The Dominion - UN

Abousfian Abdelrazik's Statement to the UN 1267 Committee

shainaagbayani — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 20:02:13 +0000

Abousfian Abdelrazik delivers a message to the UN 1267 list committee about the hardships he endures daily.

A Dark Anniversary

Tim McSorley — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:30:05 +0000

Abousfian Abdelrazik marks one year back in Canada, languishes under UN watch list

MONTREAL—“There are certain anniversaries that should never take place. The lack of action by the Harper government is unacceptable. Why is Abousfian still waiting for his name to be cleared?” asks Mary Foster, an organizer with the Abousfian Abdelrazik support committee "Project Fly Home."

On June 4, 2009, Federal Court Judge Rossel Zinn issued a stern ruling that Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon had been acting in bad faith and that the Canadian government would need to bring Abdelrazik back to Canada from Sudan. One year later, Abdelrazik continues to wait for his name to be removed from the United Nations Security Council Committee 1267 "Consolidated List," colloquially known as the Al-Qaeda and Taliban Terrorist List, or, for short, the "1267 List." Being on the list impedes Abdelrazik from functioning in the most basic of ways.

Abdelrazik recently sat down at a busy coffee shop in downtown Montreal to speak with The Dominion about what he has dubbed "living in a prison without walls."

A victorious grassroots movement brought Abdelrazik home last fall after six years of forced exile and imprisonment in Sudan. Abdelrazik tried to establish the cornerstones of a regular life—reconnect with family; find an apartment; see what work was available; and get through administrative tasks such as opening a bank account.

“It was very confusing and shameful how I was treated. Less than a week after depositing a small amount in my new account, I was contacted by Caisse Desjardins and told my account had been frozen and that they were unsure as to why but that there was nothing they could do. So no pension and no money and what I am supposed to do?” Abdelrazik asks quietly.

His legal team quickly learned that the reason behind the freeze was that he is still on the 1267 List. Beyond the complete asset freeze, Abdelrazik is also subjected to a total flight ban, and it is illegal for any employer to hire him or for him to receive social assistance, making it difficult to cover his and his children’s basic expenses. Listed individuals face vague allegations; they have no right to a hearing before they are placed on the list; and they are provided with no evidence to support the claims against them. In response, Project Fly Home launched a “Break the Silence” campaign to have him de-listed and to create a surge of popular support.

“Once again it is Lawrence Cannon and his department who have the ability to take me off the list. They refuse to tell me why I am on it, and why they have not worked to take me off of it,” Abdelrazik explains.

Break the Silence has been gaining momentum, with major unions and labour federations such as the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the Canadian section of the International Machinists and most recently the Canadian Association of University Teachers publicly endorsing the initiative and agreeing to hire Abdelrazik for short term contracts. Despite large labour organizations engaging in acts of civil disobedience, Cannon continues to reject responsibility for de-listing Abdelrazik and claims it is up to Abdelrazik himself to get off the list. So far there have been no legal repercussions for unions and organizations actively working to oppose the sanctions against Abdelrazik.

While individuals can apply to be de-listed, says Foster, the process is highly politicized and nearly impossible to get through without state support. But the Canadian government could lift the sanctions itself. “Cabinet could immediately pass an Order in Council to modify or repeal the regulations which implement the 1267 regime in Canada,” Foster explains.

The Dominion received no response from Cannon or Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT) by the time of print, but on May 18, Canwest Global quoted Cannon as saying: “All I can say is that in the past I tried to make sure that Mr. Abdelrazik had the support he needed to be removed from the UN list. That attempt, unfortunately, failed.”

A precedent backs Abdelrazik’s assertion that the responsibility for de-listing falls upon Cannon and the Department of Foreign Affairs. On June 3, 2002, on a recommendation from the then-Liberal Minister of Foreign Affairs, the regulations implementing the 1267 regime in Canada were modified to exempt Liban Hussein, an Ottawa citizen who was arrested November 7, 2001, at the request of the United States. The US accused him of supporting terrorism. The exemption effectively ended the sanctions against the only Canadian on the list at the time, and his name was subsequently removed from the Security Council’s 1267 List.

