p Dear Comrades,

p On behalf of the Central Committee of the United Party of Haitian Communists, our delegation extends heartfelt greetings to all the fraternal Communist Parties represented at this Meeting. We also take this opportunity to express our good wishes, above all, for the complete success of our work.

p As you know, during the last Consultative Meeting in May, the delegations of 70 Parties issued a joint appeal to progressive world opinion to intervene in behalf of the Haitian Communists and other patriots languishing in Duvalier’s prisons, whose lives are in danger. We have seen how the world reacted to this appeal thanks to the solidarity displayed by the Communist Parties towards their comrades-in-arms in Haiti. A far-flung solidarity campaign was launched in the Soviet Union, workers denouncing the terroristic pro- imperialist Duvalier dictatorship and demanding the immediate release of the imprisoned Haitian patriots. Responding to the appeal, Communists and progressive leaders in many Latin American, European and African countries expressed in various forms their indignation over Duvalier’s barbarian regime.

p Mr. Serge Nessi, a representative of the International R.ed Cross, came to Haiti to visit political prisoners in the jails, but was refused admission by the authorities, who said the "elusive Duvalier" was the only person who could issue permission for visiting political prisoners. This simple fact is a clue to the brutality with which political prisoners are treated by the thugs now in power, and how desperately the latter try to conceal the sinister facts from the world public.

p Comrades, the practical steps taken in response to the appeal of the last Preparatory Committee session reaffirm the vitality of the world communist movement and the immense influence it exercises on the various sectors of public opinion.

p Allow us to take this opportunity and thank the CPSU and all the other fraternal Parties that displayed their solidarity with the struggle of the Haitian working people and their Party, standing in the van of this struggle, by their stand in behalf of the political prisoners in our country. Their actions have helped invaluably to intensify the revolutionary movement in Haiti.

p For several months, terror has reigned in Haiti. A new wave of repressions swept the country to crush the revolutionary actions of the masses launched under the leadership of the United Party of Haitian Communists. Irrespective of their social standing, numerous families are being hauled into prison at the least suspicion of collaboration with Communists. The Party’s clandestine meeting places have been ravaged by squads of the regular army and Duvalier’s tontons macoutes, while relatives of Communists known to the police have been put behind bars as hostages. Under the pretext of combating communism, the tontons macoutes massacre people wholesale and pillage houses in the villages. They hope to crush by fire and sword the popular resistance to the unlawful Duvalier government’s policy of poverty and intimidation.

p Backed by now overt now covert support of the imperialists and their agents, Duvalier’s dictatorial government has clung to power for 12 years, riding roughshod over civic freedoms. Throughout these 12 years the country has lived in a state of emergency, under martial law. In 1961, as a result of a coup d’etat, Duvalier retained the presidency for a term of six years, and then usurped power for life. Since then elections have been wiped off the political slate. All mass organisations have been outlawed. Hundreds of political prisoners died due to absence of medical treatment and from inhuman torture during interrogations. Others died from hunger. In the 12 years of Duvalier’s rule, 26,000 people have been executed without trial in the prisons of Fort Dimanche. Thousands of Communists and patriots of different political beliefs, including priests, languish in Duvalier’s jails, among them Comrade Joseph Roney, the General Secretary of our Party.

p Despite the inhuman regime, the people of Haiti have not given up the struggle against arbitrary rule and exploitation. Haitian workers employ different forms of struggle against poverty, the result of cruel capitalist exploitation and government taxation. The peasants have fought pitched battles against mass expropriations by imperialist monopolies and the chieftains of the Duvalier clique, standing up stoutly to the unceasing terror of Duvalier’s cutthroats.

p In this environment of violence, continuous abuse and exploitation, the United Party of Haitian Communists was the only force to rise, unfold and organise popular resistance. Our Party proved to be the only force in the country carying deliverance to the people from imperialist and dictatorial oppression. That robbed US imperialism of its sleep and compelled it to show its true colours again as an irreconcilable enemy of all the aspirations of the people. The US imperialists condone Duvalier’s undisguised mass slayings and are poised to violate Haiti’s sovereignty to prevent the inhuman dictatorship from being overthrown.

p The United Party of Haitian Communists has called on the masses to resist Duvalier’s violence and terror with arms. For some weeks now, workers, peasants and all patriots in the north of the country have been fighting armed actions to overthrow the rotten regime of exploitation, poverty, crime and plunder that has tormented Haiti for the past 12 years.

