The Dominion - Darren Ell

Straight from the Heart

Moira Peters — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:06:32 +0000

Messages from Occupy Wall Street

NEW YORK CITY—While in New York on October 8 and 9 to photograph the ongoing Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest, I was struck by the clarity and simplicity of the messages being delivered by those attending. While protesters had many ways of expressing themselves, I was affected most by the direct, simple, and visceral messages coming from young and old, employed and unemployed, activists and non-activists. The posters—handmade and written in pen or felt marker on the simplest of surfaces—told the story of an angry, heartbroken and disillusioned population. It made me think of the signs I saw Haitians holding in Port-au-Prince following the 2004 coup d’etat: simple messages scrawled on cardboard demanding human rights and an end to injustice.

While the United States is certainly not Haiti, the disgust that people are feeling with the current economic system and those who run it for their own benefit is palpable. Among the protesters were those who understood the complex workings of the corporate capitalist system that is ruining the lives of millions of people. Also among them were people with a less sophisticated understanding of the issues, but nonetheless a very clear lived experience of the damage being done.

Although Liberty Square measures only one square block in the massive city of New York, I wondered like many of those present if this growing protest would have the long-term effect of satisfying some of the demands of those holding the signs.

On the eve of OWS coming to Canada, I am hopeful.

Darren Ell is a freelance photographer in Montreal and a member of the Canada Haiti Action Network. His work can be viewed at www.darrenell.com.

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Silent Coup in Haiti, Part II

Tim McSorley — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 05:46:57 +0000

Experts, organizers assess the country's democratic crisis

Read Part I of this interview.

Darren Ell: What has been the reaction in Canadian and American political circles to the banning of Fanmi Lavalas from the 2010 elections?

Roger Annis: I'm not aware of a single Canadian political party or representative aware of the undemocratic character of the upcoming election in Haiti or voicing concern about it. Interestingly, the federal government is by all accounts following developments closely. Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon was in Haiti for three days in early May to get a first-hand look at Canada's support for prisons and police training and equipping. He announced new spending in those areas and he was an early voice speaking in support of a sham election.

Haiti Liberte has called the sham election "the first order of business of the Haiti Interim Reconstruction Commission." In other words, while we were treated to words and speeches by the foreign powers following the earthquake in favor of meaningful aid and reconstruction, what we have received is an inadequate or failed relief effort combined with a near-stealth plan to impose a fraudulent election that will, again in the words of Haiti Liberte, "lead the country towards a deepening dependence on the imperialist countries, feet and hands tied as in the olden days of slavery."

Brian Concannon: There has been very little interest in American political circles. Representative Maxine Waters, who regularly stands up for justice in Haiti, has been trying to raise interest in the US House of Representatives, with little result so far. Senator Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a report in June that strongly criticized the political party exclusions, and suggested that the US reconsider its support for the flawed process. That report had little impact.

The US Administration, like much of the official International Community, believes that President Preval’s team has done a good job managing Haiti, including advances in financial accountability and transparency, and would like to see that team continue to run Haiti. This is a short-term expedient that will come back to haunt the US, Canada and other countries because the elections will not produce a government with the political or moral legitimacy to effectively implement a reconstruction plan. The government will have to make very difficult decisions (such as about rural versus urban spending, initiatives supporting the middle class versus the poor, etcetera) and request its citizenry—already tired and angry—to make more sacrifices. This will be very difficult for a government lacking popular support.

To some extent, the Haitian government and MINUSTAH (the UN forces) will be able to keep basic peace by force of arms, but that will not allow effective governance. I also fear that citizens who feel they cannot choose their government through the ballot will engage in more disruptive tactics, which will lead to social unrest and possibly a violent response by the police and MINUSTAH, which will in turn touch off a cycle of violence.

Akinyele Umoja: A minority has called for the inclusion of Lavalas because they know if they don’t, the elections could be easily exposed as unfair. Others hope for some minor Lavalas representative to be included and co-opted into a different platform. The dominant view remains unchanged. The blocking of Lavalas has the blessing of the US and surely the blessing of Bill Clinton.

How about Canadian and American media? We hear a lot about Wyclef Jean but nothing about Fanmi Lavalas.

Roger Annis: Canada's media has failed to inform Canadians about the flawed election in the making, including the formal exclusion of Haiti's only mass representative party, Fanmi Lavalas. This is not simply oversight or ignorance. I have conducted extensive correspondence with programs and senior news editors at CBC Radio about this matter, for several months now. They are either disbelieving or disinterested. The same can be said for the editors of Canada's print media.

This is not a proper response from a serious media outlet, but sadly, Haiti does not seem to merit the same standard of journalism that might apply to similar situations in other countries. Imagine, for a moment, that the government in Venezuela was conducting that country's electoral affairs in a way similar to Rene Preval's discredited regime in Haiti. Canada's editors and news writers would be screaming, and writing, at the top of their lungs. And we wouldn't hear the end of it from the federal government.

All this places major responsibilities before the Haiti solidarity movement and to anyone else in Canada concerned about Haiti's fate. Will we let this sham electoral process pass unchallenged? I am confident that we won't, that we will find the means to assist the people of Haiti who are waging the battle for democracy, social justice and electoral accountability. That's what got the Canada Haiti Action Network started in the first place, in 2004, and it's where we must keep moving.

Nora Rasman: Due to his international notoriety, Wyclef Jean brought the elections issue to the forefront for a short time when he declared his candidacy, was rejected and repealed. It is positive that any attention around elections has been generated, but very little media coverage has addressed the fundamental problems with the upcoming elections. If the immediate concerns of those affected by the quake are not addressed, the reconstruction and long-term rebuilding process will exclude the Haitian majority and increase the possibility of political instability.

Brian Concannon: The mainstream American media has a bias towards covering personalities over policies in all elections, including our own. Reporters and editors claim that it’s what Americans like to read. The Wyclef Jean coverage carries that bias to an extreme. It has devoted extensive space to a clearly ineligible candidate with no political experience running with a party that has never won any elected office. At the same time, it ignores the disqualification of the party that has won every free election held in Haiti for 20 years, always by a landslide.

The US equivalent to what’s happening in Haiti would be President Obama forming a new party before our 2012 elections, and announcing that the Democrats and Republicans were disqualified, then California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger—who was born in Austria and thus constitutionally barred from the Presidency—announcing his candidacy, then the press foaming at the mouth about how his entry into the race has energized action hero movie fans, while ignoring the disqualification of the parties that win every election.

Kim Ives: Wyclef Jean made it clear that he would head a pro-US administration and work with the UN and USAID. Meanwhile, Washington and its media are trying to “turn the page” on the Lavalas movement. The first stage is always to ignore and minimize it. If FL continues to stymie Washington’s agenda in Haiti, the mainstream media will set about demonizing the FL and its leaders, just as it did six years ago.

Is it fair to say that the international community does not want to see democracy in Haiti? And if so, why, especially considering Haiti’s great need and the sums of money promised for reconstruction by the international community?

Brian Concannon: The international community wants to see a “democracy” in Haiti that betrays the desires of Haitian voters in favor of the dictates of the international community and Haitian elites. This is obviously problematic from a moral and ethical perspective, but it is equally problematic from the perspective of a North American taxpayer. President John F. Kennedy famously remarked that “those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” The International Community seems intent on proving this maxim over and over. As long as Haitian voters are not allowed to choose their leaders, there will be violence in Haiti (mostly coming from anti-democratic forces, but some from democratic forces as well), which will imperil any money provided for Haiti’s reconstruction, and provoke continued expensive military intervention in Haiti.

Akinyele Umoja: I resent the term “international community” because it doesn’t refer to the people in these countries. It refers to very specific interests in the US, France and Canada. In the US, the Monroe Doctrine states clearly that the US will control the Caribbean and the Americas to suit its needs. The US doesn’t like any country that seeks a political or economic course independent of its own. Ordinary people would support democracy in Haiti, but they get so much disinformation that they don’t know what’s really going on.

Kim Ives: The US, France and Canada cannot tolerate any sovereign and nationalist state in Latin America, least of all Haiti. Their subversion and coups d’etat of the past show that clearly. In particular, the US won’t stand for it because of Haiti’s geopolitical position across the strategic Windward Passage from socialist Cuba and its sharing of the island with the Dominican Republic (DR), an important US ally and business partner. Any radical progressive social change in Haiti would have a huge impact on the DR, where many Haitian migrants and Haitian ancestry Dominicans live, many travelling back and forth between the two countries.

Haiti is also, after Cuba, the most populous nation in the Caribbean, and in many ways, Latin America's most African country. Racism has played a major role in Haiti's subjugation, denigration, and constant political crises—stoked by North America and Europe since Haiti's ground-breaking 1804 revolution.

