by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Call it a partial victory. On Monday, Quebec voters kicked out several high-profile federal Liberals some members of the local Haitian community blame for inflicting more misery on their violence-plagued homeland.

Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew lost his Papineau riding to the Bloc’s Vivian Barbot, an immigrant from Haiti. Denis Paradis, the former Immigration Minister and Canadian Secretary of State for Latin America, Africa and la Francophonie lost his Brome-Missisquoi riding to the Bloc too. And Prime Minister Paul Martin lost his government.

But Denis Coderre, the Prime Minister’s special advisor for Haiti, retained his Bourrassa seat by a wide margin of over 5,000 votes, despite a growing movement among Montreal Haitians and their supporters calling for Canada’s police training detachment, consisting of 125 serving and retired RCMP officers, to quit Haiti and halt the training of the Haitian National Police (HNP)—a force critics are calling a murderous band of thugs in the pay of the country’s elite since the February 2004 rebellion that toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his populist Lavalas party government.

On Sunday, Jan. 22, the day before election day, Serge Bouchereau was whipping up the crowd standing outside Denis Coderre’s riding office on Charleroi in Montreal North. As Haitian music blared from speakers and one man banged on cymbals, Bouchereau shouted anti-Liberal slogans into a microphone. He called Coderre “arrogant towards the petit peuple of Haiti” and says many people there have died because of Canada’s policy. The crowd, shivering in the winter cold but generally smiling and peaceable, cheered and joined in the slogans. Passing motorists honked their support while two Montreal police cars were parked nearby.

Bouchereau stresses that while not all Haitian Montrealers supported Aristide’s policies, he couldn’t find any that supported his ousting. “Every society is divided,” he says. “But that’s why we have elections. We want a free, independent, democratic Haiti.”

Elections in Haiti are scheduled for Feb. 7. They have already been postponed four times, and some suspect they may be delayed again.

From very bad to much worse

Canadians tend to pride ourselves on our reputation as peacekeepers, so it’s jarring to hear that we’re complicit in massive human rights abuses abroad. But that’s what Bouchereau, whose Comité Haïtien pour les élections fédérales 2006, and other groups charge, ever since Aristide’s removal and exile.

In early February 2004, a rebellion led by former soldiers invaded Haiti from neighbouring Dominican Republic. On Feb. 29, as fighting intensified and under pressure from the U.S., France and Canada, Aristide fled to the Central African Republic (he says he was kidnapped). He was replaced by Boniface Alexandre, head of the country’s Supreme Court, and Gérard Latortue, a former UN official and business consultant who spent the previous 10 years in Florida, and who was appointed prime minister by a seven-member “Council of Eminent People” (conseil des sages) in March.

Since then, the situation in the country of eight million, and the slums of its capital Port au Prince in particular, has gone from very bad to catastrophic. Violence, kidnappings, police shootings and incursions by UN forces into slums like Cité Soleil and Bel Air have skyrocketed; Doctors Without Borders reported treating over 3,500 gunshot wounds between January and August 2005, with most of the victims elderly, women and children. Young men suffering from gunshot wounds don’t go to hospitals out of fear the HNP will arrest or kill them. The police are notoriously brutal, and trained in part by the RCMP. It’s estimated thousands have died since Aristide was overthrown, and the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) forces, operating with blue helmets, have also been blamed for indiscriminate killings of slum residents. “Canada is up to its neck in chaos and death,” says Bouchereau.

Thugs, violence and language

A lot of blame for the violence in the slums is attributed to “chimères” or “bandits,” groups of young armed men who are usually described in the mainstream media as “pro-Lavalas” supporters. Often wearing Aristide t-shirts, these gangs are most often the targets of HNP and UN raids. But the terms are disingenuous, says Bouchereau.

“The people the Group of 184 [consisting of 184 anti-Aristide groups backed by the business elite] call the chimères are simply young people struggling for their rights,” he says.

Thomas M. Griffin, an immigration lawyer and human rights investigator from Philadelphia and the author of a November 2004, 51-page report on the political and security situation in Haiti, says they have risen out of the complete collapse of any kind of functioning state.

“There’s an element of [pro-Aristide sympathy] but this is a lawless society,” he says. He says they call themselves pro-Aristide because it’s popular, and Aristide did achieve modest but significant gains during his troubled tenure. The language used by the Haitian media, owned by the wealthy elite, dehumanizes them more. “Mostly, they’re poor and disenfranchised and want a path towards a job or an education.”

Griffin dismisses opposition charges that Aristide is secretly funding and guiding them from exile in South Africa. “He’s been out of the country for two years,” he says. “Where does he have to be for them to stop blaming him, on Mars?”

André Corten, a UQÀM political scientist and Latin American expert, agrees that the violence is a product of the collapse of society. “The situation is dehumanizing, provoked by 50 years of misery,” he says. “It’s complete desolation—these people have no normative framework. At the same time, there’s a fascination with manipulating groups of pariahs.”

Indeed, Andy Apaid, a wealthy factory owner in Port au Prince and spokesman for the Group of 184, has been linked to a notorious gang from the Boston area of Cité Soleil led by Thomas “Labanyé” Robinson. Labanyé is suspected of being behind several massacres of Aristide supporters.

Big power politics

A smoking gun that Bouchereau and other activists use to justify their anger is a 2003 article from L’Actualité magazine by Michel Vastel. In it, Vastel reveals that Canadian Secretary of State Paradis met with high-ranking French, U.S. and Organization of American States officials to discuss the removal of Aristide from power before Haiti celebrated its independence bicentennial. Called the Ottawa Initiative on Haiti, this, critics say, proves Canada’s complicity in the overthrow of the Aristide regime.