In the first week of June, Abdelrazik’s legal team filed to the Federal Court of Canada a challenge against the United Nations 1267 List. Comparable challenges have been filed in Switzerland and Belgium; both countries saw their federal courts strike down the 1267 regime as unconstitutional and undemocratic. “It is quite risky for countries to put people on the 1267 List because it will undoubtedly be challenged in the high courts because it is so starkly against basic due process,” says Foster.

In his judgment that forced the Canadian government to bring Abdelrazik back to Canada, Federal Court Judge Zinn wrote, "I add my name to those who view the 1267 Committee regime as a denial of basic legal remedies and as untenable under the principles of international human rights. There is nothing in the listing or de-listing procedure that recognizes the principles of natural justice or that provides for basic procedural fairness...It can hardly be said that the 1267 Committee process meets the requirement of independence and impartiality when, as appears may be the case involving Mr. Abdelrazik, the nation requesting the listing is one of the members of the body that decides whether to list or, equally as important, to de-list a person. The accuser is also the judge."

University of Ottawa Law Professor Amir Attaran has been closely following the case of Abdelrazik and cautions against putting the responsibility solely on the Canadian government. “While Canada’s almost certainly illegal error has been to follow an unjust UN system, the deeper problem lies with the UN, which created and administers the 1267 sanctions system, and which oddly believes it is consistent with human rights law. It is time to call into question the belief, too frequent and trusting on the political left, that the UN are good guys. They are not: Abdelrazik’s unjust persecution amply proves it.”

The 1267 List was established as a sanctions regime measure “to deter terrorism” by the United Nations Security Council in 1999 after the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. In 2001, after the 9/11 attacks in the United States, the list was broadened to target Al Qaeda as well as the Taliban. The resolution has been widely understood to be serving a political agenda to target countries the United States deems problematic. However, it seems to have evolved to become a tool numerous states are using to stifle political dissent and internal sovereignty movements, including Russia against Chechnyans and India against members of the Khalistan movement.

When asked what he would like to see happen next, Abdelrazik smiles softly and with quiet determination states, “The government could revoke the regulations entirely. This step would send a clear signal to the United Nations Security Council that Canada will no longer participate in this unjust regime and will let me continue on with my life. Until then we will continue with the campaign.”

Amy Miller is a media maker and community organizer who resides in Montreal.

Fly home

Canada vs. Gaza, Peter Kent leads the charge

dawn — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 03:06:00 +0000

Canada's junior minister of foreign affairs has made a point of pointing fingers lately. For that matter, so has Canada, which was the only country on the United Nations' Human Rights Council that voted against a motion condemning Israel for its recent attacks on the Gaza Strip.

The vote before the Geneva-based body shows the Stephen Harper government has abandoned a more even-handed approach to the Middle East in favour of unalloyed support of Israel, reads an article in today's Toronto Star.

Peter Kent, a former anchor with CBC Newsworld and foreign correspondent for NBC, seems to be settling right into his role as Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon's sidekick in an increasingly reactionary Ottawa. His outspoken condemnation of Hamas has rippled through the news as Israel continues its attacks on the Gaza Strip.

"The government of Canada has been very clear since the beginning of this crisis that it believes that the Hamas rocketing was responsible for the initial development of this crisis and for the continuing deepening humanitarian tragedy," Kent told the CBC little more than a week after Israel began Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

Who is the Terrorist? A Critical Conversation on Hezbollah.

Stefan Christoff — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 21:09:43 +0000

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17th, 6:30pm

Leacock Building, Room 232
McGill University, 688 Sherbrooke St.
Montreal, Canada

A public event hosted by Tadamon! Montreal & the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) at McGill University within the context of the campaign to challenging Hezbollah’s listing as a ‘Terrorist’ Group in Canada…

Presentations from:

Bilal Elamine: Currently living in Beirut, originally from Southern Lebanon, the former editor of Left Turn Magazine, Elamine will outline the current and historical role of Hezbollah in Lebanon from a progressive perspective. Critical recent events in Middle East history will be addressed within the presentation, as Elamine will speak about the 2006 Israeli attack on Lebanon, the 2007 general strike and opposition protests within the context of Hezbollah’s role in Lebanese society.

Brian Aboud: Presenting on Tadamon!’s campaign to challenge the listing of Hezbollah as a ‘terrorist’ organization in Canada. Today, Canada is one of only three countries world-wide to designate Hezbollah as a ‘terrorist’ organization. The other two are Israel and the United States.

