![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
HONORING LOVINSKY PIERRE-ANTOINE
Today I join you in honoring the many and great contributions of our friend and brother Lovinsky Pierre Antoine. At the center of his work has been the dignity of the Haitian people. It guided Lovinsky as he raised his voice in unison with the people of Haiti in denouncing injustice, struggling for a better life and pursuing a non-violent path towards a democratic and free Haiti for all.
If Lovinsky were there with you today, his deep and bellowing voice would echo the demands of Haitians and the world’s poor for respect of the fundamental and human right to food and freedom from hunger. His resolute commitment to peace and justice would demand no less. In his absence, it is fitting and right that the Haiti Solidarity Network of the North East shine a light on Lovinsky’s vision by awarding him with the organization’s Human Rights Award.
May this award symbolize one more step towards a safe return of our beloved brother! Peace and Love to his Family and to Haiti, our Mother Land.
Dr. Jean-Bertrand Aristide
Former President of Haiti
Pretoria, South Africa
May 2, 2008
Forbes magazine has named Haiti one of the world's 10 most dangerous destinations, along with Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.
The Associated Press has called Port-au-Prince the kidnapping capital of the Americas.
The U.S. government maintains a perpetual travel warning on Haiti, while diplomats, journalists and aid workers spend much of their time holed up in fortified hotels.
The image stems largely from two violent years after the 2004 U.S. ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide when the slums of Port-au-Prince erupted in gunbattles between gangs, Haitian police and U.N. peacekeepers, plus a wave of kidnappings.
Today, Haiti's reputation is undeserved, say security analysts and officials from the U.N. peacekeeping mission. They argue that Haiti is no more violent than any other Latin American country.
"It's a big myth," said Fred Blaise, spokesman for the U.N. police force in Haiti. "Port-au-Prince is no more dangerous than any big city. You can go to New York and get pickpocketed and held at gunpoint."
— Reed Lindsay, "BRIEFING: Haiti's image of fear 'a big myth' to some", The Washington Times
You don't see many articles about Haiti that suggest that Haiti's reputation as a dangerous place is over-hyped. This is one of the few.
I met with Reed Lindsay during one of my trips to Haiti (he lives there full time). He has some great journalistic insights into the country.
What happens to poor countries when they embrace free trade? In Haiti in 1986 we imported just 7000 tons of rice, the main staple food of the country. The vast majority was grown in Haii. In the late 1980s Haiti complied with free trade policies advocated by the international lending agencies and lifted tariffs on rice imports. Cheaper rice immediately flooded in from the United States where the rice industry is subsidized. In fact the liberalization of Haiti's market coincided with the 1985 Farm Bill in the United States which increased subsidies to the rice industry so that 40% of US rice growers' profits came from the government by 1987. Haiti's peasant farmers could not possibly compete. By 1996 Haiti was importing 196,000 tons of foreign rice at the cost of $100 million a year. Haitian rice production became negligible. Once the dependence on foreign rice was complete, import prices began to rise, leaving Haiti's population, particularly the urban poor, completely at the whim of rising world grain prices. And the prices continue to rise.
What lessons do we learn? For poor countries free trade is not so free or so fair. Haiti, under intense pressure from international lending institutions, stopped protecting its domestic agriculture while subsidies to the U.S. rice industry increased. A hungry nation became hungrier.
In a globalized economy, foreign investment is trumpeted as the key to alleviating poverty. But in fact, the top beneficiary of foreign investment from 1985-95 was the United States, with $477 billion. Britain ran a distant second at $199 billion. Mexico, the only third world country in the top ten, received only $44 billion in investment. When the majority of this money fled the country overnight during Mexico's meltdown in 1995, we learned that foreign investment is not really investment. It is more like speculation.
— Jean Bertand Aristide, Eyes of the Heart
Darren Ell: What message would you like to pass on to Canadian and American readers? In your view, what should they be thinking about if they want to help Haiti?
Patrick Elie: Become citizens in your own countries. You're nothing but consumers. You've lost control of your governments. Open up your eyes and ears to the lies you're being fed about other countries. Also, Canada should stop robbing, literally looting Haiti of its better minds that are so needed here, especially in the last five or 10 years.
