Serbia’s students have brought to life a mass movement and grassroots democracy rarely seen in the country. In the morning, they block roads; throughout the day, they occupy their faculties, march across the city and the country and shut down highways and ministry buildings. 
The movement aims to win justice for fifteen people killed in a train station collapse in Novi Sad on 1 November, and hundreds of thousands identify that goal with the daily mass protests of the students. Pushed into action by the tragedy, the students have questioned Serbia’s whole system of greed and autocratic governance.
The current president, Aleksandar Vučić, has spent years curbing democracy and allegedly lining his and his colleagues’ pockets at the expense of the mass of the Serbian people.
Vučić, who has held positions of power since the Milošević era, has usually seen off opposition protests. But this student movement has been different. Prime Minister Miloš Vučević resigned in disgrace after a mass 24-hour highway blockade, and several ministers have faced the chopping block. Unable to convince the population that the students are foreign agents, Ustaše fascists or separatists, the Serbian government has never appeared as powerless as it is at this moment.
The student movement is a dazzling display of the power of activism and democracy rooted in the people. While change is usually said to come from the best ideas and the ballot box, the masses in Serbia are showing that real change, change that can undermine an entire system of authoritarianism, comes from mass struggle.
What started as daily vigils was transformed by right-wing violence into a militant challenge to the entire system. Defending themselves against a physical attack, students in the Dramatic Arts Faculty of Belgrade took over their campus building and declared it under their control.
Soon, nearly all of the 80 major faculties in Serbia were taken over by students demanding the publication of documents regarding the station collapse, the release of their arrested comrades, justice for the attacks on students and a 20 percent funding increase for education.
The blockades are places in which a form of radical democracy has begun to grow. As described in a letter addressed to students of the world, the dramatic arts student group Svi U Blokade (SUB) describe:
“We have suspended classes, dissolved all student representative groups, self-organised plenums ... and begun to apply pressure ... We have begun to set up kitchens, dormitories, pharmacies, workshops, cinemas and classrooms for self-education ... We organise blockades through work groups ... open to everyone who wants to participate ... [They] present their ideas to the plenum ... an open forum for all students of the faculty ... [and] direct democracy is put in practice.”
The blockades have shifted power away from the government, but also from the more moderate opposition forces that have led many of the recent protest movements in Serbia. Centring resistance on the active participants of the struggle in the blockades makes those who refuse to take part have no influence, like the student union president who, on television station TV PINK, called the protests “the greatest destruction of higher education”.
The blockades have also used pressure from below and grassroots democracy in the plenums to keep leadership away from opposition politicians and in the hands of the masses themselves. After calling only a couple of symbolic demonstrations and a fist fight in parliament, those politicians have gained no leadership as the mass of students have voted for militant actions and systemic change, not just the election of the other political team.
Rather than scaring people off, the student occupations have drawn wide layers of the population into street politics. Students called one of the largest protests in Serbian history, have inspired teachers and workers into strikes and protest action, have led hundreds in days-long marches from city to city. Three months later, they continue to hold the vast majority of university faculties under student control.
With the occupations as focal points for organisation and protest, workers, unionists, parents and pensioners have all made their way into the blockades. Students have keenly adopted the concerns of various groups, supporting farmer and media protests, and travelling to the energy ministry to join rallying power plant workers. As one postal worker said in an article in the socialist newspaper Kontranapad, “If the students could respond and come to our protest, let’s stop our work too!”
Farmers have played a key role in maintaining the blockades and protests, providing tractors for barricades, soup kitchens and spit roasts, and food for weary marchers halfway between Belgrade and Novi Sad. Teachers have also shown solidarity and drawn in workers across Serbia, first in the universities as faculty members rushed to the blockades to support their students, conduct classes on the streets and participate in plenums.
The teachers have been an icebreaker for workers in Serbia. Every time they have joined a blockade, defied government threats, gone on strike or rallied in the city, they have inspired other workers to join them. 
Lawyers and actors joined the teachers on strike, while bus drivers refused to run services transporting strikebreakers. In the main news stations of RTS, workers demanded that the chief editor allow students to join their program or resign. Power plant workers, who had promised to strike further after a one-day suspension of work, overcame an order not to protest and began hour-long stoppages.
This was not guaranteed. “One part of the trade union is in connection with the regime and participates in the local government”, according to a coal miner in Kolubara speaking to N1 News. Across the country, various repressive and demobilising tactics have been attempted, workers being threatened with the sack or hauled into ministry and management buildings for lengthy interviews about their political support for the students. 
Trade union leaders have played no better a role than student union leaders. They have signed wage rise deals in exchange for calling off strikes and have taken to the media and to parliament to denounce the idea that they might strike against the government. However, they have also been dismissed in individual workplaces—one union meeting of electricity distribution workers ended with the union officials being booed out of the room by their own members.
By reaching out to workers on strike, pensioners, lawyers, high schoolers and more, the students have given ordinary people a chance to feel their own power. By creating opportunities for mass struggle, students have accomplished what a thousand speeches and essays couldn’t: they have convinced hundreds of thousands of people they have the power to change society.
Whether or not their movement wins, the students have started a radical process in Serbia. Instead of elections and bills, politics is now plenum democracies and protests. The idea that university faculties could be run by mass meetings rather than board meetings has gripped Serbia. 
During the 20 January teachers’ strike, Dušan Kokot—a leader of the Nezavisnost (Independence) trade union faction, a more militant faction of the unions—declared the strike gathering a plenum and turned to the crowd for a decision on, “Who is in favour of a general strike?” 
Of course, this is not the same as a student plenum, which Kokot noted in an interview with Vreme, but it gives workers a taste of their power. If this level of democracy were exercised not just in a protest or on a campus, but in every workplace, town and city, Vučić’s corruption and greed wouldn’t stand a chance. This could also be pushed by organising all sympathetic workers into a network of activists who could transform Serbia from the ground up.
Regardless of what building is occupied next, who protests next, who resigns next, the university students at the centre of the movement aren’t letting up. On 15 February, tens of thousands from across the country converged on the city of Kragujevac to protest together, following other inter-city marches to try to join the various city-based protests into one. 
While the government insists it is meeting the protesters’ demands, one student who had marched from Belgrade to Novi Sad explained to Radio Free Europe, “The system needs to change; if the system hasn’t changed, our demands have not been met”.

