27234: Lemieux: ZNet: Haiti's Deadly Class Divide (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Submitted by Lemieux

Haiti's Deadly Class Divide
Class war takes on a new meaning in Cite Soley

by Leslie Bagg and Aaron Lakoff; January 13, 2006


Port-au-Prince, January 10/06 - Driving into Cite
Soley on January 8th, the day Haitians were
supposed to go to the polls in a presidential
election, there is no mistaking the fact that we
are entering an occupied zone. The streets are
almost deserted, the atmosphere tense, and UN
armored personnel carriers patrol the streets.

Cite Soley, one of Port-au-Prince's poorest
neighborhoods, is home to around 500,000 people
living in abject poverty. According to
Jean-Joseph Joel, the Secretary General of the
local branch of Fanmi Lavalas, the area's
residents are virtual prisoners, and their
movements restricted by armed police at
checkpoints. Vilified as bandits or chimeres by
the elite-run press, he says they face
persecution if they do manage to escape the
neighborhood. There is no work and signs of
malnutrition are obvious in the children.

Since the February 2004 coup d'etat that ousted
democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, Cite Soley has been one of the
battlefields where a war against Haiti's poor
majority is being waged. Muliple killings of
civilians have been committed by UN forces
carrying out the will of the country's elite and
of the international community. Dieunord Edme, a
Cite Soley resident, shows us the place in the
market where his wife, Annette Moleron, was
gunned down by MINUSTAH (Mission Nations Unies
Stabilization en Haiti) soldiers on January 7th
during an operation that claimed the lives of
four women in a marketplace. He shows us bullet
holes in the metal roof over the market's stalls.


Victims of the deadly July 6th 2005 UN massacre,
an event documented by the Haiti Information
Project, which the UN denies ever happened, show
us their scars. One woman lifts her shirt to show
us where the MINUSTAH bullet entered her then
pregnant belly, ! and the mark of the cesarean
section performed to remove the baby that was
killed. As we drive out of the neighborhood we
pass a horribly bloated corpse by the side of the
road. A MINUSTAH tank is parked nearby, keeping
watch. Local residents say the man, who worked as
a porter, was killed five days previously but
every time someone went to try to remove the
body, MINUSTAH started firing. It is apparent
that they want to keep his body as a warning to
others.

This ugly violence that has swept Cite Soley in
the last week, and for many months prior, does
not come out of thin air. Someone above the UN is
calling the shots, and they wield lethal power.
Reginald Boulos, the president of the Haitian
Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and sweatshop
magnate Andy Apaid ? both members of the Canadian
and US-backed Group 184 ? called for a one-day
general business strike Monday. The stated goal
of this strike was to put pressure on MINUSTAH to
clamp down harder on crime! and kidnappings. As
an announcement heard on Radio Metropole stated
in a threatening tone, ?Don't leave your houses.
Let the police and the military do their work.
Anyone who leaves their house takes their life
into their own hands.?

However, more than anything, this strike has
served to highlight the extreme class divide in
Haiti, one that before the elections is becoming
increasingly more deadly. Indeed, many of the
more upscale businesses in the country did
observe the strike. Driving through
Port-au-Prince, we observed that the doors of
major businesses such as Texaco, Shell, Scotia
Bank, and upscale grocery stores remained shut.
However, for the majority of Haiti's population
who slave away to bring home a per-capita income
of $200 per year, the day continued as if normal.
Workers who toil in the informal economy ? street
vendors, runners, tap-tap (taxi) operators ?
lined the streets, unable to skip a day's work
just because! the island's wealthiest said so.

Our experience in Cite Soley today showed us the
other side of this business strike, and what the
MINUSTAH clamp down looked like to
Port-au-Prince's poor. Jean-Joseph Joel gives us
his analysis of the situation. Because of its
large population and tendency to vote
unanimously, Cite Soley has the power to sway an
election. Joel explains that MINUSTAH is under
intense pressure from the business elite to make
it possible for their presidential favourite,
Charles Henri Baker, to have a winning chance in
the elections. At the moment, the only candidate
able to walk down the streets of Cite Soley is
Rene Preval, the candidate supported by the mass
base of Lavalas. Preval's posters are the only
ones to be seen anywhere in Cite Soley ?
territory where the elite dare not tread.

For General Urano Teixeira da Matta Bacellar, the
Brazilian head of the United Nations military
mission in Haiti, the pressure may have been too
much! . He was found dead in his hotel room on
January 7th. He apparently committed suicide
after a tense meeting with Reginald Boulos. Joel
says that Cite Soley residents are nervous, as
the subject of that conversation was pressure on
MINUSTAH to crack down harder on Cite Soley
before the elections. The fact that Bacellar was
replaced by Gen. Eduardo Aldunate Herman, a
Chilean Pinochet-era figure and alleged human
rights abuser, does nothing to help Cite Soley
residents rest easier.

Jean-Joseph Joel's hope is that the international
community will change its position on Haiti and
side with the majority of Haitians rather than
supporting the elite and the UN mission here.
However, it doesn't look like change is in the
air. Pierre Pettigrew, Canada's Minister of
Foreign Affairs, and a man many Haitians know by
name, has recently announced that Canadian forces
will remain in Haiti, despite escalating calls
for their removal.

Sources told us that two mor! e people were
killed in the marketplace by MINUSTAH forces
shortly after we left it on Monday. Residents
speculated that these killings were retributions
for talking to the media, as we had been out for
the whole morning conducting interviews with
locals. The people of Cite Soley risked their
lives so their story could reach the public in
countries like Canada and the US, whose
governments continue to support MINUSTAH's
actions. It remains to be seen what effect their
sacrifice will have.

[Leslie Bagg and Aaron Lakoff are two independent
journalists and activists from Montreal. They
will be in Haiti for the month of January, filing
reports focused on the role of Canada in the
country. They can be reached at
montrealtohaiti@resist.ca]



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