I've seen Patrick speak; he's fascinating and nuanced in his presentation of the political situation in Haiti.
From what I've read so far, Damming the Flood by Peter Hallward is turning out to be one of the best analyses of the 2004 Haitian coup.
Have I mentioned how much I love this country?
Two events are coming up in February. First, there will be a performance of the play, Haiti Held Hostage on Wednesday, Feb. 20th at 8pm in the Lulu Lounge. Tickets are $10.
This play is based on Noam Chomsky's lectures on how the media distorts Canada's role in Haiti. I know a number of people who saw this in Guelph last spring, and said that it was very effective.
Two nights later, in the Thomas Lounge at Ryerson University, two other speakers and I will be giving a talk about students and education in Haiti. I'm not 100% sure of the time, but I think it'll be something like 7:00pm.
All this has created real confusion about what constitutes peacekeeping, and whether what is presented as peacekeeping has much to do with peace any more. It also raises questions of whether peacekeeping -- carried out either by the UN or by NATO with UN authorization -- is even a beneficial activity, or is simply a cloak for Western powers to pursue their own agendas with a veneer of international legitimacy.
Let's start by admitting that these are extremely difficult questions. Certainly, the UN has been used to further the interests of Western powers. This can be seen in Haiti, where, as noted earlier, a UN peacekeeping force helped prop up a brutal regime put in place by Washington, immediately after Washington had removed the democratically elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004. The role of the UN in this blatantly undemocratic "regime change" -- supported by Canada -- raises important questions, partly because Canadian officials seemed to regard these actions as justifiable under the principle of "responsibility to protect," a doctrine promoted by Canada and endorsed by world leaders at the UN General Assembly in 2005.
Under this doctrine, the nations of the world, acting through the UN, are considered to have a responsibility to intervene to protect civilian populations at risk of suffering severe human rights abuses such as genocide or ethnic cleansing at the hands of their own governments. The notion of the world acting collectively to protect helpless people in desperate situations has an obvious appeal. But it is also fraught with problems. It undermines a key UN principle -- the sovereignty of each nation -- by allowing nations to collectively violate the sovereignty of another nation, in the name of preventing it from carrying out severe abuses. But which abuses will be deemed worthy of intervention? What other factors may motivate the interveners? This "responsibility to protect" doctrine, for instance, could have been invoked to justify the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. And, indeed, among the key supporters of the doctrine (along with Lloyd Axworthy) has been Michael Ignatieff, who supported the invasion of Iraq as a necessary action to unseat a brutal dictator.
Disturbingly, Canada appears to have relied on the notion of "responsibility to protect" to justify the removal of Aristide's democratically-elected government. [...] "If you've been to Haiti you've seen the poor conditions in which Haitians are living and anyway from what I've seen personally there, I think that if there is one place where the principles of this 'responsibility to protect' would apply around the world, it's Haiti..." [Denis] Paradis told an interviewer in September 2004. "[I]sn't the role of the international community to make sure that the people can survive in a country, can have an economic well-being?"
— Linda McQuaig, Holding the Bully's Coat: Canada and the U.S. Empire
Since I have a moment, I want to say that Canada and the IDB and other donors have been targeting the rural sector in a way that is supporting infrastructure, for example, working on environmental degradation and promoting export crops and aquaculture farms. These are all worthwhile goals.
What I'm trying to get at is more of a peasant path to development that would prioritize food security. Some policies in that direction would be aimed at reducing the gap, for example, between capitalist farmers and peasant farm sectors; adapting existing modern technologies to the needs of the peasant sector given the conditions there; creating more peasant-friendly, appropriate sustainable technologies; and also, as part of this, promoting broader social and political conditions to make rural peasant production sustainable and productive.
What I mean is that it was clear to donors in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s that the liberalization of Haiti's markets and the lowering of protective tariffs on rice, for instance—the country's most basic staple—would devastate Haitian rice producers. This was well known. USAID came out with two reports, one in 1987 and another one in 1995, that said that if they lowered their tariffs, it would basically bring a loss of about $15 million a year to rice-growing peasants, further reducing their already poor standard of living. That was in a USAID report. In other words, we are advancing macro-economic policies that we know will impoverish these sectors. So maybe a “do no harm” policy would be a good way to start, regarding not decimating it further and pushing people out of rural areas into the slums of Port-au-Prince, where of course there is no employment.