Johnny Gerdes

Serbian students lead mass movement against autocracy

Despite months of repression and harassment by management and security, Swinburne University students voted overwhelmingly at a special general meeting on 2 September to support Palestine and demand the university cut ties with Israel. 
It was standing room only as more than 160 students, along with some staff, crammed into the meeting room at the Hawthorn campus in Melbourne. The mood was angry and determined. 
Three motions were put. The first called for an end to the genocide, the second for the university to cut ties with weapons companies and Israel and the third declaring no confidence in vice-chancellor Pascale Quester. All three passed with only one vote against. 
Along with many passionate speeches against the genocide in Gaza, a handful of pro-Israel students spoke in support of Israel and against the motions, one student arguing that “Weapons save lives, just look at the Iron Dome”. In the context of the carnage Israeli weapons are inflicting on defenceless civilians in Gaza, weapons researched and developed by companies like Boeing, Thales and BAE Systems, which all partner with Swinburne, this argument failed to elicit any discernible sympathy. 
There was likewise negligible dissent when it came to condemning the vice-chancellor. Since starting at Swinburne in 2020, Quester has sought to make it the premier defence university. She helped launch the AIR HUB program in 2021, a “civil aviation” department that brings together dozens of companies involved in weapons production. During her time, Quester has also attended meetings with the Department of Defence and the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, and in 2022, went on a sponsored “trade mission” to Israel. 
Swinburne having had neither a Gaza solidarity encampment nor an on-campus protest of any sort in recent years, the overwhelming success of the general meeting is testament to both the significant sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians among young people particularly, as well as the patient determination of Students for Palestine activists on campus.
Students for Palestine hold daily stalls, hand out leaflets and do postering, and talk to hundreds of students between classes and on their lunch breaks. The collective also holds weekly meetings through which students new to activism can get involved. 
It has not been all smooth sailing for Palestine activism at Swinburne, though. Attempts to petition, promote rallies and leaflet have been met with repression from security and university management, and stubborn obstruction by some pro-Israel officers in the student union. Police have been called multiple times, in an effort to prevent activists exercising their basic democratic right to advocate a political cause. These repressive actions have been defended by the vice-chancellor in communications to human rights lawyers and the staff union. 
In response, the staff and their union have defended students, expressed their solidarity and even argued with security officers when they tried to prevent the general meeting going ahead. 
The same cannot be said for the student union. When presented with the petition demanding a special general meeting, the student union refused to call it at the main Hawthorn campus of the university, where most students are and all the petition signatures had been collected. Instead, they called it at a secondary campus ten times smaller than the Hawthorn campus and over an hour away by public transport. It was clear to students that this had been done in an effort to sabotage the meeting.
As the meeting wrapped to enthusiastic chants of “Free, free Palestine”, a final motion was proposed for students to march to the vice-chancellor’s office. More than 70 students refused to be intimidated by the security staff guarding Quester’s office, many students giving speeches and all loudly chanting, “No blood on our degrees, no corporate universities”. 
“Let’s make it clear today that we will not be silenced in the face of genocide!”, one Student for Palestine activist told the crowd. “Let’s keep fighting till we stop Israel’s genocide and Palestine is free!”