“By leaking this information to Vastel, Paradis was basically floating a trial balloon to see if it would encounter any popular resistance,” says Dru Oja Jay, an activist from Haiti Action Montreal, a local group critical of Canada’s involvement. “When it didn’t, they decided to go ahead with it.”

Aside from giving the diplomatic okay to the coup, say many Haitian activists, Canadian soldiers secured the airport from where Aristide was whisked out of the country. Meanwhile, the Canadian government was contributing large amounts of money to non-governmental organizations while withholding aid money from the Haitian government. The U.S. did the same in 2001, when, citing electoral irregularities, the Bush administration blocked a $500-million loan.

“What Canada is doing in Haiti is its worst foreign policy crime in the last half-century,” says Yves Engler, another Haiti Action Montreal member and co-author of Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority.

Learning from experience

Haiti Action Montreal, say Engler and Jay, take their cue from members of the Montreal Haitian community and apply their own expertize on activist tactics to drum up support. This involves postering, contacting media, fundraising and taking heat from the law—both have been arrested, Engler most spectacularly when he splattered Pettigrew with fake blood last June and when he heckled Paul Martin in December. The Canadian connection to Haiti’s chaos, they say, is reason enough to get involved. “Growing up in Canada, you have grilled into you Canada’s reputation as peacekeepers and doing humanitarian interventions abroad and building democracy,” says Jay. “This is the first time Canada has taken a lead role in occupying a country and overthrowing its democratically-elected government.”

Just as bad, says Engler, is where what little money that does go from Canada winds up once in Haiti. “We’re starving this country of economic assistance,” he says. “But then you have the Group of 184, who are channelling the money into opposition NGOs to wage a campaign of violence” against the Lavalas party/movement created by Aristide.

But they also direct their anger to some Canadian groups with almost impeccable human rights credentials: groups like Rights and Democracy, Oxfam and Alternatives, all of whom have received funding from the federal Canadian International Development Agency, which they consider complicit in the coup.

Hope and warnings

As of press time, René Préval, a former president close to Aristide, looks set to win the election, thanks to his Lavalas association. But what has troubled many Haitians here is the lack of interest on the part of the candidates in the latest federal election here. “It’s bizarre that none of the leaders took a position or even mentioned it,” says Chavannes Clerveaux, head of the Union des artistes québécois d’origine haïtien. “They can’t even be bothered to send us condolences for what’s happened, and they ask us to vote for them?”

Bouchereau also warns politicians not to take his community for granted. “Of course, we’re very happy with the results,” he says Tuesday. “We got rid of this corrupt, arrogant, neo-colonialist and imperialist government and Pierre Pettigrew, who drove this terrible policy.”

But just because the Conservatives and the Bloc replaced the hated Liberals doesn’t mean they’re in the clear. “The political parties that make decisions that affect Haiti, and the Haitian people here, must conduct public consultations with the Haitian community so they can know what the Haitian community wants,” he says.

Haiti timeline

1804: Following the only successful slave rebellion in history led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, Haiti declares independence from France on Jan. 1.

1825: Haiti begins paying France 150-million francs (estimated at $21-billion U.S. in 2004 dollars) as reparations to slave owners for loss of property.

1915–1934: U.S. marines occupy Haiti.

1956: François “Papa Doc” Duvalier seizes power with help from the Haitian military and is elected president a year later.

1971: Papa Doc dies, and is succeeded by his son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, age 19. Baby Doc also declares himself president-for-life.

1986: Popular uprisings force Baby Doc into exile on the French Riviera with his family and millions of dollars. In the 31 years of Duvalier misrule, 60,000 Haitians are thought to have been killed.

1990: Jean-Bertrand Aristide is elected president.

1991: Aristide is overthrown by the military.

1994: A U.S. invasion restores Aristide to power.

1995: UN forces replace U.S. troops. The Haitian army is disbanded. Aristide supporters win parliamentary elections, and Aristide’s close ally, René Préval, is elected president.

1996: The Fanmi Lavalas movement/political party, led by Aristide, is formed.

2000: Lavalas wins legislative elections, although the elections were boycotted by opposition parties and the results disputed. The U.S. and European Union suspend almost all aid to Haiti. Aristide is elected to a second, non-consecutive term. More allegations of irregularities mar the election’s legitimacy.

2001: A coup attempt in July fails. In December, a raid on the presidential palace also fails, although 12 people are killed.

2003: Voodoo is recognized as a religion equal to other faiths.

2004: Haiti celebrates the bicentennial anniversary of its independence; a violent uprising along the Dominican border begins in February. Aristide is exiled. In June, UN forces (MINUSTAH) replace U.S.-led invasion forces. In September, tropical storm Jeanne kills nearly 3,000 in the north.

2005: Killings by gangs, police and UN troops continue as the political and security situations deteriorate. In July, Hurricane Dennis kills 45.

2006: On Jan. 7, the Brazilian chief of MINUSTAH, General Urano Bacellar, is found dead in his hotel room, apparently a suicide. Two Jordanian MINUSTAH soldiers are killed in Cité Soleil on Jan. 17. On Jan. 18 and 19, four Cité Soleil residents are killed by Jordanian soldiers, say witnesses. The first round of elections, with some 35 candidates standing for president and hundreds more for the 129 legislative seats, are scheduled for Feb. 7 after being postponed four times. A second round of voting takes place on March 19. n

Sources: BBC, CBC, Canada in Haiti