The Problem with Mainstream Media Coverage of Haiti

Mainstream media pieces about Haiti are like Swiss cheese, full of holes. This week NPR/Frontline featured a report from Haiti, "The Problem with Giving Free Food to Hungry People," about a rice vendor and the supply chain in reverse from her to the Port-au-Prince port where the rice is delivered from the U.S. The reporter points out that rice is very important in Haiti, as it is a part of every meal. That's an interesting way to put it, but why is it that Haiti is no longer self-sufficient in producing rice? Haiti is the fourth largest importer of American rice. This question is easily answered and was addressed this year in a session of Congress by former President Bill Clinton. Clinton apologized for the "free" trade policies that allowed the dumping of Arkansas and "Miami rice" subsidized by the U.S. government on the market, resulting in the loss of livelihood for over 300,000 small farmers.

"The Haitian peasantry, which not so long ago kept the country self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs, became inconvenient after Washington forced Haiti to accept U.S. government-subsidized rice. Port-au-Prince, a town of about a quarter million in 1960, swelled to at least 2.5 million as small rice farmers were forced off the land and into the shanty-opolis, where they built what they could with the resources at hand. U.S.-imposed “structural adjustment” made Port-au-Prince a high-density death trap.

Somehow, this U.S.-mandated migration – which also contributed to the exodus abroad of many hundreds of thousands – is now numbered among the many “failures” of the Haitian people."

Bill Clinton said that he thinks about this everyday, but Haiti cannot regain food security by cashing in on his remorse.

Speaking of the loss of livelihood for the small farmers in Haiti, the U.S. Census Bureau released estimates about Haiti's population on Monday. The Bureau expects "Haiti's population will continue to grow quickly despite the tremendous loss of life in the January earthquake. According to the report:

"Haiti's current population at 9.6 million, based on an estimated quake death toll of 230,000. It projects the country will recove...r and surpass its pre-quake population level by 2012. By 2050, the bureau says, Haiti will have 13.4 million people. The Dominican Republic, with a nearly identical population, is expected to keep up the same pace."

This might be seen as good news, but the Washington Post story goes on to say that: "By contrast the populations of now-similarly sized European countries like Sweden and Belarus are expected to decline over the same period."

Then the story gets interjected with an element of the aforementioned holes, when it states that: "Overcrowding is already blamed by aid workers and experts for many of Haiti's woes, from environmental degradation and hunger to the deaths of thousands crushed by stacked concrete homes during the earthquake."

Haiti is not over-populated... the city of Port-au-Prince is crowded, no doubt, but these census takers fail to mention that there are huge tracks of land which are uninhabited in Haiti. The reason the "ti paysans" moved from the countryside to the city are two-fold, and both have to do with policies implemented by the U.S. and forced on Haiti.

1) "Free trade" policies forced on Haiti that allowed the dumping of cheap, subsidized food from the U.S. into the Haiti market, destroying Haiti's self-sufficiency at food production.

2) The eradication of the Haitian black pig. Many believe this was done to force the independent, proud farmers (who had resisted being forced off their lands up to that point) to abandon their land and come into the city to work (for slave wages) in sweatshops--something the U.S. had been unable to do prior to the killing of the pigs and loss of the livelihood of the farmers.

USAID/U.S. Embassy and their directors in the democrat and republican parties and their co-conspirators in the rich Haitian oligarchy who run the sweatshops and other slave wage enterprises only have themselves to blame for the conditions that led to so many people crowding into the cities. For most, the jobs they were promised never materialized and they ended up in the slums of Sité Soley, Bel Air, Martissant... etc.

The cheap subsidized rice replaced Haitian rice and now Haiti is the fourth largest importer of American rice, whereas in the past farmers in Haiti grew sufficient rice to feed the entire country. This loss of food security is traced by the experts directly to U.S. trade policies.

The good news is that an effort is being made to repopulate Haiti with "a new variety of pig with the same beneficial qualities as Haiti’s Creole pig.

As for the Haitian farmers, they are in a new battle for their survival with Monsanto "generous" donation of its pesticide covered hybrid seeds, which Monsanto says are not the Genetically Modified (GMO) seeds banned in Europe and other parts of the world, but are just as insidious in that they require sterile land that require specific expensive pesticides and fertilizer. And by the way, they are not good for replanting, so the farmers will have to go back to Monsanto to repurchase seeds.

The Slavery in Haiti the Media Won't Expose

Reposted with permission of Ezilidanto of Haitian Lawyer's Leadership Network (HLLN)

HLLN Links to the counter-narrative to the media spins and self-serving colonial negatives promoted about Haiti

"Haitian child restaveks - domestic servants - does not equate to the European TransAtlantic trade/holocaust."

Every year one or more of these organization - CNN, NBC, New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, Miami Herald, ABC/Nightline or another such mouthpiece of the new West Indian trading companies - will, like clockwork, do a piece on how the disease-ridden Haitian poor in Haiti own child domestic servants known as- restaveks - Kreyòl for "stay with." Poor young children, mostly small girls, who go stay with another family to work for their keep because their own families can't feed and shelter them.

