[News] Fighting for Justice & Democracy in Haiti

[News at freedomarchives.org]

August 7 / 8, 2004





Fighting for Justice & Democracy in Haiti



An Interview with Brian Concannon, Jr.


By ANDREW FENTON


<http://www.counterpunch.org/fenton08072004.html>http://www.counterpunch.org/fenton08072004.html 



Fenton: Why did you feel it was necessary to form the Institute for Justice 
and Democracy in Haiti [IJDH]?[1]

Concannon: The IJDH was formed in response to both the unconstitutional 
regime change in Haiti in February and the inadequate response, by civil 
society both inside and outside of Haiti. Our mission is to promote 
democracy and human rights in Haiti, and we have three main areas of 
activity: working with grassroots groups in Haiti and the solidarity 
community abroad,; documenting human rights abuses in Haiti and 
disseminating that information; and pursuing legal actions in Haitian and 
international courts to support the democratization of Haiti and to help 
victims of human rights abuses find justice.

Fenton: Are there any cases that you are actively pursuing right now?

Concannon: Yes. We have lawyers on the ground who are trying to get 
political prisoners out of jail; we've had some successes, there have been 
some people released out of jail; we hope that by applying pressure in the 
US and working within the system that we can get the justice system to 
recognize detainee's rights under Haitian and International law. So far 
it's been an uphill battle, but we're going to keep working on that.

Fenton: One can't help but notice that the IJDH report is not exactly 
consistent with mainstream version of events that would have us believe 
that the human rights abuses are not something we should be concerned with 
in the 'post-Aristide' Haiti.

Concannon: I think our report is not completely out of the mainstream. 
There are some mainstream organizations, for instance Amnesty International 
[2] and the Committee to Protect Journalists [3] that have documented the 
systematic persecution of Lavalas supporters, but that reality has not been 
accepted by the people who actually have a duty to act in that situation, 
namely the Haitian government and the governments that propped up the 
current Haitian government, including the governments of the US and Canada. 
They have ignored it because it's an inconvenient fact.

If they do admit that these persecutions are happening then they would be 
required to act. Haiti is not the first time that this has happened; we're 
seeing it right now in Darfur, Sudan, where there was a very slow 
international response. In fact, decision makers are avoiding calling it a 
genocide because international law requires affirmative actions to prevent 
genocide.. Go back to 1994 in Rwanda, where you even had a Canadian General 
saying there was a genocide and these horrible things were happening, but 
the world refused to admit it was a genocide, because that would have 
required them to take action to stop it. In this case, the governments of 
the US and Canada, they just do not want to recognize the mess they've made 
of things [in Haiti] because that would require them to admit that their 
regime change is not working, and to put a lot of pressure on the 
government and their paramilitary allies to stop the persecution.

Fenton: What can be done with the horrific information detailed in the IJDH 
and other reports?

Concannon: We need to confront the world with these facts. We write this 
report to prove beyond a doubt that large scale atrocities are happening, 
as a way of pushing reluctant people into action. We also need to take 
organizational action, with solidarity groups like the Let Haiti Live 
Campaign, and individual action like writing to newspapers and our elected 
representatives.

Fenton: Commander of the Canadian Forces in Haiti, Lieutenant-colonel Jim 
Davis recently called into question the "credibility and validity" of the 
IJDH report [4]. How do you respond to this? Is it "credible and valid"?

Concannon: The report was prepared by lawyers who have been trained in some 
of the world's best law schools. We've been working for eight years in 
Haiti. We have a very good system of collecting and verifying information, 
and it is up to the highest standards. I actually would prefer that this 
report was all wrong. If the people who came into our office were not 
really victims' relatives, if they had invented the stories, and we had 
faked the photographs if all those people reported dead or disappeared are 
alive and well, that would make my day; that would make me extremely happy, 
because then a lot fewer people would have suffered persecution.

