27622: Ives (news): Socialism & Liberation Magazine on Haiti elections (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: "K. M. Ives" <kives@toast.net>

Link to the article http://socialismandliberation.org/mag/index.php?aid=562

Ben Dupuy on UN-backed elections in Haiti
'International' cover for the imperialist occupation

On Feb. 29, 2004, former Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide was
kidnapped by the U.S. government and forced out of Haiti. Aristide and his
Lavalas Party were replaced with a hand-picked puppet regime led by longtime
U.S. ally Gerard Latortue, brought in from Florida.

Over the last two years, the Haitian national police and UN "peace-keeping"
troops have organized countless massacres in Haiti, using everything from
marauding death squads to full-scale military operations to repress political
dissent, especially in the country's poorest urban areas.

The widespread outrage and anti-occupation sentiment among the Haitian people
has coalesced into organized armed struggle. The Dessalinien Army of National
Liberation (ADLN) issued a communiqué in late December 2005 taking
responsibility for an ambush that killed two UN troops and wounded four
others. "We are neither former soldiers, an ultra-left group or thieves. The
ADLN is the armed wing of the suffering masses, of the landless peasants whom
the big landowners have robbed and of the masses of slum-dwellers whom the
MINUSTAH is murdering." MINUSTAH is the UN mission to Haiti.

As in Iraq, forces occupying Haiti have found it impossible to pacify
militarily the Haitian people. Consequently, and with great international
media attention, the UN mission to Haiti announced that general elections
would take place in early 2006.

The elections have barred anti-occupation candidates, most notably Father
Gérard Jean-Juste, a well-known activist priest who calls for the return of
President Aristide. Jean-Juste has been a political prisoner since July 21,
2005-held without any formal charges. He was recently diagnosed with leukemia.
On Dec. 10 in Miami, the Haitian community and its supporters organized a
march demanding the release of Jean-Juste. Aristide's former prime minister,
Yvon Neptune, also languishes in prison...

In the Dominican Republic, Haiti's neighbor on the same island, a wave of anti-
Haitian violence recently resulted in the lynching of a Haitian man, several
other deaths and the torching of 35 homes occupied by Haitian families. The
Dominican government responded by arresting 30 Haitians and issuing a string
of provocative anti-Haitian comments, calling Haiti "a failed state" and
a "danger to the world."

There have been militant demonstrations in Port-au-Prince against the
Dominican government's wave of repression. These demonstrations, however, have
been led by organizations that supported the 2004 overthrow of Aristide and,
in some cases, give critical support to the de facto Haitian government.

In January, Socialism and Liberation's Ben Becker interviewed Ben Dupuy,
secretary general of the National Popular Party of Haiti (PPN), about the
upcoming Haitian elections and unfolding events in that country.

What's your perspective on the Haitian elections and their repeated
postponement?

First of all, what is being called an election is really a "selection." It is
an attempt by the United States and the so-called international community to
justify the overthrow of the democratically elected government of President
Aristide. It is meant to give the idea that there is new legitimacy to the
occupation.

There are many cooks in the kitchen in this so-called election. On the one
hand, you have the Organization of American States involved-they are supposed
to organize the voting centers and distribute the so-called identification or
electoral cards. On the other hand, the United Nations holds control of the
finances-they are the ones providing the money for the elections. Already,
they have spent approximately $60 million. That bureaucracy creates all kinds
of problems. The Provisional Electoral Council is made up of people who have
been chosen in a very unorthodox way, and many of them are members of
political parties participating in the election. So, it's a real mess.

The analysis we can draw is that there seem to be two policies, or two
currents, within the U.S. establishment: one that encourages Rene Preval,
president of Haiti from 1996 to 2001, to run, and another that prefers to
completely fabricate the result of the election.

This has created some friction between the currents. Furthermore, you have the
local bourgeoisie allied with the former Duvalierists, or Tonton Macoutes, who
are trying to have MINUTSAH, especially its armed segment, commit massacres in
the shantytowns, especially in Cite Soleil.