Film Screening:

A Summer Not to Forget: A film by Lebanese film maker, Carol Mansour. Using powerful and disturbing images, the film tells a story of yet another war on Lebanon: 1,200 killed, 4,000 injured, one million displaced, 78 bridges destroyed, 15,000 homes damaged, 15,000 tonnes of oil spilled on 80km of the Mediterranean coastline, 57 collective massacres and much more. Director Mansour takes you into the harsh realities of a nation devastated by war and a people caught under siege.

Massacre memorial for Sabra and Shatila

Stefan Christoff — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:19:35 +0000

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from the Montreal Mirror.

by Christopher Hazou

Twenty-five years ago this week, the Israeli army surrounded the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut and sent in their Christian Phalangist allies. Over the next two days, between 800 and 2,000 Palestinian civilians were butchered in a scene of carnage that shocked much of the world.

This Saturday, Sept. 22, at 1 p.m., the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine commemorates this sombre anniversary by protesting outside of the Indigo bookstore downtown (corner Ste-Catherine and McGill College), where they will call on Chapters/Indigo majority shareholder Heather Reisman and her husband Gerry Schwartz to end their support of so-called “lone sol-diers”—young Jews who emigrate to Israel alone to join the military.

“This is about direct support to the Israeli army,” says Ehab Lotayef, a member of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, another participating group. “The history of the Israeli army and what it represents is not consistent with the educational message that their bookstores should be advocating.”

It will be the 25th such protest against Chapters/Indigo in Montreal since they began in December, with similar demonstrations taking place in Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria and Winnipeg. For more info, visit www.cjpp.org

25th Commemoration of Sabra / Chatila Massacre.

Stefan Christoff — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:30:08 +0000

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Picket and Remembrance in Downtown Montreal...

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22nd, 1pm
Indigo Bookstore
Corner of St. Catherine & McGill College
(metro McGill)
Montreal, Canada

Between September 16th and 18th, 1982, Israeli military forces in Lebanon, under the direct command Ariel Sharon, former ‘Defense Minister’ of Israel, provided military logistics for the massacre of thousands of Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila by the right-wing Phalangists militia of Lebanon...

Full Information at Tadamon!

End the Media Silence on Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine's Kidnapping

Stuart Neatby — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 14:43:00 +0000

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It has been over a month since the kidnapping of Haitian human rights activist Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine. Roger Annis, a member of the Canada Haiti Action Network and one of the last people to have seen Antoine in Port-au-Prince, recently wrote this statement on the international media's silence related to his kidnapping.

[Photo by Darren Ell]

UN-Reliable

hillarybain — Fri, 18 May 2007 19:13:30 +0000

The UN is misleading the public regarding its role in Haiti

On February 15, 2007, the United Nations News Service published an article stating that UN forces in Haiti – MINUSTAH – had transformed a former gang leader’s headquarters in Cité Soleil into a free medical clinic following its raid on the man’s residence. I had just arrived in Haiti to work on a project about the impact of the 2004 Canada-backed coup d’état. I knew MINUSTAH had brought in a few doctors for a photo op after their military operations in the seaside shantytown, but I didn’t realize that fully functioning clinics were being set up. Two days later, I attended a demonstration on the site where the medical clinic was supposed to exist, but it was nowhere to be found. In the two weeks that followed, the UN News Service reiterated the existence of this medical clinic with each new mass arrest in Cité Soleil. By March 2, it stated that more gang headquarters had been converted into “medical and social centres.” I visited and photographed the headquarters of gang leaders Evans, Amaral and Ti Bazil, three of the sites of supposed UN social services, but there was nothing to be found.

It is hard not to notice that the UN’s humanitarian gestures were being performed at the same time as mass arrests were being conducted among a vulnerable population. When I notified the head of media relations at MINUSTAH about the distortions being published by the UN News Service, she agreed they were misleading. She acknowledged that MINUSTAH had only ever handed out water bottles and offered free checkups the day after 72-hour mass arrest operations. Nonetheless, the exaggerations have not abated to this day. Here is a sample from the UN News Service’s most recent article about Haiti (March 23, 2007):

"From helping to set up local municipal administrations to providing electricity, education and health services to restoring a library to laying out a football field, no task is too small or parochial for the UN peacekeepers as they try to make a difference for the people on the ground in one of the poorest countries on earth."