The bleak reality is, child labor was commonplace in the US when it was a "developing" country (here are some pictures from 1908-1912). It was customary for American children to work on family farms and to "never get paid." Photo: The History Place

They mostly deliberately misidentify this phenomenon - which is present in EVERY poor country - as slavery ONLY in Haiti and solely, it seems, to feed the American public with its regular dose on the absurdity of an independent nation of Blacks trying to rule itself without a white colonial figurehead; how uncivilized these Blacks are in their gross treatment of their children as slaves!

[See CNN's 2007 report on the exploitation of Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic's sugar cane field, where the reporter Joe Johns says that the children laboring in the field "happy to have the work."]

This constant popular U.S. media hit on Haiti apparently feeds the white psyche's programming on Haiti, its expectations and their US/Euro cultural narratives of superiority while throwing shame on Haiti precisely to marginalize, ad nauseam, Haiti's great feat of abolishing European chattel slavery, the Triangular Trade and direct colonialism. (See, Slavery Still Legally Sanctioned under US Constitution and The Untold Story: U.S. Slavery In The 20th Century. See also, Letter to AP Editors Regarding the Restavek Issue; Haitian child restaveks - domestic servants - does not equate to the European TransAtlantic trade/holocaust | Ezili's counter narrative on the ABC/Nightline report on the abuse of Haitian children, July 9, 2008 ; and Restavek: Letter to the New York Times - Demonizing the Gonaives Hurricane Victims, Sept. 14, 2008.) 



Exploitation of child domestics is a global problem, not a Haitian "slavery"
issue:

"...Studies in Indonesia estimate there are around 400,000 child domestic workers in Jakarta alone and 5 million in Indonesia as a whole. In Venezuela 60 per cent of the girls working between 10 and 14 years of age are employed as domestic workers. Country surveys showed that the proportion of child domestic workers under ten years of age was 26 per cent in Venezuela, 24 per cent in Bangladesh, and 16 per cent in Togo. A survey in Morocco showed that 72 percent of domestic workers started their working day before 7.00am and 65 percent went to bed after 11.00pm." (Child Labour: Targeting the intolerable, ILO 1996; Jafrikayiti, from Exploitation of child domestics is a global problem, not a Haitian "slavery" issue. Windows on Haiti Ann Pale forum discussion of the restavek issue, 2003.)

"To equate the restavek issue to slavery is to trivialize the ownership, sanctioned by Euro-American laws, of Africans starting from 1503 in Haiti and ending in 1803 in Haiti when the Africans wrestled their liberty from the European enslavers in combat. That human trafficking trade continued in the US until the Civil War and bears little resemblance to the phenomenon, in most poor countries where children are sent as servants to work at places where they may find an education and food. That restaveks are abused and exploited in Haiti, as in the rest of the developing world, is not questioned.



But the exploitation is ILLEGAL in Haiti. The Haiti child restavek indentured servant issue cannot be equated to the Maafa, to the Euro-American chattel slavery of the TransAtlantic nor the European Trans-Mediterranean slave trade. That's a period, no comma. To do so is to trivialize the European sponsored African holocaust - Maafa." (Child domestic labor in Haiti is NOT chattel slavery in the way of Western European-styled slavery was.)

In none of these U.S. journalistic "Haiti exposes" - from a country that still legally sanctions slavery under the US Constitution - will the world ever learn of the Haitian struggle against neocolonialism. How Haiti is destroyed by its ceaseless independence debt now being extorted by the powerful through neo-liberal economic policies; ravaged by the eleven to thirteen mercenary families - the US/Euro subcontractors in Haiti - who, with the complicity of the US/Euros and their coup d'etats exclude the majority, own most of the country's wealth while the majority starve and live in utter misery and poverty. How Haiti is ravaged by this tyranny of the rich, by unfair trade, the fraud and corruption of false aid, false benevolence, false charity, false food aid, and the false Christian missions whose help mostly don't reach the intended poorest of the poor but services the rich, blan kolon and the global elite's agenda of keeping Haiti in debt and contained-in-poverty.

The mainstream media routinely publishes articles citing research studies by self-serving charities and NGOs pontificating on the horrors of child domestic labor amongst the poor majority- ti pèp la- in Haiti. But they conveniently ignore the real tyrants - the pillaging wealthy at the very top who deny the masses a voice, their votes, economically enslave the poor Haitian majority and cause the perpetuation of the wretched survival system of child domestic servants. They conveniently ignore, for instance, that there may be more poor Haitian children being sponsored at $20 to $40 a pop by Christian missions and the global multinational charity businesses making a profit off Haiti's poverty than there are children in Haiti.

