Haiti

One [low estimate of the population of pre-Columbus Hispaniola is] 100,000. Several other modern scholars seem to lean more forcefully in the area of 300,000 to 400,000. Whatever the number, what happened to them is extremely tragic. They were not immune to European diseases, especially smallpox, and the Spanish worked them unmercifully in the mines and fields. By 1507 the Spanish were settled and able to do a more reliable job of counting the Arawak/Tainos. It is generally agreed that by 1507 their numbers had shrunk to 60,000. By 1531 the number was down to 600. Today there are no easily discerned traces of the Arawak/Taino at all except for some of the archaeological remains that have been found. Not only on Hispaniola, but also across the Windward Passage in Cuba, complete genocide was practiced on these natives.

Cruelty Never Seen Before — Conquering Paradise

When Cristobal Colon (Columbus) first arrived on Hispaniola — today’s Haiti and Dominican Republic — in October 1492, he found something close to an earthly paradise. Of the Taino people he encountered, he said:

They are the best people in the world and above all the gentlest... All the people show the most singular loving behaviour and they speak pleasantly... They love their neighbours as themselves, and they have the sweetest talk in the world, and are gentle and always laughing. (Quoted, Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise, Papermac, 1992, pp.99-100)

Colon did not allow sentiment to stand in his way for long. Formal instructions for the second voyage to Hispaniola in May 1493 were significant, historian Kirkpatrick Sale writes, in that they constituted the first statement of the colonial strategies and policies of empire that were eventually to carry Europe to every cranny of the earth. Colon’s plans were almost entirely concerned with establishing the means of exploitation and trade, providing no suggestion of any other purpose for settlement or any other function of government. (Ibid, p.127)

The rights of the Taino people were not an issue — the concern was simply to steal their gold.

Las Casas, a Spanish eyewitness, described how the invaders were motivated by insatiable greed and ambition, attacking the Tainos like ravening wild beasts... killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before. (Quoted Noam Chomsky, Year 501, Verso, 1993, p.198)

The idea seems to have been to utterly crush the spirit of the Tainos. Las Casas comments:

As they saw themselves each day perishing by the cruel and inhuman treatment of the Spaniards, crushed to the earth by the horses, cut in pieces by swords, eaten and torn by dogs, many buried alive and suffering all kinds of exquisite tortures...[they] decided to abandon themselves to their unhappy fate with no further struggles, placing themselves in the hands of their enemies that they might do with them as they liked. (Ibid, pp.198-9)

Near-identical horrors are documented under the subsequent French rulers of Haiti, who shipped in hundreds of thousands of African slaves to work their plantations. From that time to this, the logic of Western exploitation of the Third World has remained fundamentally the same: dreams of a better life must be crushed by violence and grinding poverty so extreme that local people will accept any work at any rate, and abandon all notions of improving their lot.

This is why death squads, tyrants and torturers are such a standard feature of the Third World — hope is always being born and is always being killed by local thugs serving Western elites. This is also why weapons consistently flow from the rich West to the world’s worst human rights abusers. In the 1980s, the leading academic scholar on human rights in Latin America, Lars Schoultz, found that US aid, including military aid, has tended to flow disproportionately to Latin American governments which torture their citizens... to the hemisphere’s relatively egregious violators of fundamental human rights. (Schoultz, Comparative Politics, January 1981)

Terror was required, Schoultz added, to destroy permanently a perceived threat to the existing structure of socioeconomic privilege by eliminating the political participation of the numerical majority. (Schoultz, Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America, Princeton, 1981)

From the outset Haiti inherited the wrath of the colonial powers, which knew what a disastrous example a Haitian success story would be. In the words of Napoleon Bonaparte: The freedom of the negroes, if recognized in St Domingue [as Haiti was then known] and legalized by France, would at all times be a rallying point for freedom-seekers of the New World. He sent 22,000 soldiers (the largest force to have crossed the Atlantic at the time) to recapture the Pearl of the Antilles.

France, backed by the US, later ordered Haiti to pay 150m francs in gold as reparations to compensate former plantation and slave owners as well as for the costs of the war in return for international recognition. At today’s prices that would amount to £10bn [about $17 to $18bn]. By the end of the 19th century, 80% of Haiti’s national budget was going to pay off the loan and its interest, and the country was locked into the role of a debtor nation — where it remains today.

Any prospect of planting a stable political culture foundered on the barren soil of economic impoverishment, military siege and international isolation (for the first 58 years the US refused to even recognize Haiti’s existence). In 1915, fearing that internal strife would compromise its interests, the US invaded, and remained until 1934.

