23382: Esser: Haiti Violence - Flashpoints Interview (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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

ZNet | Haiti
http://www.zmag.org/lam/haitiwatch.cfm

Haiti Violence
by Kevin Pina and Dennis Bernstein

Transcript from a
FlashPoints Radio broadcast
http://www.flashpoints.net/

October 11, 2004

Bernstein: A glittering example of U.S. foreign policy under George
Bush is the kidnapping of the duly elected President of Haiti, Jean
Bertrand Aristide, and the undermining of democracy. We now see the
aftermath of that kidnapping and the hurricane and we now have a
bloody nightmare on our hands based on U.S. foreign policy. Joining
us for an update on the violence is our good friend and our special
correspondent in Haiti, Kevin Pina. Kevin, welcome back to
Flashpoints.

Pina: Thanks, Dennis, glad to be here.

Bernstein: Alright, bring us up to speed in terms of just what's been
going on in terms of the violence of the last 48 hours, and then work
your way back.

Pina: I actually want to start with last Thursday, which was
September 30th, which was the thirteenth anniversary of the 1991 coup
d'etat against Aristide during his first presidency. It was really
clear that it was not business as usual in Port au Prince because
normally, Lavalas had a permit to demonstrate that day, in order to
commemorate the event, and normally at those events you always see a
large contingent of police providing security, Haitian police. As
well as United Nations vehicles, which regularly check the route, the
approved negotiated route. On Thursday when this demonstration began
they were conspicuously absent. No police presence, no United Nations
presence and that told everyone immediately that something was
drastically, dreadfully wrong.

What happened later is in the day, after demonstrators had passed the
National Palace in Haiti, in the central plaza, down below at the Rue
de Cassene [sp] close to the National Penitentiary, forces of the
S.W.A.T team [of] the Haitian National Police opened fire on the
unarmed demonstrators. It was as a response to the Haitian Police
opening fire on the unarmed demonstrators that violence, this latest
round of violence, broke out in Haiti. Since then, of course, we've
heard about attacks against the police; we have heard the police are
now rounding up en masse suspected Lavalas supporters, Aristide
supporters. There are now paramilitary gangs that are reportedly
working with the Haitian National Police, who are blocking major
intersections in the capital after 6 P.M. every night. This has
turned out to be a horrific, horrific nightmare. At the same time a
lot of questions were raised about what exactly is the role of the
so-called UN peacekeepers as they stood by and allowed the Haitian
National Police to provoke this latest round of violence, again, by
firing on unarmed demonstrators on September 30th.

Bernstein: We're speaking with Kevin Pina in Port au Prince where
another horrific nightmare for the Haitian people is unfolding out of
desperate U.S. foreign policy. Since the floods and the hurricane, it
does appear that reactionary forces have attempted to kill, jail with
further impunity the supporters of democracy and of President
Aristide. What can you tell us about that?

Pina: Even before that, you've got to remember that the people who
are battling the police right now are people who have been summarily
arrested and detained without cause. A majority of the members of the
popular communites such as Bel Air, LaSaline, Cite Soleil, have been,
again, indiscriminately detained and arrested in police dragnets.
Their leadership has been arrested: Prime Minister Yvon Neptune,
Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert, So Anne the very famous folk
singer, vodoo activist, who still remains in prison, who was arrested
May 10th by U.S. Marines. And then of course horrendous massacres
that occurred like March 12th in Bel Air, [and] May 18th in Bel Air.
So these are a people who have been systematically experiencing a
political witch hunt and repression and, again, political
imprisonment, since the forced ouster of Jean Bertrand Aristide on
February 29th.

So after September 30th, after police fired on unarmed demonstrators,
that genie was let out of the bottle. All of that anger, all of that
resentment that has been a result, again, of the systematic campaign
to repress the majority political party in Haiti, which is Lavalas,
Aristide's political party, which represents the majority of the
poor. All of that repressed anger came to the surface after the
Haitian police performed that action on September 30th. Now, of
course, it's interesting that today the United Nations troops
coordinated an attack on Bel Air this morning where they cordoned off
the neighborhood. APV vehicles, armoured personnel vehicles manned by
Brazilian troops, backed up by unidentified UN troops who had trained
attack dogs there today; they detained more than 500 people who the
so-called Minister of Justice in Haiti said were "gangsters."
However, of the 500 they detained they arrested 75 of them, the
remainder of them were let go, but out of all of those 500 people,
not one single gun was found. So, everyone's asking themselves,
'where did the guns go'?