These special media reports and NGO "research" studies -to get more grants off the backs of Haitians - ignore that, not only does this charity money raised -in the name of helping poor children like the ones who are so poor in Haiti they must be lent out to another poor family for work purposes as restavek - child laborers/indentured servants- not reach such children but the amount that is spent in Haiti is mostly spent on either the child of the rich or the irelatively more wealth-off Haitian child. The real poor child is merely used as BAIT to raise funds that mostly doesn't reach them or help their kind to any great extent in Haiti. The bulk of the money raised by NGOS, in the name of “helping the poor Haitian people," mostly, like US/Euro foreign aid to Haiti, stays in the US or in Europe, or is used for salaries for these do-gooders and their Haitian sycophants, for obtaining an Old Dixie Planter's lifestyle in Haiti, for administrative fees, for shipping fees, for dumping food at harvest time to further impoverish the Haitian farmer. But this enslavement, this organized violence at the top in Haiti which creates, since the Independence Debt, the individual violence at the bottom won't get any press. No.



You won't see the mainstream media publishing articles on the institutionalized poverty pimp system in Haiti, going on for over half-a-century now, starting since the early 1950s, headed by the United States through USAID, USAID insiders and contracted out to the major multinational charitable NGO businesses - CARE International, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, et al...- , that uses the Haitian poor as bait to collect funds, research grants, food aid contracts, to collect shipping and distribution contracts for the privileged foreigner and their Haitian sycophants so to get richer, more power, maintain the Old Dixie status quo in Haiti. They won't explain that there are false orphanages, like those described in Schwartz' book, that ensures the poor will remain poor and the poor peasant's child will have to become a child servant for sheer survival. And there's false food aid that destroys Haiti's security, dignity and food sovereignty, creates slums like Site Soley. This real slavery, this organized tyranny and corruption at the top - the enslavement of Haiti's majority by USAID/World Bank/IFI/IMF's poverty pimp system, run mostly by reputable charities/NGOs and the Haitian Oligarchy - the handful of "white Haitians" - Haiti's economic elite that are the richest people in the Western Hemisphere; this slavery is never exposed in these articles and special reports on child "slavery" in Haiti. (See, Ezili Dantò's review of TRAVESTY in Haiti - A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, fraud, food aid and drug trafficking, a book by Timothy T. Schwartz; HLLN on oversight needed on USAID; Letter to the Editors; Food Donation Rot in New York while Haitian Storm Victims Starve and Die, Sept. 8, 2008; and HLLN Update: Paterson's Timeline for delivery of donated goods for Haiti storm victims.)

The African warriors in Haiti fought the English, French, Spanish and a US blockage in order to abolish slavery and take Haiti's independence in 1804. But lone Haiti has been fighting these same forces to maintain its independence, since 1806, when the first successful foreign-supported coup d'etat - that is, the assassination of Haiti's founding father, Jean Jacques Dessalines. It's been since then that the bourgeois/Affranchi/mulatto/white Haitians have been enslaving, through neocolonialism (debt, dependency, privatization, free trade, false aid, false benevolence, wage slavery and foreign domination/UN occupation), the entire Haitian masses. (See, the New Slavery Model Fulfilling Lecler's imperative and Haiti Forum 2009.)



That SLAVERY - the tyranny of the tiny monopoly/mercenary families in Haiti and the USAID/NGO system that supports it for corporate America maintaining the dependency, debt, exclusion, apartheid, unfair wages, the fraud, corruption and false benevolence- is the reason Haitians continue to run to the high seas for refuge, preferring death than to stay enslaved to Haiti's Oligarchy and NGOs as continued today by the US/UN occupation. (Capsized, 85 Haitians dead: Haiti's Holocaust Continues - Asylum, Amnesty, Justice denied our kind; Haiti's Holocaust and Middle Passage Continues; The Collar of Impunity: Sexual abuse of Haiti children by Priests, Charity Workers and UN Peacekeepers and Humanitarian Aid Workers raping, molesting and abusing Haitian children.)

For all the unscrupulous and shady businessmen and governments of the world, Haiti has always been a fiscal paradise because the Neocolonialists' manufactures fear, racists myths and false stereotypes about Haitian brutality, inherent poverty, lack of natural resources, incompetence (the common neocolonial storyline/media lies), inherent violence, decontextualizes Haiti's legacy of impunity/corruption and lies about Haiti not having a viable indigenous culture. These myths, stereotypes, racists lies and self-serving fears control, promote and maintain the world's negative perceptions of Haiti so that empire, their predatory "charitable" and "benevolent" NGOs and the world's corporate oligarchs may contain-Haiti-in-poverty the better to rob it blind.

BACKGROUND:
Oil in Haiti - Economic Reasons for the UN/US occupation; Expose the lies - Haiti's Riches: Interview with Ezili Dantò on Mining in Haiti;
HLLN on the causes of Haiti deforestation and poverty;

Haiti Riches
Digging up Haiti
Map of mining resources in Haiti and showing five oil/gas sites in Haiti
Pointing Guns at Starving Haitians: Violent Haiti is a myth
Legacy of Inpunity
Comparing crime, poverty and violence in the rest of the Hemisphere to Haiti
The Two Most Common Neocolonial Storylines about Haiti

HLLN Counter Colonial Narrative
The Independence Debt
The causes of Haiti's poverty and deforestation
Ezili's counter-colonial narrative on Vodun
Haiti Policy Statement for the Obama Team

Recommended HLLN Links
Energy and Mining in Haiti
The wealthy, powerful and well-armed are robbing the Haitian people blind, and a June 13, 2008 Nouvelliste article alleging, in sum, that "...in these last months, more than 40 to 50% of the imported rice that is subsidized by the Haitian State is CONSUMED in the DOMINICAN REPUBLIC?.... And that even Haitian clandestinely subsidized petroleum products, cheaper Haiti oil products, are also being consumed by wealthy foreign ships passing through Haitian waters, instead of the impoverished and starving Haitians these food and gas subsidies were intended to benefit...")

