Haiti: Thousands march in Port-au-Prince against US-backed coup

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Haiti: Thousands march in Port-au-Prince against US-backed coup
By Keith Jones
6 March 2004

A crowd, estimated by Reuters at more than 10,000, marched on the US embassy in Port-au-Prince Friday to denounce the US-orchestrated coup against Haiti’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and demand the withdrawal of US and French troops from the Caribbean island country.

The demonstrators chanted “Bush terrorist,” urged that Aristide who is now in exile in the Central African Republic, be allowed to complete his five-year presidential term, and charged that the ex-Haitian army personnel, death-squad leaders and criminal-gang members that Washington used to oust Aristide—the so-called rebels—are inflicting terror on the slums of Port-au-Prince.

According to Reuters, one demonstrator shouted, “The bourgeoisie joined with the international community to occupy Haiti and get rid of President Aristide. The bourgeoisie never did anything for us, the masses. Now they took away our president.”

The demonstration erupted one day after the disappearance of gun-touting rebel commandos from the downtown streets of Port-au-Prince. From Sunday through Wednesday, the rebels had run amuck in Haiti’s capital, terrorizing and killing Aristide supporters, under the watchful eyes of the US Marines, who had begun arriving in force on Sunday once Aristide had been hustled out of the country.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/mar2004/hait-m06.shtml