Last night, THAC got together to view an advance screening of Kevin Pina's film, Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits. We tried to compile some feedback for Kevin. Primarily, it's about the claim that the UN is in Haiti to fight "the chimeres"/the gang leaders who are causing violence. What the film shows is the indiscriminate violence of the Haitian National Police and the UN.
There's a powerful sequence involving Pina's interviews people of Site Soley just after MINUSTAH went after (and killed) Dred Wilme. The official US response is that there were no civilian casualties, and only 5 people were killed. Pina has interviews very shortly after the attack. One man, whose wife and two children lay dead beside him, described how they were attacked.
There're some interesting moments of conscience, too. There's footage of General Ribeiro Pereira talking about how the Haitian National Police (PNH) would attack rallies and protests and completely sour the relationship between MINUSTAH (who are there to support the police) and the population. The film, sadly, doesn't go on to mention that General Ribeiro eventually quit, after complaining about the international pressure on MINUSTAH to use violence to pacify Haiti.
The footage is just amazing, and there are parts where you're just completely sickened by what's going on, and by the duplicity of the official statements. But there isn't a tidy narrative holding it all together. There are a lot of players involved. If you're not somewhat familiar with some of the names, it can quickly seem overwhelming.
Anyway, we hope to send some feedback to Kevin Pina (he's still tweaking the editing), and hopefully host a public screening some time in the new year.
Tonight, THAC hosted a showing of a documentary film, The Price of Sugar at the Brunswick Theatre. Turns out, it's the last night for the Theatre, which is closing its doors tonight.
There was a good turnout, and it was an entertaining film. It's a film about Father Christopher Hartley, a priest working in the Dominican Republic, trying to help secure rights for Haitian workers who are brought in to the country to work in the sugar cane fields. It seems to be getting some attention (I've heard that it's been long-listed for an Oscar).
But.
It's yet another one of these "white guy makes it his mission to help poor, underprivileged people in a foreign country, who would never think of organizing on their own" films. Mostly, the Haitian workers don't get to speak in their own voice: in the few instances where they are interviewed, they're talking about Father Hartley and what he's done for them.
The guest house I stayed at in Haiti had some copies of Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization by Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Tonight, I decided to read the one I purchased while I was there; it's a short book, but a nicely-written one.( Some quotes )
In Kapayisyen (also called Okap, or Cap Haïtien), Sio and I decided to go for a hike north of the city. Our Lonely Planet guide said that there were the ruins of some forts up there, although it was unclear about how far a walk it might be. You hafta understand, on Friday, Siobhan and I went up the mountain to Petyonvil, and decided to walk back down the mountain to the guest house in Delmas. It was quite the walk, and our leg muscles aren't terribly happy with us.
So, bowlegged and limping slightly, we started walking up a hill north of Kapayisyen, toward some remains of some forts with no clear idea how far we might be traveling. It didn't take us long to pass the first ruins. We noticed some pretty old remnants of walls and we wondered: is this part of the first fort? Sure enough, a few metres farther, we turned a corner and there were several old rusty canons, squat and short-muzzled. They looked about the size of good-sized wine barrells.
"I don't think I'd want to live in the house directly across from where those cannons point," I said.
"They don't work. Look, they're filled with rock," Siobhan responded.
"Physically, yes," I acknowledged. "But psychically...?"
She wrinkled her brow at me.
Farther down the road, we found the ruins of the next fort. Mostly, all we could see were the walls of the fort. Through a gate, we could see more walls, and tall grass, and the remains of a structure built into the side of the cliff below us. Our books described it as inaccessible.
So, off we went to the third fort. We turned a bend, and started downhill, and could suddenly see a good part of the bay. An old, rusty metal boat had run aground in the bay, and sat there, lopsided. There was a beach that followed the cliff wall, around the edge of the bay. And at the farthest part of that cliff, where the cliff bends out of sight, there was a stone structure. A wall? With an opening? It was hard to see it.
