WASHINGTON, DC, February  5 — The president of Haiti, Michel Martelly, was in Washington, DC, this week to meet with his U.S. imperialist masters. He met President Obama in the White House and groveled before him, thanking him for assistance after the earthquake. What assistance? U.S. “aid” to Haiti has been minimal. Thousands still live in tents, five years after the earthquake. The cholera epidemic continues to take hundreds of lives. No significant progress has been made in fighting cholera through sanitation systems and vaccinations.
In fact, beginning with the U.S. naval occupation of Port-au-Prince after the earthquake, the U.S. has put its main emphasis on strengthening the UN’s occupation army (the MINUSTAH), hated by the masses in Haiti, and with Bill Clinton’s foundation’s help, building the Caracol sweatshop zone in the north of the country. What is Martelly thanking Obama for? In fact, Obama offered nothing more for Haiti at the meeting, only lecturing Martelly on the need to fight crime and improve the electoral process. Such is the way imperialist masters address their comprador tools in poor neo-colonial countries.
The U.S. State Department arranged for Martelly to visit Howard University. No academic program or unit invited him. Top university administrators introduced him at the School of Business auditorium, just as they had done last spring when the criminal Senator Rand Paul appeared on campus to peddle his racist lies about civil rights being a Republican Party priority. Most of the people who attended Martelly’s speech on his universal public-school agenda were older, conservative Haitians, university administrators and a small number of students and faculty.
We wanted to reach them with the truth: Martelly is attacking students in Haiti. At the Faculte d’Ethnologie, Martelly personally led his pink-shirted thugs to the campus, where they beat up students and trashed their classrooms. More recently, Martelly’s police blew off the hand of one student with a stun grenade and shot students with rubber bullets.
Students in Haiti have protested Martelly’s vicious attacks on them and on the working class. Their organization, GREPS, recently sent a letter to U.S. students, calling for solidarity against the criminal Martelly. PLP members circulated this letter (along with buttons from the group “End Cholera in Haiti Organization”) to over 100 people who attended Martelly’s speech and as well as in classes. The leaflet had the headline, “President Martelly, Enemy of Haitian Students!”
 Several people commented that it was terrible for Howard University to host this criminal. A group of students from a course in International Development, who were required to attend the speech, were particularly interested in the outrageous attacks by Martelly on students at the Faculte d’Ethnologie. Even a dean commented that Martelly’s conduct towards the students was outrageous.
During the brief question-and-answer period after Martelly’s talk, one student confronted Martelly, saying, “The people of Haiti elected you as president, but who do you really serve, the people of Haiti or the United Nations’ occupation?”
He said that he only served the Haitian people, but that the UN was a very big help. Two lies in one sentence! He serves the U.S. and UN masters, and they help only the bosses, not the masses!
The struggle of workers and students in Haiti is the struggle of every worker and student in the world.  Long live the global struggle against racism and imperialism!