Alberta, August/agosto 2008
19
ALTERNATIVA Latinoamericana
ENGLISH SECTION
Canada played a significant role in creating an
ideological and propaganda type of climate in which
Aristide came to be seen as a kind of international
pariah." Peter Hallward is the author of a new book,
Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of
Containment, which details recent Haitian history
including the 2004 coup backed by the United States,
France and Canada. Hallward completes a four-city
Canadian book tour
Whether it's the Associated Press, the Globe
and Mail, the UN, or the CIA World Fact book,
mainstream media and other organizations
continue to characterize what happened in Haiti
on February 29, 2004 in the following manner:
that Haiti's twice elected President Jean Bertrand
Aristide "departed" from Haiti? After all the
extensive research and interviews you've done
for your book, how would you most accurately
characterize what happened on that day?
There's no question. It was a coup. The denials
aren't exactly impressive. People also denied that it
was a coup back in 1991. In 2004 it was presented as
a version of the "orange revolution" happening in other
places like Ukraine. So it was presented that Aristide
was under pressure by a popular uprising, he had lost
credibility had no other alternative except to turn to the
U.S. for help to leave the country to avoid a bloodbath.
But...If you're trying to "avoid a bloodbath" why
would you have the president leave rather than stop
the few insurgents who were causing havoc in parts of
the country -insurgents (who)did not have any popular
support ( lack of support subsequently confirmed as
the leader of this insurgent group stood for president in
the most recent election and only received 2% of the
vote). So why you would ask a president elected with
a massive majority to go rather than the insurgents...
So if the official line isn't the
correct one, then what is?
If you look at what actually happened, the story
is more complicated and it has nothing to do with a
type of "orange revolution." The problem with Aristide's
second government is that he was elected [in 2000]
with a big mandate, bigger than the first one of 1990.
So he comes in with this mandate and a more
coherent political organization, his Fanmi Lavalas
party, with a solid infrastructure and support all across
the country. So they're poised to implement genuine
political change. And for the first time in Haitian
history political victory and support was combined
without the presence of an army that had previously
been used to get in the way or overturn previous
Haitian governments. This situation unleashes this
huge international campaign to destabilize his
government and to spread a very elaborate web of
propaganda, presenting Aristide as a tyrant and
human rights violator so that he could eventually be
presented as a kind of new version of François
Duvalier. Figure after figure state this line, including
Roger Noriega who says in front of the U.S. Congress
that Aristide is like another Duvalier and his
supporters are like the Tonton Macqoutes, that
slaughtered the political opposition, and that he had to
be pushed out of office. So that's the first thing.
In response to this popular government of
Aristide, the Americans, the French and the elite of
Haiti do a few things. First, they deprive his govern-
ment and Haiti of all international funding and aid,
which cuts their national budget in half -virtually all the
social programs that the Aristide government had lined
up had to be put on ice.
Secondly, they support and fund Aristide's
opponents by pouring millions of dollars to them, plus
supplying about another $70 million per year into NGO
groups that are complicit with Aristide's opponents.
Without this outside money there would have been
little political opposition to Aristide.
They also made investments in the media hostile
to the Aristide government. If you look at the 25 radio
stations in Haiti, and radio is the main source of news
for Haitians, about 20 of them belong to an anti-
Aristide coalition funded by US AID, the National
Endowment for Democracy, and the European Union.
These radio stations spread lie after lie creating
massive accumulation of accusations, rumours and
innuendo against Aristide presenting him as a tyrant
and human rights abuser.
The third step was to strengthen resistance to
the Aristide government in the business, civil society
and in some student groups, which carry out the odd
demonstration. These occasional demonstrations
cause counter-demonstrations by pro-Aristide
supporters, which sometimes can get out of hand.
Leading up to the coup some of these demonstrations
lead to a couple of deaths on each side. Which then
Failing Haiti
: An interview with
Peter Hallward
allows those against Aristide to blame him for
presiding over a wave of violence, a climate of
insecurity, intimidating the opposition.
The fourth thing was promoting a contra-style
military insurgency based in different parts of Haiti and
the Dominican Republic, able to conduct hit-and-run
operations against police stations and other govern-
ment facilities starting in July 2001 and running all the
way through to the final month when there's a full-
blown military insurgency. The numbers are never
huge, fifty or so soldiers, most of them ex military
members of the Haitian National Army that Aristide
disbanded in 1995. These people eventually succeed
in putting the Aristide government in a difficult posi-
tion, having no army (and less than 3000 police
officers scattered throughout Haiti) it was difficult for
the government to confront these insurgents. The U.S.
had also imposed an ammunition embargo on Haiti so
their police forces did not have needed supplies
So all these factors combined put Aristide into a
pretty impossible position. Then the Americans
threatened him with a "bloodbath" looming in the
streets. So under these circumstances and severe
pressure, and very much at the last minute, he ends
up having to leave Haiti. The final details as to how he
left still remain unclear. I would urge your readers to
carefully read through the numerous articles and
postings at HaitiAnalysis.com.
What role played Canada prior &
since February 29, 2004 in Haiti?
Canada played a significant role in creating an
ideological and propaganda type of climate in which
Aristide came to be seen as an international pariah.
They funded some anti-Aristide NGOs and Canada
provided legitimacy and credibility to the campaign to
discredit Aristide. The basic idea was to say that the
Aristide government was presiding over a worsening
human rights situation, a continuum of human rights
disasters and the cycle of violence, in Haiti since
François Duvalier to Jean Claude Duvalier through the
coups and now by the Aristide Government.
