Haiti
Under Siege
By Kevin Pina
Znet
13 February, 2004
PORT-AU-PRINCE,
Haiti Money is power and power is money. The Bush administration
buys and sells political constituencies every day in pursuit of world
domination. Haiti, which recently celebrated its bicentennial as the
world's first black republic, is not otherworldly or immune from purchase.
Softening the ground for the transaction is the corporate media that
blatantly acquiesce to the U.S. State Department's campaign to denigrate
the rights and humanity of Haitis poor black majority. There is
no other way to describe their current campaign to portray the opposition
in Haiti as the new "freedom fighters" of the hemisphere,
out to topple the repressive dictatorship of President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.
George Bush's earlier
attempt to destroy the popular government of the poor in Venezuela only
expanded his learning curve in Haiti. The conclusions to both these
stories are not yet written.
The Washington-forged
opposition grows lighter in color and more brazen with each passing
day, while former Haitian military leaders prance hand in hand with
Haiti's traditional economic elite, intellectuals and artists. The poor
black majority, who cannot read or write and continue to support the
constitutional government of President Aristide, has been deliberately
made indescribably poorer in an effort to force them to turn against
their own interests.
Going to bed hungry
is not uncommon in Haiti. The greatest violence here is the violence
of hunger and poverty. It permeates and consumes everything in its path.
Haiti's phantom "middle class" the relative few who
have something such as an education to cling to can be easily
manipulated against a government that has declared itself to be working
on behalf of those who have nothing save for the conviction that tomorrow
may yield a better future for their children. This is especially true
when the media inside and outside of Haiti do everything possible to
make it so.
Disinformation media
The Haitian press, most notably Radio Metropole, Radio Vision 2000,
Radio Kiskeya, Radio Caraibe and Tele-Haiti, have shown themselves to
be wanton whores in the campaign to sow confusion and panic among the
people. They are active players in the U.S. campaign to destabilize
Haiti's constitutional government. With total disregard for principles
of "objective journalism," they circulate exaggerated reports
of violence by Lavalas, turn a blind eye to violence on the part of
the opposition, and underreport the size and frequency of Lavalas demonstrations
demanding President Aristide fulfill his five-year term in office. They
regularly produce and air commercials calling upon the population to
"claim their democratic rights" by joining anti-Aristide street
actions. Just as in Venezuela, where local elites use their media to
spearhead the opposition to President Hugo Chavez, the clear objective
in Haiti is to throw the constitution in the trash and force President
Aristide to resign.
Never mind that Radio Vision 2000 is owned by the same right-wing Boulos
family that funds the Haiti Democracy Project in Washington D.C. Never
mind that Tele-Haiti was founded by Andre Apaid, the self-proclaimed
leader of Group 184 that was "created from whole cloth" by
the Haiti Democracy Project. (See The Bush Administrations
End Game for Haiti, December 4.) Never mind that two prominent
journalists of Radio Metropole were funded by the U.S. State Department
to tour the United States in mid-January of this year to meet with editorial
boards around the country to spread their message of the evils of Aristide's
"dictatorship." Ignore the fact that they are a major source
of information for the Associated Press, Reuters and France's venerable
RFI whose reporters can be seen openly sharing "information"
with them buddy-buddy style on any given day. Heres the way it
works: Metropole reports a fabrication; AP and RFI pick it up for their
wire services, then Kiskeya and the others report it again in Haiti
backed by the credibility of the international press. The positive feedback
loop of disinformation for the opposition is now complete.
Partners in crime
On December 3rd the rumor hit the streets of Port-au-Prince that President
Aristide would be forced to resign on December 5th. Not so coincidentally,
the justification for the latest round of protests against the Haitian
government can be traced to December 5th and what Apaid and his minions
refer to as "Black Friday." This date was previously etched
in the Haitian popular memory as a day of memorial for the victims of
a bomb that exploded during Aristide's first campaign for the presidency
in 1990 in Petion-Ville. Instead, it has now been displaced with an
alleged attack against university students by Lavalas.
