[The following statement was adopted March 2, 1986, by the International Executive Committee of the Fourth International.
[The statement welcomes the victory of the people of Haiti last month over the hated Duvalier dictatorship. For nearly three decades, that tyrannical regime had served the interests of U.S. imperialism and of a tiny handful of wealthy Haitian families. The social and economic legacy of this imperialist oppression and brutal dictatorship has left Haiti the country with the lowest living standards, worst medical care, most malnutrition, and lowest literacy in the Americas.
[Imperialist domination has also burdened Haiti with a large foreign debt, a social malady inflicted by world capitalism on countries throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, Africa, and Asia. While the vast majority of Haitians go without food, medical care, and other of the most elementary social needs, a growing portion of the wealth produced by their labor is siphoned into the vaults of imperialist banks.
[The Haitian people are today determined to use the democratic rights that they have been fighting for for so long and at such a heavy price in order to organize and struggle to improve their living standards and social conditions. Working people around the world, above all in the imperialist countries, can add our voices to the just demands of the Haitian people by calling for an immediate cancellation of Haiti's foreign debt and the sending of massive food and medical aid to the Haitian people, with no strings attached.]
The Fourth International hails the courageous people of Haiti, who, through their mobilizations over the last months of 1985 and the first months of 1986, brought down the hated dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier and its gang of murderers, the Tontons Macoutes. The toppling of this U.S.-backed dictatorship — the secondoldest in the Americas — opens for the first time in many decades the opportunity to organize open political and trade union activity by the oppressed and exploited working people of Haiti.
The new military-civilian junta in Haiti, largely handpicked by Duvalier from among his cronies just hours before his flight, is now trying to deprive the Haitian people of this hard-won opening for democratic political organization and activity.
We stand beside the Haitian workers and peasants in their demands that the torturers and murderers of the Duvalier tyranny be brought to justice and punished; that all political exiles be allowed to return to Haiti immediately; and that an end be put to all police and army attacks on popular demonstrations and meetings.
The massive U.S. military presence in the Caribbean looms as a danger to the gains that the Haitian people have conquered and are now fighting to consolidate and extend.
We demand:
No U.S. military intervention in Haiti!
No imperialist military pressure on Haiti!
Imperialist forces out of Haiti!