23266: Esser: Will He Stand Up? Kerry and Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser <torx@joimail.com>

counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org

September 24, 2004

Will He Stand Up?
Kerry and Haiti
By BEN TERRALL

The hundreds killed this week by tropical storm Jeanne provided Haiti
another brief appearance in the U.S. media, but with little context
or discussion of the murderous regime now in power. Nor did any
reporter point out that when U.S.-backed Prime Minister Gerard
Latortue said, "We don't know how many dead there are. 2004 has been
a terrible year," he wasn't referring to death squads his coup
administration unleashed.

Haiti provides one of the clearest opportunities John Kerry has to
distinguish himself from George W. Bush. Unlike the ill-advised
pro-war corner he has painted himself into on Iraq, Kerry never
supported the International Republican Institute-orchestrated
February 29, 2004 coup that drove President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
from office. In fact, Kerry provided one of the more perceptive
comments about Haiti policy, saying the Bush Administration has "a
theological and an ideological hatred for Aristide."

Bush's right-wing fundamentalist Christianity has virtually nothing
in common with liberation theology, the militantly non-violent
tradition Aristide came out of, which emphasizes the needs of the
poorest of the poor. No matter how much the recent Republican
National Convention tried to soften its image by giving Arnold
Schwartzenegger a few lines about "inclusion", the true Bush spirit
was more accurately embodied in the venomous fear-mongering of Zell
Miller and Dick Cheney.

The government Bush's minions helped oust in Haiti was one of the
world's two demilitarized democracies, headed by an anti-militarist,
democratically elected former priest.

Given his commitment to lifting Haiti "from misery to poverty with
dignity," it's not surprising that, though forced into exile in South
Africa, Aristide remains the most popular political figure among
Haiti's poor masses. And given the Bush Administration's ideological
loathing of progressive social programs, it's also not surprising
that Aristide's solidarity with Haiti's poor majority made him
persona non grata in Washington.

Writing in the web journal www.BlackCommentator.com, Retired Special
Forces Officer Stan Goff observed, "Republicans, as the party that
still employs its latter day version of the Southern Strategy, want
to see Haiti in chaos. They will put on a mask of paternalistic
sympathy while they continue to impose dysfunction, because they need
Haiti to continue to serve as an example of Black incapacity for
self-governance--to reinforce their white supremacist appeal to the
Helms wing of the party, which is still substantial."

Goff's March 18, 2004 article, entitled "Time for Kerry to Step Up On
Haiti," argues Haiti is an obvious issue Democrats could use to rally
African-Americans to the polls. But though initially Kerry criticized
Bush's support for the sweatshop owners and paramilitary thugs that
led the opposition to Aristide, since Goff's piece appeared, Kerry
has hardly mentioned Haiti.

As Washington committed to send $6 million in new aid to the Haitian
police on August 12, ambassador James Foley explained, "There can't
be democracy without security." This statement would be comic if
untold numbers of Haitians on the ground weren't being tortured or
killed while Foley and other officials obfuscate reality with such
double talk.

The "security" model being advanced in Haiti was also used by Central
American death squads of the 1980s. As Iran-Contra veterans Otto
Reich and Roger Noriega were key architects of the overthrow of
Aristide, the similarity is hardly coincidental. Paramilitary leaders
like Guy Phillipe, who received U.S. military training in Ecuador in
1994, are part of a long line of proxy killers and torturers
cultivated by Washington. In the winter of 2004, Philippe's men
bragged to U.S. reporters that they had executed Aristide supporters
in Cap-Hatian and Port-au-Prince. "I am the chief, the military
chief. The country is in my hands," boasted Philippe.

The DEA and U.S. embassy have implicated Phillipe in drug smuggling.
But while Foley told the Haitian press, "All drug traffickers, no
matter what their political or social membership is and no matter
where they are hiding, will answer for their acts one day," few are
expecting that day to come soon for Phillipe.

The only trial of any supporters of the Latortue government took
place in early August, when notorious death squad leaders Jackson
Joanis and Jodel Chamblain were cleared of involvement in the 1993
murder of pro-Aristide businessman Antoine Izmery. Brian Concannon
Jr., Director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti,
and one of the lawyers who put Chamblain behind bars in 2000,
responded, "Neither the judiciary nor the prosecution made even the
minimum effort required by law to pursue this important case. The
absence of effort combined with top Haitian officials' public support
for Chamblain and his colleagues compels the conclusion that Haiti's
interim government staged the trial to deflect criticism of its human
rights record without alienating its military and paramilitary
allies."

The Bush Administration and elites in Haiti orchestrated a systematic
propaganda campaign implying a broad base of support for opposition
to Aristide, as real as the flowers and sweets supposedly waiting for
U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Death squad leaders freed from Haitian jails by Washington-backed
paramilitaries are now targeting members of Lavalas, the solidly
pro-Aristide mass movement. As former soldiers in the Haitian
military also mobilize against the corrupt sweatshop profiteers and
other faux-civil society leaders who constitute the current coup
government, Lavalas supporters will continue to be a common target,
crushed in the middle of ongoing battles between thieves.

But in spite of horrific repression, Lavalas has maintained an
impressive level of activity, mobilizing tens of thousands in
nonviolent demonstrations this summer. Most recently, about ten
thousand Haitians marched in Port-au-Prince on September 11,
commemorating terrorist attacks which occurred on that day, in Chile
(the coup which forced out Salvador Allende) and Haiti (a 1989
massacre of civilians by the military) as well as the U.S. Slogans on
signs hoisted included "Down with terrorist George Bush" and "Long
Live Kerry".

The Haitian people continue to struggle for freedom and justice,
taking horrifying risks to do so. It's time for John Kerry to take
the significantly lesser risk of standing up for Haiti on the
campaign trail.

Ben Terrall is a San Francisco-based writer and activist who co-edits
the journal Indonesia Alert!; he can be reached at bterrall@igc.org
.
.