Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C.

Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is scheduled to return to his homeland this week after seven years in exile in South Africa. He was overthrown – for the second time – in a 2004 coup organized by the United States and its allies. Washington has gone to great lengths to prevent his return over the last seven years, and this week the State Department once again warned that Aristide should not return until "after the [March 20] electoral process is concluded."

The State Department is pretending that Aristide can simply come home after the election, and that he must have some sinister political motive for returning before the vote. But this is completely dishonest. It is obvious that the next elected president will likely defer to the U.S. and keep Aristide out. Furthermore, there is electoral pressure right now to allow Aristide back in the country. The Miami Herald reports that both of the contenders in the Sunday election have now said they welcome Aristide's return, after previously opposing it. This about-face is obviously an attempt to court Fanmi Lavalas (Aristide's party) voters. But we Americans know what happens to candidates' political stances after the election is over.

Clearly Aristide is taking advantage of his first, and possibly only, opportunity to return home. Meanwhile, the Miami Herald reports that phone calls from President Obama and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon failed to convince South African President Jacob Zuma to keep Aristide from leaving South Africa.

How disgraceful that President Obama, a former law professor himself, would conspire to violate international law by attempting to deprive President Aristide of his human rights. And that the Secretary General of the United Nations would bend to Obama's will and collaborate with him. As noted in a letter to the State Department by prominent lawyers and law professors, this is a violation of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a treaty that the United States has ratified. It states that "[n]o one shall be arbi?trar?ily deprived of the right to enter his own country."

Washington and its allies would do better to take advantage of this opportunity to change course in Haiti, and accept the concept of self-determination for the Haitian people. They have denied this for decades, and especially since Aristide first was elected president in 1990. Within seven months, he was overthrown by the military and others who were later found to be paid by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

The United States has denied self-government to Haiti ever since. After Aristide was democratically elected for the second time in 2000, with more than 90 percent of the vote, the United States "sought . . . to block bilateral and multilateral aid to Haiti, having an objection to the policies and views of the administration of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. . . Choking off assistance for development and for the provision of basic services also choked off oxygen to the government, which was the intention all along: to dislodge the Aristide administration." That was Paul Farmer of Harvard's Medical School, Bill Clinton's Deputy Special Envoy from the UN to Haiti, testifying to the U.S. Congress last summer.