by CHRISTOPHER HAZOU

“Haiti is not an easy beat, particularly if you’re covering human rights abuses,” says American journalist and documentary filmmaker Kevin Pina.

Pina should know. Having reported from Haiti for more than 15 years, he’s received death threats, been seriously beaten by an off-duty police officer and, earlier this month, was arrested on bogus charges and spent the night in Delmas 33, a notorious jail in Port-au-Prince.

On Monday, Oct. 3, Pina will be in Montreal for the screening of his latest film, Haiti: The Untold Story, which details the complicity of the United Nations and other Western governments in the coup that ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in early 2004.

Over the phone from Washington D.C., where he’s testifying at the International Tribunal on Haiti, a conference organized by activists hoping to expose the UN’s and North America’s role in Haiti’s dire situation, Pina describes his night in jail as a harrowing, almost surreal experience, punctuated by abusive guards, a manic-depressive judge and overcrowded, cockroach-infested cells. He tells of seeing one guard violently cup the ears of a young prisoner, then force him to breakdance as Pina watched the “sadistic ritual in terror.”

“The next day I was taken out alone by a cop with a gun who dared me to run,” he says.

After declining the offer, he was quickly brought before a judge who, as it happened, was the same judge who ordered Pina’s arrest in the first place, claiming he had been personally assaulted by Pina, a charge the journalist dismisses as nonsense.

Facing strong pressure from U.S. consular officials and Pina’s American lawyer, the judge had no choice but to let him go, but not before screaming at him and crying in a bizarre courtroom outburst.

“The judge broke down and cried, [and] said I was ruining his reputation,” says Pina. “Ten minutes later he signed the release. Go figure.”

Pina is scathingly critical of Paul Martin’s government, whose actions he describes as “particularly galling” and “reprehensible.” Since the coup, Haitian police, which Canadians are training, and UN forces have been accused of serious human rights abuses resulting in the deaths of scores of civilians. In one incident earlier this summer, UN forces raided the slum of Cité Soleil, a stronghold of Aristide’s Lavalas party, killing or wounding dozens of civilians in the process.

“This is a government that represents the morally repugnant elite,” Pina says of Haiti’s current regime. As for upcoming elections, Pina’s not optimistic, believing they will be used to “justify the carnage.”

“[There will be] no peace in Haiti until the fundamental problems are addressed: the disparity between the rich and the dirt, piss-poor,” he says.

Until then, he predicts more “mayhem, death and human rights violations covered up by the Canadian government, the U.S. and France.”

As for Pina himself, he’s already at work on his next film, Haiti: The Betrayal of Democracy, which will complete a trilogy that began with 1997’s Haiti: Harvest of Hope.

Haiti: The Untold Story will be screened Monday, Oct. 3, at Concordia’s Hall Building (1455 de Maisonneuve W., Room H-110), 7 p.m., free.