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<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/activist-pierre-labossiere/">http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/activist-pierre-labossiere/</a></small></small></b><br>
<div class="intexcerpt"><strong>
<p>The political activist talks about where Haiti stands today,
five years after a devastating 7.0 earthquake hit the tiny
island nation.</p>
</strong></div>
<div class="segmentprofile">One of the most respected progressive
voices on Haitian politics, Pierre Labossiere has dedicated his
entire adult life advocating for the working poor in Haiti.
Through the Haiti Action Committee, an organization that he
co-founded, Labossiere has tirelessly championed grassroots
efforts to improve education, bring about social justice, and
develop a stable democracy for the people of his native country.
In the five years since the devastating 2010 earthquake that
killed hundreds of thousands of Haitian citizens—and caused
immeasurable amounts of destruction to the island nation—
Labossiere has focused on funding repair and rehousing efforts,
and turning global consciousness toward the serious issues that
his people face.</div>
<br>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: Five years ago today, Haiti was hit by a
catastrophic earthquake which killed hundreds of thousands of
citizens and left countless others wounded and homeless. The
aftershocks of the devastation are still being felt five years
later.</p>
<p>Tonight, I’m pleased to be joined by Pierre Labossiere,
co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee. He is one of the most
respected progressive voices on Haitian politics and a long-time
social justice advocate. And Pierre Labossiere, I’m honored to
have you on this program.</p>
<p><strong>Pierre</strong> <strong>Labossiere</strong>: With
pleasure. Thank you.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: Let me go right at it. What do you make
of Haiti? What is to be made of Haiti five years after this
massive earthquake?</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: You know, it’s a very terrible
situation. And particularly, people as we speak now on the streets
of Haiti demonstrating. They were demonstrating this morning. They
were demonstrating their anger at the fact that so much that could
have been done for the people has not been done.</p>
<p>And many people on the streets, many people still don’t have
decent shelter and conditions of the country, the economic
conditions, have worsened terribly. The earthquake is a terrible
natural disaster. However, what has happened to compound the
problem has been manmade and there is no excuse for that
situation.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: We’ll come to the manmade problems that
have compounded the result of the earthquake, as you mentioned, in
a moment. And I suspect many watching are trying to juxtapose what
the protests are about five years later with all of the money that
was pledged five years ago.</p>
<p>I mean, I don’t remember what the number was. I’m sure you will
tell me. But it was a massive amount of money that was pledged
toward Haiti after that earthquake.</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: Precisely. And I’ve heard figures of
$11 billion dollars.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: $11 billion dollars.</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: $11 billion dollars. And people have
said that there have been reports that $6 billion dollars actually
made it into the country, but these are figures that are being
thrown about. But then when you look at the situation on the
ground among the population, people are saying where is that
money? Where did it go? Who did it help? And so many of our people
are still on the streets and the conditions are so bad. That’s the
big question.</p>
<p>And right now, you have actually two Haitian attorneys who have
filed a case demanding to fight out regarding the interim
commission for the reconstruction of Haiti. And the chairman of
that commission is former president Bill Clinton. And they are
demanding to know some transparency in terms of what has happened
with that money.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: So we all recall former president Clinton
was in charge of this project.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: That’s correct.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: So if $11 billion was pledged and $6
billion, if the numbers are accurate, made it into the country, we
don’t have any assessment of where that money might have gone? My
question is, five years later, we don’t see anything we can point
to that would suggest that some of that money was well spent?</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: Well, there have been things.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: Things like…?</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: There have been certain things. For
example, there was money spent on building an industrial park, but
people were saying, look, that money should have been for the
people, for the people who have lost their homes. There have been
some other accounting based on what you read in the press.</p>
<p>But overall, when you look at the situation of those who have
lost their homes, people who have been displaced, and the
situation in terms of reconstruction, not much has been done. And
this is quoting from various newspapers, various publications and
various reports about it.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: Five years later, the cholera outbreak
that happened after that earthquake, contained? Better? Same? What
do we make of the health conditions?</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: It’s a terrible situation again.
