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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/shaw09192006.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/shaw09192006.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>September 19,
2006<br><br>
</font><h1><font size=5><b>Torture, Murder and Complicity<br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Canada in
Haiti</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5>By NIK
BARRY-SHAW and YVES ENGLER<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">D</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>oes the Canadian-promoted
"Responsibility to Protect" doctrine include murder rape, and
threats of violence?<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
In due course, Aristide was forced from office. And Canada's intervention
in Haiti has exacerbated, rather than improved, Haiti's human rights
situation.<br>
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.<br><br>
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).<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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:<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>"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."<br><br>
</dl>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.<br><br>
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.)<br><br>
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.<br><br>
On April 13, 2006, in Washington, U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza
Rice praised "Canada's very important role in Haiti."<br><br>
We suspect that anyone who has read the Lancet study does not share her
praise.<br><br>
Nik Barry-Shaw</b> is a member of Haiti Action Montreal<br><br>
Yves Engler </b>is the author of two books: Canada in Haiti: Waging War
on the Poor Majority</i> (with Anthony Fenton) and Playing Left Wing:
>From Rink Rat to Student Radical.<br><br>
</i><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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