30333: Deibert (comment) A few thoughts on Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From michaeldeibert@gmail.com :

I find the whole Batay Ouvriye funding controversy interesting I think 
discussing what groups are receiving money from which sources is a legitimate 
line of questioning to take, but I have also always found it odd that, as one 
of Haiti's most militant and effective labor unions, Batay Ouvriye would be 
vilified (without any apparent irony) for receiving money from the AFL-CIO's 
American Center for International Labor Solidarity by relatively well-off 
foreigners living in the safety of North America. Batay Ouvriye's years of 
steady and courageous organizing against exploitative labor practices in Haiti 
(at great, sometimes fatal, physical risk to its members), meanwhile, go 
unlauded. Should Rene Preval's government likewise be attacked because it 
accepts aid from the United States? From Venezuela? 
> From Cuba? Should North American activists lecture Preval - as they survey 
the desperation of Haiti - that he is "on the payroll?" I think Haiti needs 
help from anywhere it can get it, at this point. The suffering is simply too 
great for some sort of ideological litmus test.

The whole discussion reminds one that Haiti is hardly unique in the issues that 
it raises: The use of poor countries as political footballs by larger ones, the 
corrupting influence of power and money on politicians, the threat posed to 
fragile nascent democracies by the drug trade (and by the unacknowledged role 
of drug-consuming countries such as the United States), and the failure of 
various right-and-left wing political currents in so-called "developed" nations 
in North America and Europe to see beyond their own narrow, political goals to 
honestly and altruistically address the needs the developing world in a 
clear-headed, post-ideological way. To borrow a recent turn of phrase from 
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (currently embroiled in his 
own controversies), this whole debate appears to be riddled with hypocrisy and 
cynicism.

Like the attacks on Batay Ouvriye, look at the steady assault against the 
Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH, previously known as 
NCHR-Haiti). RNDDH is attacked for advocating for justice for the victims of 
the killings in Saint Marc (who apparently don't deserve justice on the grounds 
that there was more than one group fighting in the town during February 2004), 
and for receiving C$100,000 (US$85,382) from the Canadian International 
Development Agency (CIDA) in 2004. Never referred to is RNDDH's strenuous May 
2004 protests against the arbitrary and illegal arrest of the former Fanmi 
Lavalas Mayor of Delmas, Dr. Jean Maxon Guerrier, or its statement that the 
August 2004 not-guilty verdict in the Louis-Jodel Chamblain case was "a mockery 
of a trial," or its protests against the warrantless October 2004 arrests of 
then-Lavalas leaders Yvon Feuille, Gerald Gilles, and Rudy Hériveaux.

But turn the microscope another way, to face the Institute for Justice and 
Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), for example, and this chorus of criticism of links 
and sub-links suddenly falls mute. My old acquaintance Brian Concannon ably 
leads the IJDH as its public face, but how far can the organization's links 
from Haiti's former government be when, in the IJDH's own annual report, this 
organization ostensibly headquartered in Oregon, where Mr. Concannon resides, 
directs donations to be sent to P.O. Box 806, Key Biscayne, Florida, 33149, 
where Jean-Bertrand Aristide's personal attorney (so identified in a March 2004 
press release from the office of U.S. Representative Maxine Waters) Ira Kurzban 
resides? In the IJDH's own annual report, Kurzban is listed as one of its main 
donors, as well as "one of the founders" and "a member of the Board of 
Directors" in a March 2005 letter to Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 
head Santiago A. Canton.

If the IJDH or its affiliated organization, the Bureau des Avocats 
Internationaux (BAI), have ever criticized Mr. Aristide or the Fanmi Lavalas 
party for any violence they have been responsible for, or called for justice on 
behalf of the many victims among the regime's opponents in any statement, I 
have never read it, and indeed, why should they? According to the Foreign Agent 
Registration Act (FARA) filings on record with the U.S. Department of Justice, 
between 2001 and 2004, Mr. Kurzban's law firm - Kurzban, Kurzban, Weinger & 
Tetzel - received some $4,648,964 from the Aristide government on behalf of its 
lobbying efforts alone, chunks of which were then distributed to various other 
individuals and outfits in the United States, including Mr. Concannon, 
University of Miami Law School Center for the Study of Human Rights director 
Irwin Stotzky (who received almost $9,000 from the firm in 3 separate payments 
between 2001 and 2002 and was instrumental in preparing that body's 2004 human 
rights report on Haiti) and even Mildred Aristide's brother, Erickson 
Trouillot. This is all a matter of public record easily checkable by anyone who 
wants to do so, as is the $989,323 that the public relations firm of former 
U.S. congressmen and head of the Congressional Black Caucus (and current 
Oakland mayor) Ron Dellums received between 2001-2004. Mr. Kurrzban has said in 
the past that this money was almost exclusively to help prosecute human rights 
abuses that occurred during Haiti's 1991-1994 military regime and not for 
lobbying activities, but, if one goes by the statements on the law firm's own 
filings with the Department of Justice (where it lists its activities as "wrote 
an Op-Ed that was published in the Miami Herald" and "appeared on a local radio 
show," for example) this is simply not the case.

All of this, of course, is perfectly legal, but would a lawyer ever come out 
and publicly condemn his most lucrative client for that client's involvement in 
wrong-doing or, what's more, allow his employees to do so? Sorry, but looking 
at our own examples in corporate America, I think not. I also think that, when 
examining the public statements of these groups over the years, though none of 
them exactly reflect my own analysis of Haiti, it is relatively easy to see 
which of them - Batay Ouvriye, RNDDH, IJDH, the University of Miami Law School 
- have taken the most strident and unyieldingly partisan stands.

Alas, much like other tumultuous countries that pop up on the world radar from 
time to time, Haiti is also a place, it seems, to paraphrase George Packer's 
assessment of Iraq, where it is always possible to prove that you've been right 
all along. Virtually anyone can suddenly become an expert or an activist on the 
subject without first educating themselves on some of the basic facts about the 
country, where journalists, academics or filmmakers, after one or two trips 
there and never having bothered to learn the language or understand the 
culture, can then produce books or films claiming to be the final word on the 
political and social development of an entire nation, rather ironic given 
Haiti's own rich intellectual tradition of analysis, oral and written, which 
they could learn a lot from if they took the time.

Haiti, in my experience, is anything but black-and-white, and so, while such 
extremely polarized views may play well in front of crowds in North America, 
they do precious little to shed light on or ameliorate the situation of Haiti's 
long-suffering people who, it must be said, have been failed equally by the 
narrow self-interest and opportunism of both the international community and 
their own political leaders.

Michael Deibert
www.michaeldeibert.com
www.michaeldeibert.blogspot.com

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