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5 pt2 Department of State Dispatch 605 (1994)
The Crisis in Haiti

handle is hein.journals/dsptch12 and id is 213 raw text is: The Crisis in Haiti U.S. Interests In Haiti President Clinton's Oval Office address to the nation, Washington, DC, September 15, 1994. My fellow Americans: Tonight I want to speak with you about why the United States is leading the international effort to restore demo- cratic government in Haiti. Haiti's dictators, led by General Raoul Cedras, control the most violent regime in our hemisphere. For three years, they have rejected every peaceful solution that the international community has proposed. They have broken an agreement that they made to give up power. They have brutalized their people and destroyed their economy, and for three years we and other nations have worked exhaustively to find a diplomatic solution, only to have the dictators reject each one. Now the United States must protect our interests--to stop the brutal atrocities that threaten tens of thousands of Haitians, to secure our borders, to preserve stability and promote democracy in our hemisphere, and to uphold the reliability of the commitments we make and the commit- ments others make to us. Earlier today, I ordered Secretary of Defense Perry to call up the military reserve personnel necessary to support United States troops in any action we might undertake in Haiti. I have also ordered two aircraft carriers, the USS Eisenhower and the USS America, into the region. I issued these orders after giving full consideration to what is at stake. The message of the United States to the Haitian dictators is clean. Your time is up. Leave now, or we will force you from power. I want the American people to understand the background of the situation in Haiti, how what has happened there affects our national security interests, and why I believe we must act now. Nearly 200 years ago, the Haitian people rose up out of slavery and declared their indepen- dence. Unfortunately, the promise of liberty was quickly snuffed out, and ever since, Haiti has known more suffering and repression than freedom. In our time, as democracy has spread throughout our hemisphere, Haiti has been left behind. Then, just four years ago, the Haitian people held the first free and fair elections since their independence. They elected a parliament and a new president, Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Catholic priest who received almost 70% of the vote. But eight months later, Haitian dreams of democracy became a nightmare of bloodshed. Gen. Raoul Cedras led a military coup that overthrew President Aristide, the man who had appointed Cedras to leave the army. Resistors were beaten and murdered. The dictators launched a horrible intimida- tion campaign of rape, torture, and mutilation. People starved; children died; thousands of Haitians fled their country, heading to the United States across dangerous seas. At that time, President Bush declared that the situation posed, and I quote, an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. Cedras and his armed thugs have conducted a reign of terror-executing children, raping women, and killing priests. As the dictators have grown more desperate, the atrocities have grown ever more brutal. Recent news reports have documented the slaying of Haitian orphans by the nation's deadly police thugs. The dictators are said to suspect the children of harboring sympathy toward President Aristide for no other reason than he ran an orphanage in his days as a parish priest. The children fled the orphan- ages for the streets. Now they cannot even sleep there because they are so afraid. As one young boy told a visitor, I do not care if the police kill me because it only brings an end to my suffering. International observers uncovered a terrifying pattern of soldiers and policemen raping the wives and daughters of suspected political dissidents--young girls, 13 years old, 16 years old. People were slain and mutilated, with body parts left as warnings to terrify others. Children were forced to watch as their mothers' faces were slashed with machetes. A year ago, the dictators assassi- nated the Minister of Justice. Just last month, they gunned down Father Jean- Marie Vincent, a peasant leader and close friend of Father Aristide. Vincent was executed on the doorstep of his home-a monastery. He refused to give up his ministry, and for that, he was murdered. Let me be clear:. General Cedras and his accomplices alone are responsible for this suffering and terrible human tragedy. It is their actions that have isolated Haiti. Neither the international commu- nity nor the United States has sought a confrontation. For nearly three years we have worked hard on diplomatic efforts. The United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Caribbean Community, the six Central American presidents have all sought a peaceful end to this crisis. We have tried everything-persuasion and negotiation, mediation, and condemna- tion. Emissaries were dispatched to Port-au-Prince and were turned away. The United Nations labored for months to reach an agreement accept- able to all parties. Then last year, General Cedras, himself, came to the United States and signed an agreement on Governors Island in New York in which he pledged to give up power, along with the other dictators. But when the day came for the plan to take effect, the dictators refused to leave, and instead, increased the brutality they are using to cling to power. Even then, the nations of the world continued to seek a peaceful solution while strengthening the embargo we had imposed. We sent massive amounts of humanitarian aid-food for a million Haitians and medicine to try to help the ordinary Haitian people as the dicta- tors continued to loot the economy. Then, this summer, they threw out the international observers who had blown the whistle on the regime's human rights atrocities. In response to that action, in July the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution that authorizes U.S. Department of State Dispatch * September 19, 1994 * Vol. 5, No. 38 605 U.S. Department of State Dispatch e September 19, 1994 e Vot 5, No. 38 605

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