It’s a terrible situation because the cholera outbreak, that was
completely neglect by the United Nations who brought their forces.
People were infected with cholera and they actually, if I may say
that word, did their business, you know, in the water, the main
river in Haiti. And people downstream were drinking that water and
that’s how the cholera spread.</p>
<p>So instead of focusing resources to deal with that, they were so
busy trying to do damage control claiming they had nothing to do
with it when all the evidence was pointing that they were
responsible for it.</p>
<p>And now there are various figures out there about 850,000 people
infected. Some figures are lower, but about 10,000 killed, dead,
as a result of that cholera epidemic. So at different times, it
flares up again.</p>
<p>And you see massive amounts of money. For example, the U.N.
forces that are occupying Haiti, there is a lot of money being
spent on the U.N. forces on their presence, but Haiti has so many
problems of infrastructure, of healthcare, of schooling, education
for our people, that this money could have been better used for
our people.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: You said a couple of things about the
U.N. that I want to go back and pick up right quick.</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: Sure.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: Number one, as unintentional as it might
have been that U.N. workers were doing their business in the river
and folk upstream were drinking that water, five years later, did
the U.N. ever make any–was there any recompense for that? Any
remuneration there? What happened? Did the U.N. ever step up with
anything?</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: No. That’s a big issue. No, they
haven’t done anything because they are saying they have immunity.
They spent many years saying that they had nothing to do with it,
but then they are saying right now that they have immunity.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: We didn’t do it, but if we did do it, we
have immunity. That’s their position.</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: We have immunity, exactly, exactly.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: The second thing about the U.N., you made
the comment a moment ago that the U.N. is occupying Haiti.
Whenever you use the word occupy, that’s a loaded term. I assume,
being the learned man that you are, you use that word deliberately
and unapologetically.</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: Definitely.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: So when you say the U.N. is “occupying”
Haiti, what do you mean by that, Pierre?</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: What I mean is that Haiti had a
stable government. We had a democratic government, the government
of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and he was elected
overwhelmingly by the people. 2004, there was a kidnapping coups
where U.S. forces, French and Canadian, came and kidnapped
President Aristide.</p>
<p>And it wasn’t just with the President Aristide. It was a coups in
the masses of the Haitian people because almost every elected
official was dismissed summarily. And this is why I want to
present this idea of the problems that Haiti is experiencing now
have been so compounded by the manmade disaster of that coups.</p>
<p>That coups really destroyed a lot of the infrastructure of the
country. Things that were being done in terms of healthcare for
the people, hospitals being built, wood construction, clean
drinking water for the population, having a good sanitation
system, all of that was destroyed and it was done by an economic
sabotage of the country.</p>
<p>And the U.S. blocked funds that were supposed to go and help put
this infrastructure into place. So what happened was, when this
natural disaster, the earthquake and the hurricanes, when they hit
Haiti, then there was nothing there really to be of support to the
population.</p>
<p>So the U.N. forces that are there, they are there to maintain the
status quo. They’ve been there for the past 10 years and, in 10
years, Haiti has been under the control of the international
community, so-called “Friends of Haiti”.</p>
<p>And right now, the situation, the economy conditions for the
population of Haiti are worse than they were when Haiti was being
ruled by Haitians.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: Former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
is now, of course, living back in Haiti.</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: That’s correct.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: But I remember what you referred to a
moment ago as a U.S.-led coups of Aristide. I remember this well
because at the time–Randall Robinson, founder of TransAfrica,
wrote about this in a book, so it’s in this text and my name is
all in this particular chapter–because Randall knew because I had
been talking to him on the phone.</p>
<p>I was in Miami about to board a private plane to go to Haiti to
interview President Aristide at the presidential palace. He’d