It's the same question with these so-called decapitations of the
police in Haiti. They claim that Aristide supporters had decapitated
three policemen, that their headless bodies were found. Well, the
lawyer for one of the Lavalas leaders who was arrested last Saturday,
he [Lavalas leader] had participated in a radio program Radio
Caraibes FM. He, along with two other Lavalas representatives were
arrested last Saturday; well, the lawyer for one of them, the Senate
chairman Yvons Feuille, is now condemning the government and
demanding that they show the bodies of these so-called three headless
policemen. He said that the government itself has admitted that these
purported headless bodies were not wearing police uniforms but they
were wearing civilian clothes, yet no one has seen the actual bodies
of these purported three headless policemen. Yet this is something
that is being used to justify right now the United Nations and the
Haitian police performing joint actions in pro-Aristide slums such as
they did this morning in Bel Air.

Bernstein: We know from your reporting on Flashpoints and in other
alternative press outlets, the mainstream press here has not only
been complicit and quiet, they've been chearleaders for the death
squads, for the coup, and for the kidnapping, and the kind of
reporting we've seen. The ignorance of the reporting is clearly
equivalent to what we are seeing around Palestine. Has that changed
any? Is the reporting from the mainstream and places like NPR still
allowing this kind of slaughter to continue?

Pina: Well AP has fed it by allowing this so-called human rights
expert Jean Claude Bajeux so much airtime about this so-called
"Operation Baghdad." If people in the streets are beginning to
imitate and call it "Operation Baghdad" it's because news
organizations like AP have allowed disreputable sources such as Jean
Cluade Bajeux to have so much say in their news reporting. The other
element that you've got to remember is that, for example, three
Lavalas members were arrested on that radio program last Saturday; AP
says that it is only pro-Aristide people who are condemning the
arrests, well that's an absolute lie. The three Lavalas leaders who
were, as I said, Senate Chairman Yvon Feuille, along with Senator
Rudy Herivaux, and former deputy Gerard Gilles were on a program with
opposition members. It was a roundtable forum which included the head
of the Democratic Convergence Evans Paul as well as Himmler Rebu a
former military officer. Both of them condemned the arrests of those
three Lavalas leaders on Saturday as well, as well as Radio Caraibes
suspended its broadcast for two days in protest saying the arrests at
their radio station compromised their integrity as a news
organization and [their] freedom of speech.

But AP has never once mentioned that in any of their reporting. Now
AP has begrudgingly had to say that pro-Aristide supporters, they
keep calling them pro-Aristide supporters, say that the violence was
provoked when police fired on unarmed demonstrators. Well AP never
mention that it wasn't only Aristide supporters who saw that, but it
was also several members of the media who reported it here in Haiti
and elsewhere. So AP is not telling the whole story. I believe that
in a lot of instances they are giving a false impression by omission.
It's what they've done consistently in Haiti and what they continue
to do today.

Bernstein: And finally, I have to give you a crack at this, Kevin
Pina. We are now hearing Secretary oif Defense Donald Rumsfeld and
the whole administration saying flawed elections are better than no
elections in Iraq and of course we're now hearing from Jimmy Carter
that he's almost guaranteeing flawed elections again in the United
States. And, of course you know that they came and got Aristide,
kidnapped him and took him out of the country on a phony deal about
flawed elections. I'm sure you didn't miss this.

Pina: Well no, not at all, and they keep talking about having
elections next year again in Haiti. These are U.S. sponsored
elections brought to you by the Bush administration, and the
so-called 'international community' that supported the United States,
which includes Canada, of course, and France, in the ouster of
Aristide. Given, after this latest round of events, I just cannot see
myself and many other observers how they can possibly ever hold
elections given that the incontestable majority political party in
Haiti has been so repressed, and is now facing, basically, a life and
death struggle; there's no way they will participate in those
elections and I don't see how they can be fair and credible without
them.

Bernstein: Alright, Kevin Pina speaking to us from Port au Prince,
Haiti in the aftermath of a Bush kidnapping of the President of that
country, duly elected unlike the President of the United States -
select - Bush. I want to thank you again Kevin Pina for your courage
and good reporting; thanks for being with us on Flashpoints.

Pina: Thank-you Dennis, good night.
.