29487: Nat: News article by K Pina (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Rob 6969 <liberalproject@hotmail.com>

U.N.-Liberating Haiti Editorial content | Magazine

by mute on Friday, 1 September, 2006 - 14:50

ByKevin Pina

Since the deposition of Haiti's elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 
February 2004 the global media, 'civil society' and murderous UN 'peacekeepers' 
have been working hard to ignore popular demands for his reinstatement, reports 
Kevin Pina
For most, Haiti's second name is 'the poorest country in the Western 
Hemisphere', a well-worn rhetorical device that brings us no closer to 
understanding the socio-political landscape than reminding ourselves that the 
United States is the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth. Yet there 
they are, the two extremes of wealth and poverty in the Western Hemisphere 
inexorably caught in a deadly dance. On one side there is Washington's policy 
of protecting Haitian elites through a myriad of NGOs hell bent on 'enhancing 
democracy', and, on the other, close to a million economically dispossessed 
people able to paralyse the capital at the drop of a hat. It is this dynamic 
that continues to define the political landscape and the ongoing battle between 
US foreign policy objectives and the majority of the Haitian people.

That was exactly the dynamic in play when hundreds of thousands of supporters 
of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide took to the streets to beat back the 
attempt by the UN/US-backed Provisional Election Council to steal recent 
presidential elections from René Préval through fraud. Their protests also 
combined with the results of the elections to expose the big lie that was used 
as the pretext and justification for Aristide's removal from office - a key 
piece of misinformation that continues to confuse those watching events unfold 
in Haiti today.


Image: Cité Soleil, Anne E. Shroeder, http://www.language-works.com/
The overarching thrust of the lie was that Aristide was yet another Haitian 
dictator in democrat's clothing who had fallen prey to his own thirst for 
power. His forced departure, and the two years of severe repression that 
followed, was portrayed as a necessary evil to liberate Haiti from his 
tyrannical rule. Yet the results of the presidential elections showed that the 
political parties representing the movement to oust Aristide could not garner a 
combined tally of more than 30 percent of the vote cast in the elections. Most 
of these parties polled in single digit numbers exposing what was portrayed as 
a popular uprising against Aristide for the paper tiger and media creation it 
actually was. The venerable journalists of the corporate media feed 
unsuspecting consumers a false image of the strength and numbers of 
demonstrations against Aristide while virtually ignoring much larger 
demonstrations like the one on 7 February, 2004. While stories and photos of 
demonstrations led by sweatshop owner Andre Apaid and his Group 184 chewed up 
the bandwidth, hundreds of thousands demonstrating for Aristide and his Famni 
Lavalas political party went largely unreported and were treated with 
indifference by the press.

This also helps to explain the human rights situation in Haiti following 29 
February, 2004. If the premise behind the ousting of Aristide was that he had 
lost the support of the Haitian people, what did it mean when hundreds of 
thousands continued to take to the streets in a series of endless marches and 
protests demanding his return? Why were the Haitian police compelled to 
brutally suppress the demonstrations by firing on unarmed demonstrators as the 
UN and the international community stood by ready to pounce at the slightest 
sign of armed resistance to the killings? The answer to those who followed the 
situation on the ground was simple. Every large demonstration for Aristide's 
return ran contrary to the to the very justification for his ousting. The 
US-installed regime of Gerard Latortue, that assumed power with the blessing of 
the international community following Aristide's deposition, had no choice but 
to contain this truth through demonising and brutalising the growing protests. 
While the peoples of the US, Latin America and Europe were led to believe that 
the real problem in Haiti was dark and nefarious gangs of killers tied to 
Aristide, hundreds of thousands of Haitians were risking their lives in almost 
daily protests where Haitian police with high-powered telescopic rifles would 
pick them off indiscriminately with a single bullet to the head.

