30481: Laborsoul (article) Speakers show two faces of Canada and Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

> From laborsoul@aol.com



Speakers show two faces of Canada and Haiti


Talk will paint a picture of Canada's role abroad.























By Chris Arsenault, canadaeast



Published Thursday May 24th, 2007






Last week, amid much pomp and circumstance, Haitian born Governor
General Michaëlle Jean graced the province with her presence.


This week Euvonie Georges-Auguste, a Haitian women's rights activist and 
literacy co-ordinator, will speak in Fredericton.


In 1968, Jean immigrated to Canada from Haiti, as her family fled the brutal 
dictatorship of 'Papa Doc' Duvalier.


In 2004, Georges-Auguste had to flee Haiti after Canada and other
western countries helped overthrow the democratically elected
government of Jean Bertrand-Aristide. "We are opposed to the coup that
happened in 2004," said Cathy Holtmann, a STU professor and member of
Development and Peace, a non-governmental organization co-co-ordinating
Georges-Auguste's New Brunswick speaking engagement.


"We think it's important that New Brunswickers hear about the coup directly 
from people in Haiti," said Holtmann.


On February 29, 2004 Canadian troops guarded the airport in Port-au
Prince, Haiti's capital, as American soldiers forced then Haitian
president Jean Bertrand-Aristide onto a plane bound for the Central
African Republic never to return.


"The removal of [Haitian] President Aristide," wrote Jamaican Prime
Minister P.J. Patterson, set "a dangerous precedent for
democratically-elected governments anywhere and everywhere." Aristide,
a Catholic priest before entering and then being forced out of
politics, championed the rights of the poor and angered elites in Haiti
and beyond.


It's hardly surprising that Jean, given her position, has been silent
in regards to Canada helping oust Haiti's elected government; the
office of Governor General is by definition ceremonial, putting form
over function and style over substance.


Georges-Auguste has been vocal, her position is anything but ceremonial
and she will be in New Brunswick representing Haiti's poor majority,
unlike Jean who represents the British Crown in Canada.


Georges-Augustes returned to Haiti from exile in 2006, after some
degree of constitutional government was restored with the election of
Rene Preval.


George-Auguste dug in, working as a community organizer teaching literacy to 
poor women.


After the coup, Canada, the United States and France handpicked a
care-taker government, led by Floria resident Gerard Latortue, to
administer Haiti.


Buttressed by some 8,000 foreign soldiers and lacking the vaguest shred
of democratic legitimacy, Latortue and other anti-Aristide politicians
became increasingly unpopular.


Between February 2004 and December 2005, under Latortue's tenure, 8,000
persons were murdered and approximately 35,000 sexually assaulted in
the greater Port-au-Prince area, according to a 2006 study published in
The Lancet, a prestigious British academic journal.


In February 2006 presidential elections, Haitians rejected western
backed candidates and elected Rene Preval, an agronomist with close
ties to now exiled Aristide. Western governments tried reject the
results, but massive protests forced United Nations officials to allow
Preval to take office.


Haiti is the poorest country in the hemisphere, and some might wonder
what Canada would have to gain by ousting the government of a tiny
nation sitting on half of a Caribbean island with no resources.


"Aristide represented the threat of a good example," says Anthony
Fenton, co-author of the book Canada in Haiti. "Even though Aristide
did succumb to some of the pressures of the IMF [International Monetary
Fund] and the World Bank, he resisted privatization in many sectors and
he put the interests of the poor ahead of the Haitian ruling elite."
Before being named Governor General by former Prime Minister Paul
Martin, Jean was an accomplished journalist, hosting the CBC's
documentary show The Passionate Eye and winning the Amnesty
International Journalism Award.


Telegenic, intelligent, empathetic and hip, Jean is the perfect person
to hold the position of Governor General: she has effectively
popularized a useless office.


In the 1960s and '70s, it would have been strange to find a hipster
human rights journalist representing the British Queen in Canada. Back
then, there was a movement to bring the Constitution back to Canada and
- believe it or not - have an elected head of state rather than an
appointed one.


But today, the old and traditional has a nouveau post-modern cache and
human rights activists don't shun royal grandeur, or even human rights
abuses.


"The stories of Michaëlle Jean and Euvonie Georges-Auguste represent
the myths and the reality of Canadian policy in Haiti," said Stu
Neatby, a journalist who reported from Haiti in 2006 and will be
introducing Georges-Auguste in Fredericton.


"While Jean, whose family sought refuge in Canada during the years of
the Duvalier dictatorship, has been portrayed as living evidence of
Canada's humanitarian benevolence, Euvonie's story paints a different
picture of Canada's role abroad." Euvonie Georges-Auguste will speak in
Fredericton at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, May 30 at Renaissance College.























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