That SLAVERY gets no press coverage. Yet, it is the root cause of the continuing child domestic servant issue and Haiti's institutionalized empoverishment. Indeed the media failure to report the truth, their lies and simplistic reporting about Haiti, allows impunity for the mercenary familes, their agents and US/Euro collaborators. The mainstream media will not do exposes showing that Haiti’s poverty, deforestation and instability is the result of the theft and exploitation of Haiti by the world’s wealthy countries, their corporations and subcontracting, non-tax-paying Haitian mercenary families. These untouchables - Category Two (Bafyòti yo)- get no such mainstream journalistic exposes though they, with their forces (Ndòki) - that is, the military, economic, diplomatic, political, neocolonial and media power of the US/Euro imperialist (Category One) are the ones maintaining slavery, misrule and poverty in Haiti - turning an entire nation of over 9 milllion Blacks into restaveks!

Ezili HLLN's work and media campaign gives voice to this Haiti narrative and enslavement. We are re-membering the dismembered Bwa Kayiman call - E, e, Mbomba, e, e! Kanga Bafyòti. Kanga Mundele. Kanga Ndòki. Kanga yo!

Our intention at Ezili's HLLN is to extend from our Ginen source, create a new paradigm - help liberate and develop Haiti and thus foil the black collaborators/traitors (kanga bafyòti), stop the tyrannical white settlers/blan strangers (kanga mundele). Bind all their evil forces/sorcerers (kanga Ndòki). Stop their Ndòki - that is, their fraud, false charity, false media, false schooling of Haiti's children, false NGOs, false charity, false Christian missions in haiti, false USAID benevolence, false humanitarian aid and their media untruths. Stop them!

E, e, Mbomba! Kanga Bafyòti. Kanga Mundele. Kanga Ndòki. Kanga li!



Ezili Dantò/HLLN

For more background information:

Listen to the Welfare Poets's song Sak Pase and their reciting (at 2:05) the Bwa Kayiman invocation or call: E, e, Mbomba! Kanga Bafyòti. Kanga Mundele. Kanga Ndòki. Kanga li!;

Please also refer to the three posts by Ezili Dantò, written back in August of 2003, before the occupation where I wrote: Beloved, know, no matter what you hear from the Bafyòtis, Mundeles or Ndòkis, Haitians love themselves and their children and Haitians are pushing to come together to stop the abuse of poor, unprotected children, as well as to raise awareness of the plight of the Restavek. These three post give a historical perspective, some critical observations, and hopefully, will add to the many concerned Haitian voices clamoring to legally amend Chapter 9 of the Haitian Labor Code which sanctions child domestic labor, and, for a nationwide educational campaign on parenting and the rights of Haitian children.
http://annpale.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=720#720
http://annpale.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=721#721
http://annpale.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=722#722

See, Slavery Still Legally Sanctioned under US Constitution - The 13th Amendment states: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." For more on slavery in the US, sharecropping and the peonage system, see -The Cotton Pickin' Truth..Still on the plantation; The Untold Story: Slavery In The 20th Century.

Know that: - "An increasing number of prisons in the U.S. are run by corporations, using their prisoners as workers and selling their labor to corporations. Federal safety and health standards do not protect prison labor, nor do the National Labor Relations Board policies. The corporations do not even have to pay minimum wage.

- "J.C. Penney, Victoria's Secret, IBM, Toys R Us and TWA are among the US corporations that have profited by employing prisoners. Put together long mandatory sentences for minor drug offences, a strong racial bias, prisons run by corporations for profit, the sale of convict labor to corporations, and a charge for prison room and board and you have a modern system of bonded labor - a social condition otherwise known as slavery." [from Take It Personally: How to Make Conscious Choices to Change the World edited by Anita Roddick, p.75]
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"...The US government must stay out of our affairs and let us run our country. Each time they organize a coup d'état in Haiti - we have already 35 or 36 coups d'état in our history - we have to start over. This US policy of wanting to control everything in Haiti is blocking development as well as political, social or sociopolitical progress..." (--Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, interview entitled "Sovereignty and Justice in Haiti" by Darren Ell, March 4, 2007)
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Haitian-Americans ask the US Congress and President to...end the UN occupation; stop unequal immigration treatment of Haitian refugees and asylum seekers; cancel, without condition, Haiti's debt to international financial institutions; void unfair trade laws, start fair and reciprocal trade, restrict free trade so not to dump food and other imports into Haiti that eviscerate Haiti's domestic growth and by also calibrating Haiti's domestic needs for agricultural expansion, public works, job creation, health care, schools, sanitation, infrastructure, and by adding enforceable human rights, labor, environmental rights provisions in US trade laws; permanently stop all deportations to Haiti, grant TPS; release of the political prisoners; stop trading for Haiti with USAID - foreign aid should go directly to the Haitian government; demand new foreign aid guidelines and oversight of USAID in Haiti; respect Haitian sovereignty and the Haitian vote; return President Aristide; investigate the role of US in the 2004 coup d'etat where US Special forces forcibly exiled President Jean Bertrand Aristide via an unmarked plane used for renditions.

