[News] Torture, Murder and Complicity - Canada in Haiti

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/shaw09192006.html

September 19, 2006


Torture, Murder and Complicity


Canada in Haiti

By NIK BARRY-SHAW and YVES ENGLER

Does the Canadian-promoted "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine 
include murder rape, and threats of violence?

That's the question we should be asking Canadian officials after a 
study in the prestigious Lancet medical journal released at the end 
of August revealed there were 8,000 murders, 35,000 rapes and 
thousands of incidents of armed threats in the 22 months after the 
overthrow of the elected government in Haiti.

In September 2000, Canada launched the International Commission on 
Intervention and State Sovereignty. The commission's final report, 
The Responsibility to Protect, was presented to the UN in December 
2001 and at the 2005 World Summit, Canada advocated that world 
leaders endorse the new doctrine. It asserts that where gross human 
rights abuses are occurring, it is the duty of the international 
community to intervene, over and above considerations of state sovereignty.

In January 2003, the Canadian government organized the "Ottawa 
Initiative" where U.S., Canadian and French government officials who 
met at Meech Lake decided that Haiti's elected president, Jean 
Bertrand Aristide should be removed from office. The intervention was 
justified, they reasoned, by the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

In due course, Aristide was forced from office. And Canada's 
intervention in Haiti has exacerbated, rather than improved, Haiti's 
human rights situation.
Confirming numerous prior human rights investigations, the Lancet 
study estimates that 8,000 people in Port-au-Prince were killed in 
the 22 months after the toppling of Aristide's government. The Lancet 
study gives an idea of the scale of the persecution of those close to 
Aristide's Lavalas movement.

Of the estimated 8,000 people murdered--12 people a day--in the 
greater Port-au-Prince area, nearly half (47.7%) were killed by 
governmental or anti-Aristide forces. 21.7% of the killings were 
attributed to members of the Haitian National Police (HNP), 13.0% to 
demobilized soldiers (many of whom participated in the coup) and 
13.0% to anti-Aristide gangs (none were attributed to Aristide supporters).

Canada commands the 1,600-member United Nations police contingent 
mandated to train, assist and oversee the Haitian National Police. 
Yet while Canadian police have been supporting them, the Haitian 
police have been attacking peaceful demonstrations and carrying out 
massacres, often with the help of anti-Aristide gangs. While UN 
police have announced investigations in a few particularly egregious 
cases, not one report from such investigations has ever been released.

The Lancet study also uncovered some evidence that Canadian forces in 
Haiti were more than mere silent accomplices. Athena Kolbe, co-author 
of the study, recounts an interview with one family in the Delmas 
district of Port-au-Prince:

"Canadian troops came to their house, and they said they were looking 
for (pro-Aristide) Lavalas chimeres, and threatened to kill the head 
of household, who was the father, if he didn't name names of people 
in their neighbourhood who were Lavalas chimeres or Lavalas supporters."

Canada took command of "reforming" Haiti's judicial system, yet by 
all accounts huge numbers of political prisoners, including the 
former prime minister, languished in prolonged and arbitrary 
detention. The Lancet found an huge number of unconstitutional detentions.

The study also found a "shocking" level of sexual violence committed 
since the coup, with an estimated 35,000 women raped in Port-au- 
Prince, more than half of the victims under eighteen. In a harrowing 
account the co-author, Athena Kolbe, discussed interviewing a mother 
who had been raped with a metal bar, which destroyed her cervix. 
Gravely ill, the woman was transported by Kolbe's crew to the general 
hospital, where they offered to pay for medical costs. On discovering 
that a uniformed police officer was implicated, the hospital refused 
medical treatment. The victim eventually received medical attention 
at another facility, but ultimately succumbing to her injuries. Kolbe 
then paid for relocation of the traumatized family. (This 
necessitated not including the rape in the Lancet survey data.)

Throughout the period investigated by the researchers from Wayne 
State University in Michigan Canada was heavily involved in Haitian 
affairs. After withholding aid to Aristide's elected government, 
Canada gave nearly $200 million to the imposed Gerard Latortue 
regime. Nearly five hundred Canadian troops with six CH-146 Griffon 
helicopters were on the ground until August of 2004. And the imposed 
Prime Minister was feted in Ottawa on a number of occasions.

On April 13, 2006, in Washington, U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza 
Rice praised "Canada's very important role in Haiti."

We suspect that anyone who has read the Lancet study does not share her praise.

Nik Barry-Shaw is a member of Haiti Action Montreal

Yves Engler is the author of two books: Canada in Haiti: Waging War 
on the Poor Majority (with Anthony Fenton) and Playing Left Wing: 
 From Rink Rat to Student Radical.


The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20060919/7fc5e676/attachment.htm>