by Anthony Fenton

The Canadian government is following through on its commitment to "take the lead" in Haiti on behalf of the Bush Administration.

It has been almost one year since the nature of this request was made explicit in Canada's Parliamentarian Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs. During one of several meetings which took place about one month after the removal of President Jean Bertrand Aristide, Carlo Dade of the Canadian government funded hemispheric policy think-tank, FOCAL (Canadian Foundation for the Americas), had this to say on April 1, 2004: "The U.S. would welcome Canadian involvement and Canada's taking the lead in Haiti. The administration in Washington has its hands more than full with Afghanistan, Iraq, and the potential in Korea and the Mideast. There is simply not the ability to concentrate... [T]o really succeed in Haiti, you need long-term attention at the highest levels... This is a chance for Canada to step up and provide that sort of focused attention and leadership, and the administration would welcome this."

Dade also made it clear that "this was something of interest" to Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, and USAID Latin America administrator Adolfo Franco, who had visited Ottawa just days earlier.

Dade's comments were somewhat facetious, given that the Canadian government had already been playing a key role in the pre-coup destabilization of Haiti's Lavalas government. Most notably, Canadian MP Denis Paradis hosted a "high-level roundtable meeting on Haiti" January 31-February 1, 2003 (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No. 51, 3/5/2003). According to the original internal communiqués, recently obtained through an Access to Information Act request, the meeting was supposed to address "the current political situation in Haiti." Notably, the affair was "envisaged to be of a restricted and intimate nature." This, "in order to facilitate a free exchange of views and brainstorming among the invited participants."

Nowhere among the invitees were any Haitian representatives. Aristide government officials were only told about the meeting after Paradis leaked the details of it to L'Actualité reporter Michel Vastel in March, 2003, which facilitated a predictable period of "damage-control." Paradis told Vastel that the themes of Aristide's possible removal, the potential return of Haiti's disbanded military , and the option of imposing a Kosovo-like trusteeship on Haiti, were discussed during the meeting. Vastel published this information, which caused a considerable stir in Haiti, the U.S., and Ottawa, forcing Paradis and the Canadian government to deny that such things were considered. Paradis was subsequently stripped of his position as Secretary of State for Latin America, and was replaced as Minister of La Francophonie, under whose auspices the meeting was hosted. Denis Coderre replaced Paradis, and today functions as Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin's Special Adviser to Haiti.

Significantly, Vastel continues to stand by the original article, claiming .not only Paradis told him the details but that French officials corroborated them. On January 31, 2003, both Vastel and French Minister Pierre-Andre Wiltzer, spoke on the same panel, the title of which was "Obligation morale internationale; Perspectives, idées nouvelles et démarches à explorer." During a September 11, 2004 interview, Paradis repeatedly invoked the notion that he was misinterpreted by Vastel, that the meeting could, essentially, be boiled down to the "responsibility to protect," a Canadian-made "humanitarian intervention" doctrine that, if adopted by the UN through a process that Martin is now attempting to facilitate, powerful countries would give themselves the right (or "responsibility") to militarily intervene in a country that they deem to have reached a state of "failure."

Whether or not military intervention was discussed explicitly, as Vastel contends, or implicitly, as Paradis insists, the important fact is that military intervention did take place, Aristide was removed, the Haitian army has effectively returned, and a de facto trusteeship is being imposed on the Haitian people.

Justifying the Intervention

In order to pull the intervention off and assume thereafter a key "leadership role," the Canadian government has gone to considerable lengths to cover, albeit poorly, its tracks. This is a process that also has its origins in the pre-coup period. Documents recently obtained from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) show that, with exclusivity, organizations that are ideologically opposed to Aristide and Lavalas are receiving Canadian government funding. The list includes the likes of ENFOFANM, SOFA, Kay Fanm, GARR, CRESFED, PAJ, POHDH/SAKS, and the Haiti branch of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR).

In the months prior to Aristide's ouster, virtually all of these organizations assisted the official Canadian government policy toward Haiti. The most telling example of this can be found in a document entitled "Haiti: a Bitter Bicentennial," which was produced by the similarly CIDA-funded "Rights and Democracy," a "Canadian institution with an international mandate." In September 2003, Rights and Democracy sent a delegation to Haiti. Seeking to "make a contribution to" resolving the "enduring crisis" in Haiti, Rights and Democracy determined "several approaches to intervention," that might assist Haiti through the crisis. Besides providing legitimacy for the political opposition fronts Democratic Convergence and Group of 184, the report clearly lays the blame for Haiti's political turmoil on Aristide and Lavalas.

