a job at [le Premier ministre] Garry Conille, who goes around all the hotels saying that they met us and that we sent them to negotiate for us…
Officially, Viv Ansanm, Jimmy Cherizier, has not engaged in any negotiations with the Conille government… But we are open to dialogue… Conille could create a commission that would bring together everyone: the Protestant and Catholic churches, the voodooists, civil society, representatives of the armed groups, government representatives, representatives of the police and the army. Together, we could dialogue and see how we could silence the weapons, and when real trust is established… because no one should take us for little babies that they put to sleep then we put down our weapons and they take them and then kill us…
“Here, history is repeating itself… The oligarchs and traditional politicians waged a battle against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, where they used poor neighborhoods and politicians to destabilize the Aristide government. When they saw that this was not working, the United States had to intervene and get Aristide out of the country.
“Now the oligarchs who put the weapons in the poor neighborhoods have lost control of the weapons. As a result, there has been violence in the country, kidnappings and people dying. These are the same American oligarchs who brought MINUSTAH to Haiti. When this UN force arrived, many considered it a savior. But at that time, the ghettos were not as crime-ridden as they are today, and yet MINUSTAH had not managed to pacify the country.
Instead, the soldiers of this force imported cholera and rape, they raped little girls, little boys. The Uruguayan soldiers raped a 10-year-old boy in Port Salut, and the worst thing is that the Nepalese brought us cholera. The people had had enough! The people had had enough of this force and finally chased it out of the national territory!
“History is now repeating itself. [oligarques] put a lot of weapons in the popular neighborhoods to destabilize the Jovenel Moïse government. When they saw that the demonstrations and everything they did could not force him to give up seize power, ultimately in complicity with the imperialists… with the corrupt criminal politicians and oligarchs, they assassinated… Jovenel Moïse.
Now they have lost control of the weapons they were planting in the poor neighborhoods and had to call in a group of assassins and mercenaries from Kenya under the pretext that they would crush the gangs and fight Viv Ansanm. The Kenyans are only going to protect the interests of the American oligarchs. That is why they brought them here… »
“You can kill 10 or 20 people, but you can’t kill an entire people. Haitians, in their DNA, are rebels… We are fighting against a system. It is the system, to regenerate itself, calls on Kenyan force…”
“The arrival of this Kenyan force will lead us directly into a civil war… If the power does not want to dialogue with us, if it wants to be the servants of foreigners, ready to do whatever foreign powers ask of them. Starting with this foreign force coming from an African country to humiliate us, it is as if they wanted to tell us that “from Africa, blacks betray blacks” These are only lies constructed in the ultimate logic of dividing us further.
“Haiti has always been the mother of freedom. If mercenaries tread the soil of freedom. There will always be a team of young men and women ready to fight until their last drop of blood to liberate their country, Haiti.”