Between 1849 and 1913, the US Navy entered Haitian waters 24 times to protect American lives and property. The US invasion of 1915 brought back slavery to Haiti in all but name and imposed a US-designed constitution giving US corporations free rein. After ruling for 19 years the US withdrew leaving its wealth in the safe hands of the murderous National Guard it had created. In November 1935, Major General Smedley D. Butler explained the logic of intervention:

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active service as a member of our country’s most agile military force — the Marine Corps... And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.

Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City boys to collect revenues in. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. (Sidney Lens, The Forging of the American Empire, Pluto Press, 2003, pp. 270-271)

Aristide came to power preaching views completely at odds with the country’s economic leaders and the political leaders of neighboring powers such as the United States. For example, Aristide once wrote,

Haitian workers earn the lowest wages in the hemisphere. We are encouraged to exploit and maintain this so-called advantage to attract foreign companies to come. Because our economy is weak, we depend on loans and aid from foreign countries to support our national budget. This makes us extremely vulnerable to pressure from international institutions that control the money.

Nevertheless, despite Aristide’s rhetoric, the poor masses propelled him into power, giving him 67 percent of the vote. Aristide’s populism quickly alienated the country’s economic leaders, in addition to annoying influential members of the military establishment.

The withholding of international assistance from the Government of Haiti is one of the reasons more significant progress hasn’t been made towards democratic institution building. The justice system, for example, is a historically corrupt institution. Human rights attorney Mario Joseph explains,

Generally there are a lot of problems dealing with human rights in Haiti. There is a double standard of justice where it is available for some and not others. The system itself works against certain people getting justice...if you look at the situation of justice in Haiti you will see it is not for the poor. If you visit the prisons in Haiti they are filled with the poor and the rich are not there. The rich function beyond the system because they can get big lawyers and possibly bribe their way out of the situation (Personal interview, 1/12/03)

This is not to say that with international assistance democratic institution building would be happening quickly and with ease. In reality, democratic institution building is a longterm process, particularly in a country without a democratic tradition. The Haitian people have the tremendous challenge of decentralizing their government and for the very first time in their history, building a governmental structure that serves the needs of the population. This is only the second uninterrupted democratic government in Haiti. It has problems and it struggles with corruption.

What is the role of the US in Haiti?

• The US was the main supporter of the 30-year Duvalier dictatorship that ruled Haiti through a reign of terror. In 1986, when Haiti’s pro-democracy movement finally succeeded in overthrowing the hated dictator, he was ferried to safety by the Reagan Administration.
• Only with the rise of Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, did US support turn away from the Haitian leadership and shift to those who orchestrated the 1991 coup d’etat.
• In 1994, public pressure and fear of an influx of Haitian boat people led the Clinton Administration to reverse the coup d’etat and restore Aristide to power.
• ...In 1995, when Republicans took control of Congress, they pushed to cancel US aid to Haiti and to finance the opposition by reallocating federal funds to Haitian non-governmental organizations opposed to Aristide.
• In 2000, the Republicans exploited Haiti’s electoral controversy as an opportunity to discredit Aristide. The Bush Administration pressured the Inter-American Development Bank to cancel more than $650 million in development assistance and approved loans to Haiti — money that was slated to pay for safe drinking water, literacy programs and health services.
• The seven contested senators [in the 2000 election] are long gone, but the embargo remains in place, denying critical services to the poorest people in the hemisphere.

What is Aristide’s record?

• The US allowed Aristide to be reinstated on the condition that he implement a neoliberal economic agenda.
• Aristide complied with some US demands, including a reduction of tariffs on US-grown rice that bankrupted thousands of Haitian farmers and maintenance of a below-subsistence-level minimum wage.
• But Aristide resisted privatizing state-owned resources, because of protests from his political base and because he was reluctant to relinquish control over these sources of wealth.
• Aristide also doubled the minimum wage and — despite the US embargo — prioritized education and healthcare: he built schools and renovated public hospitals; established new HIV-testing centers and doctor-training programs; and introduced a program to subsidize schoolbooks and uniforms and expand school lunch and bussing services.
• Aristide has tried to walk a line between US demands for neoliberal reforms and his own commitment to a progressive economic agenda. As a result, he has lost favor with parts of his own political base and Haitian and US elites.
• Aristide has also been criticized for turning a blind eye to human rights abuses committed by his supporters and by advocates of good governance for rewarding loyalists with government posts regardless of their qualifications. (Aristide’s patronage system appears to be even more extreme than the one that has filled the Bush Administration with former CEOs and corporate lobbyists.)