So down the hill we walked. Down on to the beach. The beach was covered in rocks and garbage. We found the place where old saran wrap goes to die. And then the beach gave out and we were walking along a narrow ridge of rock between the cliff and the water. At one point, we met an old man.
He was sitting on a rock. Old, and thin, with a walking stick beside him. He had a white shirt and white pants, and a straw hat. If he had a piece of rope for a belt, he's look like an image out of so many Haitian paintings.
"Bonswa, mesye," we said. Good evening, Sir.
He looked up from his writing and cautioned us about the way forward. A big rock was in the way; someone had built stone stairs up and over the rock, but they'd broken. We thanked him for his warning and continued forward. Afterward, I found myself thinking about this man. A man with a cane, at what might be the "entrance", per se, of the trail to the fort. Hm.
We climbed over more rocks, more stairs, up and down, on a narrow ridge. From this vantage point, we could no longer even see the structure we thought we were headed toward. I looked at the sky.
"It's getting darker," I said. "I wonder if we should be heading back, soon."
"Let's at least get to that spot where the cliff turns. See if the fort is there."
"Okay," I said. "But if there's a tiger just around the bend, I'm so going to hold this against you."
We turned around the edge of the cliff, and just in front of us was a set of stone stairs leading upward. The third fort.
We walked up twenty feet or so, and there was a huge structure there. Old walls. Stairs between different levels. A platform by the water with about a dozen huge cannons, six feet long. There was no person charging admission, no tacky guys in 18th Century French uniforms mugging for photo ops. Just this amazing piece of history, largely unspoiled by tourism.
We wandered up to another level, and there were some recently-constructed wooded structures. Something in the back of my head said, "They do seremoni here." And I looked around and saw veves for Bossou and Ezili Freda. A make-shift poto mitan.
It was getting more and more overcast, and I was worried about climbing back over those rocks in the dark, so we wandered back. But it was such an amazing piece of history. And although there briefly saw one other group of blan checking out the same location, it wasn't like it was a tourist trap.
But we headed back. The old man with the cane was nowhere to be found on our return trip.
Join Danny Glover, Martin Sheen, Ron Kovic and others in a 24 Hour Fast for the safe return of Haitian human rights activist Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine Tuesday, Nov. 13 gather at 10:30am outside the Brazilian Consulate 8484 Wilshire Blvd (at La Cienega), Beverly Hills Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, the internationally respected Haitian human rights activist, disappeared in Haiti on the evening of 12 August. He is an extraordinary grassroots organizer beloved by his community, and a leading advocate for the poor, including street children, teenage mothers and victims of torture. Please urge the Brazilian government which plays a key role as head of the UN forces responsible for law and order in Haiti since the 2004 coup, as well as the governments of the US and Canada which are also key figures, to do all in their power, including making resources available to ensure Lovinsky's immediate and safe release to his family and the community who need him.
We all owe a great debt to the Haitian people. Haiti holds a special place in the hearts of many. As the first Black republic, Haiti led the way for the emancipation of those enslaved everywhere; it was a refuge for Simon Bolivar, the liberator of Latin America, and Haitian troops fought alongside him. The spirited and principled determination of Haitian people and their refusal to bend to the powerful forces which have tried to keep them down, have been and continue to be an inspiration throughout the world but especially to those of us who work to defend human rights. Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine personifies the Haitian spirit which refuses to submit despite all the odds.
WHAT YOU CAN DO The Haitian grassroots has called for worldwide actions to press for Lovinsky's release. You can answer their call by:
- Joining to initiate the fast outside the Brazilian Consulate. Commit to fast on Nov. 13, for all 24 hours or whatever part of the day you can. Ask your friends to join you.
- Coming out to support the call for Lovinsky's safe return whether you are fasting or not.