But the reality is that very good information, from us and from anyone else 
who has seriously investigated, shows that there is widespread persecution. 
If the Canadian, or any other military on the ground in Haiti does not 
believe this information, their obligation is to go out and check. Their 
obligation is to go in and talk to people in poor neighbourhoods, to go to 
the prisons and ask who's a Lavalas supporter, and find out if there are 
any warrants for those people's arrest. They'll find that there are no 
warrants; they'll find that they've not been brought before a judge, that 
the Constitution has not been respected in many ways. We'd be perfectly 
happy to cooperate with the Canadian government or anyone else who was 
looking into these questions. If they don't believe us their obligation is 
to conduct their own investigation rather than just putting their hands 
over their ears and closing their eyes, seeing no evil, hearing no evil.

Fenton: This same colonel denied that a "cleansing" of supporters of 
Haiti's Constitution has or is taking place, while at the same time 
acknowledging that 1000 bodies were buried in a mass grave by March 28th, 
one month after the coup. He admitted this and other things [such as a 
March 12th massacre carried out by occupying forces in the neighborhood of 
Belair] during a well-attended media teleconference call. None of the 
mainstream outlest picked up on this context. Why do you suppose this is 
the case and what are your thoughts on the work of mainstream [corporate] 
journalists?

Concannon: I think that journalists covering Haiti have a moral and 
professional obligation to look into these atrocities, and that for the 
most part they have not fulfilled that obligation. Obviously if they're put 
on notice by the fact that a Canadian colonel admitted that a massacre 
happened and that there were a thousand bodies, then journalists need to 
ask where these bodies came from. They need to go to Haiti and check.. They 
need to go beyond staying in the nice hotels and speaking with Haitians who 
drive nice cars or speak good French or English. They need to go into the 
poor areas where the persecution is happening. The people who are doing the 
repressing are very clever; they're not killing prominent people; some of 
the prominent people are being arrested and put in jail, but the killing is 
being done to anonymous people, to poor people in the poor neighbourhoods 
that support President Aristide and they are being targeted in ways that 
the press won't see because the press isn't going into those neighbourhoods 
and is not making the effort to talk to the victims.

For both the press and for governments, finding this information is not 
hard. We did not aggressively solicit information. For the most part people 
justcame by our office. Once the word got out through the grapevine that we 
were taking down these stories, our office was inundated with people and it 
would not be very hard for a journalist or a foreign government in Haiti to 
put the word out that they're taking testimony about these things and I'm 
sure they'd also be inundated very quickly with information.

Fenton: In a recent interview Pierre Esperrance, director of the National 
Coalition for Haitian Rights [NCHR], said "I can tell you right now that 
there are no political prisoners in Haiti." Can you put the NCHR into context?

Concannon: The NCHR also needs to investigate these things. They may be 
telling the truth in saying they haven't received reports of persecution, 
but they've also admitted that they haven't gone out and looked. One 
problem is that they're considered by many of the victims of persecution to 
be hostile to their interests, partly because NCHR has been denouncing 
people who were subsequently arrested and imprisoned illegally, and partly 
because when you go into NCHR offices there are wanted posters for people 
associated with the Lavalas government and they don't have posters of 
people who've even been convicted of human rights violations against 
lavalas supporters and are roaming free.

If NCHR and others are going to claim that this persecution is not 
happening they have to out and conduct an investigation. I think that a lot 
of the mainstream human rights organisations in Haiti, which are also not 
coincidentally supported by USAID and by other wealthy governments, have 
been systematically biased in their human rights reporting, in terms of 
over reporting accusations against Lavalas members and underreporting or 
ignoring accusations of persecution of Lavalas members.

Fenton: What else is going on on the ground to help Haitian's achieve their 
human right to self-determine?

Concannon: One thing that's happening is that Haitian civil society is 
starting to reorganize, that is, the democratic [legitimate] civil society. 
It's not an easy thing to do given that the whole purpose of this 
repression is to either kill or arrest activists, and to decapitate the 
civil society organizations, but despite that they are still managing to 
organize. I think you will see an increased effort on behalf of Haitian 
organizations to insist on democracy and sovereignty and Haitian 
independence. There are accompanying efforts outside of Haiti. I think that 
the solidarity community did oppose the coup as it was arriving but I don't 
think we that did it as effectively as we could have.