Disturbed by these reports, I decided to look into the arrest operations occurring during my stay in the country. On March 2, MINUSTAH spokesperson David Wimhurst proclaimed to the UN News Service, “We’ve got a good catch.” He was referring to the results of three operations in which UN troops claimed to have arrested one gang leader and sent three more into hiding, one of whom was subsequently arrested. In addition to the gang leaders, 70 “suspected gang members” were also arrested. In other UN News Service articles, these people are referred to as “presumed bandits,” “suspected gangsters,” or “suspected criminals.” Sometimes the term “suspected” is dropped altogether. In the days following these arrests, my Haitian colleague Wadner Pierre and I interviewed four people in Cité Soleil who claimed five of their relatives or neighbours had been arbitrarily arrested, without warrants, on their way to work or school. While we did not corroborate these claims, two of Haiti’s most prominent human rights lawyers, Mario Joseph and Brian Concannon, confirmed that MINUSTAH routinely arrests people without warrants and that it receives information from informants who in desperate economic environments are notoriously unreliable. I wondered how many more of the 70 presumed gang members might be innocent civilians now languishing in the deplorable conditions of Haiti’s prisons.

I decided to take a closer look at what the UN News Service is telling the world about Haitian reality. Most startling is a phrase that has been repeated in every article related to the origins of MINUSTAH: “The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) [was] set up in 2004 to help re-establish peace in the impoverished Caribbean country after an insurgency forced then President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to go into exile.” This is a problematic statement.

An insurgency suggests a popular rebellion against a corrupt leader. Mr. Aristide, democratically elected in a landslide victory in 2000, was overthrown in a coup d’état fomented and supported by the United States, Canada and France. The coup followed the deliberate destabilization of the Aristide government by these same countries. The ‘insurgency’ consisted of US-trained and armed former Haitian Army personnel. They swept through the country, killing police officers and civilians, and opening jails. Their leader, Guy Philippe, subsequently ran for President under MINUSTAH’s watch. The US ambassador then threatened Mr. Aristide with the spectre of increased violence in the country if he didn’t step down. US forces then took Mr. Aristide out of the country as Canadian troops secured the airport. It is important to note that these troops were not used to stop the attempted overthrow of the overwhelmingly popular, democratically elected president. Mr. Aristide has not been permitted to return to Haiti since, despite the presence of MINUSTAH. In other words, he was not “forced into exile” but was overthrown by a criminal coup d’état.

MINUSTAH In Haiti

MINUSTAH Intimidates Journalist on World Press Freedom Day

dru — Thu, 10 May 2007 00:12:09 +0000

On his way to cover a UN Stabilization Mission (MINUSTAH) police operation in Cité Soleil's Little Haiti neighbourhood, freelance reporter Jean Ristil, who was riding his motorcycle, was stopped by a group of Brazilian soldiers who surrounded him and pointed their guns at him.

"Three of them grabbed me and twisted my arm" Ristil said through a translator. They held him by his neck and took him inside a nearby school, which has been transformed by MINUSTAH into a military base inside Cité Soleil.

When they took him inside the school, they saw that he was wearing press identification around his neck.
"It was Thursday, May 3, the World Day of Press Freedom," Ristil said.

Inside, he saw somebody in handcuffs. MINUSTAH troops asked him if the man was a bandit. "I told them I didn't know him," Ristil said. Then they started kicking the man.

They made Ristil face the wall and spread his arms apart to search him. "One of the soldiers was going to hit me in the back, but another stopped him saying, 'No he's a journalist.'"

After about 30 minutes they brought in another man who had been beaten. "I saw them hit him with a gun," Ristil said. The man was wearing a badge that showed he worked as security at the Chapi Clinic. The man asked the soldiers to loosen his handcuffs because they were hurting him and they replied that if he asked again they would beat him.

Meanwhile, people outside were calling for his release. Ristil was able to leave, but by that time the soldiers had damaged parts of his motorcycle while attempting to search it.

Ristil did not report the arrest directly to authorities, but went on the radio to inform listeners of what had happened.

Twice in recent weeks while riding his motorcycle Ristil was approached from behind by a UN tank which then put on its brakes just behind him, in an effort, he thinks, to intimidate him.

"Right now I'm very afraid." If no one were around, he says he could have been seriously hurt.

Ristil is a freelance reporter for the Black Commentator, Radio Lakou in New York, Associated Press, and HaitiAnalysis.com, among other news outlets.