Zoe Lyle

Swinburne votes for Palestine

Where in the world do you expect police to be called on students for collecting signatures on a petition? If you’re thinking of Russia or China, on this occasion you’re wrong. In fact, it was at Melbourne’s inner-east campus of Swinburne University that police were called to stop students from exercising their basic democratic rights. 
Early on 7 August, two security guards informed me and several other Students for Palestine (SFP) activists that their managers had instructed them to stop us from asking students to sign a petition and handing out leaflets. The petition was to request a general meeting of the Swinburne Student Union. When we refused, citing our democratic rights, security called the police.
The police officers who attended the scene told us the university had “revoked the right” to leaflet and wanted us to “leave campus” with the petition. If we refused, the police told us, Swinburne could declare us—enrolled students—trespassers and have us physically removed from the campus.
David Mejia-Canales from the Human Rights Law Centre said of this attack: “Students should not be punished or threatened with police action just for peacefully standing up for human rights”.
For months now, the student wing of the Palestine movement has been highlighting Australian universities’ links to Israel as it continues to destroy Gaza. Thousands of students in Australia and beyond have taken part in solidarity encampments and strikes in solidarity with Palestine. 
SFP Swinburne has highlighted Swinburne University’s ties to weapons manufacturers Boeing and Thales, as well as Vice-Chancellor Pascale Quester’s sponsored trips to Israel to encourage trade between Australia and Israel.
Hundreds of students have already signed SFP’s petition demanding that Swinburne “cut all ties to weapons companies” and declaring “no confidence in our vice-chancellor”. The administration’s response has been unambiguous: shut up and sit down, or get arrested.
Swinburne’s actions are part of a broader clamp-down across Australian universities. Whether it’s dragging Melbourne University students through hearings for months over a building occupation, threatening to suspend or expel encampment leaders at Deakin and Monash, or the draconian new <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/free-speech-under-attack-at-sydney-university">“campus access policy” at Sydney University</a>, student activism in support of Palestine is under attack everywhere.
Encouragingly, more than 300 people, mainly Swinburne students and staff, have signed an <a href="http://tinyurl.com/SwinFreeSpeech">open letter</a> or come past our “illegal” stall to express support. We’re not going to stop fighting while Gaza is being bombed, and we won’t be intimidated by the administration. We plan to involve many more students in the fight for a free Palestine.

