23211: Esser: Rolling Haiti Back to Colonialism (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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

ZNet
http://www.zmag.org

Rolling Haiti Back to Colonialism
Charles Boylan of Vancouver Co-op Radio interviews Kevin Pina

by Kevin Pina and Charles Boylan; September 21, 2004

Charles Boylan: I saw an e-mail yesterday and it said that the
Haitian Army is re-establishing itself. I want you to tell us what
you know about these facts, and to tell us a little bit about what
this army is and its history.

Pina: Well it’s the Forces, d’army Haiti Fad’h, which was the army
created by the US back during the first occupation of Haiti, which
lasted nineteen years, from1915 to 1934. The army, traditionally, was
a tool of the ruling class of Haiti. It could be bought; it was
responsible for more than thirty-three coup d’etats in Haiti’s
history. During the 1990’s, after the coup d’etat against the first
government of President Aristide, the army became very deeply
involved in drug trafficking. Certainly it’s an army that has never
had to be used to defend Haiti’s sovereignty against any outside
force. It’s traditionally been a tool of repression for Haitians
inside Haiti.

As far as its resurgence [goes], what we know is that members of the
former military, as well as members of the former CIA trained
paramilitary death squad FRAPH, as well as officers such as Guy
Philippe [formerly] of the Haitian police, were given safe harbour by
certain segments of the Dominican government and certain segments of
the Dominican military. After the year 2000 we know that they began
several series’ of incursions into Haiti, which led to the
assassination of several members of Aristide’s Lavalas Party . They
would make armed incursions into Haiti and they would then return to
their “safe haven” in the Dominican Republic. There have been charges
that there’s no way that this could have been done without U.S.
complicity and the U.S. knowing exactly what was going on.

Certainly, I was reporting about [this]…about two, two and a half
years ago. So, certainly if I had that information, it had to be
available to the United States government, certainly the U.S. embassy
in the Dominican Republic. And, the former military along with these
other forces I described, used Dominican territory to launch an
attack into Haiti; a larger attack into Haiti in early February
[2004], which led to the coup d’etat of the constitutionally elected
President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was forced out of the country
on February 29th of this year.

Boylan: Now, the United Nations forces are there. They’re there under
[the auspices of] some sort of U.N. Resolution I assume. What is
their role in all of this?

Pina: Well, it’s been very sketchy. The government claims today that
they’ve re-taken the town of St. Marc. The former military has been
regrouping and has been calling for its reinstitution, its
recognition and reinstitution to its former role, which is basically,
de facto rulers of Haiti, as I said, open to bidding to highest
bidder within the traditional ruling bourgeoisie of Haiti. They’ve
taken over much a large segment, a swath of the Northern country,
which includes the town of Hinche, the Plateau Central including an
area called Morn Kabrit, and the town of St. Marc. The UN and the PNH
had announced that they had re-taken St. Marc yesterday, however we
have not confirmed that.

What’s interesting to note is that the UN ‘says’ that it is assisting
the Haitian police force, and [on] August the 14th, the Lavalas
organization, which was Aristide’s political party - which has of
course has seen tremendous repression since the President’s forced
ouster on February 29th - on August the 14th, Lavalas held
demonstrations in the second-largest city, Cap-Haitien, and in the
capital, Port au Prince. In both those demonstrations, the UN and
Haitian police had demonstrators tuck their t-shirts into their
pants, so they could be sure there were no guns at the demonstration.
The very next day, on August 15th, the same UN and Haitian police
allowed 150 Haitian military to march openly in the capital of Port
au Prince, brandishing M-16s, M-14s, a few M-60s, and they were not
challenged at all. So, if indeed the UN are beginning to challenge
the former military, it’s a brand new phenomenon.

Many people who are in Lavalas who, as I said, have been victims of
this campaign of repression since Aristide’s forced ouster of
February 29th, really see themselves as now being caught in a pincer
movement between two forces. One is the Haitian National Police -
backed up by the United Nations forces - and on the other side is the
former military who are trying to come back into power. Now, it’s
really interesting to note that the United States has worked with the
current so-called “interim government”; Lavalas refers to it as ‘de
facto’ government, the U.S. installed government of Gerard Latortue,
to now talk about integrating a 1000 of these former military
soldiers into the Haitian National Police. Well, they’d already
started this process beginning back in March; it really doesn’t make
sense for them to that they say they’re not going to allow the former
military to be restored to its former role while at the same time
they’re virtually transforming the Haitian National Police into an
entity that contains a large percentage of those same former military.