That is something we can look at and analyze.
Under François Duvalier the number of killings in Haiti
attributed in some way to his government is about
50,000. The number of people killed in the first coup
against Aristide (1991) is about 4 -5,000. The number
of people killed during the second coup (2004) is
estimated to be 3,000, it's hard to know exactly. And
how many people killed are attributed to the Aristide
government or their supporters? The number is in
between 10 and 40 people, and 40 being a largely
exaggerated number.
In the spring of 2005 I interviewed Canadian
Member of Parliament and Special Government Envoy
to Haiti, Denis Coderre. When I asked him why the
Canadian and U.S. government would not allow
Aristide to be a candidate in the upcoming Haitian
presidential elections, Coderre stated: "The issue is
this. Aristide belongs to the past. And we want to
build on the future. We don't want to build on the
nostalgia of the past. It is clear in our mind that you
can't go back."
What is your response to this?
First of all...it is incredible. Who can tell what
does or does not belong to the future. This is a
question for the Haitian people to decide. If you
believe in democracy there is a well established
process for doing that. It's called an election. And
Aristide was elected by a huge mandate. Far more
powerful a mandate than that enjoyed by any
Canadian government in recent history. Far more
powerful a mandate than any of the governments that
overthrew him, the U.S., France and Canada.
Secondly, it's a ludicrous thing to say to Hai-
tians. For the vast majority of Haitians Aristide repre-
sented hope. The reason why he was elected with
such enthusiasm was that he gave voice to a very
widely felt sense of injustice and hope for change. And
he did it in terms that made sense for Haitians. He's
not a firebrand revolutionary talking about radical
change on a model that has nothing to do with Haiti
and which has no practical chance of success. He's
not talking about turning the world upside down or a
cultural revolution. He's talking about democratic
change within the existing constraints, and working for
a slow but significant reform of the existing Haitian
institutions to slowly but surely empower ordinary
people, and begin to get rid of the type of class-
apartheid that structures Haitian society. It is very
inspiring to most people and threatening to the elite.
In this regard, Aristide still has a part to play.
Aristide himself has said that he doesn't want to
stand again as
president for Haiti.
That remains his
position at the
moment. He does
want to go back to
Haiti to help
strengthen Fanmi Lavalas, the most powerful political
organization in the country. And that's the thing his
enemies in Canada, and in other parts of the world,
are most afraid of. That's the last thing they want to
happen. You know this line, "Aristide belongs to the
past, and we need to move onto the future," basically
means that popular politics in Haiti should come to an
end, and that they should accept a version of a
democracy imposed on them by very undemocratic
organizations and other governments and NGOs
funded by USAID and CIDA and transnational
technocrats in the IMF and World Bank who will
manage the country in the interests of the ruling
class. That's what it boils down to. That the people
who want to mobilize for something different should
accept their lowly place in society.
The mainstream conventional "wisdom" reported
in the press and stated in privileged countries like
Canada, the U.S. and France is that Haiti is a "failed
state." While other, more historically versed, Haiti
watchers counter that it is the world that has failed
Haiti. It seems that this type of coverage is analogous
to the way the mainstream media often covers Africa.
Who 's failing whom, and to what
degree racism plays a role in how
western media and governments
misrepresent Haiti?
It is fundamentally racist. The only way that this
level of propaganda can begin to be understood is if
the story begins with the racist attitude that "these
people are black." And that's why we (in the west) can
characterize them (Haiti and Haitians) as
"undemocratic," and "intransigent," "unreasonable,"
"irrational" and a few other things. Even though the
most basic look at the facts at the international role in
Haiti will show that is complete crap. From the
beginning of Haiti's history, after winning their freedom
from slavery, and setting an example that was
profoundly threatening to the world's imperial powers,
they've had to fight to keep the world from closing its
ranks on them.
Yes, 1804, in terms of an example of true
freedom and democracy, Haiti provided the world with
a wondrous example of the success of a double-
revolution a revolution for independence from France
and a revolution against slavery. And it was both
incredibly sad and remarkable that on January 1,
2004, when the world should have been celebrating
the bicentennial of the truest accomplishment of
freedom and democracy that our planet has ever seen,
the western world ignored it. I believe only a handful of
countries sent official delegates. Canada, the U.S.
and France sent no one. When you think back to the
blanket coverage that the world's mainstream press
gave to the American and French bicentennial
celebrations, the difference is stark, shocking and
shameful.
It's also a cruel irony of history that Haiti was
also robbed of a proper anniversary to mark the day
that Haiti's first-ever democratically elected leader
was removed from office for a second time, as this
latest coup happened on the leap year date of
February 29, 2004. So when earlier this year we had
our first leap year since the coup, I was expecting,
perhaps naively, that the media might have some form
of coverage of this historic international event, given
that it was the first time in four years that the actual
date was before us. Yet, incredibly, there was none,
and I mean no North American media coverage
whatsoever, except for a very brief mention in the
Miami Herald.
Other thoughts on this?
I saw no coverage from my vantage point in the
U.K. I was trying to get on or get some kind of
acknowledgement on radio. I couldn't get anywhere
with that. Mainstream media does the job that it
seems it's designed to do -to preserve or promote a
type of corporate agenda that doesn't ask fundamental
questions about why the world is the way it is. If you
look at a place like Haiti, it's very difficult to look at it
without calling into question some of the things that
structure the world the way the world is.
Paul Boin (Extract,
www.rabble.ca)