17143: Esser: Propaganda War Intensifies Against Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser <torx@joimail.com>


Propaganda War Intensifies Against Haiti as Opposition Grabs for Power

Part 1 of a series by Kevin Pina
from http://BlackCommentator.com

An increasing barrage of negative propaganda in the US media is
softening the ground for an eventual power grab by the
Washington-sponsored opposition in Haiti, the Democratic Convergence. 
In a series of press releases and articles over the past three months,
international organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and
journalists have bombarded the press to justify one common theme:
violent regime change is acceptable, if not inevitable, in Haiti. The
main themes of this media spin cycling through the press today should
be more than familiar to those who follow Haiti in the news:
politicization of the Haitian police force, Lavalas grassroots
organizations cast as armed gangs, and government corruption.

NCHR and the Media Cannibals

The latest press barrage began on September 2 with the National
Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR) release of a story equating
elements in Haiti’s police force with Duvalier’s Ton Ton Macoutes and
the former death squads, known as attachés, under the Cedras
dictatorship that overthrew President Aristide in 1991.  Peppered with
the purported actual names and ranks of members of the Haitian police,
the article sought to convince the public that Aristide is just another
dictator using time-honored tactics of repression to stay in power.
NCHR drove this point home with its charge that, “The impunity that
attachés enjoy and the collusion between members of the special
brigades and officers of the Haitian National Police provide
incontestable proof that the phenomenon is part of a governmental
strategy.”

NCHR asserted in the same piece, “Specialized units called Special
Brigades (BS), composed of armed civilians dressed in black t-shirts
with the yellow inscription 'BS' on the back, are being integrated into
the police stations, at first in the metropolitan zone and now
increasingly on a national level.” In an effort to add drama and weight
to their assertions, NCHR included several photos of gun-toting
partygoers individually posing with weapons and beer bottles. The
photos were reportedly linked to Rene Civil, the leader of Youth
Political Power or JPP movement, allied with President Aristide’s
Lavalas party.  Civil, whose protestant student movement is a vocal
critic of US foreign policy and Haiti’s wealthy elite, remains a
favorite target of campaigns by the right to discredit his reputation,
and by extension, Lavalas. The easiest photos to prove their claim of
the existence of this “phenomenon” – namely “armed civilians dressed in
black t-shirts with the yellow inscription "BS" on the back” – were
conspicuously absent from the exposé. The remaining “proof” could not
be corroborated as authentic despite a calculated effort to give the
appearance it originated from someone with access to internal Haitian
police records.

Per usual in such media attacks, the US press took the allegations at
face value while largely ignoring the Haitian government’s denial of
the charges and demands that NCHR provide “verifiable evidence” to back
up their claims.  As one highly placed police official lamented in
private, “This is another example of a serious attempt to destroy the
morale and undermine the authority of the police who are already
underpaid and understaffed. By tarnishing all the hard working men and
women in our force with this, it makes our jobs even harder. The
opposition has been emboldened because now when we arrest them, for
violence or having weapons, they claim we are repressing them while we
are just doing our duty. The truth is we are trying to be fair in
applying the law and they will not help us; we need resources, instead
they tie our hands by forcing us to prove our fairness by allowing the
opposition to act with impunity. This is very dangerous.” Others close
to the police were less kind and readily criticized NCHR for taking up
the cause of the opposition.  They counter that NCHR completely ignores
acts of violence against members and officials of Lavalas while
exaggerating claims of political persecution by the Democratic
Convergence and the so-called civil society organizations of the
business community in Haiti known as the “184.” They noted that NCHR
has never called upon the Dominican government to stop using its
territories as a base for regular armed killing sprees into Haiti
committed by former members of the disbanded military and the dreaded
Front for Advancement and Progress in Haiti (FRAPH), created by the CIA
in the last days of the Cedras dictatorship.

Old-timers in the Haitian police have also stated that NCHR, which was
deeply engaged in Haiti at the time, never complained when it was
revealed in February 1999 that the police-training program, offered by
the US Justice Department’s International Criminal Investigative
Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), was being used by the CIA to
secretly recruit from within the ranks of the Haitian police.  In an
article published in the respected Washington journal Legal Times and
entitled “Separating Cops, Spies”, author Sam Skolnik exposed the CIA’s
hidden agenda in Haiti’s new police training program. The article takes
us a long way towards explaining the less than enthusiastic response of
the Haitian government towards continuing the program. Since then,
Haiti’s cops have had to go it on their own to build a credible force
capable of maintaining law and order while under constant attack from
organizations such as NCHR.

Another of NCHR’s favorite anvils, for hammering out the purported
links between the Haitian government and Lavalas attachés, was Amiot
Metayer and the so-called “Cannibal Army” in Gonaives.  Never mind that
the name “Cannibal Army” was originally that of a local gang Metayer
had battled with in the past.  Instead the constant beat of the local
and international press cast everyone in the Raboteau neighborhood of
Gonaives, including Metayer, as a “Cannibal.”  Friends tell of how he
never stood a chance in trying to convince the press of their error and
finally gave up in exasperation. Three weeks later, cannibal or no
cannibal, NCHR’s accusations of government reliance upon attachés would
serve to pre-contextualize Metayer’s assassination.

