We the undersigned are responding to a call for international solidarity sent out by the executive committee of a coalition of education organizations in Haiti after the police killing of a protesting teacher, and signed on Oct. 11, 2010, by the coordinators of the coalition François Mario, CNEH (teachers' union), Eugène Jean, UPEPH (parents' organization), and Josué Mérilien, UNNOH (teachers' union). We stand in solidarity with teachers, students, and parents in Port-au-Prince who are organizing for schooling for Haitian children abandoned by the education system, and for decent living and working conditions for teachers and students. We demand an end to the systematic violence against them: 

 ➢ On October 8, 2010, at a demonstration by teachers and students at the Ministry of Education, a projectile fired from a National Police vehicle killed Jean Filbert Louis, a member of the teachers’ union UNNOH; 

➢ On October 4, 2010, the opening day of the school year, a demonstration of teachers and students at the Ministry of Education was tear-gassed by the anti-riot police unit CIMO, backed up by troops of the UN force MINUSTAH; 

➢ On September 30, 2010, a student leader from GREPS (Group for Reflection on Social Problems), at the School of Ethnology, was wounded near his home by gunmen firing more than ten bullets at him and a friend; 

 ➢ On May 24, 2010, MINUSTAH troops raided the campus of the School of Ethnology, seizing computers and detaining and threatening an activist student from GREPS—three GREPS students were then expelled from that School; 

➢ On January 12, 2010, just before the earthquake struck, Professor JnAnil Louis-Juste of the School of Social Sciences (FASCH), an intellectual and political leader at the university and beloved mentor of many activist students, was assassinated by gunmen near the campus. 

 We strongly protest to the Ministry of Education, the Administration of the State University of Haiti (UEH), the National Police, and MINUSTAH against the police murder of our brother Jean Filbert Louis and all these outrages, clearly a systematic attempt to destroy any organized movement of students and teachers in Haiti who (in the words of the Coalition) “dare to make demands, to denounce, to condemn, and to protest.” These heinous crminal acts are (in the Coalition’s words) “a clear signal from the team in power to the people and social organizations, showing their evident willingness to sink into dictatorship and to prohibit any form of demonstration to demand better living conditions and quality education for all the children of Haiti.” In solidarity with our sisters and brothers in the Haitian education Coalition, we call also for the satisfaction of their just demands in education—especially schooling for the hundreds of thousands of children abandoned to the streets and camps by the education system.

Addressed To:

Joël Desrosiers Jean-Pierre, Minister of Education

Jean Vernet Henry, Rector of the State University of Haiti: [email protected]

Mario Andrésol, Director of the National Police

Edmond Mulet, Director of MINUSTAH: [email protected]

 

Josué Mérilien, Coordinator General of UNNOH: [email protected]

Raphael Dukens, Coordinator General of CTSP: [email protected]

Jean-Bernard Jean Louis, GREPS: [email protected]