27296: Holmstead (letters) Deibert vrs. Weisbrot (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: John Holmstead     <cyberkismet5@yahoo.com>

note: If I am not mistaken Deibert only lived in Haiti
two years.


HAITI THRU ROSE-COLORED GLASSES?

New York City

Having spent the better part of a decade living and
working as a journalist in Haiti, I would be remiss if
I did not respond to Mark Weisbrot's "Undermining
Haiti" [Dec. 12]. Articles like this, hatched in a
cocoon of ideology where rude reality never intrudes,
do little to help that long-suffering country.

While Weisbrot is content to blame the ouster of the
Aristide government on the suspension of international
aid to Haiti and a dark cabal of "mass murderers and
former death squad leaders" and to bemoan that
democracy is being destroyed "openly and in broad
daylight," the political landscape in Haiti is far
different from the one he paints, just as the popular
movement against the brutality and criminality that
came to typify the Aristide government in fact has
roots that go far beyond recent armed insurrection.

> From the summer of 2002, when the Aristide government
attempted to seize control of Haiti's state university
system and a cooperative pyramid investment scheme
that was closely linked to regime loyalists collapsed,
the cracks in the government's house began to widen,
long before members of the Cannibal Army street gang
(which served as a progovernment group until the
murder of its leader, Amiot Metayer, in September
2003) rose up to seize the northern city of Gonaives
in February 2004.

Nowhere does Weisbrot mention the myriad events that
eventually caused tens of thousands of Haitians to
take to the streets in protest at the end of 2003 and
beginning of 2004: the brutal March 2002 eviction of
peasant farmers from the Maribaroux Plain by
Aristide's security forces to make way for a
sweatshop; the Aristide government's thwarting of the
investigation into the murder of Haiti's most
prominent journalist, Jean Léopold Dominique; the
December 2003 attack on a group of university students
by gangs acting in visible collusion with police that
saw at least six shot, a dozen more stabbed and
beaten, and the university's rector pummeled with iron
bars until he could no longer walk.

This past summer's declaration by four of Haiti's most
politically progressive organizations--the Plateforme
Haïtienne de Plaidoyer pour un Développement
Alternatif (PAPDA), Groupe d'Appui aux Rapatriés et
Réfugiés (GARR), Solidarité des Femmes Haïtiennes
(SOFA) and Centre National et International de
Documentation et d'Information de la Femme en Haïti
(EnfoFanm)--calling for Aristide to be judged for his
crimes against the Haitian people is likewise nowhere
referred to.

In addition, despite the contention that the Fanmi
Lavalas Party "has not registered any candidates for
president," two distinct candidates have in fact
picked up the Lavalas banner. One, former World Bank
official and Aristide Cabinet minister Marc Bazin, has
the public support of former Cabinet minister Leslie
Voltaire, former Senate president Yvon Feuillé and
former Chamber of Deputies president Rudy Herivaux.
The other, former president René Préval, whose support
among Haiti's peasant majority has always been far
greater than anything Aristide was able to drum up, is
running under the banner of the former Lespwa (Hope)
coalition, and will be the contest's likely victor.

Haiti's problems did not begin and do not end with
Aristide, but whitewashing the past ten years of
Haiti's history does no one any favors.

Someday, maybe, my compatriots on the left will have
the courage and moral energy to examine Jean-Bertrand
Aristide's real legacy in Haiti, but neither The
Nation nor Weisbrot seems able to muster those virtues
with regard to Haiti at present. That saddens me; I
feel that all those who lost their lives there over
the years deserve better.

MICHAEL DEIBERT
author, Notes From the Last Testament: The Struggle
for Haiti

*WEISBROT REPLIES*

/Washington, DC/

Michael Deibert does not challenge that a
democratically elected
president of Haiti (Aristide) was twice (1991 and
2004) overthrown and replaced with a brutal, violent
dictatorship. Nor does he deny that the current
dictatorship keeps opposition leaders as political
prisoners and intends to hold an election to replace
the constitutional government with them in jail. Nor
does he dispute that the United States waged a
multiyear destabilization campaign supporting the 2004
coup, which included cutting off almost all
international (not just US) aid to a government that
could not function without these funds, as well as
providing massive funding for opposition groups.

What then is his point? If Deibert could show that
Aristide's government was a monstrosity, like Saddam
Hussein's, he could argue that the illegal and violent
overthrow was justified, as George W. Bush does
regarding Iraq. But Aristide's government compares
favorably with previous governments, other countries
of similar per-capita income levels (mostly in Africa)
and, most glaringly, with the current dictatorship
that Washington has installed. These are the relevant
comparisons, not some ideal invoked in order to
justify this terrible crime. With regard to the
current dictatorship, there is no comparison--an
uncounted number, probably in the thousands, have been
murdered since the coup. Most of the Fanmi Lavalas
leadership and activists are in jail, hiding or exile.
Nothing approaching this magnitude of state-sponsored
violence or repression existed under Aristide. The
current violence is primarily a result of trying to
deny Haitians the right to a free election, which
Lavalas (and even Aristide
today) could win overwhelmingly.

Deibert's excuses for this forced exclusion are weak.
Marc Bazin seems to have very little support within
the Lavalas Party. Préval does have support, and may
even win, but so might others who are not allowed to
run. And the repression of Lavalas will make it more
difficult for Préval to end up with a working majority
in the legislature if he wins. Haitians should have
the right to vote for whomever they want, as they did
before this occupation.

The anecdotal evidence Deibert offers is mostly
unsubstantiated or
misleading. There is little evidence that the Aristide
government
"actively thwarted" the investigation of the murder of
journalist Jean Léopold Dominique. As for the other
violence that he mentions, it has not been shown that
Aristide or anyone under his control was responsible
for it. He claims that thugs acted in December with
"visible collusion with police," but that is simply an
allegation.

Aristide made concerted efforts to reform the justice
system and to address the root causes of the country's
violence. He was trying to reform a judiciary
inherited from past dictatorships. But he was also
facing a massive, well-funded and ultimately
successful effort to rip apart all democratic
institutions so as to topple his government.

But even if all of Deibert's allegations were true,
which they clearly are not, it would never justify the
coup or the current dictatorship. After every US
intervention that used violence, economic sabotage and
destabilization to topple a democratically elected
government--e.g., Allende's Chile in 1973, the
Sandinistas in Nicaragua (democratically elected in
1984) or even the brief 2002 coup against Venezuela's
Hugo Chávez--there has been no shortage of academics
and journalists seeking to blame the victims for their
own demise. Since all governments commit mistakes and
abuses, this argument can always be constructed; it is
perhaps easier to do so for a very poor country where
the rule of law is
not well established. Deibert's efforts fall squarely
within that
dishonorable tradition.

MARK WEISBROT

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