Since 2001, human rights activists and humanitarian workers in Haiti have documented numerous cases of opposition vigilantes killing government officials and bystanders in attacks on the state power station, health clinics, police stations and government vehicles. The US government did not condemn any of these killings.

In January 2004, the opposition escalated its protests. At some demonstrations, government supporters, who represent Haiti’s poorest sectors, attacked opposition activists. Only then did US Secretary of State Powell issue a one-sided condemnation of militant Aristide supporters.

litany of abuses the NCHR (National Coalition for Haitian Rights) says it documented against officials of the Aristide government and the Lavalas movement. They rightly protested cases like that of the journalist Jean Dominique and a dozen other high profile attacks on opposition activists and as many as three opposition journalists. Yet during the two years leading up to this latest coup, they adamantly refused to investigate now-verified allegations of murders, arson and bombings against the government and Lavalas by former military and FRAPH. They scoffed at the alleged coup attempt at the National Palace in December of 2001, though Jodel Chamblain now boasts that was an initial coup attempt.

Although they were the only human rights group in the country adequately funded and having trained monitors throughout Haiti, the NCHR became completely partisan: anti-Lavalas, anti-Aristide. This is simply not proper for a group calling itself a Haitian Rights organization. During the final month before the coup, they abandoned any pretext of impartiality, joining calls for the ouster of Aristide, without reference to the means. After Feb. 29, they continue to site abuses by chimere, whom they call simply Aristide gangs, without documenting the connections. Though they told our group they had heard about violence against unarmed Lavalas, including the possible complicity of U.S. marines in the Bel Air incident, the NCHR said they lacked access to the pro-Lavalas shanty-towns. Of course they lacked access: they lacked any shred of credibility as a human rights monitor.

International human rights organizations, especially Human Rights Watch and Journalists Without Borders, and to a lesser extent Amnesty International, have taken the NCHR reports uncritically and failed to develop other impartial human rights contacts in Haiti. Progressive funders like Grassroots International and NGOs in Canada, the US and Europe also listened uncritically to their partners and funded groups in Haiti like PAPDA, SOFA, Batay Ouvriye and MPP.

The primary lesson to be learned for funders and NGOS, and for all solidarity activists, is that solidarity must first of all be with the people of Haiti — by the assertion of their will by voting, as Haitians did for Aristide in 2000 (the OAS and international NGOs certified that at the time). Beyond that, international funding and solidarity groups (and here the criticism is equally valid for those who were wholly supportive of Lavalas without critique) must not put on blinders when they visit Haiti. They must listen critically to all sides. They must watch for concrete evidence of the mass base of the organizations they fund — and evidence that the rank and file feel as the leaders do.

For the past few years, paramilitaries had been launching small scale raids into various Haitian towns [including] a failed attempt to forcefully remove Aristide from power. In November of 2002, a faction of former military officers publicly announced their goal of eliminating Aristide, and continued to launch small guerrilla attacks on different Haitian cities. Moving in small groups, these paramilitaries attacked and killed police, attempted to take over small towns, and aimed to increase their fighting force.

Despite their insistence, these exiled military factions had little popular support. It was not until the 2000 democratic elections in Haiti that their power was greatly magnified. Aristide’s opposition, working together under an umbrella group called the Democratic Platform, contested the results of the country’s 2000 parliament elections, in which Aristide’s Lavalas Family party won major gains. During the presidential elections that shortly followed, Aristide won again, but Haiti’s opposition groups largely boycotted the polls, putting them in a position to claim that Aristide was not a true democratic leader. Once opponents to Aristide’s rule began marching through the streets in mass demonstrations, many of Aristide’s supporters used violence against them in order to forcefully quell the protests.

Aristide’s police forces were no match for the advancing rebel army. The closer the rebel army came to Port-au-Prince, the less political leverage Aristide would have. The only way that Aristide would have been able to negotiate a solution on his terms would have been if the United States, or another major power, stepped in with political and military support. The fact that Washington did not support Aristide, and therefore would be unlikely to intervene on his behalf, made it pointless for the opposition to accept any plan that would not give them complete control of Haiti’s government.