Swinburne calls the cops on students for petitioning about Palestine

Haiti’s most powerful gangs launched an insurrection in the capital, Port-au-Prince, last month. More than 50,000 have been displaced from the capital as homes, schools, libraries and more have been destroyed by fire and bullets.
Gangs already controlled 80-90 percent of Port-au-Prince and various arterial roads across the country. The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime estimated in 2023 that “23 major gangs operate in Port-au-Prince ... and alongside these, another 70 smaller”. While usually at war with one another, many have united in a political front called Viv Ansanm.
Viv Ansanm raided and burnt police stations and prisons on 29 February, releasing thousands of prisoners. Gang members launched an ongoing siege of the Presidential National Palace. A week later, an attempted takeover of the Toussaint Louverture International Airport forced the resignation of de facto Prime Minister and acting President Ariel Henry.
Henry, a widely despised figure, travelled to Kenya in late February hoping to secure armed personnel for deployment in Haiti. Armed international support has been a long-term goal for Henry, whose power rested on police repression and diplomatic support from the West. The airport siege left Henry stranded in Puerto Rico. With no ability to govern and security forces overwhelmed, the USA and Caribbean regional organisation (CARICOM) dropped Henry in favour of a new Presidential Council (CP).
The CP is a national unity government including members from parties aligned with a recent anti-government movement, business representatives and politicians from the pro-Henry camp. As personalities from all sides have withdrawn multiple candidates and appealed various sections of its mandate—alongside delays by Henry himself in handing over official power—the CP has inspired little confidence that it will end the crisis.
Viv Ansanm is the main obstacle to the CP. Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, the group’s leader, hasn’t ruled out taking part in the political transition with the CP, saying to Sky News that he “respects CARICOM a lot”.
Despite seeking a seat at the table with business leaders and the USA, Chérizier casts himself and Viv Ansanm as Guevarist revolutionaries fighting imperialism. But he has not pulled the mass of Haitians behind him—the gangs rule the working-class slums with an iron fist. Their power comes from controlling many borders, ports and roads across Haiti, as well as being allegedly contracted out by right-wing governments.
This is not a new situation for Haitian workers and the poor. Their poverty has long been enforced by imperialist domination and authoritarian regimes that rely on secret police or paramilitary forces. 
The dynamic can be traced all the way back to the revolution of the 1790s and Haitian independence in 1804. In one of history’s most heroic mass revolts, hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans overthrew the French plantation system. The French responded by sending “the largest expedition that had ever sailed from France ... 20,000 veteran troops, under ... Bonaparte’s ablest officers”, as Trinidadian activist and historian C.L.R. James described in The Black Jacobins.
The Haitian slaves defeated France, but the prospect of eternal French invasions eventually forced Haiti to agree to pay 150 million francs in compensation for property lost in the revolution (that property being the slaves). The debt “remained shackled” to cash crops, while “education, healthcare and infrastructure went practically unfunded”, wrote Anthony Phillips in an article for the Canada-Haiti Information Project. The resulting political instability left “a series of despotic presidents ... and assassination, foreign sponsored coup d’état or civil insurrection”.
This instability provided cover for the US to launch a military occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934. This began as an operation to ensure Haitian payment of France’s debt and, the US argued, to create stability. Yet Peter Hallward’s Damming the Flood describes how the US military “abolished an ‘undemocratic’ clause in the constitution that banned foreigners from owning property in Haiti, took over the National Bank ... expropriated land to create new plantations ... and forced labor that accompanied it”. 
All of this required murdering thousands of Haitians who rebelled against forced labour and the end of independence, and the establishment of forces that would keep the new, pro-US political system in place. That was primarily the Haitian military, which assumed “power for themselves ... following the election of a mildly progressive government in 1946”, as Hallward describes. 
