Ben Dupuy on UN-backed elections in Haiti

 

Ben Dupuy speaking at Sept. 24, 2005, anti-war protest in Washington, DC. Photo: Travis Wilkerson

On Feb. 29, 2004, former Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped by the U.S. government and forced out of Haiti. Aristide and his Lavalas Party were replaced with a hand-picked puppet regime led by longtime U.S. ally Gerard Latortue, brought in from Florida.

Over the last two years, the Haitian national police and UN “peace-keeping” troops have organized countless massacres in Haiti, using everything from marauding death squads to full-scale military operations to repress political dissent, especially in the country’s poorest urban areas.

The widespread outrage and anti-occupation sentiment among the Haitian people has coalesced into organized armed struggle. The Dessalinien Army of National Liberation (ADLN) issued a communiqué in late December 2005 taking responsibility for an ambush that killed two UN troops and wounded four others. “We are neither former soldiers, an ultra-left group or thieves. The ADLN is the armed wing of the suffering masses, of the landless peasants whom the big landowners have robbed and of the masses of slum-dwellers whom the MINUSTAH is murdering.” MINUSTAH is the UN mission to Haiti.

As in Iraq, forces occupying Haiti have found it impossible to pacify militarily the Haitian people. Consequently, and with great international media attention, the UN mission to Haiti announced that general elections would take place in early 2006.

The elections have barred anti-occupation candidates, most notably Father Gérard Jean-Juste, a well-known activist priest who calls for the return of President Aristide. Jean-Juste has been a political prisoner since July 21, 2005—held without any formal charges. He was recently diagnosed with leukemia. On Dec. 10 in Miami, the Haitian community and its supporters organized a march demanding the release of Jean-Juste. Aristide’s former prime minister, Yvon Neptune, also languishes in prison. He is reportedly near death after a prolonged hunger strike.

In the Dominican Republic, Haiti’s neighbor on the same island, a wave of anti-Haitian violence recently resulted in the lynching of a Haitian man, several other deaths and the torching of 35 homes occupied by Haitian families. The Dominican government responded by arresting 30 Haitians and issuing a string of provocative anti-Haitian comments, calling Haiti “a failed state” and a “danger to the world.”

There have been militant demonstrations in Port-au-Prince against the Dominican government’s wave of repression. These demonstrations, however, have been led by organizations that supported the 2004 overthrow of Aristide and, in some cases, give critical support to the de facto Haitian government.

In January, Socialism and Liberation’s Ben Becker interviewed Ben Dupuy, secretary general of the National Popular Party of Haiti (PPN), about the upcoming Haitian elections and unfolding events in that country.

What’s your perspective on the Haitian elections and their repeated postponement?

UN troops repress anti-occupation Haitians to pave the way for U.S.-UN-backed elections. Photo: Reuters/Eduardo Munoz

First of all, what is being called an election is really a “selection.” It is an attempt by the United States and the so-called international community to justify the overthrow of the democratically elected government of President Aristide. It is meant to give the idea that there is new legitimacy to the occupation.

There are many cooks in the kitchen in this so-called election. On the one hand, you have the Organization of American States involved—they are supposed to organize the voting centers and distribute the so-called identification or electoral cards. On the other hand, the United Nations holds control of the finances—they are the ones providing the money for the elections. Already, they have spent approximately $60 million. That bureaucracy creates all kinds of problems. The Provisional Electoral Council is made up of people who have been chosen in a very unorthodox way, and many of them are members of political parties participating in the election. So, it’s a real mess.

The analysis we can draw is that there seem to be two policies, or two currents, within the U.S. establishment: one that encourages Rene Preval, president of Haiti from 1996 to 2001, to run, and another that prefers to completely fabricate the result of the election.

This has created some friction between the currents. Furthermore, you have the local bourgeoisie allied with the former Duvalierists, or Tonton Macoutes, who are trying to have MINUTSAH, especially its armed segment, commit massacres in the shantytowns, especially in Cite Soleil.