Following the Platform’s refusal, the Bush administration tacitly approved the opposition’s plan of fostering a coup that would remove Aristide from power by placing the blame for the turmoil squarely on Aristide’s shoulders. Releasing a statement on February 28, the White House argued, This long-simmering crisis is largely of Mr. Aristide’s making. ... His own actions have called into question his fitness to continue to govern Haiti. We urge him to examine his position carefully, to accept responsibility, and to act in the best interests of the people of Haiti.

This decision created controversy in Washington, as the Bush administration openly suggested that Haiti’s constitution should be ignored in order to place a new leader in power. The decision led U.S. Representative Charles Rangel of New York to state,

We are just as much a part of this coup d’etat as the rebels, as the looters, or anyone else. [The Bush administration] made it abundantly clear that Aristide would do best by leaving the country. Which means that the rebels, the looters ... [were] given to believe that they should never, never, never accept Aristide as the president.

Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who is the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, echoed Rangel’s concerns, stating that Democracy has a black eye in Haiti this morning.

In a country as poor as Haiti, control over the institutions of the state is one of the only sources of wealth, making national politics an arena of violent competition. Similarly, in an environment of 70 percent unemployment, the prospect of long-term work as a paramilitary fighter leads many young men to join these forces.

Who is the Opposition?

• Like the so-called opposition to the Chavez government of Venezuela, Haiti’s opposition represents only a small minority (8 percent of the population according to a 2000 poll). With no chance of winning through democratic elections, they rely instead on armed violence to foment a political crisis that will lead to the fall of the government. Using their international business connections, especially ties to the corporate media, the opposition has manufactured an image of itself as the true champion of democracy in Haiti.
• The gangs that have placed thousands of Haitians under siege are reportedly armed with US-made M-16s, recently sent by the US to the government of the Dominican Republic.
• The gangs are directly linked to two groups financed by the Bush Administration: the right-wing Convergence for Democracy and the pro-business Group of 184.
  • ....The Convergence is led by former FRAPH paramilitary leaders (including Louis Chamblain, Guy Phillipe and Jean Pierre Baptiste) who carried out the bloody 1991 coup d’etat, in which the CIA-trained and -funded FRAPH overthrew Aristide, killed 5,000 civilians and terrorized Haiti for four years.
  • The Convergence is supported by the Haitian elite and the leadership of the US Republican Party (through the National Endowment for Democracy and the International Republican Institute).
• By demanding that the opposition be included in any resolution of Haiti’s political impasse, the US has greatly empowered these forces. While the opposition perpetuates Haiti’s political deadlock, the US embargo guarantees the island’s economic strangulation. Aristide’s opponents hope that these combined tactics will achieve what they cannot win through democratic elections: the ouster of Aristide.

Why is it so hard to get a clear picture of what is happening in Haiti?

• Media Manipulation
• ...
• US Double-Speak
  • Another reason for confusion is that the Bush Administration is upholding a long US tradition of talking about respect for democracy in Haiti while supporting the country’s most anti-democratic, pro-business forces.
  • The US has encouraged the opposition to refuse to participate in elections and, at the same time, declared that elections in Haiti will only be considered legitimate if the opposition participates.
  • Powell says that the US is not interested in regime change. But the Administration is supporting a disinformation campaign in the US media, maintaining an embargo that is intensifying hunger and disease amongst Haiti’s poorest and supporting the sponsors of armed, vigilante violence that has already killed scores of people.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide said in a telephone interview Monday that he was forced to leave Haiti by U.S. military forces.

...When asked if he left Haiti on his own, Aristide quickly answered: No. I was forced to leave. They were telling me that if I don’t leave they would start shooting, and be killing in a matter of time, Aristide said...

...Aristide told reporters that he signed documents relinquishing power out of fear that violence would erupt in Haiti if he didn’t comply with the demands of American security agents.

U.S. authorities have dismissed Aristide’s claims as unfounded.

We are bound to question whether his resignation was truly voluntary, as it comes after the capture of sections of Haiti by armed insurgents and the failure of the international community to provide the requisite support, despite the appeals of CARICOM, [Jamaican Prime Minister, P.J.] Patterson’s statement said.

The removal of President Aristide in these circumstances sets a dangerous precedent for democratically elected governments anywhere and everywhere, as it promotes the removal of duly elected persons from office by the power of rebel forces.

Patterson said CARICOM had a standing position that the removal of the constitutionally-elected president by unconstitutional means could not be supported by the group.

Consider also how the Bush administration dealt two weeks ago with a beleaguered, but democratically elected Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Not only did it refuse to come to his assistance as required by the U.S.-backed Inter-American Charter on Democracy, it withdrew his security detail and bundled him and his wife, a U.S. citizen, off to the airport to be flown to exile in Central African Republic (CAR) aboard a U.S. jet.