Yet in 1957 the US found its most trustworthy strongman in François Duvalier, who took power when radical workers and students threatened the military regime. Duvalier, and his successor and son Jean-Claude, ended the instability through economic and military warfare.
The Duvalier dynasty was an anti-communist bulwark in Latin America and seen as an essential counterweight to Cuba. It was backed by the US, which sent warships to Haitian ports to ensure the smooth transfer of power from François to Jean-Claude in 1971.
The Duvaliers sold public industries to multinational sweatshops and abolished import controls to allow cheap US goods to flood the markets. Workers’ wages fell by 50 percent by the end of the 1980s. To maintain this system of extreme exploitation, the Duvalier dynasty established its most infamous institution of political repression, the Tonton Macoute.
Originally created as a personal paramilitary for Duvalier, the Macoute were drawn from the impoverished towns of Haiti with the promise of money and power. At times unofficially, but often openly, the Macoute acted as the nation’s secret police, brutalising and disappearing dissidents and murdering tens of thousands of students, workers, peasants and leftists.
Revolution eventually toppled the dictatorship in 1986. The strikes and popular organisations that smashed the Duvaliers terrified ruling-class interests in Haiti, and years of unsuccessful counter-revolution by the Haitian military forced the imperialist core to act.
In 2004, the United Nations sent a “stabilisation” mission to Haiti after, in its own words, “President Bertrand Aristide departed Haiti for exile in the aftermath of an armed conflict”. Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, who came to power through the mass movement against the Duvalier dynasty, “departed for exile” after a military coup that the UN defended by targeting those resisting it.
“After a demonstration of ten thousand people demanding the return of [Aristide] ... UN forces attacked the community and killed close to 30 people”, found a report by the North American Congress on Latin America and the Haiti Information Project in 2006. UN troops, led by Brazil and politically backed by Canada and the US, left behind death and disease (including a cholera outbreak caused by dumping sewage in drinking water), and not an ounce of democracy.
Since then, successive Haitian governments have implemented IMF austerity programs, stolen money allocated to public infrastructure and sold land to multinational companies. A telling example is the 2018 Digneron free-trade zone, which boasts of lacking corporate taxes and housing a golfing range. That same year, the government implemented IMF-advised cuts to fuel and food subsidies. The poverty resulting from these policies is “leading both girls and boys to join armed gangs, with 30-50 percent of gang members estimated to be underage recruits”, according to a Plan International report released last month.
These right-wing governments have brutally repressed the Haitian working class to secure their own rule. Assassinated ex-President Jovenel Moïse had police using live ammunition and tear gas against anti-government demonstrations and is alleged to have consistently used gangs as a personal paramilitary force, much like François Duvalier. A Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic study on the Moïse government’s ties to organised crime alleges that multiple government officials either “furnished weapons and vehicles” to the gangs or paid them “to put an end to anti-government protests”. 
The provision of public services and welfare has been handed to foreign aid missions and NGOs that provide little to those who need it. Following the 2010 Haitian earthquake, the largest recipient of US aid was the $300 million Caracol industrial park designed for sweatshops. The Red Cross, according to a 2015 NPR article, “says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 [Haitian] people, but the number of permanent homes the charity has built is six”.
The current crisis is linked to years of foreign powers underdeveloping Haiti and backing corrupt, authoritarian regimes that have fostered the growth of powerful gangs. All that has changed is that the gangs have outgrown their benefactors and asserted their role as power brokers. None of these forces want to improve the lives of regular Haitians or engage the mass popular movement that has been fighting for a more dignified life for the last six years.
Just as the crisis recalls Haiti’s colonial and imperial history, the solution will have to recall Haiti’s formidable revolutionary traditions.