- Signing the petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/august/pet
ition.html, circulating it in your networks - Contacting your local press or media to tell them about this campaign to bring Lovinsky back, or calling a fast or vigil where you are
Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine is co-founder of Fondasyon Trant Septanm, an organization formed by family members and others concerned about the victims of the 1991 coup in Haiti. Similar to the work of internationally renowned Mothers of the Disappeared in Central and South America, for over a decade, the September 30th Foundation held weekly vigils demanding justice for victims of human rights violations and for the release of political prisoners. Lovinsky was co-founder of Fondasyon Kore Timoun Yo (Foundation for the Support of Children) for young street children in Port au Prince, FAM (Foyer pour Adolescentes M=E8res), a center for teenage mothers, and Map Viv ("I Live"), a program designed to give medical and psychological aid to the victims of the 1991 coup. His present community-based human rights organization Fondasyon Trant Septnm grew out of the work of those earlier efforts.
Coordinated by the Ad Hoc Working Group on Haiti which includes: ANSWER Coalition, CISPES/LA, Coalition in Solidarity with Haiti, Global Women's Strike/LA, International Action Center, and the Pan African Activist Coalition.
For info call 323-276-9833; email: la@crossroadswomen.net. websites: www.haitisolidarity.net; www.HaitiAction.net; www.globalwomenstrike.net
Last month, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), described by some as a liberal think-tank, issued an article structured as a "report card" of Haitian President Préval. The article made numerous critiques of Aristide, repeating common right-wing claims that Aristide was corrupt and involved in violence. For example, one passage read:
Six years ago, President Aristide appeared to have given up hope of ruling the country with intense energy, constitutional devotion, or a tireless commitment to building democratic institutions. Perhaps due to the attempted coup in late 2001 — or, just as likely, his own insensitivity to inclusive rule—Aristide seemed to manifest a show of lassitude to the rule of law as well as indifference to democratic institution building. He encouraged citizens to use violence when needed to fight the nation’s armed opposition, and civil liberties and political/human rights were in short supply. For all intents and purposes, there was a constitution in name only, something which newly elected President Préval, whom, it should be noted, was a close friend and political comrade of Aristide, promised to change.
As you might expect, the paper drew some criticism from Haiti activists. Today, I got this in my in-box:
There has been an intense dispute on the part of outside critics regarding COHA's piece on Haiti - which was issued on September 14, 2007. Its author, Michael Glenwick stands behind his article and the sharp criticism of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which has now been moved from COHA's website and can be found in COHA's Forum. After closely reviewing the Glenwick piece, COHA's senior officials regretfully concluded that much of the criticism of it - notably the September 21, 2007 critique of COHA's Haiti piece by Joe Emersberger for the Narco News Bulletin - was well-founded. It should also be noted that most of the contributions we received on the subject were opposed to our point of view; this is why we decided to submit the Glenwick article to a protracted review. Today we are replacing the Glenwick piece with a substantially revised version which was authored by COHA Director Larry Birns. This is now COHA's official position on the relative roles of Presidents Aristide and Preval and contains some glimpses of the former president's strengths and weaknesses, including his invaluable contribution to Haitian democracy.
Ever since he came into prominence in 1989, COHA has devoted much of its effort to spotlighting the life and times of President Aristide, stressing Washington's persistently radical and hostile rightwing attitude towards him under both the Clinton and Bush Administrations. From 2002-2004, COHA issued scores of analytical pieces on U.S.-Haitian relations written by Larry Birns, often in conjunction with COHA Research Fellow Jessica Leight. This included a co-authored contribution to Dr. Paul Farmer's "The Uses of Haiti" written in 2003: Mr. Emersberger was good enough to take note and praise this long association.
The first part of the fight is to not let the lies go unchallenged.
A prominent U.S. refugee advocate has been arrested by Canadian authorities as she was helping 12 Haitians seeking asylum in Canada.
Janet Hinshaw-Thomas, a director of Pennsylvania based Prime - Ecumenical Commitment to Refugees, was taken into custody around noon yesterday at the St. Bernard de Lacolle border crossing.
According to her Montreal lawyer, this is the first time in Canada a section of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act of June 2002 has been invoked against a human rights worker.
Section 117 makes it a crime to "organize, induce, aid or abet" the entry into Canada of persons who do not have a visa or passport.
[...]
Montreal lawyer Mitchell Goldberg, who is acting for Hinshaw-Thomas, said he knows of no other cases when "someone acting for humanitarian motives has been arrested" under the act. "It was designed to deter smugglers and people who are trafficking, not people who are saving lives.
