In a letter to Argentina’s Autonomous Workers’ Central (CTA), the Unitary Confederation of Public and Private Sector Workers of Haiti (CUTRASEPH) thanks its counterparts for their message of solidarity, while issuing an urgent call for a general uprising in Haiti.
According to CUTRASEPH, the country is the victim of a “silent genocide” perpetrated by foreign powers with the complicity of local leaders. “The Haitian people in struggle and the Executive Committee of CUTRASEPH express their deep gratitude for your message of solidarity and your support for the call for a general uprising,” the union wrote in this message signed by its main leaders, including Josué Mérilien, General Secretary, and Garry Lapierre, Secretary of Communications.
In this document, CUTRASEPH openly accuses national political authorities and their foreign allies of being at the origin of the current security crisis, which it describes as a “criminal plan aimed at systematically destabilizing and destroying the Haitian people.” “These [armed] groups are becoming political instruments at the service of a criminal plan that seeks to destroy the Haitian people, seize their wealth and erase their history as a rebel people,” the union denounces.
The text also evokes the historical responsibility of Western powers in the isolation and weakening of Haiti, due to its victorious anti-slavery revolution. “The slave-owning, racist and colonialist West still holds a grudge against Haiti for having made this historic gesture,” the message stresses, referring to the independence of 1804. Drawing a parallel with the events in Gaza, the trade union centre asks: “Why has the genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza aroused so much indignation […] while the genocide that is taking place in Haiti, under the auspices of the imperialist powers, leaves almost the entire international community indifferent?”
CUTRASEPH calls for active international solidarity to end what it describes as a situation of controlled collapse. A general mobilization is needed that involves the people, progressive organizations and all the friends of Haiti. “The solution to the Haitian crisis must come from the Haitians themselves, not from solutions imposed from outside,” the letter says.
Quoting by way of conclusion, a statement by the Argentine Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, during his visit to Haiti in 2005, recalls the symbolic and strategic significance of Haiti’s destiny: “The future of the peoples of Latin America, the Caribbean and all the peoples of the South depends on what happens today in Haiti.” CUTRASEPH affirms that this support from Argentina “revives consciences” and constitutes a lever to “break the wall of silence” erected around the daily suffering of the Haitian people.
Haiti Libre y Soberana, Resumen Latinoamericano, April 14, 2025.