Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies
mentally unstable, which contributed to the clamor against
him in Washington and beyond.
Initiatives by a few individuals forced the United States and
the UN into action. On April 22, 1994, six congressmen, five of
them members of the Congressional Black Caucus, demonstrated
in front of the White House to protest United States
policy toward Haiti and were arrested. On April 12, Randall
Robinson, executive director of TransAfrica, a lobbying organization
on Africa and the Caribbean, began a hunger strike that
he announced would last until the administration fired special
envoy to Haiti Larry Pezzullo and changed its policies toward
the Haitian military and the refugees. Twenty-seven days later,
Pezzullo was fired, and the hospitalized Robinson received
assurances that his other demands would be met. Robinson
then ended his strike.
The Department of State named a new special envoy to Haiti
and promised asylum hearings for Haitian refugees aboard
United States ships. President Clinton took new steps to cut off
the junta from oil supplies and their foreign bank accounts. On
April 28, President Clinton gave the junta an ultimatum: a global
trade embargo or resignation within fifteen days. On May 6,
the UN Security Council approved a near total trade embargo
on Haiti along with restrictions on the junta, with a deadline of
May 12.
The junta demonstrated that it had no intention of relinquishing
power. On May 11, it installed Emile Jonaissant, an
eighty-one-year-old Duvalierist Supreme Court justice, as provisional
president; he selected his own prime minister and cabinet.
When President Clinton applied additional pressure,
ending United States-Haitian commercial flights and urging
United States citizens to leave the country, the junta attempted
to provoke nationalist and anti-United States sentiments by airing
television films of the 1915 invasion. The situation led President
Jonaissant to declare a state of emergency and impose a
curfew. Infantrymen paraded through the streets.
In response, the United States asked the UN to endorse a
United States-led military intervention in Haiti, and on July 31,
1994, the UN Security Council passed a resolution (S/Res/
940) approving a plan to raise a Multinational Force, Operation
Uphold Democracy, which would "use all necessary means
to facilitate the departure from Haiti of the military dictatorship."
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