Rights and Democracy a hard-right front?

[Re: “Reflecting on Haiti and human rights,” News, May 21]

Does the Mirror have a responsibility to tell its readers about a group that’s little more than a front for the Canadian Government?

Despite its high-minded sounding name, Montreal-based political group Rights and Democracy was created by an act of Parliament, its head is appointed by the Prime Minister and it is funded almost entirely by Ottawa. And in the case of Haiti, where our government supported the overthrow of the country’s elected government in 2004, Rights and Democracy has closely aligned itself with Canadian government policy.

While now claiming that there is a link between Haiti’s poverty and instability, it took a decidedly different tack when Haiti’s hard right was calling for more bloodshed in the post-coup pacification campaign. In a January 2006 letter to the UN, Rights and Democracy echoed the extreme right’s demand for increased repression in the country’s largest slum neighbourhood, Cité Soleil.

A couple of weeks after a business-sector “strike” demanding that UN troops aggressively attack “gangsters” in Cité Soleil, Rights and Democracy questioned whether UN forces were “protecting armed bandits more than restoring order and ending violence.”

Criticizing the UN for softness in Cité Soleil flew in the face of evidence suggesting the opposite, including two particularly horrific raids on January 6, 2005 and December 22, 2006, which together left some 35 innocent civilians dead and dozens wounded in Cité Soleil (a bastion of support for Aristide). In fact, just prior to the Rights and Democracy letter, Canadian solidarity activists documented a murderous UN attack on a hospital in the slum neighbourhood.

To get a sense of the group’s political work, in October 2005, Rights and Democracy began a $415,000 Canadian government financed project to “foster greater civil society participation in Haiti’s national political process.” The Haitian coordinator of the project, who later became director of Rights & Democracy’s Haiti office, was Danielle Magloire, a member of the “Council of the Wise” that appointed Gérard Latortue as prime minister after the February 2004 coup ousted the elected president.

In mid-July 2005, Magloire issued a statement on behalf of the seven-member “Council of the Wise” saying that any media that gives voice to “bandits” (code for supporters of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide) should be shut down. She also asserted that Aristide’s Lavalas Family should be banned from upcoming elections (Lavalas’s presidential candidate was barred in the 2006 election, and last month, all the party’s candidates were blocked from participating in the senatorial races, but don’t expect to hear anything about that from Rights and Democracy).

One must ask whose rights and what sort of democracy Rights & Democracy supports, when it effectively aligns itself with fascistic elements in Haiti?

>>Yves Engler, a member of Haiti action Montréal

Art gets scientific

[Re: “Is it art? Moving Art,” May 21] Regarding the opening line stating that it is rare for “artists to blur the line between science and art”: I think it is worth emphasizing that there are indeed many artists whose work is intertwined with science.

Institutes and annual conferences are happening internationally that are centred around such work and residencies are being given to artists in many academic departments that have traditionally been considered scientific.

In addition to areas featuring strong applications of science, like architecture, design, textile arts and electronic music, there is increased promiscuity in informatics, neuroscience and genetics.

Notable institutes include the Arts and Genomics Centre at theUniversity of Leiden, Netherlands (artsgenomics.org/), European Mobile Lab for Interactive Artists (media.uoa.gr/~charitos/emobilart/) and the the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia.

Likewise, works of many artists and scientists working across the art-science interface can be seen at Toronto’s yearly Subtle Technologies Conference (subtletechnologies.com), at Smart Textiles Sweden’s Ambience Conference (smarttextiles.se/Ambience08/program/posters.asp) and at ARS Electronica, Austria (aec.at).

>>Erin Fortier

Couch potato activism

[Re: “Anti-Zionist rant?” Letters, May 21] It’s hard to believe that the only letters from readers are about Israel and Palestine shit. I’m tired of those couch potato activists.

You wanna change the world? Grab an AK-47 and a plane ticket to Israel and go fight for what you think is right and leave us alone with your bullshit.

Same for those yuppies on Ste-Catherine who ask me every day to sign a petition or give a donation to animal cruelty. What about giving food and shelter to the homeless? They’re not hard to find—they’re on the same street.

Another thing—about the People column? Hey Chris Barry, there’s life outside NDG! Hahaha.

>>Eric

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