Ota Benga Alliance For Peace, Healing and Dignity

In the name of humanity, the desecration of all lives in Haiti must cease. In the name of our organization, the Ota Benga Alliance for Peace, Human Dignity, and Healing in the DR Congo and the USA, we call for an end to the never-ending suffering of the Haitian people.

The Haitian people are like the Hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We are all victims/survivors, some without knowing, some very conscious, of a chain reaction which started exploding with more and more force around the Planet since 1492.

The system which grew out of the multiple genocides (Africans, Arawaks, Caribs, Amerindians, Native Americans, African Americans) has reproduced itself through what it knows best how to do in order to move forward: to kill relentlessly, physically, and spiritually. It kills in all the ways it can: softly, seductively, through corruption, violence, and, if all else fails, through the most lethal weapon it has in its hands. It is a chain reaction which led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and has continued to grow worse.

We must stand by what we believe: we must stand by the meaning of words like respect and love for all lives, respect for all members of humanity, respect for freedom with peace and justice.

For the system to kill so systematically, so massively, it had always resorted to one simple method: declare the future victims as less than human: the list is too long to name all of them, but you know them.

We are supposed not to pay attention to what is happening in Haiti, we are supposed not to hear the screams against injustice, the screams which echo the survivors of all the genocides: “Please do not inflict this pain and suffering on any other human being.” We are supposed not to trust our ears, our feelings, our conscience. All in the name of a system which has been working at turning all of us into its worshippers of violence in all its varied silent and not-so-silent forms. All in the name of not breaking our personal comfort.

Father Jean Juste, and all the many not so well-known Haitians who are being tortured till they submit to the system, deserve much better from us than just words or occasional coins. They deserve a stand and actions which will not stop till all the people of Haiti enjoy completely and totally the freedom for which their ancestors died more than two hundred years ago. They died for all of us who do love freedom with justice and peace. And they are still at it, but are we ready to be counted?

As all the survivors of all the genocides, past and recent, certified and uncertified, small and big, forgotten and remembered, we say to those who are directly and indirectly, actively and passively responsible for the ongoing suffering of all the people to Haiti to stop and radically change their behavior. For the sake of humanity, let us put our lives at the service of the Haitian people who are being killed, tortured, jailed, simply because they are calling for what all of us take for granted: freedom with justice and peace. Let us support their right to call for the return of their democratically elected President and government officials. Let us do it, nonviolently, non-stop, in the same way we brought down the Apartheid system.

Jacques Depelchin, Executive Director
Ota Benga Alliance
Berkeley, August 25, 2005