The solidarity community is starting to do more outreach, and making its 
message more effective. I also think that we are gradually getting more 
people on board. It's been a bitter disappointment for me that people who 
would not accept the US and other countries overthrowing an elected 
government elsewhere in the Americas did nothing to stop it from happening 
to Haiti. And people who would not believe Bush Administration propaganda 
with respect to other countries believe and recirculate it with respect to 
Haiti. Many of those people are starting to come around, they're seeing 
that this puppet [Gerard Latortue-Boniface Alexandre] regime is in fact not 
functioning and is not providing any benefit to the Haitian people.We're 
hoping that some of those people will 'jump on the bandwagon' and start 
supporting Haiti's sovereignty and popular democracy.

Fenton: A number of Haitian organizations who claim to represent 'the 
people' and left-of-center viewpoints were calling for Arisitde's 
resignation before the coup, allying themselves with the right wing 
elements. Please discuss this context.

Concannon: Haitian society has a few different divisions. The biggest 
division is between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'. A lot of people who 
espouse left of center ideas do so from comfortable offices and homes, and 
when push comes to shove they stick to their primary alliance with others 
of their class, in spite of their espoused politics. I think this certainly 
happened in the months leading up to Haiti's coup. You saw incongruous 
alliances with former communists, and anti-neoliberal activists holding 
hands with sweatshop owners, calling for a common platform. Those people 
aren't happy now; they're not getting what they wanted, except for the ones 
who received ministerial posts, or director-general posts. It's obvious 
that the government is not advancing their espoused political agenda. But 
there still is this division, where people pick sides, almost like 
tribalism, where you pick a side of your economic class over your espoused 
views.

Fenton: It strikes me that Batay Ouvriye falls under this category. They've 
said about Aristide's agreeing to be returned by Clinton in 1994: "The 
return of Aristide under US/UN occupation was a futherance of this process 
of placing Haiti gradually under US imperialist tutelage." And, in the 
context of the recent coup they've said "The current U.S. led intervention 
in Haiti was first called for by the Lavalas government, desperately 
seeking a way to stay in power by any concessionnecessary. But the U.S. had 
more servile lackeys in mind while taking advantage of the invitation to 
intervene."[5]

Concannon: Batay Ouvriye's criticism of Aristide coming back in the 1994 
under US occupation, is certainly a legitimate issue for debate. I think to 
a large extent that debate was settled , by the fact that the Lavalas party 
continued to win a landslide in every election. I think that shows that the 
Haitian people did in fact approve of that decision, even though many of 
those voters probably struggled with that issue, they did come down in 
favour of having the Lavalas back in office. But in any event the issue 
should be debated within the democratic, constitutional framework: through 
public discussion in the press and elsewhere, and by putting the issue in 
front of the voters. Violent regime change simply does not advance that debate.

Fenton: In the context of a 'post-9/11' world and the subsequent new 'war 
on terrorism', put into context what Noam Chomsky has expressed as the 
"Tragedy of Haiti".

Concannon: One closely related theme to all of this is imperialism. After 
the 9/11 attacks there was a lot of talk about whether poverty breeds 
terrorism, and I think that that link is not necessarily a strong one. But 
there is a very strong link between injustice and terrorism, and I think 
you can also make a link between injustice and the inability of a country 
to maintain a stable government. If you look at all the 'trouble spots' in 
the world, you'll see there's a large disparity in wealth and there's also 
a lot of injustice both within those societies and between those societies 
and the wealthy countries of the world. I think that this is at the root of 
a lot of the problems that are afflicting poor countries as well as the 
wealthy ones.