Ristil, along with an American journalist, was arrested and briefly put in jail by SWAT members of the Haitian police force in September 2005 after they allegedly witnessed the police officers planting weapons at the church of Father Gerald Jean-Juste.

Ristil was also arrested in November 2005, this time near the Central Headquarters of the Judicial Police (DCPJ). He recalls being beaten after he refused to hand over photographs that he had taken showing the results of violent raids carried out by the Haitian police and UN forces in Cité Soleil.

Freelance journalist Jean Ristil recounted the incident to Bay Area journalist Judith Scherr by telephone through a translator on May 6, 2007.

Freelance journalist Jean Ristil recounted the incident to Bay Area journalist Judith Scherr by telephone through a translator on May 6.

MINUSTAH Troops in Haiti

The UN Spins its Mission on Haiti

darren ell — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:32:45 +0000

I've just published a new article about the UN's propaganda machine in Haiti and the way it has been misrepresenting its humanitarian work in the country. The article deals with the mass arrests in February in Cite Soleil and the photo ops and lies that followed each phase of these arrests. These lies continue to this day via the UN News Service and were unexamined by Canadian journalist Jean-Michel Leprince (Radio-Canada) when he was embedded with MINUSTAH in February during these missions. To read the article, go to Montreal Serai Magazine.

Haiti: the Damage Done

hillarybain — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:49:28 +0000

Part II of an Interview with Brian Concannon.

Read Part I of this interview.

Brian Concannon is the director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), He founded IJDH after the 2004 Canada-US-France coup d’état that ousted Haiti’s democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Concannon formerly co-directed the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) , the most prominent legal group prosecuting human rights cases in Haiti, and worked for MICIVIH, a UN human rights mission in Haiti. Darren Ell interviewed him in the offices of the BAI in Port-au-Prince on February 28, 2007, the third anniversary of the 2004 overthrow of democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

For a timeline documenting Canada’s involvement in Haiti since 2000, read this.

Darren Ell: Let’s talk about the Préval Government. From a legal standpoint, have things in Haiti changed since the Latortue regime was voted out?

Brian Concannon: They certainly have, but there are still problems. Political prisoners are getting out, but many are still in jail. Judges aren’t being fired for making decisions unpopular with the government, but the judges put in by Latortue are still in place. Only a couple of the prosecutors have been changed even though many of them were an active part of the repression. Cases for the victims aren’t proceeding very well. There is no order, like under Latortue, not to take the cases, but there hasn’t been any support for them to move along.

What about the tens of thousands of rape cases?

It’s very disappointing. We worked on these issues during the transition to democracy in 1994. Support from other nations and the UN was inadequate but very present. It’s very distressing that nobody except the victims is talking about that now; neither the Haitian government nor the international community. We’ve got the cases ready but the time isn’t right.

Bear in mind the other influences on Préval when we criticize him. There are great limitations on his power. The biggest limitation is the people patrolling the country and going into Cité Soleil – MINUSTAH [UN mission in Haiti] – which is dominated by the United States. We saw in recently declassified documents how the US Embassy is pressuring MINUSTAH to take a harder stand on people in Cité Soleil, which means shooting. We’ve seen the results with the big massacres.

Economically, Préval is dependent on wealthy Haitians and the international business community. He hasn’t purged the police force which has a lot of former soldiers put there by Latortue.

And now an attempt by Senator Youri Latortue to make a parallel police force with these men, which Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine described as a new attempt to prepare another coup d’état: take these men out of Haitian control and give them US training.

Exactly. It would be yet another destabilizing pressure. Préval also doesn’t run the judiciary since it’s packed with Latortue’s men. But there’s something else North American activists need to understand. Recall that the presidential elections were successful in so far as Préval won with a largely uncontested mandate. He won even though he had to cancel many of his campaign appearances for fear of being killed. The senators and deputies had no such luck. Progressive candidates were either not allowed to run, were intimidated or purely afraid. Conservative candidates on the other hand were able to get money, organize and intimidate people. So the legislature is drawn from a small relatively conservative pool of people. Add to that the fact that the biggest party in the country – Lavalas – didn’t participate in the elections and you have a legislature much more conservative than Préval’s mandate. While it’s important for Haitians to pressure him to fulfill his mandate, his power is limited. As for North American activists, we need to bear in mind that our countries saddled him with these limitations. We should join in the effort to minimize the limitations on his power, to prevent our countries from preventing him from doing what he was elected to do.