The great sums of money promised to Haiti after the quake are primarily earmarked to go to US contractors like Halliburton, DynCorp, and Kellogg Brown & Root [now KBR]. The “reconstruction” is a golden opportunity to channel billions to the Pentagon’s principal contractors and rebuild Haiti as Washington sees fit (ie; more like Puerto Rico, a US colony whose national economic independence has been almost completely repressed, subjugated or consumed by US multinationals, which have polluted the environment, doctored the legal and political system and corrupted the Indigenous culture). This is why the US has essentially taken over the Haitian government through the Interim Commission to Reconstruct Haiti (CIRH).

How important is this election to Haitians, especially given the struggle for survival since the earthquake?

Nora Rasman: The exclusion of FL has added skepticism to people’s views on the usefulness of these elections. For many of the camp leaders and those living in camps, elections are not a priority because there are so many other outstanding immediate issues on the table, including securing basic goods and services on a daily basis. People affected by the earthquake—particularly those who have been internally displaced—are challenged to obtain consistent access to food, water, health, sanitation and washing services, education or job opportunities.

Akinyele Umoja: In the camps, the main issue is survival: safety, health and food. But people are tying it to politics. They see themselves as Lavalas, so they feel that if their party was allowed to participate, they would be interested in the elections, but with the current group of candidates, they just see it as a sham that will not help them at all.

What can concerned citizens in Canada and the US do about this issue?

Brian Concannon: Concerned citizens outside of Haiti need to protect our ideals, our tax dollars and Haitian voters against our own governments’ polices, by 1) staying informed about Haiti, and 2) staying involved. The IJDH has a program called "Half-Hour for Haiti," which helps people do both. Anyone can sign up on our website.

Nora Rasman: Concerned citizens abroad can argue for free, fair and transparent elections to move forward. Holding your government, as well as national and international non-governmental organizations, accountable for their activities is of the utmost importance. To this end, we suggest that people become engaged by contacting their elected officials to tell them the crisis on the ground has not ended while emphasizing the need for Haitian civil society organizations to be part of the long-term planning for reconstruction, including the electoral process. Or building concrete relationships with solidarity organizations in Haiti, the US and Canada, organizations that support a fair and representative electoral processes.

Akinyele Umoja: We need to challenge our own governments. In the US, we need to ask ourselves the question of how Aristide can be returned to the country because we took him away. We need to understand our own government’s involvement in the impoverishment of Haiti. If people hadn’t stood up around the world against apartheid in South Africa, it wouldn’t have fallen, and we need to do the same work around the issue of Haiti.

Kim Ives: People should provide material and financial support to the resistance being carried out by coalitions like PLONBAVIL, groups like the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and Bureau des avocats internationaux (BAI), and media like Haiti Liberte.

Originally from Saskatchewan, Darren Ell is a teacher, photographer and freelance journalist residing in Montreal. Between 2006 and 2008, he documented the legacy of the 2004 coup d’etat in online publications with the Citizenshift, The Dominion and Haiti Action. His photographic installation on this subject, Haiti Holdup, was exhibited at Concordia University in Montreal.

Fanmi Lavalas Haiti

Silent Coup in Haiti, Part I

Martin Lukacs — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 07:09:34 +0000

Experts, organizers assess the country's democratic crisis

MONTREAL—Once again, the people of Haiti are being denied the government of their choosing. While mainstream media has focused public attention on ineligible candidates such as hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean, the most popular political party in Haiti, Fanmi Lavalas, has been banned from the November 28, 2010, Presidential and Parliamentary elections.

Fanmi Lavalas (Lavalas, or FL) grew out of the Lavalas movement that brought down the US-backed Duvalier dictatorship and ushered Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power in 1991. In 2000, during the last democratic election the party was permitted to participate in, it won 90 per cent of Haitians' votes, the equivalent of Canada’s Conservative, Liberal, NDP and Green parties combined; or the equivalent of the US's combined electoral support for Republicans and Democrats.

Lavalas' progressive democratic program and Aristide’s goal of lifting Haiti from “misery to poverty with dignity” has always been an unsavoury proposal for Haiti’s narrow elite and their supporters abroad. Two bloody coups d’etat have unseated Aristide: the first in 1991, backed by the US, and the second in 2004, supported also by Canada and France. In each case, thousands of FL activists and supporters were murdered and imprisoned, and Aristide was sent to exile in February 2004. Since the 2004 coup, FL has been banned from participating in Haitian politics.

Support for the party remains strong, though it currently faces significant challenges beyond its exclusion from the elections. The government of Rene Preval, on the other hand, is widely unpopular, especially in the aftermath of the catastrophic January, 2010 earthquake. An estimated 1.7 million survivors now live in unsafe, unsanitary makeshift camps for the internally displaced, facing food insecurity and forced evictions. It is in this climate that the November 2010 elections will be held.

To discuss the crisis of democracy, The Dominion spoke with some key political figures on the ground in Haiti and abroad. Brian Concannon is a founder and director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), a US-based grassroots organization that does human rights advocacy and pursues legal cases in Haitian, US and international courts. Kim Ives is a member of the editorial board of Haiti Liberte, a progressive Haitian newspaper. Roger Annis is one of Canada’s foremost Haiti solidarity activists and a member of Canada Haiti Action Network. Akinyele Umoja is an Associate Professor of African-American Studies at Georgia State University and founding member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. He recently returned from meetings with popular organizations in Haiti. Nora Rasman is the Interim Director of Latin America and Caribbean Policy at TransAfrica Forum. She specializes in UN interventions in Haiti and has extensive post-earthquake experience on the ground in Haiti.

Darren Ell: Is there any way of knowing if Fanmi Lavalas is as popular today as it was prior to the earthquake?

Brian Concannon: The best way of measuring its popular support would be through a fair election, but the Haitian government is not allowing that to happen. Other indicators of its popularity, which have correlated to electoral landslides in the past, point to continuing support for Lavalas. These measures include my own surveys of people I meet in Haiti, attendance at demonstrations, statements from grassroots leaders and perhaps most indicative, the efforts that Lavalas opponents at home and abroad are making to prevent the Haitian people from freely choosing their leaders.

Kim Ives: Anybody doing a cursory sidewalk poll can establish FL’s support in a few hours. In March 2010, I asked dozens of people: “In the quake’s aftermath, would you like to see the return of President Aristide?” The responses came back 90 per cent in favor, 10 per cent against. Another key indicator of that support was the success of the April and June 2009 nationwide boycotts of the partial Senate elections, where less than five per cent of the population participated because FL was excluded.

What is the reason for Fanmi Lavalas’ popularity?

Brian Concannon: When I have asked this question, Haitian voters—many of them critical of some FL policies or leaders—usually say, “Because Lavalas (or President Aristide) has not betrayed the Haitian people.” Voters believe that FL at least tries to implement progressive policies designed to promote social equality in Haiti and improve the lives of the majority of Haitians who are poor, and resists pressure from Haitian elites and the international community to increase social inequality.

Akinyele Umoja: Lavalas has won every election they’ve run in, but the US, French and Canadian Governments all have interests in Haiti and don’t want to see the Lavalas agenda put forward. FL invests in people, emphasizing infrastructure investment in schools, roads and hospitals. That is not the priority of foreign interest or the Haitian elite. It’s quite shocking that despite the repression people have endured for voting for Lavalas in the past they still remain loyal to the party.

Kim Ives: Besides their investment in the poor majority, FL really is the people. There are dozens of different bases (“baz”), often with rivalries and political differences. The national leadership is weak and not really respected, but the idea and symbol of popular power still remains with FL and Aristide.

What is the current state of Fanmi Lavalas? How organized is it and how did the earthquake affect it? Are there splits in the party?

Akinyele Umoja: As someone who has worked in the civil rights movement in the US where repression was long and intense, I know that repression has a negative effect on any such movement. Party representatives I met in Haiti suggested that this has occurred in Haiti and that the movement is not consolidated. Yet it seems to have widespread support. On the celebration of Aristide’s birthday on July 15, 12,000 people marched. If they can do that, they can mobilize people politically now.

Kim Ives: FL is rent by splits, has weak national leadership, and has a very ambiguous official program, all of which is complained about by its entire membership base. It is organized around small groups called Ti Fanmi which often have disputes with each other. Aristide designates its leaders but they are unpopular with or unknown to the base. While the base might remain strongly attached to Aristide, it often resents and rejects his appointees. This is currently the situation with, for example, Dr. Maryse Narcisse.

