Were Canadians involved in a massacre in Haiti?

by Anthony Fenton

On July 29th, the Commander of the Canadian Forces contingent in Haiti, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Davis, acknowledged to a well-attended media teleconference call that at least 1,000 people had been killed in Port-au-Prince since February 29 th . He also acknowledged that occupying forces took part in a massacre of between 40 to 60 Lavalas civilians in the neighbourhood of Belair on March 12th.

Neither of these events merited mention in subsequent news reports. On the contrary, the Toronto Star headline read “Haiti mission called success: shops open, children smiling.” This is consistent with other illusions presented to the Canadian public to characterize the performance of Canadian Forces in Haiti. On July 29, new Minister of Defence Bill Graham said, ominously, “Our mission in Haiti was instrumental in bringing peace and stability to this troubled country.”

The reality of the March 12th massacre Davis described is much different from that which was reported at the time. Davis said “I'm not denying that these things have taken place. The US battalion the five previous evenings had taken ambush attacks. . . . You need to appreciate what the battalion was attempting to do, what it came here to do. . . . It was chaotic on a night to night basis. . . . Within a matter of days we had clamped down on things.”

The mainstream reports about the evening of March 12th only mentioned a mere “two people slain by American troops” (Truro Daily News, March 13, 2004). According to a US Marine, “The two men killed late Friday during a patrol had previously fired on the soldiers, although their weapons were never discovered.” According to witnesses, however, “the dead were bystanders,” and “those killed were not armed or militant.” The brother of one of the deceased revealed, “He was playing basketball when the Americans and French began firing.” Later, it was reported in the National Post that “residents said as many as 11 people were killed in the cross-fire.”
more
http://www.cmaq.net/fr/node.php?id=17805

The Canadian Left is Silent on Haiti

by Yves Engler
July 22
rabble.ca

The Canadian media's silence regarding police and rebel collaboration is striking since prior to Aristide's ouster, it was full of ominous accounts of the politicization of the police force. Yet now with Aristide gone and Canadian troops supporting Haiti's police, our media ignore their crimes, which include the torture and execution of five Aristide supporters in March, according to Amnesty. Haitian police also fired on a pro-Aristide march in May, killing at least one person and allowed former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune's home to be ransacked. He is now in prison with at least seven other pro-Aristide ex-officials.

...

The economic situation has also deteriorated since the coup. Immediately after Aristide's ouster, millions of dollars worth of property was looted and destroyed, much of it by infuriated Aristide supporters who blame the one per cent of the population that controls nearly half the country's wealth for Aristide's removal. More significantly, the price of rice has doubled since Aristide's forced departure, worsening life for the poor majority who rely on rice for subsistence. The cost of rice has increased for a couple of reasons including a slight rise in world prices and some disruption of supply routes. But most importantly, Aristide's regime helped stabilize prices and according to Berthony F.A. Mercier, 50, who paints signs in Port-au-Prince, "the people who sell the rice are the people who kicked Aristide out."

...

During the federal election debates, Paul Martin and Gilles Duceppe agreed that Canada's involvement in Haiti was a success. The NDP's Jack Layton didn't object, wasting an opportunity to provide an alternative view of Canada's role in the troubled nation. Does he really agree with replacing an elected government by force of foreign troops? If so, who speaks for those opposed to Canada's Haiti policy?

It's time the Canadian left supported the thousands of Haitians risking their lives for the restoration of democracy. It's the least we can do after all our troops and media have done.

http://www.rabble.ca/news_full_story.shtml?x=33335

The killing of innocents and then lying about it is not just a U.S. problem, although here it appears to have reached a high art. Throughout history it has been ever thus... Heavy sigh.

Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Wednesday that he had written another letter to President Thabo Mbeki regarding a consignment of arms sent to Haiti in the dying hours of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's regime.

Leon said he had to date received no answer to his previous query regarding the dispatch in February of a South African Air Force Boeing 707 to the Caribbean island state loaded with 150 R1-assault rifles, ammunition and assorted equipment.

"This is the most extraordinary thing in a constitutional democracy. If it wasn't for a journalist and a newspaper in Jamaica, we would never have known about this deployment," Leon told a press conference in Johannesburg.

The DA leader said he had taken legal advice on the matter from an advocate in Cape Town who advised him that the flight to Haiti amounted to the employment of the Defence Force as contemplated in the constitution as well as in the new Defence Act, and that government, by not reporting this deployment to parliament within the stipulated 14 days, was in breach of the law.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=6&art_id=qw1080130142942B265&set_id=1

Every night I get frantic calls from friends and contacts I have met and interviewed in the past. In the background I hear the thunder of heavy automatic weapons and the screams of terror as they describe to me the carnage being met upon them. The calls come from places like Bel Air, Cite Soleil, La Saline and Martissaint. The poorest of the poor who supported President Aristide and democracy are being slaughtered by the former military and FRAPH. There is a 6 p.m. curfew imposed by the international forces but it does not seem to apply to these killers.

Naturally, the Haitian press remains silent along with their buddies in the corporate media who are more enamored of the romantic notion of the former killers returning than of the killing itself. I can't blame them though, as the groundwork had already been laid by the Haitian and Washington elites. Haiti’s poor had already been dehumanized in the eyes of the international audience. They are just "chimeres" or violent gangs allied with the president, so we can ignore when they are killed en mass. They deserve it, after all, as payback for having thought they had a place in Haiti's political life. They are only good for two things now, to make money off of or to kill – and who will really know the difference?