Let’s talk about Operation Nazca, the recent MINUSTAH operation in the Belekou quarter of Cité Soleil. According to MINUSTAH, 17 people were arrested in connection with gang crimes. We talked to people on the ground who said their family members and neighbours were innocent, that MINUSTAH was arresting people arbitrarily. We didn’t corroborate our information, but it seemed to us that MINUSTAH is just arresting people as they please.

MINUSTAH is making arrests without any judicial control. In every country in the world, police can’t simply arrest people. You need a warrant or you need to catch the person in the criminal act. MINUSTAH doesn’t have this. They don’t have warrants. The cases aren’t being processed by the justice system. Prisoners’ rights aren’t being respected. It’s like Guantanamo Bay, where people have been arrested without a process and without the chance to go before an independent arbiter to see if there’s any justification for the arrest. It’s like Guantanamo in another way. MINUSTAH is not doing detective work. They’re using informants from Cité Soleil. Informants are notoriously unreliable because they want money and in this case, the UN is paying people from a desperate community for information. Sometimes the informants want to settle a score with someone over money, turf, a woman, drugs, and so they denounce the person to MINUSTAH to eliminate their competition. We saw this in Afghanistan, where people were collecting bounties to turn in “terrorists,” people like you met in Cité Soleil that had never done anything wrong, who were on their way to school or work, who never had anything against the UN until then. So Haiti is now the type of law-free zone Guantanamo is. It’s a violation of the Haitian constitution, a violation of international human rights and a horrible example by the UN. Why should people in Cité Soleil obey the law if the UN won’t?

The Canadian Ambassador Claude Boucher congratulated MINUSTAH on the December 22 attack in Cité Soleil that left two dozen civilians dead; the second such large-scale killing by MINUSTAH. Two more children were killed as they slept in early February. What is in place legally when MINUSTAH kills?

Trying them will be difficult. MINUSTAH signed immunity agreements with the Latortue regime which are still in effect. We have tried various methods, but we think we may have a real chance with the International Criminal Court (ICC). At the hearings of the International Tribunal on Haiti – in Boston, Washington, Miami and Montreal – we developed evidence against top military, paramilitary and police leaders, as well as MINUSTAH. If the ICC is serious about international law, they will give these cases a good look. So far, the ICC has focused on people who have gone against wealthy countries. This is a challenge to the ICC to see if justice is blind, if they are willing to go after the UN, after people such as the Canadian Ambassador who encourages these crimes. We need to look at the fact that the US Embassy, as they have admitted, is pressuring the UN to carry out illegal acts. When more of the key documents come to light, we will have a compelling case to make against these people.

It was strange to spend three mornings in Cité Soleil, a sprawling desperately poor slum, and notice the complete absence of police officers. We only ever saw M-16 wielding foreign troops who, as far as we could tell, spoke no Creole.

You can’t police using foreign troops. One of the reasons the Haitian police stay out of Cité Soleil is that they want nothing to do with it. They know that if they join in while MINUSTAH is shooting that they’ll have no credibility among the people of Cité Soleil. If you’ve got a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. That’s MINUSTAH. Everyone looks like a criminal and MINUSTAH has heavy weapons. It’s not working. It’s creating great animosity among the people of Cité Soleil. It’s not reducing crime. It’s creating terrible precedents that will take a long time to repair.

Talk about some of the important legal successes in recent months in the US.

There were two big ones. The first was Emmanuel Constant, the leader of FRAPH, the main death squad from 1991-1994. We convicted him in the Raboteau case in 2000, but he sought shelter in the US. He’d been ordered deported in 1995, but because he was a CIA asset – both him and US officials admitted it – he was allowed to live at large in the US. A group called The Center for Justice and Accountability in California went after him with our help and managed to get a civil judgment against him in August 2006, saying he was liable to some of the women raped by FRAPH. It’s a settlement of $19 million. He had actually been arrested for mortgage fraud: you can rape, pillage and kill thousands of people in Haiti, but don’t mess with the banks.

Like Al Capone.