- U.S. good governance and democratic enhancement policies administered by USAID should result in maximizing, not depleting or obliterating the Haitian Diaspora's $2 billion annual remittances and investments in Haiti; the next US Congress and President should implement new US foreign assistance regulations, guidelines and oversight to ensure foreign aid administered by USAID actually reaches the people in need, doesn't stay in Washington and is not primarily used for USAID's political benefactors, NGOs and non-profit's administrative, salary or shipping/transportation fees. (For complete details, go to: What Haitians and Haitian-Americans Ask of the New US Congress and President and Haiti Policy Statement for the Obama Team). 


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Ezili Dantò's review of TRAVESTY in Haiti - A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, fraud, food aid and drug trafficking

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Haiti's Holocaust and Middle Passage Continues 


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Oil in Haiti - Economic Reasons for the UN/US occupation


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Restavek: Letter to the New York Times - Demonizing the Gonaives Hurricane Victims
Sept. 14, 2008



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Haitian child restaveks - domestic servants - does not equate to the European TransAtlantic trade/holocaust | Ezili's counternarrative on the ABC/Nightline report on the abuse of Haitian children July 9, 2008

FOR MORE of Ezilidanto's Counter Narrative to the Mainstream Media, Visit her website.

Copyright © Ezilidanto (HLLN)

Sowing Panic on the Streets of Haiti

"So you have people who were financing misinformation, on the one hand, and destabilisation, on the other, and who encouraged small groups of hoodlums to sow panic on the streets, to create the impression of a government losing control."

–"An Interview with Jean-Bertrand Aristide," July 20, 2006

Pro-Aristide graffiti in front of the Haitian Presidential Palace (March 2008)

That statement was made by President Aristide in 2006, but it is still appropriate for the situation in Haiti now. A UN food convoy was reportedly attacked by an armed group of men trying to hi-jack the supplies. One has to wonder, who are these fools, who would try to hold up a vehicle with men armed with powerful automatic weapons? These men couldn't have been armed with guns. What's more, no one was injured! The UN only fired warning shots. Unbelievable! What of the occasions when the UN occupiers have committed massacres; firing into shantytown communities, killing mothers, fathers and babies; or when a few brutally beat up Haitian policemen in their own barracks; or shot and killed a young man attending Pére Gerard Jean Juste's funeral?

The carnage which began with Bush regime change did not stop when the UN occupiers took over, as chronicled by Ezili Danto's Witness Project:

April 1, 2005 to April 23, 2005 - Killed by UN soldiers (AUMOHD report)

1. Fedia Raphael, age 15. She was shot by the Peruvian MINUSTAH soldiers, April 9, 2005

2. Jean Brenel Jean, age 28, killed by several bullets to the head by Peruvian MINUSTAH soldiers, April 15, 2005

3. Paul Jean Emile, killed at Bois Neuf in Cité Soleil by MINUSTAH soldiers.

4. Andre Joassaint, killed April 1, 2005 by MINUSTAH soldiers

5. "Bord", so called, a former soccer player, killed outside the police station at Cité Soleil

6. Denis Gary, killed by MINUSTAH soldiers with a bullet to the head, Cité Soleil

7. Daniel Jimmo, killed by MINUSTAH soldiers, April 19th, at Drouillard

8. Marie Maude Fabien, age 28, shot by MINUSTAH soldiers April 23, 2005. She is still in the morgue because her parents haven't the means to bury her.

(AUMOHD report for Ezili Danto Witness Project, dated April 30, 2005)

Bush regime change brought a bloodbath to Haiti, with the attendant massacres and human rights abuses. It's hard to believe that the UN occupier's disregard for Haitian life has just turned on a dime in a matter of days and they are just firing warning shots into the air now. The UN specializes in head shots. Their intent is not to maim, but to kill.

"And then when it comes to 2004-6, suddenly all this indignant talk of violence falls silent. As if nothing had happened. People were being herded into containers and dropped into the sea. That counts for nothing. The endless attacks on Cité Soleil, they count for nothing. I could go on and on. Thousands have died. But they don’t count, because they are just chimères, after all." –Jean-Bertrand Aristide

To be fair when the UN occupiers first came in June 2004, they just bore silent witness to the killings by the Haitian police and the goons who served the oligarchy. It was not part of their mission to stop the carnage, so they did not intervene to stop it. It was not until April 2005 that the UN began to systematically brutalize the Haitian population. The terror intensified in July and December of 2005 when Brazilian troops leading the "military component" of the UN mission committed bloody massacres in the shantytown of Cite Soleil.

