[R-G] Haiti's great white hope?

[Anthony Fenton]

Haiti's great white hope?
John Maxwell

Friday, May 29th 2009

http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_opinion?id=161483544

History is littered with treachery. In the noisome Slough of Dishonour  
are mired thousands of reputations, most of those who betrayed their  
own countries, like Pierre Laval, Vidkun Quisling, Jonas Savimbi and  
Augusto Pinochet.

The deepest pits, though, the most purulent sinks, are reserved for  
those who have ranged abroad to betray and sabotage strangers, to  
inflict unnecessary suffering on people who have never given them  
cause for complaint. People like Leopold of Belgium, Neville  
Chamberlain, Hitler, Ariel Sharon and George W Bush spring readily to  
mind. Recently, former US president Bill Clinton announced that he  
would accept an invitation from the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon  
of South Korea, to become his personal envoy in Haiti. It is an  
appointment that will end in disaster. I mention Ban Ki Moon's  
nationality because I believe that the disaster that already exists in  
Haiti is the result of a culture clash which is entirely  
incomprehensible to most people outside the Western hemisphere

I am presenting a few facts which, however you interpret them, will  
lead inexorably, I believe, to the conclusion that modern ideas of  
liberty and freedom, modern capitalism and globalisation of production  
and exchange, would have spent much longer in gestation had it not  
been for the black slaves of Haiti who abolished slavery and the slave  
trade. In the process they defeated the armies of the leading world  
powers of the 18th and 19th centuries, destroyed the French empire in  
the western hemisphere, doubled the size and power of the United  
States and incidentally promoted the European sugar beet industry and  
revolutionised European farming.

The Haitians and all the other blacks of the Western hemisphere were  
uprooted from their native grounds, their civilisations laid waste,  
and they themselves transported to unknown lands in which they were  
forced to create unexampled riches and luxury for their rapists and  
despoilers.

The Enlightenment and its prophets and philosophers popularised the  
ideas of freedom and liberty, the rights of man. Nowhere was freedom  
taken more seriously than by the Haitians, who, described as  
Frenchmen, fought valiantly for American freedom in that nation's  
Revolutionary War of Independence. When revolution convulsed France in  
turn, the Haitians threw their support to those they thought were  
fighting for freedom. When that proved a false trail, the Haitians  
continued to fight, defeating the French, British and Spanish armies  
sent to re-enslave them.

Haiti's freedom was compromised by French and American financial  
blackmail. Haiti was the first heavily indebted poor country, and the  
US, Canada, France and the multilateral financial organisations, the  
World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the IMF have  
worked hard to keep her in that bondage.

Eventually, 93 years ago, the Americans invaded Haiti, destroyed the  
constitution, the government and their social system. Jim Crow  
segregation and injustice destroyed the Haitian middle class, enhanced  
and exacerbated class distinctions and antagonisms and left Haiti a  
ravaged, dysfunctional mess, ruled by a corrupt US-trained military in  
the interest of a small, corrupt gang of mainly expatriate or white  
capitalists.

Finally, 20 years ago, the Haitians rose up and overthrew the  
Duvaliers and the apprentice dictators who followed. In their first  
free election the Haitians elected a black parish priest of small  
stature, the man whose words and spirit had embodied their struggle.  
But the real rulers of Haiti, the corrupt, bloodthirsty capitalists  
with their American passports and their bulletproof SUVs, had no  
intention of letting Haitians exercise the universal human rights  
their leaders had proclaimed two centuries before.

When Jean Bertrand Aristide was deposed after a few months in office,  
it was with the help of the CIA, USAID, and other American entities.  
Then ensued one of the most disgraceful episodes in the long,  
unsavoury history of diplomacy. Bill Clinton-elected president  
promising to treat the Haitian refugees as human beings-elected  
instead to observe the same barbarous policies as George Bush I, and  
when the refugees became a flood, Clinton's answer was more  
illegality. He parked two massive floating slave barracoons in  
Kingston harbour where refugees picked up in Jamaican waters were,  
with the craven connivance of the Patterson government, denied asylum,  
captured and processed and 22 per cent of them selected for the  
Guantanamo Bay concentration camp while the rest were returned to  
their murderers in Haiti.

Eventually, largely due to pressure from black pressure groups in the  
US and crucially, a fast to the death begun by Randolph Robinson,  
Clinton agreed to restore Aristide while General Colin Powell talked  
grandly of the soldier's honour he shared with Haiti's then murderer- 
in-chief, a scamp called Raoul Cedras. Clinton made several pledges to  
Aristide and to Haiti, but history does not seem to record that any  
were kept. Had even a few been kept, Haiti may have been able to  
guarantee public security and to install some desperately needed  
infrastructure. Instead Haitians are still scooping water to drink  
from potholes in the street and stave off hunger with "fritters" made  
from earth and cooking fat.

The Haitian Army, the most corrupt and evil public institution in the  
western hemisphere, was abolished by Aristide, to the displeasure of  
the North American powers. Now that the Americans have deposed  
Aristide for the second time, security is in the hands of a motley  
mercenary army, a UN peacekeeping force. Security in Haiti is so good  
that three years ago, the then head of this force, a Brazilian  
general, was found shot to death after a friendly chat with Haitian  
elites. The rapes, massacres, disappearances and kidnappings continue  
unabated and the only popular political force, the Fanmi Lavalas, has  
been effectively neutered.

Clinton "will aim to attract private and government investment and aid  
for the poor Caribbean island nation", according to Clinton's office  
and a senior UN official. "A UN official said that Clinton would act  
as a 'cheerleader' for the economically distressed country, cajoling  
government and business leaders into pouring fresh money into a place  
that is largely dependent on foreign assistance".

It all sounds so nice and cosy, a poor, black 'hapless' nation under  
the tutelage of the rich and civilised of the earth. I am prepared to  
bet that neither Haitian democracy nor Clinton's reputation will  
survive this appointment. Democracy is impossible without popular  
participation and decision making. In Haiti, democracy is impossible  
without Lavalas and Aristide. If Haiti is to survive, the UN General  
Assembly needs to seize this baton from the spectacularly unqualified  
and ignorant Security Council and its very nice and affable secretary  
general, even less attuned to Haitian reality than Kofi Annan and his  
accomplices, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, PJ Patterson and Patrick  
Manning.

-Courtesy Jamaica Observer