Boylan: When you speak this way about this pincer movement my mind
flashes back to the tragedy of Lumumba in the Congo ‘way back in
1960’s,’ you had the same sort of intervention by the U.N. on the one
side and you had the Chambe [Mobutu’s] reactionaries on the other.
It’s hard to make these parallels of course but it seems to me you
have the U.N. sort of playing a duplicitous role here. The original
invasion of course was by the United States, Canada, and France. Have
all of their forces left the island now?

Pina: I still see smatterings of Canadian troops; there are some
French forces here that are laying low; there is still a small
contingent of U.S. Marines. But mostly it’s the Brazilians, the
Chileans and the Argentineans, who are taking the lead. Certainly, I
believe that the role of the French and the U.S., and the Canadian is
at this point a leadership role within the command structure of the
U.N. forces. It’s also interesting to note that there’s a new level,
a new wave of repression that began this last Sunday. Now remember
that the U.N. forces claims that they are assisting the Haitian
police. This includes even if the Haitian National Police are
performing an action at the behest of the Latortue government, which
may be based upon a lie, as in the case of So Anne, who is a popular
folk singer, who’s home was violently invaded by U.S. Marines on May
10th and she herself was arrested by the U.S. Marines, based upon an
accusation of the Latortue government, that she was planning to
attack U.S. forces.

So, the UN will back up the Haitian police even if the Haitian police
from the Latortue government are performing an action that is based
upon false information, false information that they know is false.
This last Sunday, the Haitian National Police began to
indiscriminately round up all adult males in several popular
neighbourhoods where Lavalas support is known to be great. On Sunday
they arrested more than sixty males in a neighbourhood just North of
the capital, and yesterday they arrested another thirty in a
neighbourhood called St. Martin. Sunday, the police would come in,
and they would create this net around the neighbourhood and then they
would indiscriminately round up all adult males who were caught in
the net without any cause or justification. Always lingering in the
background are large APV vehicles with heavily armed United Nations
troops. I guess they are [there] to ensure that no one will resist
the Haitian police while they are performing this broad procedure of
indiscriminate detainment and arrest in popular neighbourhoods where
Lavalas support is known to be greatest.

Boylan: Can you go into a little more detail about the current level
of political prisoners in Haiti’s penitentiaries, and also put into
context this issue acquittal of known murderer Louis Jodel Chamblain,
who is one of the “rebels” we read about in early February?

Pina: The Inter-American Human Rights Commission was just in Haiti;
they represent the OAS, and of course Amnesty has had several of its
researchers on the ground, on and off, as well as Human Rights Watch.
Pretty much everyone is in agreement that besides the ‘high-profile’
Lavalas political prisoners, such as Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, and
interior minister Jocelyn Privert, and, as I said earlier, So Anne –
Annette - Auguste, this famous Haitian folk singer, there are a lot
of lesser known people affiliated with the Lavalas party who are
currently filling the jails, not only just in the capital of Port au
Prince, but also in places like Cap Haitien. I still receive daily
calls from people who ask me - because I’m known as a journalist on
the ground - if I can put them in touch with human rights
organizations; some of them have been wasting in jail since early
March without any trial.

The Haitian Constitution says that people should be brought before a
judge and charges should be brought before them after forty-eight
hours, but there are people who have been in jail for months and
months without any charges never seeing a magistrate or a judge. The
jails right now are said to be chalk full of people who are
affiliated with Lavalas, who consider themselves to be political
prisoners. It is interesting that Jodel Chamblain, who was the second
in command of the FRAPH [the Front for Advancement and Progress in
Haiti], which was the CIA-trained paramilitary death squad
responsible for thousand and thousands of deaths following the 1991
coup against Jean Bertrand Aristide, and who was seen by eyewitnesses
to be the trigger man who assassinated a leading businessman and
Aristide supporter Antoine Izmery on September 11th, 1993…

The trial was obviously a sham, human rights organizations have
rightfully condemned it; it’s interesting to note that while Jodel
Chamblian was given his ‘day in court’ as was Jackson Joanis who was
the former head of anti-gang, who was also implicated in the murder
of Antoine Izmery. Annette Auguste, Prime Minister Neptune and
Interior Minister Jocelyn Privert, have had just these cursory visits
to the court, and then nothing has been done, they’ve just been left
without word of when their next hearing will be, whereas with someone
like Jodel Chamblain is given an immediate trial where eight
witnesses are called, seven of the witnesses are frightened out of
their minds and will not come to the hearing. Only one shows up and
he says nothing about the incident, and the jury deliberates in the
middle of the night in secret for fourteen hours and the man is
acquitted of this horrendous crime; clearly there is an inequity,
there is not an equal application of Haitian law and the Haitian
Constitution. But again I think that’s to be expected when you have a
government that is more beholden to Washington, and to Ottawa, and to
Paris, then it is to its own people, and its own constituency.
Remember, this government that’s in power now has never withstood the
test of democratic elections; it’s in power by virtue of the role
that those three nations played in overseeing the forced ouster, if
you will, of the Constitutionally elected President Jean Bertrand
Aristide on February 29th of this year.