The reactionary nature of the action was underlined not only by the fact that France, the colonial master of both Haiti and CAR, was deeply involved in the caper, but also that Paris’ complicity was based in part on its eagerness to be rid of a pesky leader who had the audacity to demand that it compensate Haiti for the money it was forced to pay in exchange for French recognition of its independence almost 200 years ago.

The fact that Toussaint L’Ouverture, the leader of the Haitian fight for independence, was also captured by France and exiled to the Jura Mountains near the Swiss border, just as Aristide was taken to the remotest part of Africa, only added to the imperial nostalgia surrounding the episode.

The US lawyer representing the government of Haiti charged today that the US government is directly involved in a military coup attempt against the country’s democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ira Kurzban, the Miami-based attorney who has served as General Counsel to the Haitian government since 1991, said that the paramilitaries fighting to overthrow Aristide are being backed by Washington.

...These people came through the Dominican border after the United States had provided 20,000 M-16’s to the Dominican army, says Kurzban....

Kurzban said he has hired military analysts to review photos of the weapons being used by the paramilitary groups. He says that contrary to reports in the media that the armed groups are using weapons originally distributed by Aristide, the gangs are using highly sophisticated and powerful weapons; weapons that far out-gun Aristide’s 3,000 member National Police force.

The question is, says Kurzban. Will the international community stand by and allow a democracy in this hemisphere to be terminated by a brutal military coup of persons who have a very, very sordid history of gross violations of human rights?

Marguerite Laurent, chair of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership, told the Power and Interest News Report that she believed Aristide’s economic stance was a huge factor in Washington’s decision to assist, however indirectly, in his removal from power: Aristide refused to fully implement Washington’s neoliberalism economic policies when he returned to Haiti in 1994. ... Democracy is dead in Haiti, flown out when the U.S. took away Haiti’s peacekeeper.

Only days before Aristide was put on a plane February 29 for his State Department-arranged flight into exile in the Central African Republic, Powell repeatedly acknowledged the legitimacy of Aristide’s rule and denounced the opposition’s violent thugs. He further insisted that they would not be allowed to shoot their way to power nor would Aristide be forced to resign. Once engaged, Powell began insisting that the anti-Aristide political opposition must negotiate with the government and that Washington would not sanction regime change or insist upon Aristide’s forced ouster. Then, scarcely 24 hours before Aristide’s State Department-scripted travel arrangement, Powell reversed himself and ignored Haiti’s constitution, which stipulates that a president must convey his resignation only to the country’s legislature.

...Aristide had done nothing to justify this 180 degree reversal in U.S. policy. Powell’s rhetoric appeared to represent the high road on the issue, but he was either deceiving the public or being undermined by Noriega and Reich, who, in off-the-record briefings to journalists and other interested parties, made it clear that regime change was very much an option and that Aristide could be muscled aside in any negotiation process.

...

Aristide had conceded to every demand made on him by the OAS [Organization of American States], the European Union (especially France), the United Nations, the United States, and the English-speaking Caribbean nations to share power with the opposition, yet it was he who was repeatedly denounced by Powell and the international community for obstructionism, and rarely the opposition, which saw its vested interest intrinsically better served by chaos than peace. This was a solid strategy on the opposition’s part, because it knew it lacked the popularity to win the elections that successful talks inevitably would help bring about.

U.S. Embassy authorities were able to thrust a resignation letter into an understandably-befuddled Aristide’s hands for him to sign. This was done under the implicit threat that only then could he and his family be flown out of the country to safety. Once airborne, Aristide was told that his ultimate destination would be the Central African Republic only a half-hour before his scheduled landing. He was denied any ability to communicate with the outside world. Nor was he told where he would be going during a four-hour layover. Such behavior exemplifies the utter contempt in which he was held by U.S. officials. Powell’s defense of this scenario was based on his now revised line that Aristide was a flawed president who brought on his own downfall.

Today Haiti is a horrific mess, but it can’t entirely be attributed to President Aristide’s flawed performance. If Aristide was flawed, it was largely due to the impossible conditions laid down by Washington for him to rule.

The Democratic Platform and the rebel leaders have now achieved their aims, shown through recent statements by rebel leader Guy Philippe. Remarking on the Bush administration’s decision to send U.S. Marines to restore order in Port-au-Prince, Philippe told CNN, We need them. I think the worst is over now. And we are waiting for the international force. They will have our full cooperation. ... [We] don’t intend to fight anymore. After achieving control over Port-au-Prince, Philippe has little else to fight for. Indeed, in his own words: The country is in my hands.

