disemboweled by weasels

Oil Find Hints at a Less Dependent Cuba



Haiti Debt by Yves Engler



Sent by Anthony Fenton, this report is from Yves Engler:





Many Canadians know that on February 29, 2004, Haiti's democratically

elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was sent into exile.

Few of us realize, however , that most Haitians believe Aristide was, in

fact, overthrown by a U.S., French and Canadian orchestrated coup d'etat.

Or, that, along with Aristide, most of the country's elected officials

were forced from office. Or that in subsequent political repression of

Aristide's party, Lavalas, thousands have lost their jobs, been jailed or

killed. Few Canadian understand that our country's good name has been

besmirched throughout the Caribbean by our government's involvement with

the U.S. and France in this project to once again tell poor Haitians what

is good for them.

I believe most Canadians would be appalled to learn that our country has

sided with Haiti's small elite against the majority of its population. In

order to really understand what is happening in Haiti I recently traveled

there, and to the neighboring Dominican Republic where hundred of

thousands of refuges have fled.

The situation is chaotic. Haiti is a country that assaults the senses and

the intellect.



***

Semereste Boliere is the elected mayor of Petit Goave, a town of fifteen

thousand in the south west of the country. Arrested in March by the new

authorities he escaped his captors and is hiding out in Port-au-Prince.

While we sip cola from '50s-style pop bottles sitting in a run-down labour

hall near the city centre he tells me that since his departure from

office, Petit Goave has mostly been in the hands of former military

officers who led the rebellion against the constitutional government. (The

army, notorious for murderous repression, was disbanded by Aristide in

1995.)

Boliere and Ronald St Jean, a human rights activist also with us, say that

throughout the country hundreds of elected mayors, council members and

senators were forced into hiding or exile. Those officials who have kept

their positions have made accommodations with the U.S.-armed paramilitary

thugs, many of whom are convicted murders and drug runners.

St Jean and Boliere are very disappointed with Canadian involvement in

undermining Haitian democracy.

***

Rea Dol is a 38-year-old mother of three who, before February's upheaval,

worked for the District of Petionville, which is an upscale (in Haitian

terms) suburb of Port au Prince. When the "interim" government installed,

Marie Renee, a new un-elected mayor she found herself out of work. Fired

without cause, with no compensation and owed back wages, she says she is

just one of thousands - more than 2000 at the state telecom company alone

- fired for their perceived political affiliation.

As we lunch on chicken and rice she tells me about unemployment lines in a

country with no social assistance and where most of the urban population

is looking for work. It appears that some of the recently unemployed,

especially the hundreds of police officers purged over the past ten

months, have taken to crime. Some have probably become "Chimeres"  - a

"gang" no one seems able to define - which the mainstream media claims is

pro-Aristide and behind Haiti's violence.

She says that the rising cost of food staples, rice and beans, is also

driving people to lawlessness. Imported by a handful of wealthy families,

who supported Aristide's removal, costs have increased by 40 percent since

the coup. Undoubtedly there has been a marked rise in malnutrition, but in

the chaos who is keeping track?

***

Incredibly, for some people food for survival isn't their top priority.

Not getting shot outranks eating.

I meet Jeremy, a twenty-year- old who formerly worked for the government

TV station. A couple weeks after the overthrow of the elected government

armed men came to his house.  He wasn't home, Jeremy tells me with fear

still in his eyes, so they killed his aunt.

He fled to the Dominican Republic for six months and still does not dare

return home.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Institute for Justice

Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), with respected Harvard professor Paul Farmer as

a board member, have documented hundreds of killings of poor Lavalas

supporters by paramilitary death squads and the police.

On October 26, Haitian police rounded up 12 young men in the Fort National

slum. They were forced to lie down and then were shot in the back of the

head.

Two days later under similar circumstances four more slum dwellers were

murdered in the Lavalas stronghold of Bel Air. Both of these incidents

were reported in the mainstream media, but most killings are not.

It is almost impossible to ascertain how many have died from political

violence and repression since February. An IJDH report covering the period

until the end of July documents  - with pictures of over 50 bodies  -

hundreds of murders, mostly of Lavalas supporters. Based on anecdotal

evidence it is reasonable to assume that hundreds more have been killed

since August.

During a pro-Lavalas demonstration on September 30th, the anniversary of

Aristide's first U.S.-backed removal from office, the national police

fired into the crowd. At least four unarmed demonstrators were killed

under the watchful eye of United Nations "peacekeepers". The next day

installed Prime Minister Gerard Latortue was quoted saying: "We shot them,

some of the them fell, others were injured, others ran away."

On December 1st, two weeks after the government fired more than a dozen

experienced prison guards, a deadly riot broke out at the heavily

fortified national penitentiary.  At first the government claimed seven

prisoners were killed. This was later increased to 10 but subsequent

investigations by Reuters, the Toronto Star and IJDH suggest that this

number is likely a gross underestimate. The actual figure could be as high

as 110, according to the IJDH.

I tried to interview prisoners to find out what happened, but since

December 1st the downtown Port-au-Prince national prison has been off

limits to family members and most outsiders. The government admits,

however, that of the 1100 held in the prison when the riot occurred, only

17 were convicted of any crimes. Hundreds of the detainees still

languishing in the

overcrowded cells are Lavalas activists, including the elected Prime

Minister Yvon Neptune and numerous senators.

***

Inside the women's Petionville prison I meet two prominent political

prisoners: internationally acclaimed folk music singer, So anne and the

former head of the Haitian Senate, Yvon Feulle. So anne is a feisty

70-year-old who brings the music of Haiti to the world and is also a

political organizer committed to improving the lives of ordinary people in

the poorest country of the Americas.

She says, incredibly cheerfully, that she has been behind bars without

charge since May 10th when U.S. marines barged into her house at 1 in the

morning. The marines killed two dogs and arrested everyone, including a

couple of children. Seven months after her arrest So ane is defiant. She

flexes her arm muscles and shouts out "they won't intimidate me."

***

Port-au-Prince stretches up a mountain from a Caribbean bay. The higher up

one climbs the wealthier the neighborhood. At the top is Petionville where

the latest SUVs are on display and Western banks are never far away.

Luxurious mansions line the peak looking out over the city of two million.

But even in Petionville poverty is rampant. At a sprawling market hundreds

of women "entrepreneurs" spend their days selling inventories of a few

dozen small candies and other products that would take up a few inches of

shelf space in a Canadian dollar store.

I visit SOPUDEP school, which educates hundreds of children whose parents

are unable to pay even a tiny fee. Demand for the school rises by the day.

But, I am told, in September Petionville's new (unelected) mayor attempted

to shut the school down. The new mayor associates the school with Lavalas

so she sent in machine-gun wielding police during school hours.

Ultimately the school remained open with the help of outside pressure, but

how long it can continue to operate under these trying circumstances is

open to question.

***

Fifty feet below the house where I am staying a shantytown begins. One

evening on my way back I lose my direction and find myself in a

neighborhood where it is unclear what is dwelling and what is burned out

car or pile of garbage.

It's scary but I am even more fearful of what growing up here must be

like, because children are jumping from rock to rock in the desolate

landscape. How to help?

Canada is not helping by siding with the rich against the poor, said So

anne, the folksinger.

If outside forces would just respect our democracy and give us aid we can

improve our country, said Boliere the former mayor.

The Aristide government cut the illiteracy rate from 80 per cent to 50 per

cent said my host. Poor people understood the government was on their side

- that's why Aristide is so popular to this day.

I just want to believe a better life is possible, said Jeremy. Can you

offer us that?

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