23048: Esser: Blood on the hands: A survey of Canada's role in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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

Seven Oaks Magazine
http://www.sevenoaksmag.com/features/27_haiti.html

August 24, 2004

Blood on the hands:
A survey of Canada's role in Haiti

by Roger Annis

Five hundred Canadian soldiers are returning from Haiti this month.
Together with the armed forces of France and the United States, they
took part in the violent overthrow of the elected government of
Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February/March of this
year. Since then, occupying troops have provided backing for rightist
gangs who will form the core of the police and government authority
the occupying forces are cobbling together to replace the Aristide
government.

Troops from the three countries began occupying Haiti on February 29,
hours after the United Nations Security Council gave its blessing.
Aristide was kidnapped by U.S. forces later that day and flown out of
the country. He now lives in asylum.

The capitalist media in Canada presented the coup as a popular
uprising against an unpopular regime. Since then, they have kept a
discreet censure about conditions in Haiti under imperialist
occupation. New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton spoke not a word
about the ongoing tragedy in Haiti during the federal election
campaign in May and June. Trade union leaders have also been silent.

The truth urgently needs to be told about Ottawa's crime against the
Haitian people.

A disaster for the Haitian people

Constitutional government in Haiti, won through many years of
tenacious struggle, has been overthrown. Killings by rightist gangs
were widespread leading up to the coup and they have continued during
the occupation regime. Several thousand have died. The rightists
target supporters of the Aristide government and anyone striving to
improve social conditions in the country. Rightists convicted of
crimes and human rights violations during previous regimes have been
released from prison and are involved in the killings.

U.S. troops have taken part in the attacks on the Haitian people. An
Associated Press reporter witnessed U.S. marines joining police in
firing on a demonstration of tens of thousands of Haitians on May 18
in Port au Prince. A dozen people were killed and many more injured.
Demonstrators were demanding the return of Aristide on the occasion
of a holiday marking Haitian independence.

Following the coup, living conditions in Haiti have gone from bad to
worse. Prices for basic foodstuffs have risen sharply, the minimum
wage has been cut by the new governing authority, and civic services
have declined. Flooding this past May on the eastern part of the
island devastated many villages and killed several thousand. In the
countryside, drought conditions are devastating the livelihood of
farmers and threatening the vital food harvest. Precious little
international aid is being delivered to meet emergency needs.

In a letter to the Toronto Star on July 30, a reader described her
dismay with the head of the Canadian military in Haiti when he
described the occupation as a "success." The letter recounted a
recent telephone conversation with a Canadian aid worker living in
Cap Haitien, the second largest city in Haiti. "Things are so much
worse than they were last October, prior to the revolt in February,"
reported the worker. "Supporters of Jean-Bertrand Aristide are still
being hunted down by those who support a new regime.… Food supplies
are low, electricity is only on for one to three hours daily, garbage
is piled up along the roads, as there has been no collection for many
months now, and people everywhere are sick."

Why imperialism opposed Aristide

Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas. Average annual income
is a few hundred dollars. Average life expectancy is 49 years for men
and 50 for women. An AIDS epidemic is ravaging the country.
Forty-seven percent of the adult population is illiterate and
unemployment is 60% to 70%. The country is burdened by a crushing
debt to imperialist governments and lending agencies. Gross domestic
product in Haiti has declined from US$4 billion in 1999 to $2.9
billion in 2003.

Aristide rose to prominence in the 1980s during the revolutionary
movement that overthrew the Duvalier dictatorship in 1990. He was
first elected president that year with the overwhelming support of
Haiti's working people on a platform of radical social reform. Nine
months later he was overthrown by a military coup. He was elected
again in May of 2000.

The masses in Haiti had big expectations in the governments headed by
Aristide, and despite many disappointments with his performance, they
continued to place enormous pressure on his government to stand up to
the imperialists and improve their lot. Aristide established
diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1996, and he welcomed hundreds of
Cuban doctors and health workers to provide health care in remote
parts of the country. The post-2000 government built new schools and
refused imperialist demands to privatize state-owned services such as
electricity, telephones, and ports.

Aristide angered the French government in April 2003 when he demanded
that it pay $21 billion in reparations to Haiti. France, the island's
former colonial power, had extorted millions of dollars in payments
from Haitian governments during the 19th and 20th centuries as
punishment for the successful anti-slave revolt that led to Haiti's
independence from France in 1804.

Aristide's governments brought few improvements in living conditions
for the masses. It implemented measures demanded by the imperialists,
including lowering of tariffs that protected local food production,
emptying of the national treasury in order to pay off international
lending institutions, and privatizing some state-owned industries.
Nevertheless, the imperialist powers feared a revival of the mass
movement that had toppled the Duvalier dictatorship, and they were
not confident that Aristide would keep the island safe for continued
exploitation.

Canadian imperialists in Haiti

The imperialist intervention in Haiti was a joint venture with
rightist forces that launched an armed rebellion in early February.
The rightists were armed and financed by wealthy Haitians and their
backers in the U.S., France, Canada, and neighbouring Dominican
Republic. They were few in number and weak in the capital city Port
au Prince. But pro-government defense forces were poorly organized
and armed, and were politically disoriented by the record of the
Aristide government in bowing to imperialist dictates.

In January 2003, Canada's foreign affairs department was one of the
sponsors of an international conference in Ottawa that discussed and
laid plans for the overthrow of Aristide's government. Thirteen
months later, according to a report on the French-language television
news network of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the elite
service of the Canadian armed forces was among the imperialist troops
that helped capture and secure the airport in Port au Prince in the
early hours of February 29.

On July 6, Prime Minister Paul Martin announced that Canada would
send 100 RCMP to replace the returning soldiers. Police and soldiers
from the U.S., France, Chile, Brazil, and other countries will remain
in Haiti, under UN Security Council approval. A press release from
the Canadian government described the role of the occupation as being
a form of assistance to "the transitional Haitian government in
establishing a secure and stable environment, restoring law and
order, and reforming the Haitian National Police."

Canada's troops provide security for the post-coup regime, and the
killings continue. One of the tasks the occupation forces have set
for themselves is to disarm the civilian population.

The Canadian government has convinced many at home and abroad that it
is a friend of peace and democracy and that its armed forces abroad
are "peacekeepers." This is a lie. Indignation against the crimes of
Washington in Iraq and elsewhere will ring hollow if not accompanied
by equal indignation at Ottawa's participation in the pillage and
oppression of the semi-colonial world.

Those concerned with human rights, poverty and the oppression of the
Third World peoples have a responsibility to speak out about the
situation in Haiti. We should demand of the Canadian government that
it withdraw police and military forces from that country and halt any
form of assistance to the post-coup authority. Working-class and
progressive organizations in Canada need to support the people of
Haiti in opposing the coup-imposed regime and fighting for the return
of the democratically elected government.
.