“MINUSTAH has been shooting tear gas on the people. There are children who have died from the gas and some people inside churches have been shot. The Red Cross was with us. The Red Cross was just here and might have just gone on to pick up more children and adults who have gotten shot. The Red Cross is the only one helping us. The MINUSTAH soldiers remain hidden in their tanks and just aim their guns and shoot the people. They shoot people selling in the streets. They shoot people just walking in the streets. They shoot people sitting and selling in the marketplace.”

– Emmanuel "Dred" Wilme/shot and killed by MINUSTAH 06.06.2005

Prior to the massacres, Cite Soleil had been the launching point of mass demonstrations calling for the return of President Aristide and an end to foreign occupation of their country. The targeting of Cite Soleil for terror, death and violence is documented as occuring before planned demonstrations.

Although Emmanuel "Dred" Wilme was targeted as a "gang leader," his people knew him as a Community Leader and hero. On July 6, 2005, 440 soldiers shot heavy guns at the fragile homes of the shantytown dwellers of Cite Soleil for seven hours from their tanks and helicopters. A total of 22,000 rounds of ammunition were expanded to kill one man, but killed in the cross-fire were an estimated 59 others; innocent men, women and children. Dred Wilme died a slow and painful death from a gut wound--he was not yet thirty when he died. His people celebrated Dred Wilme by giving him an honorific African funeral pyre by the seaside.

HLLN: "None of those calling Drèd Wilme "bandit" have ever shown he traveled outside his community to attack either the foreigner who came to kill him in his own home, nor the morally repugnant Haitian bourgeoisie who paid assassins to destroy his community, his nation. In contrast to the bi-centennial Coup D'etat traitors, Drèd Wilme is known to the people in his community as a defender of the defenseless and poor. Again, we say, as we did last April, Wilme covered himself in glory because he added value in his own community, and if, in fact, he lives no more, he joins the line going back to that first Neg and Negès Ginen who can only - depi lan Guinen - live free or die. That unborn spirit, that Haitian soul, cannot die. It's rising."

In spite of all the terror and deaths, United Nations Destabilization Mission in Haiti has not been successful in stopping dissent in Haiti. When President Aristides' Fanmi Lavalas was banned from elections last April, the polling stations were empty due to a boycott. The same action was due to happen this February 2010, because once again the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) decided to bar the country's most popular political organization (Fanmi Lavalas). To add insult to injury the Council approved the candidacy of Guy Phillippe's party. Guy had been one of the thugs leading the "rebels" calling for the ousting of Aristide. Astonishingly, Guy is supposedly the target of a DEA warrant.

MINUSTAH must have gauged that things would be coming to a head this month with the elections, and probably protests and boycotts. There were propaganda posters posted warning people that if they did not come out to vote, they could expect an increase in hunger for their country. The earthquake has preempted all that and now the elections have been postponed by the Haitian government.

Back to the convoy incident, it's hard to believe that the earthquake has so effected the aim of the "peacekeepers." Just this past November a man was shot who was part of a group of curious Haitians who approached a UN helicopter operating in the dead of night. Why was the UN mission that night so important that deadly force had to be used to repel unarmed townspeople?

"Residents of this quiet seaside town an hour west of Port-Au-Prince were awoken at about 1 a.m. on Nov. 10 by the sound of helicopters flying low overhead. A curious crowd amassed around the aircrafts.

One of the helicopters had mechanical trouble and had to make an emergency landing, said U.N. spokesperson Sophie Boutaud de la Combe. To lighten the load on the damaged helicopter, the Chilean crew moved white boxes of supplies into the other helicopter for several hours.

She also said, in a radio interview broadcast here in the capital city, that troops only fired once into the air in attempt to disperse the crowd. They had called for backup from the local platoon of Sri Lankan U.N. troops."

Rinvil Jean Weldy, 50, has a wound on his right shoulder as a painful reminder of the very real bullets aimed at the crowd. The incident begs the question: Who are the frightful monsters that people must be cautioned against -- the Haitian people who are dying by the hundreds of thousands or MINUSTAH's heavily armed military contingent? The Haitian people for one, know the answer to that question. They don't want MINUSTAH. They don't need MINUSTAH. They can't see what MINUSTAH has done for Haiti since they've been there. Even during this earthquake crisis, the UN was seen conducting military exercises, ignoring the acute suffering of the Haitian people. Why was the UN in a convoy with food supplies anyway? Who are they delivering it to--it can't possibly be for the Haitian people.

"Edmond Mulet, as the organization's Acting Special Representative of the Secretary-General and interim head of MINUSTAH. Mulet clarified on January 22 that MINUSTAH will concentrate on assisting the Haitian Nation Police in providing security within the country after the earthquake, while United States and Canadian military forces will distribute humanitarian aid and provide security for aid distribution."