Alleged
is indeed the case. A videotape has been discovered of events at the
university that day which appears to refute the description given by
Radio Metropole and Tele-Haiti. Both outlets reported that popular organizations
aligned with Lavalas broke through a back wall of the university, destroyed
computers at the site and then proceeded to break the legs of the university's
Rector after he entered the facility. However, the videotape clearly
shows that Lavalas militants were outside of the building when these
transgressions occurred and that the so-called "students"
were in complete control of the facility when the Rector entered. Although
they claim that Lavalas militants had burned a hole through a back wall,
the opposition "students" can be seen pummeling the police
and the press with large rocks and small boulders as they attempt to
approach the building. As the Rector proceeds to enter with a police
escort, the "students" can be heard chanting "no police"
several times from behind the large metal gate, at which time the Rector
is heard asking the police to let him enter unescorted. This does not
sound like a compound under siege from within, but rather a site under
the complete control of those inside. As you hear the crashing sounds
of computers in the facility being broken, Lavalas popular organizations
members comment on the tape, "Oh my god. They are going to blame
us or the police after this is over." Photos have been taken of
the "students" who controlled the facility from their rock
throwing perch on the balcony, and some sources have said that arrests
for questioning are imminent.
The tape irrefutably
shows that the only camera crew allowed to enter the facility was Tele-Haiti,
while the rock-throwing students kept the other media outside. In that
case, how could it be that Lavalas militants were inside and in control
of the university facility? One university student who left the campus
bloodied may hold the key. "We were attacked by student members
of the opposition for being pro-Aristide, he stated. After
they broke the computers they realized they had gone too far and held
a quick meeting. They had cell phones and talked with someone on the
outside. Then they brought into the room the faculty member responsible
for the computers and he talked for several minutes with someone on
the cell phone. I could not tell who it was but he agreed with them."
The Haitian police
appear to have been equally confused. The tape allows us to easily identify
the faces of the rock throwing "students" casually standing
on a balcony above while the police arrest a mere two persons alleged
to be Lavalas militants below. Were two persons responsible for the
entire damage done to facility? As I watched the tape I could sense
that the facts had been rehearsed. The students
shamelessly forced tears as they left the facility blaming the evil
Lavalas grassroots organizations for attacking them. To this day the
Rector of the university has refused to comment on the incident.
Out of the shadows
Following the claims of "Black Friday" came a torrent of protests
against the government from students supposedly violated
by Lavalas. But Andre Apaid's Group 184 clearly emerged as the true
leadership of the demonstrations. December 22 saw a large protest by
Apaids group calling for the resignation of President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. These surrogates of Washington's war against the poor in the
Caribbean and Latin America, filled the streets with nearly 10,000 people
while a smaller contingent of Aristide's Lavalas movement guarded the
national palace. Michael Norton of the Associated Press, as well as
a heavy contingent of France's press, witnessed this to conclude that
it was merely a matter of time before Aristide and his ugly little experiment
in democracy for the poor would fail. What they did not know, or could
not know, was the depth of the creative resistance of the poor black
majority in Haiti. Its difficult to fault the foreign medias
judgment, however, for money is power and power is money and they can
afford their next meal while the impoverished majority in Haiti cannot.
In a country as poor as Haiti, this is the difference between knowing
what is real and what is false. What non-Haitians must try to understand
is that if only half of the negative propaganda about Lavalas were true,
particularly that President Aristide no longer enjoys wide support in
the country, this government would have fallen long ago.
In the wake of the
fabricated events of December 5 the Haitian government and Lavalas endured
weeks of clandestine attacks, while the opposition demonstrated under
heavy police protection. Then, on December 26, the great silent beast
of Haitis poor, portrayed as violent and anti-democratic by the
Haitian press and their friends in the international corporate media,
awakened. Tens of thousands of Lavalas supporters hit the streets with
a singular purpose and objective: that Haiti's constitution be respected
and President Aristide be allowed to fulfill his five-year term in office.
The real battle
had just begun, as Haitis long-oppressed millions prepared to
celebrate the 200th anniversary of the worlds only successful
slave revolution and the first black republic.
Kevin Pina
is a documentary filmmaker and freelance journalist who has been working
and living in Haiti for the past three years. He has been covering events
in Haiti for the past decade and produced a documentary film entitled
"Haiti: Harvest of Hope". Mr. Pina is also the Haiti Special
Correspondent for the Flashpoints radio program on the Pacifica Network's
flagship station KPFA in Berkeley CA.