While the details of the report are of themselves interesting, herein it is the list of those organizations that Rights and Democracy met with at the time that we should find particularly revealing. But for a single representative of the Haitian government, the remaining Haitians met with were aligned with the political opposition. All the organizations listed above, today receiving CIDA funding, are on this Rights and Democracy list. It is possible that several of the groups were receiving Canadian funding prior to the coup.

What is known for certain, and perhaps most insidiously, is that NCHR received $100,000 for the specific purpose of juridical, medical, psychological, and logistical assistance for the "victims" of the alleged La Scierie massacre. On March 9, 2005, Haïti-Progrès put NCHR into proper context in this respect: "The illegal government has charged both [former Prime Minister] Neptune and [former Interior Minister] Privert with involvement in a supposed 'massacre' on February 11, 2004 in St. Marc, an event which reporters and human rights groups almost universally agree never happened. Only the pro-coup U.S. government-backed National Coalition of Haitian Rights (NCHR) charges that some 50 people were slaughtered by pro-Lavalas partisans. Pierre Espérance, the NCHR's Haiti bureau chief, says that the remains of the supposed victims were 'eaten by dogs' to explain the absence of any forensic evidence" (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 22, No. 52, 3/9/2005).

At this point it is doubtful that many Canadian taxpayers are aware that they are funding such a partisan and thereby illegitimate "human rights" organization such as NCHR. In an independent report published around the same time that the Canadian Embassy in Haiti announced the funding for NCHR (April 14, 2004), the National Lawyers Guild laid out NCHR's deficiencies as a human rights organization. NCHR "could not name a single case in which a Lavalas supporter was a victim," and took the delegation to a room "where the wall was adorned with a a large 'wanted' poster featuring Aristide and his cabinet." Unanimously, the NLG report concluded: "We condemn the National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR) in Haiti for not maintaining its impartiality as a human rights organization."

Despite this, NCHR remains the most often cited human rights organization in Haiti by the international and local elite-owned media. Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin has echoed Pierre Espérance, who insists that "there are no political prisoners in Haiti." Rather, the 700 or more imprisoned without charge, are common criminals who just happen to be Lavalas. On the whole uncritical of the hand-selected Latortue government, the NCHR has played an critical role in legitimizing the coup and keeping international public opinion confounded on the issue of human rights abuses directed against pro-democracy activists.

With several independent human rights reports recently and exhaustively exposing the systematic repression of perceived supporters of Aristide and/or constitutionality, the NCHR is gradually being seen as naked, not unlike the emperors on whose behalf they are working. In a March 11 press release, the director of NCHR-New York, Jocelyn McCalla, who himself has been criticized widely in the past for being partisan, publicly distanced his organization from Espérance's Haiti-based NCHR: "Neither Mr. Espérance, nor any member of the staff of NCHR-Haiti, speak for or on behalf of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR), its board or its staff."

McCalla accused Espérance of "defending a dysfunctional Haitian judicial system which delivers little other than injustice." Here, McCalla was referring to the continued detention of Neptune despite having "not been formally charged" by Haitian authorities for his alleged involvement in the "massacre" in St. Marc on February 11, 2004. Neptune's three-week long hunger strike, which protested the "dysfunctional Haitian judicial system" while demanding his and Privert's unconditional release, came to an end when he was brought to a UN hospital and treated for dehydration on March 11.

Author and co-ordinator of the Committee for the Defense of the Haitian People's Rights, Ronald Saint-Jean, has documented and analyzed the circumstances surrounding NCHR's role in what he characterizes as the fabrication of the "massacre" in St. Marc. (See: "A propos du "Génocide de la Scierie": Exiger de la NCHR toute la verité," 2004) Saint-Jean was in Ottawa and Montreal earlier this month and denounced Canada's funding of NCHR, telling officials and the press that if Neptune dies his blood is on Canada's hands.

The author is an independent journalist based in Vancouver.

by Marguerite Laurent
Last August, political activist Ron Daniels, who heads the New York-based Haiti Support Project, scandalized pro-democracy activists by organizing a cruise to commemorate the Haitian bicentennial with leaders of the U.S.-backed opposition front who had just helped overthrow Haiti's democratically elected government.

Today, Daniels is again working with pro-coup forces and presenting them as "honest brokers, mediators and facilitators, people who are not tied to or committed to any political party, organization or personality within the broad array of progressive forces in the popular movement for democracy in Haiti."