Despite this leadership void at the top, the mid-level Lavalas leaders are very strong and dynamic. Many of them are leaders in coalitions like PLONBAVIL and Tet Kole Oganizasyon Popile. They generally are more radical than the official party line, calling for things like an end to the foreign military occupation of Haiti (a call Narcisse has never made), the overhaul of the Provisional Electoral Council (Conseil Electoral Provisoire, or CEP) that approves candidates, Preval’s resignation and the formation of a provisional government to hold elections. Much of this Lavalas base has also been involved in the defence of women subject to rape in the IDP camps, and the defence of the IDP camp residents from eviction by landowners.

How does Fanmi Lavalas’ platform differ from that of other candidates?

Kim Ives: Generally, candidates in Haiti have very conventional and harmless platforms, calling futilely for things like jobs, education, health, roads and so on. FL’s last “program” was released 11 years ago and was called “Investir dans l’Humain” (Invest in People), but FL has always been defined, despite attempts to dilute its message and ranks, by the program put forward by the Lavalas movement leaders, headed by Aristide in 1990, who called for Haiti’s “second independence,” meaning a break with the US, France and Canada, taxation of Haiti’s rich to benefit the poor, and the political marginalization of anti-democratic forces like the Duvalierists and neo-Duvalierists. But officially in 2010, FL is not proposing anything radically different from any of the other candidates.

Why have so many observers stated that the CEP,the organization that approves the official list of candidates, is not credible?

Brian Concannon: The CEP was chosen in 2009 through an unconstitutional process that gave the president undue influence over the choice of councillors. Over the past year, the Council has confirmed the fears of observers across the political spectrum that it would advance the interests of the president’s party over the interests of the constitution and Haiti’s voters. The Council’s most egregious act has been the unjustified disqualification of 14 political parties from across the spectrum, including FL, from the legislative elections. A detailed analysis of the problematic nature of the CEP is available on the IJDH website.

Why has the CEP banned Fanmi Lavalas from the electoral process?

Brian Concannon: The CEP provided verbal justifications for FL’s banning from the upcoming 2010 legislative elections, none of which was formally stated in a legal document, and none of which is legally justified. The Council initially claimed that a mandate sent by President Aristide to allow another party leader to register FL candidates was not authentic, then that it was not appropriately notarized. When both those claims were disproven, the Council changed course and said that FL’s failure to file some documents before the April 2009 Senatorial elections (from which FL was also illegally excluded) prevented its participation in the elections.

FL was banned from the upcoming 2010 Presidential elections by a CEP decree that parties could not register unless the head of the party registered in person. Haitian law provides no basis for such a claim. In Haiti as in Canada or the US, people are freely allowed to delegate authority through authenticated written instruments. This action by the CEP was clearly aimed at FL, because it is the only party whose leader is in involuntary exile.

If Fanmi Lavalas cannot run candidates, what choices are left to Haitians?

Kim Ives: Many Haitians will seek to boycott the November elections if they go forward (and that is a big “if”) or to disrupt them in other ways. Some may support the candidacies of the “stealth” Lavalas candidates—those who are posturing to be seen as Aristide's heir: Jean Henry Ceant, Yvon Neptune, Leslie Voltaire, Yves Christallin or Dr. Gerard Blot.

The IJDH has detailed the challenges the earthquake created for elections: the loss of innumerable identification cards, identifying the deceased in the electoral lists, the destruction of polling stations and the displacement of the population. They have also stated that “if elections are not held, Haiti’s extraordinary difficulties will be compounded by the lack of a credible, democratic power in Haiti.” What could be the consequences for Haiti if credible elections are not held? How is this going to play out on the ground in Haiti given the post-earthquake reality?

Kim Ives: If credible elections are not held, which is likely, a large percentage of the population will boycott the polling. Alternatively, the population could, in an unofficial manner, vote in large numbers for one of the “stealth” Lavalas candidates, or possibly even for former Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis if he continues to make Aristide’s return one of his principle planks.

Under the first scenario, the “winner” of the election will be seen as illegitimate by the population, leaving a very fragile political situation. The slightest incident (historically, usually the shooting of children) could set off riots and calls for the president’s resignation. This is, of course, why the UN occupation troops remain deployed in Haiti: to repress precisely this type of popular uprising.

In the second scenario, if one of the “stealth” Lavalas candidates manages to get a popular following and “take” the vote in some way, then that candidate would come into office with a great deal of popular expectations riding on him. He will then either betray that popular trust put in him by toeing the line like Preval did, or try to challenge the restrictions placed on him by the UN forces, the Interim Commission to Reconstruct Haiti and the international financial institutions. If he does this, he will quickly be demonized and eliminated in one way or another. Betrayal however is the most likely outcome.

In either case, the constellation of progressive groups orbiting the offices of the Bureau des avocats internationaux (BAI) and Haiti Liberte will continue to gain strength and credibility, as their predictions of either bogus elections or a betraying leader are borne out. This embryonic resistance front, in turn, will eventually crystallize into a more organized and disciplined organization or a broad social movement under the leadership of a symbolic leader, similar to what is happening in Latin America.

How this later aftermath would play out depends on whether Aristide returns or not. If Aristide did return, it would only be if one of the “stealth” Lavalas candidates, or Alexis, wins. On his return, although he would devote himself to his university and foundation, Aristide would become a huge power broker. However, Washington will do everything in its considerable power to prevent Aristide’s return.

Originally from Saskatchewan, Darren Ell is a teacher, photographer and freelance journalist residing in Montreal. Between 2006 and 2008, he documented the legacy of the 2004 coup d’etat in online publication with the Citizenshift, The Dominion and Haiti Action. His photographic installation on this subject,Haiti Holdup, was exhibited at Concordia University in Montreal.

Fanmi Lavalas Haiti

Writing Off Sovereignty

dru — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:24:58 +0000

Quebec media on Haiti since the earthquake

In the five weeks following the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, Quebec’s mainstream French-language media focused a considerable amount of attention on the devastated nation. What follows is a critical look at the opinions expressed by columnists during this time. Their ideas on three themes are examined: (1) The Reconstruction Process; (2) Haiti’s poverty; and (3) Attitudes towards former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his party, Fanmi Lavalas.

Looking ahead: the reconstruction process

When opinion writers look to the future, Haiti is depicted as a clean slate, a country bereft of capable people. Hope for the future and leadership in the reconstruction process are to be found not within the Haitian majority population but in the diaspora, the Haitian business elite and the international community. Journalists’ ideas and the ideas of the people they quote or interview are distinctly colonial and there is virtually no diversity of opinion. Haitian sovereignty and the building of a strong Haitian state are seen as unimportant, and the extraordinary ability of the Haitian population to mobilize and create progressive political programs is overlooked. A new Haiti is to be imposed, it would appear, by the few on the many.

Vincent Marissal is a columnist for La Presse in Montreal and a prominent figure on the Quebec media landscape. One month after the earthquake, he called for the international community to "impose the required decisions.” Responding to an urgent plea by the World Bank to strengthen the Government of Haiti, Marissal said: “How do we say cut the crap in Creole?...The word is strongly displeasing to Haitians, and this is understandable, but the solution starts with trusteeship, or protectorate if this word is less troubling to sensitive types.” More concretely, Marissal suggests ignoring democratic procedures and imposing an elite government: “...[W]e must install, for the next five years, an emergency government composed of several respected Haitian personalities, including members of the diaspora and representatives of the international community, whose mandate would be to restore order and security, save and give security to the victims, establish and supervise the reconstruction plan and follow the money carefully.”

Marissal suggests that “respected industrialist” Charles Henry Baker could be one of the “respected personalities” on the new political scene. Marissal’s colleague at La Presse, Philippe Mercure, later ran a puff piece on Baker entitled “The big-hearted entrepreneur.” Mercure did not mention that “big-hearted” Baker is a key member of the reviled Haitian business elite whose millions dodge government coffers; that in 2009 he opposed paying his sweatshop employees more than US$2 per day; that his pro-coup d’état organization, the Group of 184, promoted armed UN attacks on heavily populated slums following the 2004 coup d’etat; and that he was supported by 8.2 per cent of the Haitian population in the 2006 Presidential election.

Writing in Actualite, Quebec’s largest selling news magazine, editor-in-chief Carole Beaulieu continues themes she developed in 2004 when she suggested annexing Haiti and turning it into Canada’s 11th province. In 2010, she writes: “The Haitian government is an empty shell...Let’s speak frankly. When the cadavers are piling up, when people are being amputated by saws with no anesthesia, when hundreds of thousands of people are hungry, Haitian pride, which is outraged at attacks on sovereignty, is inappropriate...Reconstruction needs a leader in which Haitians can have confidence and who can rally foreign powers, someone who knows that decentralizing the economy and building roads to allow peasants to sell their products in cities is more important than rebuilding the national palace...Why not [Canadian Governor-General] Michaelle Jean? She is on good terms with Barak Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy and knows the language and culture of the country. What’s more, her mandate as Governor-General ends soon.”