Mainstream media had a credibility problem. Their original story was openly contradicted. The kidnap story could be ignored or back-paged as was done by many newspapers in the US. Or it can be framed within the context of a US denial and dismissed. Unfortunately, the corporate media seems not at all interested in conducting an investigation into the charges, seeking witnesses, or verifying contradictions. Nor is the mainstream media asking or answering the question of why they fully accept the State Department’s version of the coup in the first place. Corporate media certainly had enough pre-warning to determine that Aristide was not going to willingly leave the country. Aristide had been saying exactly that for the past month during the armed attacks in the north of Haiti. Aristide was interviewed on CNN February 26. He explained that the terrorists, and criminal drug dealers were former members of the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), which had led the coup in 1991 killing 5,000 people. Aristide believed that they would kill more people if a coup was allowed to happen.

...

Mainstream media had every reason to question the State Department’s version of the coup in Haiti, but choose instead to report a highly doubtful cover story. We deserve more from our media than their being stenographers for the government. Weapons of mass destruction aside, we need a media that looks for the truth and exposes the contradictions in the fabrications of the powerful.

The more one sniffed around Washington the less America’s position made sense. People in positions of responsibility in international agencies simply shrugged and mumbled that they couldn’t do more to help Haiti in view of the Bush veto on aid. Moreover, by saying that aid would be frozen until Aristide and the political opposition reached an agreement, the Bush administration provided Haiti’s un-elected opposition with an open-ended veto. Aristide’s foes merely had to refuse to bargain in order to plunge Haiti into chaos.

That chaos has now come. It is sad to hear rampaging students on BBC and CNN saying that Aristide lied because he didn’t improve the country’s social conditions. Yes, Haiti’s economic collapse is fueling rioting and deaths, but the lies were not Aristide’s. The lies came from Washington.

In the weeks leading up to the Coup d’Etat, the media has largely focused its attention on the pro-Aristide armed gangs and thugs, without providing an understanding of the role of the FLRN [National Liberation and Reconstruction Front] Rebels.

Deafening silence: not a word was mentioned in official statements and UN resolutions regarding the nature of the FLRN. This should come as no surprise: the US Ambassador to the UN (the man who sits on the UN Security Council) John Negroponte played a key role in the CIA supported Honduran death squadrons in the 1980s when he was US ambassador to Honduras. (See San Francisco Examiner, 20 Oct 2001 http://www.flora.org/mai/forum/31397)

The FLRN rebels are extremely well equipped and trained forces. The Haitian people know who they are. They are Tonton Macoute of the Duvalier era and former FRAPH assassins.

The Western media is mute on the issue, blaming the violence on President Aristide. When it acknowledges that the Liberation Army is composed of death squadrons, it fails to examine the broader implications of its statements and that these death squadrons are a creation of the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The bulk of reporting on Haiti has consisted of describing the movements of people: The rebels are advancing. President Aristide has left the country. US marines have arrived. From this it has been literally impossible to establish what is happening. No idea has been given of how popular Aristide actually is or was; what accounts for his popularity or lack of it.

No indication has been given of which external forces might be influencing the tiny, impoverished country and what their motivation might be. We have so far seen, for example, no mention on TV broadcasts of the substantial US corporate interests in Haiti. A Media Lens reader — an intelligent senior manager with a large UK-based charity — wrote to us:

You’re right when you say you defy anyone to understand what’s going on from newspapers and the TV — it is literally incomprehensible. I asked around at work this morning (and I work with some very conscientious Granuiad [Guardian] and Indy readers) and no-one had much idea about Aristide, his policies, who the rebels were, what they wanted and so on... Newspapers get heavier by the day and split themselves amoeba-like into more and more sections. So much print filling up so much space. And yet really, absolutely nothing is reported in a meaningful way. It’s truly extraordinary. (Email to Media Lens, March 1, 2004)

Another cruel irony is that none of the officials and institutions charged with the responsibility of providing security to the citizens of Haiti — not the bankrupt interim government that was set up to replace ousted Jean Bertrand Aristide, not the U.S. and French forces who have been in country since Aristide’s February 29 departure, and not the understaffed, under-funded U.N. forces who nominally took over June 1 — has been able or willing to provide even minimal emergency aid to the victims of the flood.