Daniels is convening a host of coup d'état participants, sympathizers and supporters for a March 17 and 18th symposium at the Rayburn Office Building in Washington, DC to supposedly "facilitate a serious and substantive assessment and dialogue about the state of affairs in Haiti with the objective of creating or contributing to momentum towards positive, workable solutions to Haiti's social, economic and political crises."

But Daniels' list of invitees reads like a who's-who of the very coup elite which torpedoed Haiti's democracy on February 29, 2004. They include: Frandley Julien, who led the "Group of 184" opposition front in Cap Haïtien and was the public face in Haiti for Daniel's "Cruising into History" junket last year; Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, a leader of the opposition-aligned Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), who supported and collaborated with armed "rebels" like death-squad leader Jodel Chamblain when they rolled into Hinche in early February 2004, murdering two policemen; Jocelyn "Johnny" McCalla, whose U.S.-State Department-supported National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR) has been lambasted for justifying the illegal imprisonment of Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert, as well as Deputy Amanus Mayette; Jim Morrell of the Washington-based Haiti Democracy Project, which was the coup's think-tank and propaganda clearinghouse; Lionel Delatour of the Center for Free Enterprise and Democracy (CLED), a U.S. State Department-supported businessmen's group which has fought Haiti's democratic forces for almost two decades; Gabriel Marcella from the U.S. Army War College, who recently advocated in U.S. newspapers that Haiti become an international "protectorate" run by Washington and its allies; Alix Baptiste, the illegal, coup-installed Minister for Haitians Living Abroad; and a gaggle of other U.S. government officials and quasi-officials from agencies like USAID and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES).

We should also note that no less than three representatives of Frandley Denis' National Civic Movement are set to attend.

Is it conceivable that Ron Daniels, who postures as a progressive, can be inviting this patently anti-democratic crowd to discuss "workable solutions" at this hellish juncture in Haiti's most recent coup d'état? It makes about as much sense as 9-11 survivors inviting Osama Bin Laden to the Rayburn Building in Washington to sit with Congressional members and discuss the future of the United States. It is like asking the Ku Klux Klan to come discuss the future civil rights and development of African-Americans in the U.S. after the murders of Emmett Till, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., or the Mississippi civil rights workers.

The Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) has walked in the past year, since the U.S.-backed and implemented coup d'état, hand-in-hand with the poor disenfranchised masses of Haiti, with the majority who disagrees with the coup and denounces illegal Prime Minister Gérard Latortue's murderous death squads. Our collaborators have walked with the people of Belair, Cité Soleil, Cité de Dieu, Fort National, Milot, Cap Haïtien, and those throughout the provinces outside of Port-au-Prince who face the coup d'etat's military forces and this U.S.-backed and illegitimate Latortue regime. We support the women who have been raped, the street children shot while they sleep, the political prisoners, the families forced into exile, and the refugees who cannot find asylum or Temporary Protected Status.

We know who has unequivocally denounced the coup d'état, fought for the principles and process of democracy, and been on the firing line in this merciless attack against Haitian self-determination and sovereignty. We have stood with the Black Caucus, the African Union, Caricom and the people's leaders on the populous streets of Haiti. We bear witness and can credibly point to many who joined the Haitian majority in their long walk to freedom as a new chapter began on Feb. 29, 2004. In that walk, we have not run into the organizers of "Cruising into History." Au contraire. They were one of our adversaries.

In the ranks of those fighting for Haiti's dignity and respect for the one-person-one-vote principle, we certainly did not meet the pro-coup representatives who make up almost 80% of the symposium invitees and whom Ron Daniels calls "honest brokers" ready to discuss the future of democracy and development in Haiti.

How is it possible that those who participated in the destabilization and ouster of the constitutional government such as Jim Morrell, Frandley Denis Julien, and Chavannes Jean-Baptiste can now have ANY credibility to sit down and dialogue about a democratic future for Haiti? And what about the people denouncing the coup? Why is Ron Daniels not getting confirmation of attendance to his shindig from the champions of democracy, from organizations who have sent delegations to Haiti in 2004 to report on the human rights situation, organizations such as EPICA, Pax Christi, Miami Law Center, Haiti Accompaniment Project, Amnesty International, National Lawyers Guild, the Haiti Commission of Inquiry, the International Labor/Religious/Community (ILRC) and the Haiti Action Committee.