Little matter that since the earthquake thousands of people regularly take to the streets in Port-au-Prince carrying signs showing the face of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, not Michaelle Jean. For Beaulieu, the wishes of Haitians seem to matter little, but she assures us that her ideas are not colonial in nature: “No foreign country wants to take over Haiti! Who would want a miserable country with no resources other than the sun and the smiles on the faces of her inhabitants?”

Disrespect for Haitian sovereignty continues. Also writing in Actualite, journalist Michel Arseneault introduces his article on the reconstruction of Haiti by quoting his interview subject, Haitian geographer Jean-Marie Theodat: “The international community must now do everything to help a population with no other options, even if it means taking a chip out of Haitian sovereignty. A state unable to coordinate foreign aid must let others take on the responsibility.”

Actualite’s Jonathan Trudel interviews Haitian-born Quebec sociologist Franklin Midy about solutions for the future. Midy proposes 16 solutions for Haiti. Number 11 is called, “Supporting the State.” We learn that in Haiti’s current government, “competent people remain; they’re not all dead, and it is important to give them work and responsibility. To avoid the collapse of the state, the international community must ensure that the salaries of nurses, teachers, police officers and bureaucrats are paid.” Other than this, the Haitian state is absent from Midy’s reconstruction effort. The only initiative in which the state appears to be involved (in conjunction with the UN) is in encouraging people to move to the countryside from Port-au-Prince.

Actualite’s interview choices mirror those of 2004 when “specialists” were telling Haitians to make room for an international trusteeship. In 2010, Jean-Frederic Legare-Tremblay interviews former Quebec Liberal politician Gerard Latulippe, current director of the National Democratic Institute in Haiti. After resurrecting old lies by criminalizing Aristide and his followers (the majority of Haitians), Latulippe states: “...I see no other way than by imposing a trusteeship run by the international community... This means that during the reconstruction of the political institutions, decisions will be made by a group of people appointed by the Security Council of the United Nations who would run the country.” Latulippe and Actualite seem to have forgotten the murderous legacy of the 2004 trusteeship.

In Quebec City’s Journal de Quebec, columnist Jean-Jacques Samson reminds us of the incompetence of Haitians living in Haiti: “Since they can’t do it alone, Haitians will have to count on international aid for many years. The brilliant Haitian minds that emigrated to developed countries will have to return to their country of origin to show leadership. They must be the first to believe in a future for Haiti so that the citizens of donor countries believe.”

Francois Brousseau, writing for Le Devoir, states: “...A profound awakening is necessary—by foreign countries and Haitian elites—as to the inadequacy of everything that has been attempted until now.” For aid to work, he states that a sort of “cultural revolution” is needed in Haiti. Brousseau neglects to mention that ordinary Haitians already had their cultural revolution long ago, without any help from foreigners or elites, and created a progressive democratic movement. Not only that, but what they achieved was hardly inadequate. On the contrary, the program of the Lavalas movement, had it been supported and not crushed by violence, could have solved many of the problems created by colonialism.

Looking back: reasons for Haiti’s poverty

Journalists used the earthquake as an opportunity to discuss the history of Haiti’s misery. French and American colonial practices are explained with varying degrees of detail, but Canada’s role in the 2004 coup d’etat is unexplained. In fact, five weeks of copious journalistic output in Quebec produced one sentence mentioning (not explaining) that Canada was involved in a coup d’etat in 2004, validating the thesis of Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model—whereby mainstream media toes the line of existing power structures and points the finger elsewhere.

One week after the earthquake, Quebec journalist Chantal Hebert recommends in her blog with La Presse that Michael Ignatieff and Denis Coderre patch up their differences so Coderre could handle the Haiti dossier. During the last trusteeship in Haiti, Coderre was special advisor to Haiti and skilfully ensured that blame for Canada’s role in the coup be deflected. Hebert’s suggestion, if realized, would guarantee more of the same.

Shockingly, several high-profile journalists look to Haitian cultural “defects” to explain Haiti’s economic woes. There is no corresponding inquiry into US, French or Canadian cultural flaws that would induce these nations to sack Haiti. Richard Hetu, for example, a New York correspondent for La Presse explored the reasons for Haiti’s poverty in his blog. He relates uncritically the ideas of New York columnist David Brooks who notes that even though over 10,000 NGOs in Haiti “are doing the Lord’s work...even a blizzard of these efforts does not seem to add up to comprehensive change.” For Brooks, the “thorny issue of culture" is the root of Haiti’s poverty. Quoting Lawrence E. Harrison’s book, The Central Liberal Truth, Brooks points out that “Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences,” such as “the voodoo religion” and “high levels of social mistrust...difficulty internalizing responsibility, and faulty child-rearing practices”.

Patrick Lagace is a prominent columnist with La Presse in Montréal. In no uncertain terms, he attributes Haitian misery to passivity: “...Sorry, but Haitians collectively are horribly, depressingly and dangerously passive...I believe I’ve described the urgency with enough compassion to have the right, just once, to say that by their passivity, Haitians actively contribute to their misery.” Twisting historical fact in new ways, Lagace claims Haitians were too passive to oust their own elected president (Aristide), whom he describes as a dictator: “No one is ever brutal with Haiti for fear of being called insensitive or racist. Haitians don’t need it anyway. They’re already brutal amongst themselves, tolerating dictators and putchistes. And when an elected president screws them, it’s the US marines who kick him out, not Haitians.”

Francois Brousseau, like Lagace, also muses as to the cultural roots of Haiti’s poverty. “Perhaps there is something in the local culture...something that blocks things such as economic development, an enterprising spirit, construction and projects.” He wonders also if voodoo and superstitions do not "stuff Haitian minds with a dreadful fatalism.”

Attitudes toward Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas

Quebec mainstream media attitudes toward former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide—despite voluminous and widely published research dispelling the lies about his second presidency—have not changed since prior to the 2004 coup. He is consistently depicted as a megalomaniac, a dictator, a last-ditch hope for desperate Haitians, and a danger to Haiti. The real story of his ouster is apparently not worth sharing with the Quebec public, perhaps because it involves Quebec political figures and NGOs.

Furthermore, the tendency to focus only on Aristide and not on the grassroots movement that brought him to power (or the corrupt opposition that undermined him) has the added benefit of keeping the Quebec public unaware that there is a coherent democratic force in Haiti. We are not told, for example, that in 2009, the party Aristide created, Fanmi Lavalas, the largest political organization in Haiti, was banned from elections. Nor are we told that 90 per cent of the voters boycotted the election. Why is this dynamic democratic political force not being discussed or supported by Quebec mainstream commentators?

Evoking old disinformation, Vincent Marissal likens public demands for the return of Aristide to the pleas of desperate people clinging to a former dictator for help. “It’s not for nothing that we see banners and graffiti demanding the return of Aristide. People are looking for a glimmer of hope, even if it means looking into the darkest corners of their recent past.”

Michel Arseneault did not challenge his interview subject, Jean-Marie Theodat, after his absurd reply to Arseneault’s inquiry as to whether Aristide should return to Haiti: “If he returned, it would be like adding another layer to the destruction already caused by the earthquake.”

Brousseau portrays Aristide as a sort of madman: “...The dark episode of February 2004...when the US of George Bush, together with Canada and France as sidekicks, apprehended the elected president in his home and sent him into exile, a Jean-Bertrand Aristide with all his very real errors, prey to his visions.”

Finally, Quebec caricaturists expressed themselves when after the earthquake Aristide requested to return to Haiti from an illegal US-imposed exile. Serge Chapleau, caricaturist for La Presse, portrays a feeble Aristide waving a feeble Haitian flag. The caption reads: “When it rains, it pours.” (A similar translation would be, “Bad things come in twos.”) In Sherbrooke’s La Tribune, caricaturist Herve Philippe portrays Aristide holding a halo above his head and we read the following: “The former Haitian president in exile, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, capitalizes on the chaos in Haiti to stage a comeback by posing as the Messiah.” In Gatineau’s Le Droit, caricaturist Bado shows us Baby Doc riding a wooden horse yelling: “If Aristide can do it, so can I!”

Conclusion

If the function of media in a democratic society is to provide its citizens with the information and ideas they need to take meaningful action in their democracy, then Quebec’s opinion writers have failed dramatically. Quebec, home to one of the world’s largest Haitian diaspora populations, is being told that Haiti should once again be controlled by everything but the will of its own majority population; that Canadian crimes in Haiti are not worth mentioning; that Haitians possess cultural flaws that perpetuate their suffering; and that Haiti’s most popular political figure and the party he led—the most popular in the country—have no place in Haiti’s future. It is clear that unless Quebeckers read outside the mainstream media they will support ideas destined to perpetuate the errors of the past and prolong the suffering of the people of Haiti.