Boylan: Well, this puts the question on the whole constitutionality
of the validity of the invasion in the beginning, and I’d like you to
speak, if you will, to a Canadian audience, of what you know about
Canada in this whole affair.

Pina: It is clear that Canada played a very pivotal role in terms of
backing and going along with U.S. foreign policy. Certainly the
Canadian government, I would say in, a lot of ways, lacked backbone,
at best, and, at worst, were openly complicit with this ouster of
Constitutionally, democratically-elected president [Aristide]. But to
go to the particulars of what happened on February 29th, you’ve got
to remember that Canada has towed the line of the U.S. government
that there these armed rebels threatening the capital. Well, this is
just complete nonsense. It was very clear how this theatre went down.

Foreign embassy after foreign embassy, beginning with the Italian
embassy, who were then followed second by the Canadian embassy and
other European embassies demanded that all their citizens flee Haiti
and that hit the headlines big: “Foreign Nationals Flee Haiti” And
the n finally the United States demanded that its citizens flee Haiti
and that hit the headlines big: “U.S. Citizens Flee Haiti.” You know,
President Aristide and Lavalas had been condemning these armed
incursions I had spoke about earlier, by the former military, by the
former paramilitary death squad, FRAPH, from the Dominican Republic
into Haiti, in which they were killing Lavalas officials and then
returning to the Dominican Republic. They’d been condemning this for
years, and their condemnations had been falling upon deaf ears in the
[corporate] press.

Suddenly, Guy Philippe and these guys show up in the country, and all
of these [corporate news] editors fall over themselves to find
budgets, including sending your dear Paul Knox from the Globe and
Mail out here. Suddenly they’ve got these budgets, per diems, and
transportation expenses to send these reporters out to fall all over
themselves to cover this ‘huge story’ of the rebels. When, as I said,
Lavalas had been condemning and talking about these people being in
the Dominican Republic for years, and it was falling upon deaf ears
and the press never had any attention span for it or interest in it,
whatsoever. Suddenly, they discover them ‘by miracle’ and its this
huge headline, and as I said this is compounded by this theatre of
foreign embassies demanding that their nationals leave, ultimately
leading to the U.S. embassy demanding its nationals leave.

The very next day 50 armed U.S. Marines arrive into Haiti, into the
capital, flown in a big flurry on a big transport plane, purportedly
to check on the security preparations at the U.S. embassy, and then
the next bead in this story, this theatre if you will, is that,
suddenly, the Toussaint L’Ouverture airport is closed to all airport
traffic. Now, you’ve got to remember that not a single foreign
national in this entire time ever had a scratch or a hair touched on
his head. Nor was there ever a single shot fired at the airport, and
that’s what leads myself and many others who were here, who
experienced this, to believe that this was just a superb theatrical
performance that was being led by France, Canada, and the United
States to give the perception of these “dire” circumstances, to give
the perception of this ‘embattled dictator’ Aristide, who had to
‘cling to power’ by virtue of these violent forces, his ‘minions’ of
his party of Lavalas.

And, by the way, they [Aristide’s supporters] were in the streets,
and they were trying to protect the capital, and that’s why I say
that this threat that the U.S. government said forced Aristide out of
office, that the rebels were going to enter the capital, was a
non-threat, because there was no way that 200, or even 300 heavily
armed men could have entered this capital at any time without heavy
house to house fighting and heavy resistance. It’s just a lie and a
non-threat.

What you also have to remember that at the exact moment that those 50
U.S. Marines who entered Haiti under the auspices of checking the
security preparations at the U.S. embassy; at the same moment that
they were entering Aristide’s residence, to take him out of office,
to force him onto that airplane to Bangui, in the Central African
Republic; at this very same moment there was a large transport plane
on the tarmac in Jamaica, refuelling, that was carrying re-supplies
of arms and ammunitions for the Haitian police force. This was not,
as the U.S. and Canada, and the French presented, a President who was
“resigned to his fate.” This was a President, who because that
transport plane was being sent in a unilateral assistance agreement
with the government of South Africa, with the re-supply of arms and
ammunition for the Haitian police force, and as I said at the same
moment the President was being taken out by the U.S. Marines, that
same plane was refuelling on a tarmac in Jamaica; that was why they
had to take him out, because, quite the contrary to the image they
portrayed of this man who was resigned to his fate, who had lost the
support of his people; this was a man who was willing to fight for
the sovereignty, was willing to fight to continue his democratic
mandate.