It is no secret that the reason behind Préval's victory was that the base of 
Aristide's Lavalas party voted for him in overwhelming numbers with three 
objectives in mind. First and foremost was that they wanted to put an end to 
the previous two years of human rights hell in Haiti. Summary executions, armed 
raids and arbitrary arrests took a huge toll on people living in the poorest 
neighbourhoods of the capital as they continued to resist the US-installed 
government. Battle fatigue was beginning to set in as these neighbourhoods were 
forced to continue to fight on two fronts. They managed to fight and resist the 
brutal Haitian police and the subsequent UN efforts to pacify them, but the 
time had come to adopt a new strategy. Préval's entering the race, after the 
corrupt Provisional Electoral Council blocked the candidacy of the Lavalas 
favorite Catholic priest Gerard Jean-Juste, provided another avenue around the 
US and its now famous chorus a.k.a. the international community. They also 
calculated that the quickest way to insure Aristide's return and secure the 
release of Lavalas political prisoners was to elect Préval president. That is 
why, when the fraud in the elections became apparent, they were willing to give 
the international community an ultimatum: either let Préval win the first round 
of balloting as initially projected by the polls or risk the country breaking 
out into civil war with the Haitian police and the UN battling the majority of 
the population in the streets.



Image: Soldiers distributing food in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 2006. UN, 
http://www.un.org
The US and their allies in the Haitian elite and the international community 
blinked. In an obscure agreement dubbed the 'Belgium option', the international 
community brokered an arrangement with the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) 
where thousands of blank ballots were distributed evenly among the candidates 
giving Préval the votes he needed to rise above the 50 percent threshold to 
avoid a runoff. The arrangement also helped to mask the failure of the 
international community to sponsor clean and fair elections in Haiti after 
investing an estimated 76 million dollars as well as providing a UN army for 
security and logistical support to the process.

Central to the current struggle between the wealthiest nation on earth and the 
poorest nation in the western hemisphere is this very question of the return of 
Aristide. By now it is public knowledge that the US and its closest partners in 
Haiti, France and Canada, have made it clear that Aristide is not welcome back. 
The Haitian people thwarted the plans of the CEP to defeat Préval through 
manipulation and fraud, yet the international community still managed to blame 
the victim and turn it to their advantage. Then acting US Chargé d'Affaires, 
Timothy Carney, reminded the new president that a veritable Sword of Damocles 
hangs over his head. In an Associated Press article written by Stevenson Jacobs 
on 19 February, 2006 - titled 'American: Haiti Leader Must Perform' - Carney 
stated, 'If he [Préval] doesn't perform, yes it [the electoral settlement] 
could weaken him.' Carney then added the caveat, 'If he does perform, nobody 
will remember it.' Carney had already made it clear that part of the expected 
performance from Préval included not allowing Aristide to return to Haiti. In a 
statement the day after the elections Carney said, 'Aristide is on his way to 
becoming as irrelevant to Haiti as Jean-Claude [Duvalier], and with no future. 
Aristide is now demonstrated to be a man of the past.' They have also made it 
clear to Préval that if he even considers allowing Aristide to return he can 
expect the sharp end of a lance.

In spite of threats by the US and its allies, a demonstration estimated at well 
over 50,000 took place this last Saturday in Port-au-Prince demanding once 
again that Aristide be returned to Haiti. One of the main themes of the 
demonstration was that Préval had been elected for the express purpose of 
returning Aristide and releasing political prisoners still held in Haitian 
jails today. Despite protesters forcing their way past armed policemen to march 
in front of Haiti's National Palace, there was no reported violence and it is 
expected that this movement will continue to grow in volume and frequency over 
the next few weeks and months. If the recent past is any indicator, it is only 
a matter of time before the negative propaganda machine, fed by certain foreign 
embassies and the local elite, goes into hyper-drive once again to demonise and 
marginalise the protesters. Then you can expect violence and it will, as 
always, be blamed on the supporters of Lavalas and Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Kevin Pina <kevinpina AT yahoo.com> is a freelance reporter

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