This article originally appeared in Haiti Analysis.

Sources

Arseneault, Michel. "Il faut rebâtir par le bas!" Actualité. March 1, 2010, pp 18-21.

Beaulieu, Carole. Et si on anexait Haïti?. Actualité. April 1, 2004.

Beaulieu, Carole. "Haïti: parlons franchement!" Actualité. March 1, 2010, p. 9.

Brousseau, François. « Les conditions de la renaissance. » January 18, 2010.

Brousseau, François. “Commentaire – les damnés de la terre.” Le Devoir, January 14, 2010.

Brousseau, François. « Reconstruire. » Le Devoir. January 25, 2010.

Cyberpresse.ca. “Caricatures du 10 au 16 janvier, 2010.”

Facal, Joseph. Les sept plaies d'Haïti. Le Journal de Montréal. January 18, 2010.

Hébert, Chantal. Sortir Denis Coderre des boules à mites? Actualité.com. January 18, 2010.

Hétu, Richard. "Pourquoi Haïti est-il si pauvre?" La Presse Blog. Januay 15, 2010.

Lagacé, Patrick. "Haïti, malade de ses charades." La Presse. January 30, 2010.

Légaré-Tremblay, Jean-Frédéric. «Urgent ! Vide politique à combler» Actualité. January 28, 2010.

Marissal, Vincent. "En attendant la secousse politique." La Presse. February 6, 2010.

Marissal, Vincent. "Le temps d’agir." La Presse. February 12, 2010.

Mercure, Philippe. "Charles-Henri Baker: l'entrepreneur au grand-coeur." La Presse. February 17, 2010, p. A18.

Samson, Jean-Jacques. Un nouvel Haïti. Le Journal de Québec. January 19, 2010.

Trudel, Jonathan. "16 solutions pour l'avenir." Actualité. March 1, 2010. p. 22-24.

Boy in Cite Soleil

Haiti's Catch-22

hillarybain — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:45:03 +0000

An interview with Patrick Elie

A biochemist by training, 58-year-old Patrick Elie is a political activist in Haiti, who has been fighting since the 1980s for the right of all Haitians to shape their country's political future. A member of Jean-Bertrand Aristide's cabinet in exile following the 1991 coup d'état, and Secretary of State for Defence after Aristide's return, Elie recently and reluctantly accepted President René Préval's request to preside a commission studying the question of security in Haiti. In this interview, conducted in Port-au-Prince four years after the 2004 coup d'état against the Aristide regime, Canadian photojournalist Darren Ell asks Elie about the obstacles to Haiti's quest for true sovereignty.

What is the connection between Haiti's crumbling infrastructure and recent political history in Haiti? I'm thinking in particular of Haiti's roads, which are so dangerous to navigate.

Roads in Haiti are difficult to maintain because of our limited means, but also because of the topography of the country: mountains, running water because of deforestation, and so forth. More importantly, the strength of the mobilization we had when Aristide was elected in 1990 has been broken twice. During Préval's first presidency, there was more interference. We have had no continuity. You don't build infrastructure in two days, not even over one mandate. It requires a national plan that holds over a quarter or half a century. If you get clobbered every time you move forward, then you're constantly wasting money. Nothing ever gets finished.

Every progressive government in Haiti since 1990 has found itself in the position of trying to fix a collapsing house, while assassins are trying to break down the back door. People looking at the house later blame the government, but it was busy the whole time keeping the assassins-–you guys!-–from breaking in with your machine guns. People always leave out that part-–the constant aggression, the constant sabotage. You'll hear people say, "Aristide spent 10 years in power and he achieved nothing!" It makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. After seven months in government he was overthrown by a military coup. He spent three years in exile and they count these years in assessing his performance as president at the time. He gets a second term of five years, cut short by two years, and the three years he had in power were spent managing crises and embargos and destabilization campaigns, but they want to count all of that as if he had the opportunity to change things. This is a perverse assessment of his government.

Don't forget, we're dealing with the consequences of two coup d'états, 1991 and 2004, the second one having terrible symbolic value: we were trying to celebrate our bicentennial, but instead we were humiliated and violated. It does terrible things to your spirit. It has created a lot of confusion and despair, which are not assets helpful in building a future. Some people said we were set back two years. I say we were set back 50 years. Now we do have a legitimate president, but the post-coup conditions of Haiti have made him obsessed with stability. He is paying more attention to our adversaries, both local and foreign, trying to neutralize and woo them, rather than taking his mandate from the poor of Haiti who gave it to him. Either the president accomplishes the task given to him by the poor or we're going to hit some rough water again. It's a Catch-22 when you've been made so dependent on the people who threw you down in a hole. You want to fight them, but they're holding the rope you need to get out.

Canadians benefit from world-class publicly funded education, health care, transportation and telecommunications. In Haiti, these crucial services are almost completely privatized. Can you put the issue of privatization in perspective?

We are probably the most privatized country in the world, but they want to weaken the state even more. People in Canada and the US probably think we have a strong government, a Cuban-style state, and that we need to liberalize our economy. The reality is that 84 per cent of kids go to private schools. This has tremendous and terrible consequences. It's the same for public transportation: it's totally private. Water distribution is privatized. Health care is almost totally private. If you go to the General Hospital, the main public hospital in Port au Prince, you will find it completely surrounded by private clinics and drug stores, all run by the doctors working in the hospital. What interest do they have in providing good health care in the hospital? Security is increasingly privatized. There are 6,000 police officers in Haiti, but 15,000 private security agents. Everything that should be in the hands of the state has been taken away by business interests or by the plague of NGOs. NGOs are being used to slowly remove all the flesh from the state. Unless we react to this invasion, it could be the thing that finally vanquishes us.

Look at the matter of Teleco, our once-public telephone company. Any serious government in Haiti should go back and arrest every general director of Teleco. Telecommunication represents a huge market in Haiti. Teleco used to be our only telecom. It was publicly owned, it had a huge head-start and it was the first one to start a wireless service. But it was deliberately ruined and undermined so that Digical and other private firms could come in and rob Haitians of profits that could have been reinvested by the state for their benefit. As it is, it's simply making rich people richer.

The idea that the state cannot manage things correctly is pure hogwash. Cuba is an example of a country functioning much better than Haiti and other countries I won't mention. It's nonsense that a state can't run something efficiently. You simply have to extirpate corruption. That is entirely possible to do. Rather than selling state-owned enterprises to private interests and giving control to unelected, unaccountable people--which will not solve the problem of corruption--the answer is to clean up corruption. Because the people financed the creation of these companies, they belong to the people. The people need to be mobilized into this fight by showing them what they are losing because of corruption and by showing them what they lose when these companies are simply given away. Privatization is not the way forward. We've already seen what happened because of the privatization of water resources in Latin America. We've also seen how the USSR has gone from a superpower to a Third World country by giving away what the state owned.

What are the challenges facing the agricultural sector of the Haitian economy, the peasantry?

There are many important issues facing peasants, and they're important for the whole country. The price of fertilizer is one; the availability of irrigation water is another. If the Artibonite Valley alone could be given what it needs to produce, Haiti could be exporting rice rather than importing 340,000 tons per year. This wouldn't require big changes in our policies. But we would run afoul of the US policy of subsidizing rice from South Carolina and dumping it into Haiti. This all began with Jean-Claude Duvalier, when licences to import rice were given to friends of the president. It hit full-stride under the post-Duvalier dictators, who totally liberated rice imports. Now we only produce 60,000 tons of rice, but we need 400,000 tons. It's destroying the peasants. But there's a lot of money being made on those 340,000 tons and the Americans will react if we try to turn that policy around.

It's a conspiracy. Haitian peasants used to have pigs completely adapted to our environment. The US, with the complicity of the Duvaliers, completely wiped out Haitian pigs on the pretence of swine flu, then destroyed Haitian pig production by introducing a species of US pig that eventually died because it couldn't adapt to the environment. Then the peasants were even more vulnerable. The pig was like a "piggy bank" for the Haitian peasant. He had a few mango trees, a couple of avocado trees and a pig. Selling mangos and avocados covered regular expenses, but when it came time to send a child to school or pay for a doctor, he butchered and sold a pig and the money was there. Once the pig was gone, he had nothing left to do but chop down his trees and sell the wood. It was devastating to the peasants. There are policies behind all of these problems. Unfortunately, these policies have found partisans in Haiti.

In Canada, everything from speed limits to water quality is carefully regulated by the state in order to protect the public. Talk about the question of regulation in Haiti.