One of Haiti's fundamental problems is the class divide. Although different 
elements of the anti-Lavalas sector had different motivations, the most 
powerful actors wanted Aristide removed because he was governing on behalf 
of the poor.If you look at Haile Selassie's famous 1963 speech to the 
United Nations, that Bob Marley transformed into his excellent song "War", 
where he proclaimed that as long as there's injustice, as long as there's 
racism, as long as people's autonomy and sovereignty are not respected, 
there will be war. Bob Marley's song said "War in the East, War in the 
West, War in the North, War in the South," meaning that sometimes the war 
will be contained in places like Cite Soleil and Soweto, but sometimes it 
will not. And I think we're seeing that. As long as the wealthy and 
powerful countries of the world continue to ignore the principles of 
justice in their international relations, we're going to have war.[6]

Fenton: If John Kerry is elected can or will this have a positive impact on 
the Haiti solidarity struggles?

Concannon: Certainly John Kerry's election will make a difference. He 
espouses a more multilateral, more cooperative, and a more just approach to 
foreign policy. I don't think that it will necessarily make all the 
difference, nor can solidarity activists rest on their laurels if Kerry is 
elected. For example, if you go back to President Clinton, when he was a 
candidate in 1992 talking about the de facto regime [CIA-supported Cedras 
junta] that was in place at the time, and the US policy of illegally 
sending refugees back to that regime, he called that policy illegal and 
immoral, and he promised to change it. But even before he became President, 
a couple of days before his inauguration, he issued a statement reversing 
this position, saying he was going torepatriate Haitian refugees, the same 
thing that as illegal and immoral for the first President Bush to do...So, 
we certainly can't rest, we must continue to push for a just foreign policy 
toward Haiti, even if Kerry is in the White House.

Fenton: Speaking of Clinton, his administration originated the "Failed 
State" terminology that people like Canada's Paul Martin are now parroting 
as if the rhetoric was going out of style

Concannon: I think that the rhetoric is highly cynical. The fact that there 
were problems with Haiti's government is no surprise. There certainly were 
problems - many of them can be traced directly back to the policies of 
Canada and the US and the rest of the wealthy countries. Not 
coincidentally, most of these countries are former slave-holding countries 
and there was a three-year embargo against Haiti's democratically elected 
government. There was also diplomatic isolation, there was persistent 
support for people who were trying to overthrow that government both 
violently and non-violently. Calling Haiti a "failed state" is a way of 
deflecting attention away from the international community's failed 
policies. It is also an excuse to suspend the commitment to democracy that 
wealthy countries always preach, but so often fail to put into practice.

Despite the challenges of the embargo, and figting an intermittent but 
persistent armed attack, the Haitian government was continuing to provide 
many basic services. There were impressive, if still inadequate successes 
in terms of educational reform. Although they weren't anywhere near to 
filling the needs of the country, there were unprecedented advances in 
terms of building schools, training teachers, adult literacy programs. 
There were also great successes in terms of justice, some of our work. We 
had some of the best human rights cases ever done in Haiti and probably in 
the entire hemisphere over the last twenty years or so. Some of these 
happened with international support. Had the international community 
provided more consistent support, there would have been more consistent 
successes. Perhaps most important, before 1996, no Haitian President in 
history had served his original term in office and left voluntarily at the 
end of it, no more no less. That happened in 1996, and again in 2001.

Haiti's Constitutional regime eventually foundered not because of 
competence, but because of politics: the governments insisted on 
implementing a mandate that had been given by the Haitian electorate but 
with which the wealthy countries [and wealthy Haitians] didn't agree.

Fenton: On June 1st you wrote an article called "Haiti's Coup and the 
Constitution,"[7] Please summarize where constitutional issues stand in 
Haiti today. And how has this affected you personally considering all the 
work that you've done over the last nine years in Haiti?