On the night of September 21 Amiot Metayer, one of the popular heroes
of the resistance against both the Duvalier and Cedras dictatorships,
was pumped full of bullets and thrown in a ditch. His murder apparently
served the interests of those who would benefit from edging Haiti
closer to the brink of outright civil war. The murder further
destabilized Haiti as the opposition began spreading the rumor that
Aristide was behind the killing. Infiltrated, confused and demoralized,
the population of Gonaives was initially manipulated into turning
against the very movement they had sacrificed so much blood and so many
lives to build. As President Aristide pointed out, to a near deaf
international press predisposed to print and repeat the rumor as a
foregone conclusion, by any objective standard there was nothing for
the government to gain from this killing. One Lavalas observer on the
ground concluded, “This is part of what has always been the strategy of
the CIA and the opposition, to separate the base of Lavalas from its
leadership. This was the real reason behind the killing. The US wants
Aristide out and a subservient government in place before we celebrate
our bicentennial on January 1, 2004. They believe this plan is the best
way to achieve that objective. They cannot win elections so they have
decided to create conditions for a civil war.”

Foxes Guarding the Chicken Coop

Following Metayer’s assassination and on the heels of NCHR’s
revelations, came yet another attempt to destroy the Haitian
government’s credibility. This time the information would originate
from an international corruption watchdog organization known as
Transparency International (TI) who would label Haiti the third most
corrupt nation in the world.

TI has been described by several British organizations on the left as
“a tool to destabilize Governments for corporate interests under the
guise of exposing corruption.” They point to the fact that TI’s
Chairman and Founder, Peter Eigen, is a trustee of Crown Agents
Foundation which is currently involved in “reconstruction and
rehabilitation” in Iraq. The London-based Independent reported on March
31: "Crown Agents, a privatized development assistance firm, has become
the first British company to win a contract in the American programme
to rebuild Iraq. It will be a subcontractor to International Resources
Group (IRG), a US professional services firm providing technical
assistance for planning and management of the reconstruction and
rehabilitation activities in Iraq." According to British activists
writing about a recent protest against Crown Agents' role in Iraq,
“Privatised in March 1997, Crown Agents lurks in that murky area
between state and business that has become so central in the new age of
corporate government. Its board boasts some notable links to the world
of big business and banking – and these are just the ones actually
declared on its own website! Its holding entity is The Crown Agents
Foundation, whose membership includes token 'worthy' organisations such
as Christian Aid and British Overseas NGOs for Development. But the
vast majority of names of both permanent and elected members hail, once
again, from the world of business.”

The pieces of the puzzle really begin to fall into place when Eigen
also lists in his resume, “Under Ford Foundation sponsorship, he
provided legal and technical assistance to the governments of Botswana
and Namibia.” In an December 15, 2001 article entitled, The Ford
Foundation and the CIA: A documented case of philanthropic
collaboration with the Secret Police, James Petras of the respected
online journal Rebelión wrote, “A U.S. Congressional investigation in
1976 revealed that nearly 50% of the 700 grants in the field of
international activities by the principal foundations were funded by
the CIA (Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, Frances
Stonor Saunders, Granta Books, 1999, pp. 134-135). The CIA considers
foundations such as Ford "The best and most plausible kind of funding
cover" (Ibid, p. 135). The collaboration of respectable and prestigious
foundations, according to one former CIA operative, allowed the Agency
to fund "a seemingly limitless range of covert action programs
affecting youth groups, labor unions, universities, publishing houses
and other private institutions" (p. 135). The latter included "human
rights" groups beginning in the 1950s to the present. One of the most
important "private foundations" collaborating with the CIA over a
significant span of time in major projects in the cultural Cold War is
the Ford Foundation.”

So where is the Haiti connection in all this aside from Aristide being
labeled leader of the third most corrupt nation in the world by Peter
Eigen’s organization? If one goes to the website of another
organization named the Haitian Resource Development Foundation, you
will find they work with a Belgium firm named Altech to build a
purified water system known as Hydopur in Haiti’s Artibonite valley.
Altech’s list of international projects is impressive and includes
countries such as Iraq, Nicaragua, South Africa, Burundi, Democratic
Republic of the Congo, and Vietnam. Among Altech’s references is that
they act as a non-exclusive representative of Crown Agents sponsored
projects. This is the same Crown Agents that is involved in dividing up
the spoils in Iraq and where Peter Eigen of Transparency International
acts as a trustee. And who is listed as a legal consultant for Altech?
None other than Gerard Gourgue, the appointed provisional president of
the Washington-backed opposition, the Democratic Convergence in Haiti!
To recap in shorthand, Peter Eigen, the founder and chairman of
Transparency International, is a trustee of Crown Agents, who is
represented by Altech, whose legal consultant, Gerard Gourgue, is the
provisional president of the Democratic Convergence in Haiti.

While not a direct link, for they rarely are in such matters, this
connection is more than enough to call into question the objectivity of
Transparency International’s so-called Corruption Index when it comes
to Haiti. As if that weren’t enough, Bolaji Abdullah of the Jamaican
journal This Day Online filed this report last July 24 from Kingston:
“A founding member of Transparency International, and Secretary-General
Jamaica, Ms Beth Aub, has resigned her membership of the global
anti-corruption body with effect from January 31, alleging corrupt
practices, among others.”

In a letter dated January 11, and addressed to Chairman of the Board,
Peter Eigen, Ms Aub said she was resigning in protest against some
"policies and practices being pursued by the governing body of
Transparency International" and which she does not wish to be
associated with. “

Next Week PART 2:

The Ambulance Chasers – Or, How Many Journalists and Associated Press
Photographers Can Dance on the Head of a Pin?

Immediately after TI took its turn trying to beat the Haitian
government’s credibility senseless, the so-called independent voices of
the press in the US stepped in to deliver a few more uncritical yet
fatal blows…



Kevin Pina is a documentary filmmaker and freelance journalist who has
been working and living in Haiti for the past three years. He has been
covering events in Haiti for the past decade and produced a documentary
film entitled "Haiti: Harvest of Hope". Mr. Pina is also the Haiti
Special Correspondent for the Flashpoints radio program on the Pacifica
Network's flagship station KPFA in Berkeley CA.