No one in these poor neighborhoods believes that President Aristide resigned of his own freewill. The very first day of the coup (let's call it what it really is) they had already begun spreading the rumor that he had been kidnapped. Poor they may be, but stupid they ain't. Now they must suffer for that same intelligence as the world stands by, ignoring their screams of terror.
more
http://www.blackcommentator.com/80/80_cover_haiti.html

By Michael Christie

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - The northeast Haitian town of Fort Liberte lives up to its name for 150 murderers, rapists and thieves freed from the local jail. They run the place.

<snip>

Most of Fort Liberte, a small town on the pockmarked road to the Dominican Republic border from the northern port of Cap-Haitien, is in the hands of escaped convicts, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Stores are shuttered and the streets are empty.

"The town is virtually deserted. There is no market. Many houses have been burned. Prisoners control most parts of the city," said U.N. spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs.

Far to the southwest, in the seaside town of Les Cayes, armed rebels who helped oust Haiti's first democratically elected leader carry out public executions, unchallenged by police or foreign troops.

<snip>

Neither the French soldiers nor the police have taken any action to free Aristide supporters illegally detained by the rebels, or to confiscate weapons.

<snip>

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml ;jsessionid=VJDPCJJGPK2CYCRBAEZSFFA?type=worldNews&storyID=4638215&pageNumber=1



muscail ar misneadh trid an domhain, al bupp, muscail ar misneadh trid an domhain mhor :hi:

EVERY DEATH CREATES NEW ENEMIES
MORE TERRORISTS
MORE DANGER
MORE DEATH
AND REMEMBER...

HE IS JUST GETTING STARTED...

BUSH'S PLAN FOR PEACE
IS THE PEACE OF THE COMMON GRAVE

http://www.bushflash.com/pax.html WATCH THIS VIDEO only takes 3 minutes

Wumpscut
Totmacher

sie ahnten nichts von mir
von meiner wilden gier
doch als du kamst zu mir
da wurde ich ein tier
kein gedanke an danach
als ich dir die knochen brach

tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot

tot

fuer mein naechstes leben
schoepfe ich neue kraft
ich bin dem toeten ergeben
in der einzelhaft

tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot
tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot

ein dahinsichen
von gottes hand
ich kann dich riechen
und das denken verschwand

tot tot tot tot tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot tot tot tot tot

ich mache dich tot ich mache dich tot
ich mache dich tot ich mache dich tot

sag mir was du willst
dass du meine sehnsucht stillst
ich mache dich tot fuer immerdar
von blut alles rot auf gottes altar

tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot

ich mache dich tot fuer immerdar
ich mache dich tot glaub mir es ist wahr
ich mache dich tot fuer immerdar
ich mache dich tot auf gottes altar


Should Haiti Declare a "War on Terrorism" against the U.S?

On December 27, 1993, Emmanuel "Toto" Constant and his FRAPH (Revolutionary Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti) death squads began firing on the Haitian shantytown of Cite Soleil. They then circled the town with gasoline and burnt several hundred homes to the ground, forcing some fleeing residents- children included- back into their burning homes at gunpoint.

Two months before this attack, in October, 1993, the U.S. navy vessel, USS Harlan County was dispatched to Haiti carrying 200 troops to ostensibly pave the way for previously ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's return to power. As the ship approached the Port-au-Prince wharf, Constant and his men staged a riot and the USS Harlan was unable to dock. As a result, the populist President's scheduled return was aborted.

During Constant's three-year reign of terror, his FRAPH death squads butchered several thousand Haitian civilians. So how is it that one of the world's leading terrorists is free and living in a nice, two-story home in the quiet Laurelton neighborhood of Queens, New York?

After the U.S. military entered Haiti in 1994, Constant, who by then had a criminal subpoena and a warrant for his arrest, escaped an uninspired "search" by U.S. soldiers and slipped into the U.S. on a tourist visa. He was eventually captured and placed in the custody of U.S. immigration authorities for over a year. In 1995, the Haitian government requested Constant's extradition on charges of murder, torture and arson; however the U.S. suspended his deportation, claiming that Haitian courts could not handle the extradition and instead gave Constant a green card to live and work freely in the U.S.
more
http://www.hopedance.org/archive/issue32/articles/pitteli-haiti.htm

every night, keeping _Bush and his sly, slippery, sadistic supporters awake for the rest of their lives.

I hope it becomes impossible to ride down their guilt and fear of judgement both in this world and in a possible world to come.

This is unpardonable. They knew what they were doing, they knew people were going to be murdered, and it simply didn't matter. It would have been obvious from the first moment they decided to let Haiti feel their "power." It surely was to all of us onlookers.

Fools, demons.

It came out later how heavily involved we were with the atrocities in East Timor too. If Canada have some companies that have investments/ or want to invest in Haiti the Canadian government doesn't hesitate to use our money to prop up friendly dictators and use our military to protect those investments. Don't forget that Aristide was raising the minimum wage there and the sweatshop corporations were not happy, obviously some were Canadian.

This is just unacceptable. When I have some time I will do some more digging around and start writing letters.