Boylan: This is a very telling story; I don’t think that’s been
broadcast here, that’s for certain. That aspect of the story; we were
all left wondering, ‘Why did Aristide leave? What the hell was going
on? And of course we were all left in the dark by the mass media
manipulation of the airwaves. This is an extremely important chapter.
Tell us a little bit more about this story, tell us a little bit
about the circumstances facing you and all those who are trying to
bring light to what is actually happening in Haiti, and what
oppositional forces, internationally, locally, are putting some
weight behind the Haitian people in this dark moment of their history?

Pina: Well, you’ve got to realize is that it was a huge campaign of
disinformation that demonized Lavalas and demonized Aristide, and
this is still going on today. They use buzzwords like ‘chimere,’
which is a term that they call Lavalas who defended themselves, or
who defended the government. They’ve painted Aristide as a ‘dictator’
who ‘lost the support of his people,’ who was relying upon his
Lavalas ‘shock troops.’ They’ve really presented this dark image of
what was essentially, what is essentially, a movement of the majority
of the poor in this country, they continue [to demonize] to this day.

There has been so much misinformation, and so many lies; the Haitian
press participated in it: they fed stories to the international
press, and the international press fed it back to them, and suddenly
what was innuendo and rumour gets ‘transformed’ into reality and
suddenly reality gets turned on its head, and a lot of what I read
[in the press] about Haiti is the exactly the reverse of what I
myself and many others who live this reality day to day; what we
experience and how we see the situation. Today the Haitian press
still plays an horrendous role; the standard of journalism and what
passes for the truth, and what passes for professionalism is just
abhorrent.

The major news outlets here are owned by large families who are
aligned with the elite, or are members of the small economic elite
themselves, it’s clear that they’ve had a large role in this movement
to overthrow Aristide; it’s clear that they’d spent a tremendous
amount of money in public relations, whether that be over the
internet, in the U.S. press, the French press, the Canadian press.
And the U.S. corporate media in general, as I said, presenting this
image of the movement of the poor in a very ugly and, I would say,
false light. It’s not to say that, certainly, there weren’t errors
made by Aristide; it’s not to say that there weren’t people amongst
the masses of the poor who weren’t angry, and who ultimately felt
cornered and that they had no resort except to violence. But you’ve
got to remember, and not to apologize for it or excuse it, we have to
understand that this really a response to people who knew that this
was going to happen, that their greatest enemy who was this corrupt,
dangerous, murderous institution, the Haitian military, was being
poised to return to this country. They knew that a year ago, and of
course how can you expect people who’s mothers were raped, whose
brothers and fathers were brutally murdered, whose sisters were
murdered, not to react very emotionally and in some instances
violently, knowing that this was going to happen, that the Haitian
military was being poised for an eventual position of return to Haiti?

A lot of what was twisted and said to represent the evil ‘shock
troops,’ the chimeres of the dictator Lavalas, was the righteous
indignation and anger of a very, very frightened mass of poor people
in this country who for the first time had a government that they
felt represented their interests. All you have to do today, with what
is going on with this U.S. backed government, this U.S. installed
government, by virtue of this action that the U.S., France, and
Canada pulled in Haiti, you see that there was a Ministry of Literacy
under the Aristide administration, that was one of the first
ministries abolished. Literacy, and the majority of the poor learning
to read and write is not a priority for this [de facto]
administration.

There was public housing that was built where poor families could
rent an apartment but their rent would be applied for equity to allow
them for the first time to own an apartment or a condominium, that
was a decent home with running water and electricity, that was
something modern. Now, that housing is being taken over by this
government to give to U.N. officials for their own personal housing.
Imagine, housing that was built for the poor is now being taken over
by this U.S. installed government, to turn over to United Nations
workers, and the peacekeeping force, their commanders, so that they
can live in them while they are displacing and evicting the poor,
who, for the first time, had housing. These are just a few examples
to show you what the priorities are now versus what the priorities
were. It seems that you only really get to really understand what was
really going on before by seeing it being dismantled today.