Concannon: In terms of the Constitution and the current government, it came 
to power through unconstitutional means and is continuing to govern in a 
completely unconstitutional way. As in the U.S. and Canada, there are 
certain ways to deal with constitutional crises and interruptions in the 
normal order. None of these were followed in Haiti. The Prime Minister was 
not selected in a constitutional way; the President was the closest thing 
to being constitutional, in that he was the Chief Justice of the Supreme 
Court, and the Constitution does provide for the Chief Justice to fill a 
Presidential vacancy. It wasn't a vacancy because President Aristide did 
not resign; his letter was not a resignation letter. The US State 
Department hired a Creole expert to translate it who said that it was not a 
translation letter.

Even if there had been a vacancy, the interim President is supposed to 
serve for a maximum of three months. We are close to double that now, and 
there is no talk of elections before the end of 2005. The Prime Minister, 
who was appointed by a process not recognized by the Constitution, is 
filling most of the President's roles. He has the real power, because he 
has the ties to the international community.

As far as my personal reaction goes, I am of course bitterly disappointed 
with these results. We'd been working within the Haitian justice system 
since 1995 to try to make the system work, using the tools of democracy. We 
were successful in many ways. The places where we were most successful was 
when we were able to convince people to take a gamble on democracy, we 
convinced people to testify in open court. We argued that prosecuting human 
rights violators under the law rather than engaging in some kind of extra 
judicial vengeance, would help establish the rule of law and break the 
cycle of violence. We told people that the rule of law would be the bulwark 
against these kinds of things happening again.

And the victims very courageously took the gamble, and now they're looking 
like suckers because the people they put in jail are now out, and in power, 
and are threatening them. This is demonstrated by several reports, not just 
ours [Amnesty, etc], that the former human rights abusers, who've actually 
been convicted, are back outside on the streets doing the same things to 
the same people. And they got back out on the streets with the help of the 
wealthy countries that supposedly promote democracy and the rule of law.

It's obviously a bitter disappointment to see Haiti' nine-year experiment 
in democracy thrown out like that. It was not a perfectly successful 
experiment, but it was in fact working. People for the first time ever had 
a role in their destinies. Democratic institutions were being developed 
through painstaking labor. Now we're not back to zero, we're back to less 
than zero, since there is not only a completely undemocratic government in 
place, you also have a lot of people who are now going to say 'I'm not 
going to be fooled again, I'm not going to take the bet on democracy next 
time'.

Fenton: The Haitian Constitution doesn't say that in the event of an 
'interim govenrment' the Prime Minister--in this case Gerard 
Latortue--becomes the de facto head of State, does it?

Concannon: Where Alexandre at least has a veneer of constitutional support, 
Latortue has none; it's clear that Latortue is running the country. The 
constitution does divide executive power between the President and the 
Prime minister, and in fact Latortue is doing most of the things that are 
on the President's side of the divide. It's clear that Latortue is the US 
man. He's probably spent more time in the United States in his life than I 
have. He's the Haitian Ahmad Chalabi, and he's there to do the US bidding.

Fenton: The EPICA"People's fact-finding mission to Haiti" finds that what 
we see in Haiti now is an effective return to the conditions of 1915. Many 
see US ambassador James Foley as the de facto 'governor' of Haiti. Would 
you agree with this characterization?[8]

Concannon: There's another report that came out this week from the Haiti 
Accompaniment Project [9], which came to similar conclusions as EPICA. When 
you look at the detailed workings, everything from the airport to the 
ministries, you have Americans that are involved in important oversight 
positions throughout the Haitian government. In that sense, it is a lot 
like in 1915, which was the beginning of a 19-year occupation.

It seems like in many of these [current] cases, people are settling in for 
the long haul. One person named Terry Stewart was a prison official in 
Arizona who was extremely controversial because of torturing and other 
mistreatment that went on on hs watch. He was then sent to Iraq and 
subsequently sent out of Iraq because he was too controversial, because of 
his past history of involvement in torture. He was then sent to Haiti. I'm 
not sure if he's still there but this is an example of the type of American 
practices that are being exported to Haiti. [10]

Fenton: What are your thoughts on attempting a new [or continued] 
'democratic experiment' in Haiti? Do you agree with Jean Saint-Vil and 
others who see the struggle ahead as a long term one?