granted me an interview because all this stuff was about to go
down.</p>
<p>Aristide grants me an interview, I’m about to hop on this plane
to head to Haiti, Port-Au-Prince, to interview him and I got a
message from Secretary of State Colin Powell that that might not
be a good idea.</p>
<p>I knew Secretary Powell and–these are my words–he was at least
concerned enough or kind enough to let me know, Tavis, this is not
where you want to be right now ’cause something’s about to go
down.</p>
<p>I didn’t get any heads up on what was about to go down, but just
from Mr. Powell’s office, Tavis, don’t do this. So the plane never
took off, I never left. I’m watching CNN a few minutes later, you
know, an hour or so later, I see Aristide is being whisked out of
the country by U.S. forces.</p>
<p>The story then and all these years later, as the U.S. government
will tell it, is that they did that to save Aristide. That if
Aristide had not done that, had he not gone on that plane with the
U.S. military forces, he would have been assassinated, killed.</p>
<p>So the U.S. government says we did it to save Aristide and, quite
frankly, to save anarchy in the country. Your view and Randall’s
view and others’ view all these years later is that it was a
U.S.-led coups. Tell me why you feel that way.</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: Yes, because we, the Haiti Action
Committee, I was in Haiti when President Aristide’s inaugural in
2001 and I remember on the way back reading an article from one of
the U.S. papers in print quoting a former state department
official saying that it will take a coups to get rid of Aristide.</p>
<p>I knew right away something was going to happen. And everything
else that was occurring at that time led us, my organization and
other people, to see that there would be these preparations for a
coups.</p>
<p>So we were very active in trying to stop this from happening,
working very closely with a number of the members of the black
caucus to try to prevent that, marching, demonstrating in the area
against it.</p>
<p>So when it happened, we knew that it wasn’t something that
was–they had Haitian faces in the front, but it was really
something that was organized by these so-called international
communities.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: So this leads to my exit question, then.
Five years after the earthquake with all that we’ve talked about
tonight, what is the political situation in Haiti?</p>
<p>How stable politically is the country now, for whatever is going
to happen, to put this country where it needs to be, on stable
ground, on strong footing? What’s the political situation in Haiti
five years later?</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: Five years later, what we have is
still a continuation of the coups. We have a current President
Martelly who was put in there by several people have
said–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Martelly is there and
he is quite a dictator. He tried to bring the country back to the
days of the Duvalier era by…</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: And Baby Doc–was that last year? He died
last year? 2014?</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: Yeah, a couple of months ago.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: Yeah, yeah. 2014, yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: But what brings us hope is the fact
that the Haitian people are in the streets. They are protesting.
They are demanding their right to vote. They are saying we need to
sit around the table. What brings us hope is to see that Haitians
can do for self.</p>
<p>For example, we look at UniFA, the University of the Aristide
Foundation medical school where President Aristide came back from
exile and he reopened the school within six months.</p>
<p>And the school is now a medical school, there is a nursing
school, a law school and the first school of physical therapy
churning out good people who Haiti needs as opposed to the United
Nations forces that have been killing our people, conducting rape,
bringing cholera to the country.</p>
<p>So when you contrast the 10 years of democratic interlude in
Haiti from 1994 to 2002, you compare that to the 10 years of 2004
to 2014 during which Haiti has been under the occupation of those
forces, the U.S., Haiti has received much money during that span
of time.</p>
<p>And the situation is very clear. The people are not getting a
better life. As a matter of fact, things are worse for our people.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: I love the people of Haiti. They are
resilient more than anybody I can think of on the globe and yet
these political and economic and social questions that remain five
years after this massive earthquake is why we come back to Haiti
as often as we can on this program. Pierre Labossiere, thank you
for coming on.</p>
<p><strong>Labossiere</strong>: Thank you so much.</p>
<p><strong>Tavis</strong>: And for giving us an update on what
things in Haiti are like five years after this 7.0 earthquake hit
the tiny island nation.</p>
<br>
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