Are these pro-democracy activists not "honest brokers"? If they were invited, why have they decided to not attend? Why are organizations such as Haiti Action Committee, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, International Action Center, Fondasyon Trant Septanm, Veye Yo, New England Organization for Human Rights in Haiti, Haiti Support Network (HSN), Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners in Haiti, the Resistance Movement of the Popular Bases (MRBP), the Communication Commission for Fanmi Lavalas, Vwa Zansèt, AUMOHD Dwa Moun, Haiti Information Project, Haitkaah Social Justice Project, Ottawa Haiti Solidarity Committee (OHSC) and so many other pro-democracy forces not "honest brokers, facilitators and mediators" but Haiti Democracy Project, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, Frandley Denis Julien, and Ron Daniels are? Why are so many pro-democracy groups not participating in this symposium?

Is this a repeat of the symposium that was held on Dec. 10 and 11th in Canada where the Canadian government invited "leaders in the Haitian community abroad" who were simply coup-d'état leaders while pro-democracy groups with credibility among the grassroots movement for democracy in Haiti were not invited or welcomed at this meeting? Is Ron Daniels taking a leaf out of Canadian Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew's book and now plotting to legitimize this idea of "protectorate" with the Chalabis in the United States?

Where are the Haitian diaspora's representatives who have fought for Haitian rights, who never called for the coup d'etat and denounced it after it had taken place? On Daniel's list, why are there so few undisputed supporters and delegates from Fanmi Lavalas, Haiti's most powerful political party, who are in New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Canada, and France?

Even if pro-democracy forces were to sit down with pro-coup people (which pro-coup forces always refused to do before they took power), at least the symposium's participants should accurately represent Haiti's democratic reality. Without question, the vast majority of Haitians oppose the coup while only a tiny minority supports it. The symposium at present has these proportions reversed and is unbalanced in its representation of the views of the Haitian majority. It's tantamount to attempting a coup d'état in the U.S. Haitian diaspora to give legitimacy to positions that hold no water with the Haitian masses.

I would say, based on the e-mail below and the compiled list of those qualified to "discuss Haiti's future," that Ron Daniels is as clueless today as he was last year when he tried, with Frandley Julien as his spokesperson in Haiti, to bamboozle the African-American intelligentsia, scholars, activists and well-meaning celebrities, such as Danny Glover and other unsuspecting Black Americans, to join him in supporting and collaborating with the "Group of 184" and the Latortue death regime in Haiti in the name of celebrating our ancestors' bicentennial.

Despite Ron Daniel's high-placed friends, the August 2004 "Cruising into History" project failed because it collaborated with putschists. Daniels didn't succeed then and is plainly looking to humiliate himself once again.

Larouze fè banda tout tan soley pa leve.
Nou pap bay legen!
Grenadye alaso!

HLLN's position is clear. Those who took up arms against the constitutional government or participated in the destabilization along with high-ranking officials within the U.S./Canada/France are responsible for the bloodletting in Haiti right now. They are neither freedom fighters nor "honest brokers" for Haiti. Their propaganda must be countered. The truth about Haiti and its interminably long struggle for respect, self-determination and justice must see the light of day. Dialogue is essential. But based on his own actions with "Cruising Into History" and now with this thinly veiled attempt to marginalize pro-democracy advocates, Ron Daniels is showing that he is the least qualified to facilitate truthful, positive dialogue and workable solutions to the post-coup d'état human rights debacle and general instability in Haiti.

Below is the Haiti Support Project's letter about the symposium and the list of confirmed and unconfirmed invitees.

National/International Symposium
The Future of Democracy and Development in Haiti
March 17-18, Washington, D.C.

Dear Invitee:

If you have not confirmed your attendance/participation in the National/International Symposium on the Future of Democracy and Development in Haiti, we sincerely hope you will do so immediately. Confirmations are steadily coming in. Thus far the following individuals and/or organizations have indicated they will attend/participate for all or part of the Symposium:

Congressman John Conyers, Jr., Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee, Congressional Black Caucus
Congressman Gregory Meeks, Congressional Black Caucus
Marc Morial, President/CEO, National Urban League
Dr. Joseph Baptiste, President National Organization for the Advancement of Haitians (NOAH)
Hillary Shelton, Director, Washington Bureau, NAACP
Leslie Voltaire, former Minister for Haitians Living Abroad, Haiti
Roy Hastick, President/CEO, Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce and Industry
Jocelyn McCalla, Executive Director, National Coalition for Haitian Rights
Frandley Julien, National Civic Movement, Haiti
Leonard Dunston, President, Emeritus, National Association of Black Social Workers
Lionel Pressoir, SHRAC, Haiti
Dr. C. Delores Tucker, President, National Congress of Black Women
Joe Thelusca, President/CEO, Global Access Partners, LLC
Joe Leonard, Ph.D., Executive Director, National Black Leadership Forum
Jean Claude Martineau, former Dir. of Education and Culture, National Television of Haiti
Robert Maguire, Ph.D., Director of Programs in International Affairs, Trinity College
Lionel Delatour, Center for Free Enterprise and Democracy, Haiti
Rev. Justus Brutus, Director of Missions, Progressive National BaptistConvention
Marc Prou, Executive Director, Haiti Studies Association
Damu Smith, Co-Founder, Black Voices for Peace
Dr. Gilbert Parks, Chairman Emeritus, National Medical Association
Selena Mendy Singleton, Vice-President, Trans Africa Forum
James Morrell, Director, Haiti Democracy Project
Derrick Humphries, Black Congress of Law, Health and Economics
Jocelyne Mayas, Queens Empowerment Coalition for Haitian Immigrants
Ron Hampton, Executive Director, National Black Police Association
Gabriel Marcella, (will send a position paper on trusteeship based on a Miami Herald article)

Latest Confirmations
Marc Bazin, Mouvement Pour l' Instauration de la Démocratie en Haïti
Anselme Remy, Professor, University of Haiti
Martineau Guerrier, MD, former Senator, Haitian National Assembly
Serge Parisien, NOAH
Gary Flowers, National Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, Representing Rev. Jesse Jackson
Alix Baptiste, Minister for Haitians Living Abroad, Interim Government of Haiti
James Gomez, Director of International Affairs, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
Eugenia Charles, Executive Director, Fondasyon Mapou
Jean Claude Desgranges, M.D., Haiti
Dr. Evalliere Beauplan, DDS, former Senator, Haitian National Assembly
Cyllay, IFES
Josette Desir, National Civic Movement, Haiti
Winifred Chauvel, Executive Director, Haitian Leadership Foundation
Mike Benge, Senior Forestry Advisor, USAID
Suzette Jean-Baptiste, National Civic Movement, Haiti

We are delighted that a number of leading African American civil rights, human rights, religious and professional organizations/institutions have already agreed to participate in the Symposium, and we expect more within the next few days. This is important because the Haiti Support Project is committed to building a constituency for Haiti in the United States with a priority on engaging African Americans to impact policy towards the first Black Republic in the hemisphere and facilitate the mobilization of humanitarian and developmental assistance to contribute to improving the quality of life of the Haitian people. The Trans Africa Forum is also doing some important work in this area.

As indicated in the initial Save-the-Date Email Notice and Invitation, the goal of this important Symposium is to facilitate a serious and substantive assessment and dialogue about the state of affairs in Haiti with the objective of creating or contributing to momentum towards positive, workable solutions to Haiti's social, economic and political crises. In some respects the Symposium could be characterized as a modest effort to complement the initiative recently launched by the African Union at the behest of the Government of South Africa. The Haiti Support Project believes that constructive ideas can and must be generated in several quarters in order to contribute to the process of democracy and development in Haiti in a principled manner.

As I wrote in a recent article, "the Haiti Support Project ... firmly believes that Haiti can best be served by organizations, institutions and individuals who can function as honest brokers, mediators and facilitators, people who are not tied to or committed to any political party, organization or personality within the broad array of progressive forces in the popular movement for democracy in Haiti." It is in this spirit that we have reached out to a broad range of organizations and individuals to engage in a dialogue at this Symposium. Everyone who has been invited is considered a resource person with something to contribute to the process and all ideas are on the table for discussion.

HSP's ideas are colored by our primary commitment, which is to the long suffering Haitian masses. We will always strive to be on their side and we make no apology for our position in that regard. Accordingly, at appropriate moments during the Symposium, we will offer views and ideas which we believe are consistent with that commitment.

Your participation in the Symposium can help make it a meaningful and productive exercise. Therefore, we hope you will make every effort to attend/participate. Formal letters are in the process of being mailed out.

However, we need your confirmation via phone or email asap! Please contact Ka Flewellen immediately by email at HSP3971770 or call 202-397-1770.

Yours in the struggle,

Ron Daniels, Founder,
Haiti Support Project