Concannon: I think that the most hopeful sign is that the Haitian 
electorate has always been highly mobilized and very clear in their 
desires. I've observed a lot of elections in Haiti--I was an official 
observer with the OAS in Haiti for several elections, and I've unofficially 
observed several others, and in almost every instance, the rate of 
participation of Haitian voters was way above that of any participation 
rate you'd have in U.S. elections, and higher than most elections in Latin 
America.

That shows that despite the challenges to their democracy, the Haitian 
electorate really does care. That is by far the most hopeful sign, although 
a lot of what has happened over the last years have been intended to 
demobilize the population, to make them care less about democracy so 
they're less likely to defend it. I think that this has not completely 
worked, and I think that whenever you do have elections the Haitian people 
will speak very clearly. This is why the plan is to delay elections as long 
as possible. But I think that the people will keep fighting and I agree 
with Jean Saint-Vil that solidarity activists need to be fighting too. We 
need to take the long-term view of this and fight over the long haul for 
the return of real democracy in Haiti, in which the poor majority has the 
say, that has the weight in public affairs that's consistent with their 
numbers. Together, we can in fact get Haitian democracy back on track.

Brian Concannon Jr., human rights lawyer and activist, Director of the 
Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH). Brian has co-managed 
the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux [BAI] in Port-au-Prince since 1996, 
after coming to Haiti in 1995 with the United Nations. Concannon is a 
graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, and held a Brandeis 
International Fellowship in Human Rights, Intervention and International 
Law from 2001-2003. Since Haiti's coup d'etat in February, the BAI has 
switched gears to document continuing human rights violations. The BAI also 
runs a training program for Haitian law school graduates.Mr. Concannon 
writes and speaks often about justice, human rights and the democratic 
transition in Haiti. He can be reached at brianhaiti at aol.com.

Anthony Fenton, is an investigative journalist and activist, living near 
Vancouver, B.C. Fenton has written for ZNet and The Dominion, 'Canada's 
Grassroots National Newspaper'. He can be reached at apfenton at ualberta.ca.

[1] Download the latest IJDH reports at 
<http://www.haitiaction.ne>http://www.haitiaction.net. See also, 
forthcoming, <http://www.ijdh.org>http://www.ijdh.org

[2] See Amnesty's reports at <http://web.amnesty.org>http://web.amnesty.org .

[3] The CPJ's latest can be found here: 
<http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2004/haiti_7_04/haiti_7_04.html>http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2004/haiti_7_04/haiti_7_04.html

[4] During a July 29, 2004 media teleconference from Port au Prince.

[5] Batay Ouvriye said this in a May 25, 2004 interview: 
<http://www.axisoflogic.com/>http://www.axisoflogic.com/ See also 
<http://www.batayouvriye.org>http://www.batayouvriye.org.

[6] On Selassie's speech and Bob Marley go to: 
<http://www.bobmarley.com/life/rastafari/war_speech.html>http://www.bobmarley.com/life/rastafari/war_speech.html

[7] Originally published in the Boston Reporter, June 1, 2004, available 
at: 
<http://haitiaction.net/News/bc6_1_4.html>http://haitiaction.net/News/bc6_1_4.html"

[8] Ecumenical Program in Central America and the Caribbean. Go to: 
<http://www.epica.org/haiti/action_haiti.htm>http://www.epica.org/haiti/action_haiti.htm" 
See also the Quixote Center's "Emergency Haiti Observation Mission" report.

[9] The HAP report is available at 
<http://haitiaction.net/News/hap6_29_4.html>http://haitiaction.net/News/hap6_29_4.html

[10] For more on Terry Stewart in the context of Haiti, see Dominique Esser 
and Kim Ives' "Haiti and Abu Ghraib: The US is to "clean up" Haiti's 
prisons -- just like it did Iraq's" .


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