Another point is the agrarian reform. Everybody always said that
there was never any effort to help the majority of the poor who are
peasants in the countryside; seventy per cent of Haiti’s population
are poor peasants living in the countryside. Well, it’s only today
when we are seeing the agrarian reform being dismantled, under this
U.S. installed government, the former landowners are returning and
taking back the land that was distributed to the peasants under the
Agrarian Reform Act, that we understand that there really was was an
agrarian reform project. That huge propaganda campaign, the people
who control the press said that agrarian reform program never
existed, and the only reason we can see today that it clearly existed
is that now the peasants are fighting back and there’s open violence
now, and rebellion by peasants in the countryside against these large
landowners returning to re-claim the land that was distributed to
them under the agrarian reform that was started first under the
Preval administration, and then continued under the Aristide
administration.. These are examples of projects that clearly
benefited the majority of the poor, that people said never existed,
that the corporate media completely ignored and only focussed on
stories that were fed to it buy the elite-controlled media that
focussed on these negative acts of violence…[disconnects…]

Boylan: Listeners must be very angry as they listen to the things you
are enumerating, listing off these facts that are brand-new to most
people. What can we do about it, how can we empower ourselves to
affect change, and [to help] restore democracy to Haiti?

Pina: I think that it’s got to start with our own governments. I was
very proud of Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who [recently] called out
Washington, Paris, and Ottawa by name today. She said, ‘they’re the
ones who created this mess, they’re the ones who are responsible to
clean it up.’ I think she’s absolutely right, that we have to hold
our governments accountable, that we need to [exert] pressure, even
though the media, which has played such a terrible role in all of
this, particularly the corporate media: These are large businesses,
these are people who get called up buy the prime minister’s and the
presidents and the secretaries of this and that, and have the news
influenced and shaped for them. These are the people who would rather
call the Embassy first to get their reaction, then to risk their
necks out on the street to try to get the reaction of the average
poor person.

So, they’ve played a terrible role; right now they are conspicuously
silent, they’ve done their damage, so what means is that we have to
rely upon our own education networks, that means that we have to
create our own sources of reliable information, that we need to
cherish those sources, we need to support those sources, and we need
to use that information that we get from those sources that we trust,
to then leverage it against our elected officials, in order to get
them to stand up, to put this issue back on the burner again, where
it belongs. To get them to take responsibility for what they have
done in this country, and what they have done to this country.
Certainly what has gone down in Haiti falls right at the doorstep of
Mr. George Bush, the Junior. I’m certain that right now this is not
an issue in the election, but there are people who are trying to make
it an issue in the election, particularly when we see, in a lot of
ways, the U.S. you know played the leadership; I don’t mean to cut
Canada down, but they’ve really sort of been the lackeys, and the
lapdogs, if you will, of U.S. foreign policy in this. I’m not trying
to say that they weren’t smart enough to do their own damage, but you
know it’s pretty much the U.S. that’s called the shots on the ground
here and Canada has pretty much saluted and said ‘yes sir, whatever
you need?’

The French played a more of a public leadership role on the ground;
but Canada certainly had a definite role, and certainly the Canadian
people should take responsibility to pressure their elected
representatives, to put this issue back on the burner and to force
them to restore democracy to Haiti, first of all. This is not a
government that has been tested by the polls and it doesn’t look as
if the next elections in Haiti are going to allow the majority
political party, who, as we discussed earlier, has been violently
repressed, has been subject to mass arrests and mass detentions, is
caught in this pincer movement between the violence of the Haitian
police committed against them backed up by the United Nations, and
the violence of the dreaded former military; they’re not going to be
able to participate in a free way in the next elections. So those
elections are not really going to represent the will of the majority
of the Haitian people either.

What I can say is that people should watch closely, because I think
that this popular movement is not going to go gentle into that good
night. We see it beginning to reassert itself again; we see that
people, despite this tremendous atmosphere of a witch-hunt, despite
this tremendous atmosphere of political persecution and intimidation,
are still continuing to fight for their rights, still continuing to
fight for their right for themselves to be part of a Party that
represent the voice of the majority of the poor of this country.
That’s what we need to be watching for, keeping our pulse for, to
know who to support on the ground. The NGOs, by and large, play a
very evil role in this country. Certainly they played part and parcel
right into this campaign to overthrow the democratic government of
Haiti. Remember that Haiti saw its first peaceful transitions from
one President to another under the Lavalas Party…

Boylan: I’m sorry to tell you this but times up. Kevin, this has been
very enlightening and very, very helpful for our audience to listen
to this information; and we will definitely be back in touch; thank
you very much for joining us. This has been very helpful, and I want
to thank-you for joining us.

Pina: It’s been my pleasure.

*This interview was conducted on September 8, 2004. For more
information, please go to Wake Up With Co-op:
http://www.wakeupwithco-op.org/ . Boylan also hosts "Discussion,"
Wednesday evenings at 7:00 PST. Kevin Pina is an independent
journalist, filmmaker, is Associate Editor of the Black Commentator:
http://blackcommentator.com/ , and currently resides in Haiti.
.