p In some towns, including Port-au-Prince, groups of armed patriots have inflicted considerable losses on the government’s repressive agencies. The scale of that bitter struggle, and the response it evokes, testify to the people’s firm 79 determination to overthrow the blood-stained dictatorship and establish a genuinely democratic system. The struggle abounds in tragic episodes. Our gallant comrades die from the bullets of Duvalier’s killers. At the beginning of this week, a battalion of the president’s guard attacked the new clandestine Party premises. Comrade Gerard Wadestrandt, a member of our Central Committee, Comrade Jacques Jeannot and Comrade Daniel Sansaricq, the last of a family of 18 members massacred by Duvalier’s gestapo in 1965, were killed in the bitter engagement.

p Today, with popular resistance at high tide, Negro soldiers of the US Army have been brought into the country to help the armed forces in Duvalier’s service. The American "green berets" were shipped in as tourists, joining the local punitive force on Pentagon’s orders in actions against the guerrilla movement in the north. This lifts the veil on US intervention, aimed at assisting the dictatorship, obnoxious to all progressive mankind and, above all, the people of Haiti.

p The United Party of Haitian Communists and the people of Haiti are convinced that they will break down the resistance of Duvalier’s anti-popular, reactionary government and the US aggressors. They are equally sure of the international solidarity of Communists and the world’s proletariat, the sole guarantee of revolutionary victory for all peoples fighting imperialism.

p Comrades, the United Party of Haitian Communists is happy to be able to say that it has participated actively in preparing so momentous an event as this International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties. The Meeting is important for many reasons.

p Since the last Meeting in 1960, many of the new problems in the world revolutionary movement required a new analysis, new conclusions of concern to our entire movement. The differences that appeared in our ranks required insistently that we reaffirm the fundamental principles on which the unity of the world communist movement is based. Also, they required that all of us should rally to the struggle against any dispersal of our forces in face of the imperialists.

p Besides, imperialism has changed its tactics. Surreptitiously, it attempts to export counter-revolution to the socialist countries, has redoubled its aggressive actions against the forces of progress and national liberation, as evidenced by the local wars, and actively supports dictatorial regimes. The number of military coups in newly independent countries has increased, and imperialism endeavours to pit one people against another, creating seats of international tension in a number of .regions of the globe.

p After the suppression of the movement in defence of the constitution in the Dominican Republic and after US Congress adopted an openly interventionist decision, the peoples of Latin America are continuously under the threat of intervention by Yankee militarism. Militant communist solidarity is now the most revolutionary task that none of our contingents should evade if they do not want to play into the hands of the enemy.

p In our view, no pretext for evasion can be valid if the stake centres on strengthening our movement, securing its unity in the fight for peace, in defence of the socialist gains in the world, or on effective co-operation essential for new victories in the fight against social and national imperialist oppression 80 of the peoples. This Meeting testifies to our fervent wish to overcome our differences, which are secondary in face of the compulsive need for new unity in the struggle of the world proletariat.

p It is an indicative fact that in preparing the Meeting we focussed our attention on the main issue: the tasks of the struggle against imperialism at the present stage and unity of action by Communist and Workers’ Parties, by all antiimperialist forces. This led us to produce an historic Document, in the detailed drafting of which all our Parties participated. It reflects the needs of the present period and will serve the world proletariat as an effective weapon.

p We note with satisfaction that this Document, drawn up in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism, is more than a programme for joint action. It provides an objective elucidation of the present international situation, the relation offerees in the international arena and the existing possibilities of the revolutionary movement at the present stage, accentuating the fundamental principles guiding the Communist Parties in their mutual relations, principles that constitute the basis for the unity and insuperable power of our movement.

p Our Party holds that the Document is a big step towards cementing our ranks and advancing proletarian internationalism, making the Communist Parties the core of the world revolutionary movement. That is why we stand for adoption of this Document by the International Meeting. Our Party also stands for adopting the document on the centennial of the great Lenin’s birth submitted to the Meeting, and supports the Appeal in Defence of Peace and the appeal "Independence, Freedom and Peace for Vietnam!”.

p Dear comrades, the vast majority of Communist and Workers’ Parties are taking part in the Meeting. The Communists and all the people of Haiti who have come to grips with the dictatorship and imperialism, note with deep satisfaction the successful unity of our movement in the great struggle for socialism under the banner of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. Like all Communists the world over, the Haitian Communists show a deep interest in the results of this Meeting and are prepared to contribute to the common cause without hesitation.

In conclusion, we express our deep gratitude to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its Central Committee for providing good facilities for this Meeting.