There are few regulations here. Those that exist are outdated or not applied. You can do whatever you want in Haiti. Private water companies are not required to test their water. If you want, you can get a building and some tools and start a treated-water vending operation. If you have enough money, you can buy land and turn it into a dump or set up a disco in the middle of a residential area. You can do whatever pleases your fancy unless you step on the toes of somebody powerful. The state doesn't impose rules on schools. There is no regulation regarding the number of students in a class, nothing about student evaluation, teacher qualifications or the curriculum. People send their kids to schools run by a French organization and their exams are graded in France. You can open a two-room building with one teacher and call it a university. Nobody will come and look at what you're doing. You can call anything an "institute." You can put up a sign saying that you are a doctor curing AIDS and no one will ask you any questions. That is the situation. That is why we need to strengthen the Haitian state, not weaken it.

If 50 per cent of Haiti's federal budget comes from foreign aid and 85 per cent of its services are provided by foreign charities and NGOs, is Haiti really a sovereign nation?

The sovereignty that Haiti won with so much blood, courage and daring in 1804 was lost when Haiti agreed to reimburse France for property lost during the revolution. Even though we had the appearance of sovereignty, Haitian peasants were breaking their backs to make the French bourgeoisie rich. It became more blatant when the US invaded Haiti in 1915, making sure to leave behind an occupation army in its place. Things since have gone from bad to worse. Haitians are very jealous of their sovereignty, but they're not always realistic about what constitutes sovereignty. We're not sovereign by any stretch of the imagination and if we don't react intelligently with a strategy in mind, we will lose every last piece of our sovereignty. It is only getting worse every day with the NGOs being given more and more power, with the UN military occupation and with a foreign administrative occupation trying to dictate the politics in Haiti. I believe we can win the battle because the odds we face are no worse than what Haitians faced in 1791 when they went beyond freedom to sovereignty. It's a formidable, but not an impossible challenge.

To what extent do you blame foreign interference for the problems Haitians face today?

Foreign interference in Haitian affairs dates to the birth of Haiti. There has always been a strong will to make Haiti fail. I'm not saying Haitians weren't partly responsible. But if I have to point a finger at Haitians, I'll point the same finger as Frederick Douglas did in 1893 when he said that the curse of Haiti was not the ignorant masses, but the educated and wealthy minority. They're the ones who destroyed the country through greed, believing themselves to be a European tribe in this land, different from the poor peasant masses they exploited so blatantly, then by getting in cahoots with the enemies of Haiti.

Foreign powers have played a great role in putting us in that situation, but they're not alone. They have their accomplices here. Take very recent history. I don't believe the US, Canada and France would have had the pretence to intervene had the Group of 184 and others not opened the door for them, had they not pleaded for an intervention and made it palatable for the average Canadian or American to think that it was their right to intervene, that it was their "responsibility to protect." I'm confident that 95 per cent of Canadians believe that Canada came here to protect Haiti, but none of them have asked themselves why Canadians and French and Americans weren't protecting Kenya or Chad or any other dozen countries in the world that had a worse situation in 2004. Rather than help us toward a negotiated settlement-–Aristide had bent over backwards to obtain this-–why did they send their paratroopers and marines? We have to constantly raise this question. Aristide was kidnapped and dumped in the Central African Republic, a country in a state of permanent war, but I don't see any expeditionary force going there to re-establish peace, kidnap a president and so forth. Sri Lanka, which has a full-scale civil war in its midst, is sending soldiers to teach us about peace. Guatemalans are teaching us about democracy and human rights. It's so obvious to me that you've been lied to, but you've grown accustomed to those lies.

The Haitian army has always been a tool of internal repression in Haiti. You are overseeing a commission studying the question of security in Haiti. What is being said about this issue?

First of all, the army was never a real army and it was certainly never Haitian. In 1915, US marines invaded Haiti and imposed US rule on Haiti. Early on, during the occupation, after disbanding the army that was there, they created a core of locals to help them fight the Haitian patriots, the peasant resistance. That's the birth of the monster. It was created as a monster, as a group of armed locals working under direct orders from US officers to kill Haitians opposed to the pacification of the population. When the marines left, they left the monster with us, with the same mission: to repress its own people and occupy the country. After that, Haitian dictators used the army to protect their own power. It remained a tool of internal repression and as a tool for use by the foreign powers that created it. It happened all over Latin America. It's a recipe that's been applied everywhere the US or any other colonial power has left their mark.

Today, the Haitian state is unable to guarantee the security of its borders-–land, sea or air-–and it has to be able to do that. It will need some force to do that, but the idea of such a force conforming to the model that we had is intolerable. We have a chance for the first time in decades to define our own national security strategy and philosophy. I've accepted to head the commission looking at this problem, but it isn't going to be easy. Forces within this country will oppose the vision of a security force whose mandate is to protect the country and the nation rather than to crush the people's will. Of course, opportunistic foreign powers will resent this vision as well because a new army should not only protect the land, but also the political regime that the people have chosen. This is also the role of national security forces. They have to protect what the people choose. Already there are major efforts to turn the Haitian National Police into what the army was, a tool of repression and a referee of political life, something to be used to put pressure on certain politicians or to overthrow others.

What do you see as key solutions in Haiti's ongoing struggle?

You build a country from the bottom up. In Haiti, that means the peasants, the Haitian countryside. Once that is the priority, the rest will follow. With cheaper fertilizers, better irrigation and modern tools instead of hand-held hoes, production would increase. The exodus to the slums would slow down. That's the way to go. Building electric plants for 24-hour electricity should not be a priority now. Port-au-Prince is sucking the country of its people. It started with the US occupation. The Americans centralized the administration of the country. Port-au-Prince became the centre. Prior to that, there were only regions. The US closed all the ports in other regions. Everyone started going to Port-au-Prince for opportunities even though there were none. This country has been living on the backs of Haitian peasants since the era of slavery. The wealth of the country has always come from the countryside, but we've never sent anything back to the peasants. This is one way to reclaim our sovereignty, by regaining control of our stomachs. It will build national cohesion.

What message would you like to pass on to Canadian and American readers? In your view, what should they be thinking about if they want to help Haiti?

Become citizens in your own countries. You're nothing but consumers. You've lost control of your governments. Open up your eyes and ears to the lies you're being fed about other countries. Also, Canada should stop robbing, literally looting Haiti of its better minds that are so needed here, especially in the last five or 10 years. I've heard French President Nicolas Sarkozy speak about "chosen immigration,” but Canada has been doing it for years. I think the reason Canada is "involved" in Haiti is because it gets finished products without having invested in them; that is, Haitian minds: technicians, doctors and engineers. If you do the math, you'll see that Haiti has helped Canada much more than Canada has helped Haiti. It costs money to raise a kid, send him to school, then have someone grab that finished product for free and start using it. Please tell the Canadian government to stop baiting our kids. And stop destabilizing our country because it just makes it easier to entice and extract our most talented people.

Darren Ell is a photographer, independent journalist and MFA student at Concordia University. He has been working in Haiti since 2006.

UN in Haiti

Haiti: The Kidnapping of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide

dru — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 08:04:49 +0000

New book chronicles events surrounding Aristide's removal from Haiti

In a new book, author Randall Robinson has presented new evidence in the debate about the events surrounding the February 2004 removal of elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, raises critical questions about the role of the United States in the overthrow of Haiti's elected government.

A key piece of evidence presented in the book is the statement Robinson took from Aristide's helicopter pilot, Frantz Gabriel, in 2005. Other than President Aristide, his wife, and Haitian security personnel at the President's home, Gabriel was the only eyewitness to Aristide's abduction on the morning of February 29th, 2004.

Canada's ambassador to Haiti, Claude Boucher, has stated publicly that there was no coup d'état in Haiti and that the Haitian President left of his own accord.

Colin Powell, who was US Secretary of State at the time of Aristide's removal, has made similar denials. According to the CBC, Powell called "allegations of a coup d'etat and kidnapping 'baseless and absurd,' saying Aristide asked for American assistance to leave Haiti."

"He came back to us and said it was his decision, based on what the security people were also telling him about the deteriorating situation, that he should leave," Powell told the press.

What follows is the full text of Gabriel's testimony, taken in South Africa while in exile with Mr. and Mrs. Aristide. -- Darren Ell

Reproduced with the author's permission.

I got to the house at 3:30 A.M. on Sunday morning. The gate is usually opened by a member of the CAT team (Haitian Counter Ambush Team). That morning it was opened by the Steele people [private security firm protecting Aristide]. This never happened before. (I later thought that the Steele people had gotten a call to play the game, to play along.)

The gate closed behind me. I parked in my usual space in the parking lot on the right between the two walls. I left the M3 on the seat of my car. I walked through the second gate and into the command post. No one said anything to me. I then walked through the office and then into the president's living room.