The bourgeoisie and the Duvalierist-Macoute forces would like to create a Fallujah-type of situation—a “final solution.” But it seems some current within the United States and United Nations would rather have Preval run in order for the electoral process to appear to be legitimate. These contending forces have created a huge conflict, which I think has resulted in the assassination of the Brazilian general in charge of MINUTSAH. The mainstream media are claiming it’s a suicide, but all indications point to the elimination of this man, who at some point seems to have refused orders to massacre people in the shantytowns.

How have the Haitian people resisted the occupation?

Jailed activist, Father Gérard Jean-Juste Photo: Lannis Waters/Palm Beach Post

There have been different forms of resistance. At the beginning, the partisans of Lavalas and President Aristide tried to organize demonstrations, especially in Port-Au-Prince. But because the national police, assisted by MINUTSAH, repressed the demonstrations, people have changed their tactics. One sector of Lavalas has supported Preval in the hope that he would eventually agree to have President Aristide come back to Haiti. But in the meantime, there have been many confrontations in areas like Bel Air and Cite Soleil.

In response, the police have organized death squads. In one instance, a machete-wielding death squad entered a stadium where people were playing soccer. They ordered everyone to lie down and the police let them kill dozens of people. It was later revealed that some higher-ups in the police department had organized this massacre.

On July 6, 2005, MINUTSAH entered the Cite Soleil area with helicopters and tanks, resulting in what they called “collateral damage.” In fact, many women and children were massacred. In the International Tribunal on Haiti’s first and second session, all kinds of evidence—audiovisual material, witnesses and so on—was provided that exposed the human rights violations committed by the national police and UN forces.

What’s behind the United Nation’s “Peace Building Commission” and its designation of Haiti as a “failed state?”

The UN Security Council recently approved the “Peace Building Commission” as a vehicle for the United States and European powers to have the United Nations take the lead in reconstructing countries they categorize as “failed states.” To a large extent, the big powers in the Security Council would like to use the United Nations as a cover or a fig leaf for their own intervention.

There is an index called the “Failed States Index,” which has been published by the pro-imperialist foundations “The Fund for Peace” and the “Carnegie Endowment for International Peace” in the magazine Foreign Policy. On that index, you find countries like the Congo, the Ivory Coast, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Venezuela, among others. It is clearly a justification for the big powers to get more and more involved in foreign countries.

We must remember that part of the foreign policy of the United States and also of former colonial powers in Europe is to fabricate conflict in Third World countries. They engineer covert actions, in which the CIA engages in all sorts of wheeling and dealing behind closed doors. Later, after they have created the conflict, they use this commission—what they call the “Peace Building Commission”—to bring an end to the conflict. The commission serves to legitimize their intervention.

Why is the government of the Dominican Republic taking actions against Haitians?

In the former Yugoslavia, one of the things we witnessed was the United States putting into practice the concept of “divide and conquer.” They created conflict between Serbs and Croats. They called it “ethnic cleansing,” but those were maneuvers to justify intervention of the so-called international community. They used NATO to divide up all of the former Yugoslavia.

Today, xenophobia has been engineered inside the Dominican Republican against Haitian immigrants. They are trying to promote this kind of chauvinism as a way to create conflict between the two nations. We know that the present social-democratic government in the Dominican Republic is totally subservient to U.S. foreign policy, particularly the Dominican army. There is more and more talk of establishing military bases on the border between the two countries. Both Haiti and the Dominican Republic are on the Failed States Index, so I think eventually the United Nations and the United States hope to create a situation to justify their presence on the island.

What can U.S. activists and progressives do to help end the occupation of Haiti?

The mainstream media have tried to play down the occupation of Haiti, and the “regime change” committed there, instead concentrating on Iraq. It is therefore up to the progressive press to draw the connections between the situation in Haiti and the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On Sept. 24, 2005, hundreds of thousands of people were made aware of the similarities between those occupations at anti-war demonstrations across the United States. That was an important step. The anti-war mobilizations provide us with an opportunity to bring to light other connected and important issues that are often left out, like Palestine and Haiti.