Except that they arrested Capone on tax evasion because they wanted to get him for murder. In Constant’s case, they didn’t care about the killing. He pleaded guilty a few weeks ago. He has a year sentence on that. It’s expected he’ll be deported as soon as this summer and that the government will put him in jail also for his conviction in the Raboteau case.

The other big success was another man we convicted in the Raboteau case: Carl Dorélien. He was the “G1”, the person in high command in charge of personnel (discipline, transfers and morale of the troops). He was important because during the 1991 dictatorship, he was transferring people because they were thugs, transferring them to hotspots like Gonaives, Cité Soleil and the Cap Haitian. He was also supposed to be investigating illegal acts by the army, which he never did. He was convicted in abstentia for the Raboteau massacre in 2000, then deported back to Haiti and jailed in 2003, then released from jail after the coup of 2004. With the recent conviction, he owes $4.3 million to victims.

In a perfect world, what would countries such as the US and Canada do for Haiti, aside from giving aid?

They would let democracy develop as Haitians want it to, not as outsiders want it to. In every Haitian ministry, there are Canadian and American advisors who say they’re there to help, but they’re really there to represent their governments. And too much aid is politicized. It’s a tool to advance one’s own policies, not the human and political development of the country. This is stifling Haiti’s growth. It happened with US assistance with police training, where the training was used to recruit intelligence agents. Several of the employees who complained about this publicly were fired.

Canada and the US should support people coming to Haiti from other countries: CARICOM countries, for example, or African nations ahead of Haiti in infrastructure development. These people have more to offer because they are only jumping over these hurdles now. Canadians and Americans jumped over them a long time ago and have forgotten. What these countries don’t have is the money to send these people, so that’s where we could help.

Finally, vowing not to support another coup d’état, or offering a guarantee they’ll stand by Haiti in its hour of need; these would be nice, but I don’t see them happening.

Darren Ell is an independent journalist and photographer from Montreal who was recently in Haiti to explore the ongoing impact of the 2004 coup d’état. While in Haiti, he published an interview with Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine and a photo essay on UN military operations in Haiti. He has been blogging with the Dominion and Citizenshift, with whom he will be producing a full online dossier about Haiti in the summer of 2007.

Haitian Boy, 2006

The latest on Haiti from Canadian Television

darren ell — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 04:24:41 +0000

To see the latest version of facts by Canadian mainstream TV on recent operations in Cite Soleil, go to the link below. It's in French, but my summary and criticism below is in English.

http://www.radio-canada.ca/actualite/v2/tj22h/#

It's a report called "Au coeur du mal" (Into the heart of Evil) by a big dude with Radio-Canada: Jean-Michel Le Prince. Let's ignore the title of the report. His report just reached probably over a million Quebecois and a couple hundred thousand Francophones outside of Quebec. In the report, he's embedded with the MINUSTAH troops and follows the recent mass arrests and gang hunt in Cite Soleil. I was there for the end of the operation. Check out the report and blog in your comments. Here's mine:

Advice for Haiti Activists in Canada and US

darren ell — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 13:34:09 +0000

Mario Joseph, the leading human rights lawyer in Haiti, granted me a long interview yesterday in Port-au-Prince. We discussed many things (published soon), but when I asked him about what activists should be doing in Canada and the US, he said: "Keep your eyes wide open, watch your governments closely, be sophisticated in your research." He expressed deep gratitude as well to all those who have been working for democracy in Haiti.

Brutalized and Abandoned: Residents of Cité Soleil Speak Out

darren ell — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 01:21:41 +0000

The two part photo essay about recent arrests and spin by MINUSTAH is now online at Haitianalysis.com As the title of this blog entry suggests, the title of the photo essay is "Brutalized and Abandoned." The photo essay addresses mass arrests, lies about social services in Cité Soleil and the demands of the victims of MINUSTAH.

A Need for Independent Journalists in Haiti

darren ell — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 15:56:15 +0000

I couldn't help but notice the lack of journalists in Cité Soleil yesterday as we interviewed yet another person who spoke of a neighbor being illegally arrested by MINUSTAH forces. MINUSTAH now claims they have "a nice catch," meaning over 60 "armed marauders" in the last month. Seeing as we connected with five cases who said the victims of the arrests had nothing to do with crime at all (and this was definitely not an exhaustive investigation) the question can at least be raised as to the legality of MINUSTAH operations in Haiti (yet once again). I haven't seen that question asked of MINUSTAH, but maybe I didn't catch it.