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30333: Deibert (comment) A few thoughts on Haiti (fwd)






From michaeldeibert@gmail.com :

I find the whole Batay Ouvriye funding controversy interesting I think discussing what groups are receiving money from which sources is a legitimate line of questioning to take, but I have also always found it odd that, as one of Haiti's most militant and effective labor unions, Batay Ouvriye would be vilified (without any apparent irony) for receiving money from the AFL-CIO's American Center for International Labor Solidarity by relatively well-off foreigners living in the safety of North America. Batay Ouvriye's years of steady and courageous organizing against exploitative labor practices in Haiti (at great, sometimes fatal, physical risk to its members), meanwhile, go unlauded. Should Rene Preval's government likewise be attacked because it accepts aid from the United States? From Venezuela?
From Cuba? Should North American activists lecture Preval - as they survey
the desperation of Haiti - that he is "on the payroll?" I think Haiti needs help from anywhere it can get it, at this point. The suffering is simply too great for some sort of ideological litmus test.

The whole discussion reminds one that Haiti is hardly unique in the issues that it raises: The use of poor countries as political footballs by larger ones, the corrupting influence of power and money on politicians, the threat posed to fragile nascent democracies by the drug trade (and by the unacknowledged role of drug-consuming countries such as the United States), and the failure of various right-and-left wing political currents in so-called "developed" nations in North America and Europe to see beyond their own narrow, political goals to honestly and altruistically address the needs the developing world in a clear-headed, post-ideological way. To borrow a recent turn of phrase from Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (currently embroiled in his own controversies), this whole debate appears to be riddled with hypocrisy and cynicism.

Like the attacks on Batay Ouvriye, look at the steady assault against the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH, previously known as NCHR-Haiti). RNDDH is attacked for advocating for justice for the victims of the killings in Saint Marc (who apparently don't deserve justice on the grounds that there was more than one group fighting in the town during February 2004), and for receiving C$100,000 (US$85,382) from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in 2004. Never referred to is RNDDH's strenuous May 2004 protests against the arbitrary and illegal arrest of the former Fanmi Lavalas Mayor of Delmas, Dr. Jean Maxon Guerrier, or its statement that the August 2004 not-guilty verdict in the Louis-Jodel Chamblain case was "a mockery of a trial," or its protests against the warrantless October 2004 arrests of then-Lavalas leaders Yvon Feuille, Gerald Gilles, and Rudy Hériveaux.

But turn the microscope another way, to face the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), for example, and this chorus of criticism of links and sub-links suddenly falls mute. My old acquaintance Brian Concannon ably leads the IJDH as its public face, but how far can the organization's links from Haiti's former government be when, in the IJDH's own annual report, this organization ostensibly headquartered in Oregon, where Mr. Concannon resides, directs donations to be sent to P.O. Box 806, Key Biscayne, Florida, 33149, where Jean-Bertrand Aristide's personal attorney (so identified in a March 2004 press release from the office of U.S. Representative Maxine Waters) Ira Kurzban resides? In the IJDH's own annual report, Kurzban is listed as one of its main donors, as well as "one of the founders" and "a member of the Board of Directors" in a March 2005 letter to Inter-American Commission on Human Rights head Santiago A. Canton.

If the IJDH or its affiliated organization, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), have ever criticized Mr. Aristide or the Fanmi Lavalas party for any violence they have been responsible for, or called for justice on behalf of the many victims among the regime's opponents in any statement, I have never read it, and indeed, why should they? According to the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings on record with the U.S. Department of Justice, between 2001 and 2004, Mr. Kurzban's law firm - Kurzban, Kurzban, Weinger & Tetzel - received some $4,648,964 from the Aristide government on behalf of its lobbying efforts alone, chunks of which were then distributed to various other individuals and outfits in the United States, including Mr. Concannon, University of Miami Law School Center for the Study of Human Rights director Irwin Stotzky (who received almost $9,000 from the firm in 3 separate payments between 2001 and 2002 and was instrumental in preparing that body's 2004 human rights report on Haiti) and even Mildred Aristide's brother, Erickson Trouillot. This is all a matter of public record easily checkable by anyone who wants to do so, as is the $989,323 that the public relations firm of former U.S. congressmen and head of the Congressional Black Caucus (and current Oakland mayor) Ron Dellums received between 2001-2004. Mr. Kurrzban has said in the past that this money was almost exclusively to help prosecute human rights abuses that occurred during Haiti's 1991-1994 military regime and not for lobbying activities, but, if one goes by the statements on the law firm's own filings with the Department of Justice (where it lists its activities as "wrote an Op-Ed that was published in the Miami Herald" and "appeared on a local radio show," for example) this is simply not the case.

All of this, of course, is perfectly legal, but would a lawyer ever come out and publicly condemn his most lucrative client for that client's involvement in wrong-doing or, what's more, allow his employees to do so? Sorry, but looking at our own examples in corporate America, I think not. I also think that, when examining the public statements of these groups over the years, though none of them exactly reflect my own analysis of Haiti, it is relatively easy to see which of them - Batay Ouvriye, RNDDH, IJDH, the University of Miami Law School - have taken the most strident and unyieldingly partisan stands.

Alas, much like other tumultuous countries that pop up on the world radar from time to time, Haiti is also a place, it seems, to paraphrase George Packer's assessment of Iraq, where it is always possible to prove that you've been right all along. Virtually anyone can suddenly become an expert or an activist on the subject without first educating themselves on some of the basic facts about the country, where journalists, academics or filmmakers, after one or two trips there and never having bothered to learn the language or understand the culture, can then produce books or films claiming to be the final word on the political and social development of an entire nation, rather ironic given Haiti's own rich intellectual tradition of analysis, oral and written, which they could learn a lot from if they took the time.

Haiti, in my experience, is anything but black-and-white, and so, while such extremely polarized views may play well in front of crowds in North America, they do precious little to shed light on or ameliorate the situation of Haiti's long-suffering people who, it must be said, have been failed equally by the narrow self-interest and opportunism of both the international community and their own political leaders.

Michael Deibert
www.michaeldeibert.com
www.michaeldeibert.blogspot.com

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