The president was standing alone in the room dressed in a suit with a white shirt and a dark tie. The First Lady was somewhere else. She was not in the living room.

I then asked, "Is there a problem, Mr. President?"

The president said, "There has been a lot of pressure coming from all different directions."

I said, "What do you mean, sir?"

He said, "The way things are looking – I am under intense pressure."

The phone rang and the president went to answer it. I heard him talk. No American forces were there at that time. While he was on the phone, I said to myself that I should go out and see what was going on in the yard where Haitian security and the Steele people were.

As I walked out [the front door], pulling up to the walk to the front door was a big white Suburban with diplomatic plates. I was standing by the steps to the door. [Luis] Moreno got out of the Suburban with two American soldiers. I turned and went back into the living room to be closer to the president. The president was putting the phone down.

Moreno said, "Mr. President, I'm from the U.S. Embassy. Ten years ago, I was there when you came in. I was there to greet you. It's too bad that ten years later, I'm the one that has to announce to you that you've got to go."

I looked at the president and then at Moreno. By then the First Lady had come downstairs. The president went into the dining room to speak with her. They came out together. The First Lady was carrying a small bag. She was wearing a suit.

Outside there were twenty to thirty American soldiers on the walls that surrounded the house. They had lasers on their guns that made red dots. The red dots filled the yard. They were crisscrossing and coming from all directions.

The two soldiers with Moreno were Special Forces. I knew this because they had beards. They carried M16's and wore full battle dress with steel helmets and bulletproof vests. They were white and said nothing.

We got into the Suburban. The president sat in the second row by the window. The First lady sat in the middle and Moreno sat by the sliding door. The two solders sat up front with one of them driving. I sat in the back row.

We went through the main gate and made the right toward the airport. Outside the gate, we were joined by a convoy of ten U.S. embassy vehicles. There were all white Suburbans. We made a right into the airport in the direction of the general aviation area. There were two hangers there. The old Huey helicopter was there. There was s white Airbus there. It had a huge American flag on the tail. There was no tail number and no other markings.

Moreno opened the door and got out of the Suburban. He said to the president and the First Lady, "Okay, let's go."

That's all he said. He didn't say anything to me. He stood at the foot of the plane and sort of motioned to the president, the First Lady, and me to board the plane. The three of us went up the stairs into the plane. The two American soldiers who were in the Suburban boarded the plane and changed into civilian clothes (polo shirts and sneakers) while the door was still open.

Moreno never boarded the plane. The [American] ambassador was not there.

All this happened very quickly. Everything was timed so well. The Suburban came into the yard at about 4:00 A.M. We got to the plane at about 4:30 A.M. The Suburban went right to the bottom of the stairs. We sat in the Suburban about five minutes before Moreno opened the door and said, "Okay, let's go."

The plane looked like it would seat about 365 people. All the window shades were pulled down. Behind the first seating section was a big operations centre with telephone, a fax machine, and a computer. The machines were on one side of the plane and there were seats on the other side.

The president and the First lady were told to sit in the front section. I sat ten rows behind a bulkhead that was behind the American soldiers who were behind the operations centre. I could not see the president and the First lady from where I was sitting, but I went to talk to them several times. He was quiet. She was crying silently. I said to myself, This is incredible. This is a kidnapping. They just came and kidnapped the president in his home and took him away. I'm in the middle of a fucking kidnapping. This is the first thing that hit my mind.

There were about thirty American soldiers on the plane. They came from the house in the ten Suburbans. They all had beards. They boarded the plane with their gear and then changed into civilian clothes. One of them, who seems to be in charge, said to me, "Are you going back with us?" like he thinks I am one of his men. Maybe it was just because of my beard.

The American soldiers sat on the plane between me and the president and the First Lady. All the way in the back behind me were the Steele men with their wives and children. They were all wearing casual clothes. The pilots wore regular pilot's uniforms. We waited on the plane about thirty minutes before we took off.

There were five black people on the plane. Besides the president, the First Lady, and me, there was a Haitian woman who was with one of the Steele men. They had a baby. After we landed the first time, I asked somebody where we were but nobody would tell me. Everybody was quiet. I heard the fuel nozzle attach. Once in a while the baby would cry. After the baby was fed, everything was quiet again. They offered the president and the First lady some sandwiches, but they did not take them.

We were on the ground for five hours. The guys who spoke to me before, who seemed to be in charge, said to everyone over the PA system, "So far we don't have an official invitation yet for President Aristide. It seems like nobody wants him." The guy was on the phone the whole time behind the president who was sitting face forward. His staff was also on the phone. Some of the phones were black and some were red. They were using the fax and the laptops also.

We flew for a long time after we took off again. We landed again and waited on the ground for fuel. We didn't know where we were. When we were approaching the Central African Republic, the guy who was in charge asked me, "What are you gonna do? Are you going back with us?" I told him that I was staying with the president. Then he said, "You are going to a French military prison." This is what he said to me. I said, "I don't care. I'm going where the president goes." Then he said, "You will be greeted by a French colonel on your arrival."

No Americans got off the plane. Nobody. Only the three of us. Only the Central African Republic minister of foreign affairs came on the plane. We left the airport before the plane took off. Before that, we went into a small terminal. It was in the morning. We sat in the terminal for thirty minutes. The minister allowed journalists to ask him questions, but he was in no mood to talk. Then they drove us to President Bozize's palace. The president was out of town. They took us to two rooms in a side section of the palace. It was three days before President Bozize returned from out of town.

More information about Randall Robinson and his book can be found at www.randallrobinson.com.

Aristide

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

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

Haiti: the Damage Done

hillarybain — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 16:00:03 +0000

Part I of an Interview with Brian Concannon

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: Why did you create the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti?

Brian Concannon : We started the IJDH because -- despite painstaking progress made by the Bureaux des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), the UN and the Haitian justice system from 1995 to 2004 -- when the US, Canada and France threw out Haiti’s elected leader, they also threw out all our progress: everyone we had convicted was let out of jail; they packed the courts with new judges; appointed new prosecutors; put pressure on existing judges; and then systematically reversed everything else. Good judges and prosecutors were pushed out and replaced with people willing to do what the regime asked them to do.

It became clear to me that there was no point in painstakingly constructing a justice system if powerful nations in the international community -- like the US, France and Canada -- could just throw it all out the window, which is what they did in February 2004. I then felt that after nine years in Haiti, my place was in the US, trying to make the US, France and Canada safe for democracy in Haiti. So the role of the IJDH is really to carry the fight for justice in Haiti to the international community.

Talk about the importance of the BAI in Haiti.

Between 2004 and 2006, they were the only group standing up for victims in court. Their success at getting people out of jail at the time was not great. That’s the nature of a dictatorship. We only saw real progress after the Latortue dictatorship was voted out of office [in 2006]. Despite the initial failures, however, Mario Joseph’s [manager of the BAI] work gave activists the knowledge that someone would be there for them when they got arrested. Many activists have since told us that BAI’s presence helped them stand up for democracy. It gave people more confidence to go out and vote in 2006. Although it didn’t reverse the oppression, it limited it because the interim government knew that if it went beyond a certain point, BAI would represent people in court, get the word out, [by connecting] with groups like the Canada-Haiti Action Network and solidarity groups in the US that bring pressure to bear in their own countries. It didn’t reverse the coup, but it was part of the solution.

You’re trying to ensure that criminal regimes know they will be pursued once out of power.

That’s a lot of the work we were doing from 1996 to 2004: trying to break the cycle of coup d’états. In 2000, we thought we had succeeded with the Raboteau Massacre Trial, where we convicted all the top military and paramilitary leadership. They were all given life sentences. Three of the members of the high command were deported from the US, including a major-general, the highest ranked soldier ever deported from the US to face human rights charges. So it looked like we had finally established a deterrent. Then the US, France and Canada overthrew the government and all these people got out. But we continue to put in people’s minds that there is a cost to this. Gerard Latortue, for example, has some very well founded worries right now. He will soon be in legal trouble. We are using the International Tribunal on Haiti and pressuring the UN. We filed complaints with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights against Latortue and the UN. Unfortunately, they aren’t taking a lot of the cases. However, a lot of law students in the US are working on ways of going after MINUSTAH [UN mission in Haiti] and the political leaders. We won’t stop until there is accountability and justice.

Anything you want to add about the legal and judicial impact of the 2004 coup d’état?