The bourgeoisie and the Duvalierist-Macoute forces would like to create a
Fallujah-type of situation-a "final solution." But it seems some current
within the United States and United Nations would rather have Preval run in
order for the electoral process to appear to be legitimate. These contending
forces have created a huge conflict, which I think has resulted in the
assassination of the Brazilian general in charge of MINUTSAH. The mainstream
media are claiming it's a suicide, but all indications point to the
elimination of this man, who at some point seems to have refused orders to
massacre people in the shantytowns.

How have the Haitian people resisted the occupation?

There have been different forms of resistance. At the beginning, the partisans
of Lavalas and President Aristide tried to organize demonstrations, especially
in Port-Au-Prince. But because the national police, assisted by MINUTSAH,
repressed the demonstrations, people have changed their tactics. One sector of
Lavalas has supported Preval in the hope that he would eventually agree to
have President Aristide come back to Haiti. But in the meantime, there have
been many confrontations in areas like Bel Air and Cite Soleil.

In response, the police have organized death squads. In one instance, a
machete-wielding death squad entered a stadium where people were playing
soccer. They ordered everyone to lie down and the police let them kill dozens
of people. It was later revealed that some higher-ups in the police department
had organized this massacre.

On July 6, 2005, MINUTSAH entered the Cite Soleil area with helicopters and
tanks, resulting in what they called "collateral damage." In fact, many women
and children were massacred. In the International Tribunal on Haiti's first
and second session, all kinds of evidence-audiovisual material, witnesses and
so on-was provided that exposed the human rights violations committed by the
national police and UN forces.

What's behind the United Nation's "Peace Building Commission" and its
designation of Haiti as a "failed state?"

The UN Security Council recently approved the "Peace Building Commission" as a
vehicle for the United States and European powers to have the United Nations
take the lead in reconstructing countries they categorize as "failed states."
To a large extent, the big powers in the Security Council would like to use
the United Nations as a cover or a fig leaf for their own intervention.

There is an index called the "Failed States Index," which has been published
by the pro-imperialist foundations "The Fund for Peace" and the "Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace" in the magazine Foreign Policy. On that
index, you find countries like the Congo, the Ivory Coast, the Dominican
Republic, Haiti and Venezuela, among others. It is clearly a justification for
the big powers to get more and more involved in foreign countries.

We must remember that part of the foreign policy of the United States and also
of former colonial powers in Europe is to fabricate conflict in Third World
countries. They engineer covert actions, in which the CIA engages in all sorts
of wheeling and dealing behind closed doors. Later, after they have created
the conflict, they use this commission-what they call the "Peace Building
Commission"-to bring an end to the conflict. The commission serves to
legitimize their intervention.

Why is the government of the Dominican Republic taking actions against
Haitians?

In the former Yugoslavia, one of the things we witnessed was the United States
putting into practice the concept of "divide and conquer." They created
conflict between Serbs and Croats. They called it "ethnic cleansing," but
those were maneuvers to justify intervention of the so-called international
community. They used NATO to divide up all of the former Yugoslavia.

Today, xenophobia has been engineered inside the Dominican Republican against
Haitian immigrants. They are trying to promote this kind of chauvinism as a
way to create conflict between the two nations. We know that the present
government in the Dominican Republic is totally subservient to U.S. foreign
policy, particularly the Dominican army. There is more and more talk of
establishing military bases on the border between the two countries. Both
Haiti and the Dominican Republic are on the Failed States Index, so I think
eventually the United Nations and the United States hope to create a situation
to justify their presence on the island.

What can U.S. activists and progressives do to help end the occupation of
Haiti?

The mainstream media have tried to play down the occupation of Haiti, and
the "regime change" committed there, instead concentrating on Iraq. It is
therefore up to the progressive press to draw the connections between the
situation in Haiti and the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On Sept. 24, 2005, hundreds of thousands of people were made aware of the
similarities between those occupations at anti-war demonstrations across the
United States. That was an important step. The anti-war mobilizations provide
us with an opportunity to bring to light other connected and important issues
that are often left out, like Palestine and Haiti.

Articles may be reprinted with credit to Socialism and Liberation magazine.

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