Who’s to blame for the crisis in Haiti?

Panama’s President Laurentino Cortizo has announced the closure of an environmentally destructive copper mine after the country’s Supreme Court ruled on 28 November that legislation granting the mine a 20-year concession was unconstitutional. The decision was greeted with jubilation by masses of protesters who had fought for weeks for this result.
The protest movement was sparked by the government’s decision, signed into law on 20 October, to renew the contract under which Canadian mining company First Quantum Minerals (FQM) operates the Cobre Panamá copper mine.
The contract was very favourable to the company. It promised that Panama would receive a minimum of US$375 million in annual revenue from the mine, but this pales in comparison to FQM’s likely profits, which totalled $1.1 billion last year. It also allowed the company to call on the government to seize any land it needed if it couldn’t convince the existing owners to sell—removing one of the last remaining points of leverage ordinary Panamanians had over the mine’s operations.
The Cobre Panamá mine plays a significant role in Panama’s economy. It contributes up to 5 percent of the country’s GDP, and 75 percent of its exports. The mine produces roughly 1.5 percent of the global copper supply. It directly employs 7,000 workers, but an estimated 40,000 people are employed in work related to the mine’s operation—making up roughly 2 percent of the entire Panamanian working class.
The mine has had a disastrous impact on the environment. According to environmental news site Mongabay, around 5,900 hectares of rainforest have been negatively impacted. Talking to Mongabay about the major rivers in the mine’s vicinity, local resident Estelina Santana said, “We have been told that the river is polluted and we prefer not to use it”.
Immediately after the rushed backroom renewal of the mining concession, protesters took to the streets to oppose what they perceived as a sell-out by the government and to demand the contract be repealed. “Panamanians felt completely mocked”, one protester told the Washington Post.
Road blockades were established across the country, shutting down the movement of goods to the point that supermarkets began running out of stock. Ports were blockaded by small fishing boats. These actions were often led by the rural indigenous population. One fisher at a port near the mine explained to Reuters, “If this goes on a year, we will stay a year ... we know the area in which we are waging our war. We use ropes to make them back down and, well, threaten them”.
Indefinite strikes were called first by construction workers and teachers—members of the SUNTRACS and ASOPROF unions respectively. Their example was quickly followed by many other groups such as healthcare workers, nurses, doctors and social security workers. As the protest movement developed, the working class and the unions increasingly took on a leading role.
The strikes incorporated daily protests and mass marches, with videos posted online by SUNTRACS giving a good idea of why the workers joined the struggle. A construction worker in the Coclé region explained in a speech to his co-workers, “The fight we are waging in our country is not only against mining, it is with a system that is corrupted”.
It’s no coincidence that construction workers and teachers have led the way, or that they see the movement against Cobre Panamá as part of a wider struggle. Both sections of the working class have been at the forefront of battles against the Panamanian government in recent years, particularly since the election of President Cortizo in 2019.
Strikes by builders and teachers for better education funding, against lacklustre COVID-19 protections and for cost-of-living increases have drawn thousands into struggle alongside the unions. In particular, the battle over petrol prices in 2022 was a victory for the workers’ movement, with prices coming down by close to 50 percent by the end of a 27-day strike.
In taking up the anti-mining cause, workers helped to strengthen, cohere and drive the movement. As one teacher, in a video posted online by ASOPROF, put it at a march against the mine, “United we will win; the teachers are the people, and the people are with the teachers”.
The clearest indication of the power of this working-class-led movement was the response of the government, which quickly began to retreat. On 30 October, only ten days after the protests began, Cortizo announced a moratorium on all mining contracts and proposed to hold a referendum on the Cobre Panamá concession.
Unfortunately for Cortizo, this was rightly seen as a tactic to demobilise the workers, and the strikes continued. As one protester told Reuters, “People on the street have a very clear objective, which is to strike down the approved contract”. Having tried the stick, the government quickly learned that half a carrot wouldn’t work either.
Neither was simply waiting out the strikes and protests an option for Cortizo or FQM. The government faced the entire economy shutting down, with billions of dollars being lost due to delayed infrastructure projects and road and port blockades. FQM’s stock price plummeted nearly 50 percent. The port blockades made shipping copper from the Cobre Panamá mine nearly impossible, and the company announced a temporary suspension of all activities.
Under these conditions, on 28 November the Supreme Court made its ruling, and the government announced it would begin to close the mine. Rather than congratulating the government, however, SUNTRACS leader Saúl Méndez stated in a video made during protesters’ celebrations, “This is a popular triumph ... They did not give that ruling because they wanted it, they gave it because the people are in the street ... we have to finish facing down the whole agenda of the president, and we are going to with the same firmness, the same unity”.
This reflects the reality of a still unfolding situation in Panama—one in which the workers are on the front foot and could build on their victory. The teachers’ strike has only just concluded a week after the court’s ruling, with teachers winning back wages that had been withheld by the government during the protests in an attempt to break the strike. Construction workers have vowed to continue their protests until the mine is actually closed.
Additionally, the process of the mine’s closure raises new questions. FQM has launched a legal appeal to keep its mine open. At the same time, it has asked to have its obligations to contracted workers suspended. This would mean Cobre Panamá employees losing their jobs without pay or compensation—a move clearly aimed at raising tensions between mine workers and the anti-mine movement.
The largest mining union has opposed the protests and called for police repression. A significant minority of mine workers, however, have expressed solidarity with the movement. Building links between workers on a rank-and-file level and fighting for fair compensation and transition jobs for mining workers would significantly strengthen the workers’ position and keep the mining bosses and the government on the defensive.
Regardless of where the movement goes from here, what it has achieved so far should inspire all those fighting environmental destruction and the capitalist exploitation of nature and human labour alike. Solutions are often posed as coming from above. Movements are advised to be moderate and aim for compromise. In Panama, the opposite has been shown: intransigent struggle against capitalists and their representatives in government, particularly when based on the power of the working class, is the key to change.

