23304: Holmstead: Canadian Dimension-Canadian Crimes in Haiti: Beyond Complicity (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: John Holmstead <cyberkismet5@yahoo.com>


Canadian Crimes in Haiti: Beyond Complicity
By Anthony Fenton
September/October 2004

In light of the graphic and well documented
human-rights reports coming out of Haiti*, the
Canadian government has a number of serious questions
to answer. Namely, if “order has been restored” since
the “resignation” of President Aristide, then why have
several thousand Aristide supporters been killed,
while tens of thousands more have been forced to flee,
forced into hiding, or imprisoned after February 29?
None of this context has found its way into the
corporate media, owing to the general whitewash of
Haiti’s reality. While the historical record might
prove otherwise, it is doubtful that Canada has ever
been so heavily implicated in an illegal intervention
in Latin America and the Caribbean as it has in the
case of Haiti.


On January 17, 2003, Canada hosted a meeting, the
“Ottawa Initiative on Haiti,” where the coup was
discussed and preliminary plans for it were shored up
(L’Actualité, March 15, 2003). This meeting was hosted
by Denis Paradis, then Minister for Latin America and
La Francophonie, and was attended by several
high-level diplomats from the EU, France, El Salvador,
the OAS and the United States. A follow-up meeting,
this time with a White House official in El Salvador,
was attended by Marc Lortie a couple of months later.


While the Liberals were planning the Haiti coup, they
were also debating whether or not to participate in
the illegal Iraq war. Evidently, Chretien was
“pre-emptively” mending fences over the decision not
to participate. All along, the U.S. knew that Canada
(and France) would play an instrumental role in their
imperial redux into Haiti.


Paul Arcelin, self-styled “intellectual author” behind
the “rebel uprising,” met with Pierre Pettigrew on
February 5, just weeks before the coup. Why was
Pettigrew meeting with a known coup-plotter? What was
this meeting about? Days after the coup, Arcelin told
the Gazette’s Sue Montgomery that he had discussed
“the reality of Haiti” with Pettigrew, who “promised
to make a report to the Canadian government.”
Pettigrew, who is no stranger to Haiti given that his
riding is home to the highest concentration of
Haitian-Canadians in the country, had to have known
about Arcelin’s criminal past. In 2003, Arcelin was
arrested along with Guy Philippe for plotting one of
several coup attempts. While denying this at the time,
and getting released by Dominican authorities, Arcelin
admitted to Montgomery that he had for two years been
plotting “10 to 15 hours a day” to overthrow Aristide
with Philippe.
Not a single mainstream publication has challenged the
“official” position on Haiti. Accordingly, the public
has no idea of the atrocities being carried out in
their names. Recently the Commander of the Canadian
Forces in Haiti, Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Davis,
acknowledged publicly in a July 29 teleconference call
that at least 1,000 bodies had been buried in a mass
grave by the State Morgue within three weeks of the
coup.


Davis also defended (rather than denied) the actions
of multinational forces on March 12, when 40 to 60
civilians were slaughtered. According to several
eyewitnesses, what took place was a night-time
military invasion. The invasion is now known to
Haitians as the Belair Massacre. Davis did not
challenge the fact that occupying forces killed these
people and carted away the bodies in ambulances
brought to the scene in anticipation of the carnage.
There is still the outstanding question as to whether
or not Canadian troops were involved in this massacre.
Despite official denials about their presence in
Haiti, Canada’s Joint Task Force 2 “secret commando”
forces arrived four days prior to the coup, were
photographed on March 3 and were, reportedly, “armed
to the teeth.”


Disturbingly, several mainstream journalists heard
Davis make these admissions but have thus far refused
to publish the information. Any investigation into
this grave matter will have to include the
corporate-owned media, who appear to have violated
virtually every ethical standard they purport to
uphold.


The magnitude of this catastrophe is difficult to
measure. Even in crude financial terms, the amount of
tax dollars Canada has spent on military operations
and “security” in Haiti — over $230 million thus far —
has eclipsed that of the well publicized “sponsorship
scandal.” Of course, no price can be put on the
massive loss of human life, which is the direct
consequence of Canada’s actions. While a poor
Haitian’s life may be disposable to the Liberal
government, it is protected under the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and several other
internationally recognized (and ratified) charters.

The Canadian government must come clean over this
dirty secret and the wall of silence must be broken.
All the implicated individuals must be held to
account, including coup front-man Bill Graham,
recently moved to Minister of Defence; former
Parliamentary Secretary Denis Coderre; Paradis,
recently relegated to the backbenches; Foreign Affairs
Minister Pettigrew; and, of course, Paul Martin.*
Visit http://haitiaction.net/News/IJDH/IJDH.html for
the gruesome details.

Anthony Fenton is an independent journalist and
activist living in Vancouver. He traveled to Haiti
between March 22 and April 2 with the Quixote Center
(http://haitireborn.org).






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