The reversal of developments within the justice system will have an impact for years. The judges were appointed illegally. Until now, Préval [current president of Haiti] has not chosen to legalize the judges. This is very problematic. Latortue named half the Supreme Court on his whim. Many people continue to be in place for reasons other than their ability to impartially decide a case. That will be there for a long time, and it sets a horrible precedent. The fact that people can take power illegally impacts the justice system. Many lawyers said during the Latortue regime that it was the worst time for the Haitian justice system since well before the Duvaliers, because not even the Duvaliers would go so far as to fire half the Supreme Court. [Francois Duvalier and later his son Jean-Claude Duvalier ruled Haiti by dictatorships that were known for violence and corruption. Jean-Claude was overthrown during a popular uprising in 1986]

But there’s another legal problem now at the level of the Constitution. One of the things Haiti is missing is a tradition of regular legal transfers of power. During the democratic interlude from 1994 to 2004, Haiti began developing that tradition. We saw in 1996 the first ever transition from an elected president to another elected president. 2001 saw the first time an elected president had ever served out his entire term in office and left voluntarily at the end. There were still problems in the legislature with contested elections, but you finally had one branch of government doing the types of things Canadians and Americans take for granted. People in Haiti finally felt like we do; that no matter how little you like a government, you will have the chance to vote them out. You cannot overestimate the benefits of this to Haitian stability. Ministers could finally make longer-term plans for the country. This is what Haiti needs in order to develop economically.

This was all thrown out the window in 2004, returning the country to the old precedent of “might makes right.” As before, once the president gets into power -- and this is happening with Préval -- his opponents do what they can to shorten his term. He spends a lot of time and energy fighting this, energy he isn’t putting into providing clean drinking water, food and education for Haitians. I think this return to the precedent of “might makes right” could in the long-term be more damaging than the legal issues. It has happened so often in Haitian history that there is a proverb for it: “Constitution, c’est papier; baionnette, c’est fer.” [Constitutions are made of paper and bayonets are made of steel.] That was reinforced three years ago today.

In the press, we’ve heard the term “dictator” used to describe Aristide and the Duvaliers. But we’ve never heard it used in the press to describe Latortue.

Aristide was the first person in Haiti’s history to leave voluntarily at the end of his term, yet he was called a dictator. The press was so free in his term that in the lead up to the coup d’état of 2004 you had the press openly calling for the overthrow of the government. In the US, that would not be tolerated. That would be beyond free speech. My expectation is that it would be illegal in Canada as well. There was immense freedom of assembly. There were assemblies that would definitely have been controlled in the US or Canada because they were violent and illegal. But because they were done by the opposition, the Aristide government didn’t touch them. So it’s curious that someone like that is called a dictator.

Then you get someone like Latortue who was a dictator in a very real sense. He had no parliament. He abolished what was left of it. He took over the justice system, completely illegally naming people to it. Aristide never did that. He named people by the regular channels through a fair process.

And then Latortue's violent attacks on Artistide's party, Lavalas.

That was the worst of it, the police killing people. There were hundreds of political prisoners, which you never had with Aristide. There were some arrests that looked political and some spent a week in jail without respect for their rights. It shouldn’t have happened and we denounced it at the time, but there’s no comparison between a couple of people spending a week in jail and hundreds of people spending two years in jail. Then there’s the thousands mowed down by police and their paramilitary allies.

Talk to us about the international connection to justice issues in Haiti. What should concerned people living in the countries that pulled off the coup – Canada, the US and France -- be thinking about?

They should consider that Haiti should be given the same chance as their own countries to develop a justice system. No country becomes independent then immediately has a great tradition of justice. In the early stages of the US, there were problems even though there was time to develop it, even though the transfer to independence was relatively peaceful compared to what happened in Haiti.

Canadians should be worried about wasting their money. I believe it was in 1996 when the Canadian government started building really nice courthouses all over the country. It made a difference. It allowed the justice system to function much better than it previously had. All those courthouses were burned down in 2004 with the coup. Canada and the US invest a lot of money into the administration of justice, into filing cabinets and training, which are all good and necessary. But it’s an absolute waste of money if you’re going to defy the constitution and replace the government when you don’t like it.

But there’s something more important, and I say this as someone who has worked with the UN, worked within the justice system on behalf of victims, worked side-by-side with people from the US and Canadian embassies and the UN: everyone keeps telling people in the Haitian justice system, “You need to respect the rule of law. You need blind justice.” But it’s very hard for judges to rule correctly when their lives are being threatened. It’s hard for them to pass up bribes – they don’t have enough money to live – if you yourself aren’t setting a good example yourself. You have also to convince them that they’re working for something sustainable. In the Raboteau Massacre case, we convinced judges to do a fair job, to not take money and to rule based on the facts. Those judges got beaten up after the coup d’état. It’s very easy for a Canadian or an American to go in and say, “You have to obey the rule of law.” But they’re going to reply, “Where were you three years ago when our constitutional government was overthrown, when we got beaten, when the good judges got kicked out?” That’s a very good question. The Americans, Canadians and French have very low credibility telling Haitians they have to sacrifice when they wouldn’t stand up for Haiti in its hour of need.

Are there precedents in place for the prosecution of government officials from foreign governments involved in coup d’états? I’m thinking of officials from Canada and the US.

We filed a case with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) against the Dominican Republic, the Interim Government and the United States for the overthrow of democracy in Haiti. We were working with some Canadian lawyers to get a similar complaint against Canada, but before we could file the Canadian complaint, the IACHR threw the case out. The problem is that the wealthy countries don’t sign onto human rights treaties that can hold them accountable. It’s something the human rights movement is starting to recognize. Groups like Amnesty International have traditionally pursued human rights abusers in poor countries, which is very important, but in many cases, such as Haiti, the strings are pulled by wealthy countries. Amnesty didn’t stand up for democracy in Haiti, but I’m confident they will do a better job next time. This is what the solidarity movement needs to do; ensure there are structures in place so that when the next coup d’état is being planned – it’s already happening in Haiti and other countries may already be planning to remove Préval – so when that process comes to light, we need to have structures in place to stop them.

You’re talking about a deterrent. I’ve discussed impunity with people, but you’re talking about stopping crimes before they happen.

We’re not there yet, but there are promising historical cases like Germany, Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Chile. Now there are also cases against Rumsfeld in Germany and the US. We’re exploring options for Haiti.

And Rumsfeld just lost his job. It didn’t take years to pursue him, only a few months.

This is a great development. Historically, we waited 10 or 20 years before going after the guy. The time for pursuit has shortened. We haven’t convicted Kissinger or Rumsfeld yet, and even Pinochet sort of got away with it. But at least he was legally harassed until his death. That is the next step; going after these people. It’s not easy because they made the rules, but we’ll find a way.

Read Part II of this interview

Haiti 2006 Elections

Haiti Aux Haitiens!

hillarybain — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 13:21:36 +0000

Montreal mobilizes in solidarity with Haiti

Over 100 demonstrators took to the streets in Montreal on Saturday, February 3, as part of the International Day in Solidarity with the People of Haiti. Their demands were clear: the end of MINUSTAH crimes and the departure of UN forces from Haiti; the liberation of political prisoners; the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Haiti; and the repatriation of the multi-billion dollar debt paid to the French Government as price for Haitian independence. The protest came on the heels of the recent December 22 massacre in Cité Soleil, which left over a dozen dead and many more wounded. As Canadian researcher and activist Kevin Skerrett recently revealed, this grave crime -- a breach of the Geneva Conventions and a reminder of the July 2005 massacre in Cité Soleil -- was praised by the Canadian ambassador to Haiti, Claude Boucher, who encouraged MINUSTAH to “increase their operations as they did last December.” This disregard for the lives of Haitians mirrors former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin’s comments to the press during the height of the terror of the Latortue regime: “There are no political prisoners in Haiti.” There were, of course, hundreds languishing in Haitian prisons without charge.

One of these prisoners, Haitian folk singer and Lavalas activist Annette Auguste (aka So Ann), was recently in Montreal to address the media and members of the community. So Ann addressed many issues of critical importance to Haitians: the corrupt power of MINUSTAH, the criminal role of Canada, the US and France in the coup d’état, the problem of impunity for the many crimes committed against the Haitian people, the need for lasting economic development in Haiti and the strength and determination of the Haitian people. Many of So Ann’s concerns were taken up by the protestors in Montreal, whose signs read: “Canada is complicit in kidnapping in Haiti!”; “Haiti is not for sale!”; “USA: stop deporting our criminals!”; “We demand that President Aristide be returned to Haiti!”; “Stop the massacres in Cité Soleil and Bel Air!”; “The real bandits are not those being shot!”; and “USA, France and Canada out of Haiti!”

Darren Ell is an activist photographer and independent journalist from Montreal. He has previously published work with the Haiti Information Project and will be in Haiti from February 13 to March 6.

Montreal Mobilizes in Solidarity with Haiti 8

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