Mass movement defeats a mining giant in Panama

A wave of mass struggle has surged in Haiti, anti-regime riots and protests washing over the country over the last nine weeks. Sparked by fuel price increases, the protests have linked dire living conditions to the unelected Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
The protests are part of a larger movement that began in 2018 in response to a series of economic, social, and political crises. The ruling clique around Henry is associated with the deeply unpopular right-wing Haitian Tèt Kale Party, which was in power from 2016 to 2021 under President Jovenel Moïse but also has close links to both the current government and to Michel Martelly, who was the president from 2010 to 2015.
From the end of last year, the mass movement slowed, but protests were renewed on 21 August demanding action on fuel shortages and inflation. In response, Prime Minister Henry announced the end of government subsidies. Haitians already unable to afford petrol, diesel and kerosene faced a doubling of prices. The protests moved into a new phase, in which thousands embraced the tactic of “peyi lok”, meaning country lockdown, which was used throughout 2018 and 2019 to halt all economic activity.
From the capital of Port-au-Prince to all major cities and even small towns, protesters have built barricades with wood, bricks, metal, even cars and trucks, which they often set on fire. These have served to shut down the country and to impede police, who have used tear gas and live ammunition in unsuccessful efforts to repress riots and protests.
Protesters have burned and looted banks, courthouses, politicians’ homes and cars, UN buildings, and the French and American embassies, along with food storage from international charities that has failed to meet the needs of the Haitian people.
The key demand at this point is for the resignation of Henry. But slogans have emerged acknowledging that this will not be enough. Protesters in recent weeks have begun chanting for “Dechoukaj” (uprooting), a term that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s when workers, students and the urban poor overthrew the right-wing Duvalier dictatorship, which had ruled since 1957.
The governments of Martelly, Moïse and Henry have overseen ultra-neoliberal programs, growing authoritarianism and a massive corruption scandal in which billions of dollars vanished from Venezuela’s PetroCaribe program, which was promised for Haitian infrastructure. Protesters believe this money went straight into the pockets of the rich, including into a company run by Moïse at the time.
At the same time, the government sold off massive tracts of farmland to foreign companies, compounding the food insecurity faced by around 4.5 million Haitians. Inflation soared, reaching 20 percent under President Moïse, and is now around 30 percent. For years, the International Monetary Fund has demanded austerity in return for its predatory loans, notably in 2018, when President Moïse cut fuel subsidies, which was a spark for the 2018 protests.
Moïse used his presidential powers to sack judges and political opponents who tried to restrict his powers or investigate him for corruption. He dissolved the parliament and ruled by decree after cancelling elections in October 2019. The last battle between Moïse and the masses occurred when he refused to step down at the end of his term in February 2020.
Moïse was assassinated in his home in July last year. Ariel Henry emerged as the head of state following Moïse’s death and was able to use the promise of elections and political stability in the wake of the assassination to quell the anti-Moïse protests.
He hasn’t delivered on those promises. Elections have still not been held, and economic misery has worsened. With no end in sight to the crises that arose under Martelly and Moïse, larger layers continue to enter the struggle, most notably the working class.
In September there was an uptick in strikes, as workers used their power to shut down production alongside the blockades of the protesters. Dominique St Eloi, the leader of the National Coordination of Haitian Workers, noted in a 14 September online statement: “Many factories did not work today ... in Port-au-Prince or in the Northeast ... Factory workers are in rebellion”.
The most significant action came in late September, when a two-day nationwide strike was called by a variety of organisations and trade unions alongside the United Front of Transporters and Workers of Haiti. The strike proved successful in bringing workers into the streets, shutting down transport and other sections of industry such as telecommunications. For three days after the strike, workers led marches that brought thousands into the streets across Haiti.
The discontent hasn’t been limited to these few sectors. In August, port workers refused to work in the face of armed gangs hijacking shipments of oil, and women workers in garment factories launched militant strikes in February against sweatshop wages and sexist abuse from management, building barricades to fight off the police.
With no real domestic support, Henry has increasingly turned to the United Nations, the Organization of American States and the United States to intervene. The trend of these talks has reflected a desire among regional leaders for a US-approved military intervention and occupation, led by either the UN or an international coalition should intervention be vetoed by the UN Security Council.
Such a move would aim only to crush the protests and protect the interests of capitalists. In his bid to convince the US to intervene, Henry has waged a propaganda campaign to relabel the mass movement as a violent gang struggle. While armed gangs are a powerful force in both organised crime and political struggle in Haiti, the protest movement is larger than all of the gangs and has consistently demanded that they be crushed.
The last military intervention was the disastrous fifteen-year UN occupation from 2004 to 2019, which still has a legacy in the current United Nations Integration Office in Haiti (BINUH). That occupation was spearheaded by regional powers, including Lula’s Workers’ Party government in Brazil, and used by the US, Canada and France to oust popular Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The occupation brought misery to Haiti. It exacerbated political instability through propping up unpopular leaders and only entrenched the power of armed gangs through an influx of arms. And the UN forces were alleged to have committed atrocities such as rape.
It will take a significant struggle not only to topple Henry but to get real social change in Haiti. Rank-and-file workers building solidarity between all workplaces, taking the lead in the mobilisations and developing a program to unite the rural towns, the students and the urban poor would challenge the power of the ruling class.
Only through such an escalation can the desired uprooting take place.

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