– Wikipedia

Since MINUSTAH's "peacekeepers" claim to be securing the peace in Haiti, it's natural to wonder what casualties they have incurred as a result of their clashes with these violence prone Haitians- - the bandits, gangs, Chimeres and desperate criminals. It's been four long years since MINUSTAH has occupied Haiti. The fearsome native gangs must have taken a toll on the UN forces? After all, they are reportedly armed and dangerous. Nope. Not so much. There is a staggering imbalance when one looks at the numbers. The Lancet documented in 2006 that the conservative estimates of the carnage in Haiti since 2004, following the removal of the democratically elected government were: 8,000 dead and 35,000 raped. On the UN side, the documented deaths are 2: one suspicious "suicide" of a Brazilian UN Commander (suspicious because he had argued with members the repugnant and immoral oligarchy just before his death) and one Philippino soldier. This mission has been a breeze for the men in blue helmets. It's as if the threat of violence has been extremely exaggerated.

The most casualties sustained by the UN forces in Haiti are the 100 reportedly killed when the UN building in Port-au-Prince collapsed during the earthquake.

The actions of the UN Destabilizing mission in Haiti as described by HLLN in Nov. 2005 were as criminals preying on members of Fanmi Lavalas.

"HLLN comment on the continuing occupation of Haiti:
In what should be a community police function, military soldiers from the multinational UN contingent [...] are executing, not arresting, "suspected criminals" in Haiti with no judicial oversight and against the Geneva Convention and other well established rules for military engagement and clearly beyond "peacekeeping" functions which normally means MEDIATION between two political different armed groups. But because Haiti is weak, poor and Black, profiling of Lavalas supporters is the standard to determine whether a Haitian male is "a gang member" standards of law seem suspended for this nation by the international community (US, Canada, France) and the UN."

In the aftermath of the catastrophic 7.0 earthquake of Jan. 12, so-called "isolated" incidents of violence by the Haitian population are being pointed to by the media and the US Pentagon as a pretext for keeping Haiti under a brutal military lock-down. So with the blessing of these two American institutions, these "criminals," who are masquerading as a "peacekeeping" force and who have had zero accountability for all the crimes they have committed in Haiti, have the license to go on operating as they have in the past -- as a brute force.

Anti-UN graffiti Fort Liberté, Haiti (2009).

Photo credit: Drax WD - read his story on Flickr

It is evident that MINUSTAH is the culprit for much of the violence and death in Haiti since its brutal occupation began in June 2004. The people feel no security from the presence of MINUSTAH's armed forces. See Mediahacker's piece: "Mistrusting of Their Government and UN, Haitians Place Their Hopes In US Troops, Aristide."

However, the tiny one percent of the Haitian population which monopolizes Haiti's wealth, do feel very secure; as do the NGOs, hypocritically pious churches, the multi-national business interests, foreign government agencies, sweatshop owners, charities... they by and large have felt very comfortable with the hunting down, killing and criminalizing of Fanmi Lavalas members. A democracy really does not work very well for them. It would impinge on their turf and they might have to answer to the people for their actions in Haiti. Why, they might even be expected to pay taxes!

In the interview quoted at the beginning of this piece, President Aristide talked about the "hoodlums" who were the instrument of fear and panic used to create the impression that he had lost control of his government. The same scenario is unfolding in Haiti now. The media covering the events in Haiti are constantly anticipating and predicting violence. It's as if they act as an arm of the US Pentagon in times when the Empire is ready to make interventions in hapless countries like Haiti. Haiti is ripe for the picking because it has been crippled by the US' economic, social and foreign policies -- not a "natural" disaster.

"It was never really about me, it’s got nothing to do with me as an individual. They detest and despise the people. They refuse absolutely to acknowledge that everyone is equal. So when they behave in this way, part of the reason is to reassure themselves that they are different. It’s essential that they see themselves as better than others. I’m convinced it’s bound up with the legacy of slavery, with an inherited contempt for the common people, for the petits nègres. It’s the psychology of apartheid: it’s better to get down on your knees with whites than to stand shoulder to shoulder with blacks."

–"An Interview with Jean-Bertrand Aristide," July 20, 2006

President Aristide understands the dynamics of the forces aligned against Haiti. He is the only one who can finally unify the people. President Aristide must be allowed to return to Haiti. The international community has no right to keep a former head of state landless and exiled. Moreover, President Aristide is needed to help in the reconstruction and rebuilding of Haiti and in the establishment and maintenance of Haiti's institutions. He only needs to have his Haitian passport restored. President Preval, are you listening? Now that your handlers are no longer heaping praise on you for the improvements you have made, please stop kowtowing to them. President Aristide must return home to his country in Haiti's time of need.

"The South African government has welcomed us here as guests, not as exiles; by helping us so generously they have made their contribution to peace and stability in Haiti. And once the conditions are right we’ll go back. As soon as René Préval judges that the time is right then I’ll go back."

–Jean-Bertrand Aristide/Pretoria, South Africa 2006

Vive retou Aristid.

UPDATE 7:00pm 02.03.10:
In early 2005, MINUSTAH force commander Lieutenant-General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira testified at a congressional commission in Brazil that “we are under extreme pressure from the international community to use violence,” citing Canada, France, and the United States. Later in the year, he resigned, and on 1 September 2005, was replaced by General Urano Teixeira da Matta Bacellar as force commander of MINUSTAH. On 7 January 2006, Bacellar was found dead in his hotel room. His interim replacement, Chilean General Eduardo Aldunate Hermann.

In January 2006, two Jordanian peacekeepers were killed in Cité Soleil.

Source: Wiki.

Tim Russert: Haitians Have No Political Power

"Haitians have no political power."
--Tim Russert | MSNBC (03/29/2008)

Now that seems like a harmless assessment, but if you look closer it makes you wonder what it would take for Haitians to have this vaunted "political power." Could it be that they are poor and black? Is that their sin? So I sat down to write an email to Mr. Russell.

"Those poor voiceless, powerless, impotent Haitians that you and your guest Tucker and the other guest were chuckling about -- seemed to me kind of mean to laugh at people dying on the open seas or being repatriated to Haiti without a hearing or incarcerated like criminals in immigration jails.

Edwidge Dandicat the great Haitian writer has an acclaimed book describing her uncle's death at an immigration facility called "Brother, I'm Dying". Have you heard of it? Probably not, dead black Haitians are so last year.

Although, it is sort of ironic that poor black people from Haiti think that they can find refuge and safety in their chief enemy's country.

It's a new one though, you boys adding Venezuelans to your target list of powerless hated peoples. You may find it a bit harder though to put your imperialist heels on the metaphorical necks of poor Venezuelans. They and their leaders will give you a better fight, since they have oil revenues and are in a better position to fight.

My question is though -- why are you guys trying to perpetuate the myth of Venezuelan refugees. Maybe if you had exhibit A - poor, powerless Venezuelan seeking shelter from harsh, dictatorial, unelected government of Hugo Chavez, you would not so unintentionally give me such a belly laugh!!!!

That wealthy Venezuelans, who could not overthrow the democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez are filling up the ranks of the Cuban dissident few (and getting fewer) in Miami is probably true. But most likely they are taking a flight in from Caracas on American Airlines and sipping a glass of martini in relative comfort."

Update (3/30/08):
Tucker Carlson commented that the US should end the blockade of Cuba; not to end the suffering of the Cuban people, you understand, but so that Cuba can be invaded by Starbucks. That'll fix those Commies!

Carlson expressed his surprise and obvious dissappointment that the Pastor Wright controversy seemed to be losing its legs. It seems that his political prognostications about the negative repercussions for Obama were wrong.

Update (3/31/08):
The context of the discussion when the remark about Haitians was made by Russert involved the so-called "wet foot / dry foot" or if you call it like it is; the "black foot / white foot" policy of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) .

Black Liberation Meets White Tiger

Masked black overseers look after the white tiger's "interests".

Pastor Jeremiah Wright is meeting the same white tiger that attacked and malled the democratically elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. This western tiger opposes liberation theology as it relates to the liberation of the poor in a society dominated by the rich and powerful who oppose the gospel of Jesus Christ and its message of hope and change.

Haitians morn the loss of their sovereignty and freedom.

"A white theology can be just as political as a black theology or a theology of liberation in Latin America. Although it is easily seen through, political concern seeks to hide the orientation of a white theology toward defending dominant class interests. This is why, through simulating neutrality, white theology is preoccupied with the conciliation of things that cannot be conciliated, why it denies so consistently the differences among social classes and their struggles, and why in its efforts for social good it does not go beyond the kind of modernizing reformisms that only shore up the status quo."

"A Black Theology of Liberation"
-- Paulo Freire (Foreword to the 1986 Edition)

A prayer to the ancestors for the return of President Aristide

Here is a progression of events that happened to the democratically elected government of Haiti, lead by its President, Jean-Betrand Aristide; a former priest who ministered to the poor in his church and preached liberation theology.

Like Pastor Jeremiah Wright, he was demonized by his enemies in the US government and in the corporate controlled MSM, particularly by the New York Times and the far right led by the racist Jesse Helms.

The ultimate toll for Haitians (mostly poor and underprivileged) who supported President Aristide and his party Lavalas (the flood):

"Shocking Lancet Study: 8,000 Murders, 35,000 Rapes and Sexual Assaults in Haiti During U.S.-Backed Coup Regime After Aristide Ouster"

Democracy Now!
August 31, 2006

Barack's "Improbable Campaign": 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft

60 Minutes hosts an extensive interview with Senator Barack Obama.



Kroft: "One of the problems that you have still is the question of experience... when you sit down and look at the resume, huh, there's no executive experience. In fact, correct me if I'm wrong; the only things you've run is the Harvard Law Review."

Barack: "I've run my Senate Office and I've run this campaign. You know, one of the interesting things about this experience argument is it's often posed as just a funcion of longevity; there are a lot of companies that have been here longer than Google, but Google's performing."