Just say no to a New Haitian Army by Geoff Burt for Boston Globe and Mail

10/10/2011

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Women walk past buring garbage
 in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Haitian President Michel Martelly plans to make good on his campaign pledge to restore Haiti’s armed forces, disbanded in 1995 because of widespread abuse. Since Haiti faces no external threats, Mr. Martelly’s army would primarily be responsible for securing the porous border with the Dominican Republic and maintaining order in emergencies. The price tag is $95-million, to be underwritten by Haiti’s international donors.
The creation of a Haitian army is at the bottom of the donor governments’ agenda. Canada should take the lead by signalling it won’t fund the return of a force that’s not only unaffordable but has the potential to do more harm than good.

At the moment, Haiti’s fragile security is provided by a mix of 12,000 international peacekeepers and the Haitian National Police. The Haitian government’s plan explicitly indicates that the new force is necessary to replace the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) when its mandate expires. For many Haitians – who blame MINUSTAH for the cholera outbreak that killed 6,000 and the recent sexual abuse of a Haitian boy by Uruguayan peacekeepers – the internationals can’t leave soon enough.
Just Say No to a New Haitian Army by Geoff Burt, Globe and Mail,  October 10, 2011
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Sebastian Walker's report. Haiti: After the Quake.

09/21/2011

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Al Jazeera's Sebastian Walker asks why a system that was designed to help Haitians 
ended up exacerbating their misery. Al Jazeera Correspondent Last Modified: 13 Sep 2011
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Haitians protest Uruguayan UN Peacekeeper Sex Assault (Democracy Now report)

09/10/2011

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Haitians protest Uruguayan Peacekeeper sex assault

The commander of the Uruguayan Navy’s United Nations mission in Haiti has been dismissed after the circulation of a video that allegedly shows Uruguayan peacekeepers sexually assaulting an 18-year-old Haitian man. Haitian President Michel Martelly condemned the alleged abuse yesterday and said the victim had been subjected to "collective rape." The attack occurred in July, but graphic cell phone video of the alleged attack only surfaced in recent days. This latest episode follows others by U.N. forces. In December 2007, 100 Sri Lankan soldiers were deported from Haiti following charges of sexual abuse of under-age girls. In 2005, U.N. troops went on the rampage in Cité Soleil, one of the poorest areas in Port-au-Prince, killing as many as 23 people, including children. Yesterday, there were demonstrations in Port Salut, the seaside town in Haiti where the incident is alleged to have occurred. We go to Port Salut to speak with journalist Ansel Herz, who broke the story. "Some people want MINUSTAH, the entire force in the country—it’s now about 12,000 soldiers—to simply leave," says Herz. "Others are asking that they transform their mission from one of military so-called 'peacekeeping' into development—building roads, building schools, helping create the infrastructure that Haiti needs to get back up on its feet after the earthquake." 
Video of U.N. Peacekeepers’ Sexual Assault of Haitian Prompts Calls to Focus on Post-Quake Rebuilding by Democracy Now, September 6, 2011
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Haiti Wikileaks Cables, Articles.

09/08/2011

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Wikileaks Haiti portal. 
Canada Haiti Action's WikiHaiti articles, etc.
In The Nation: WikiLeaks Haiti: The Aristide Files 
By Kim Ives and Ansel Herz

WikiLeaks: Diplomatic Cables Expose How U.S. Blocked Aristide’s Return After 2004 Coup
DemocracyNow!, August 11, 2011. An interview with Kim Ives, editor of Haïti Liberté.

WikiLeaked Cables Reveal Obsessive, Far-Reaching U.S. Campaign to Get Aristide Out of Haiti and Keep Him There
By Ansel Herz & Kim Ives "This Week in Haiti", Haiti Liberte, July 27 - August 2, 2011, Vol. 5, No. 2 http://www.haitiliberte.com...

COHA background paper: WikiLeaks Cables Show Haiti as Pawn in U.S. Foreign Policy
This analysis was prepared by Council on Hemispheric Affiars Research Associate Katie Soltis, July 27, 2011 http://www.coha.org/wikileaks-cables-...

Martelly Proposes Gousse for PM: Wikileaked Cables Testify to Nominee's Repressive Past
By Ansel Herz & Kim Ives Bernard Gousse, whom Haitian President Michel Martelly nominated for Prime Minister on Jul. 6, was so repressive,...

WikiLeaks: Part II: “Mafia boss... drug dealer... poster-boy for political corruption” : Wikileaked U.S. Embassy Cables portray Senator Youri Latortue
By Kim Ives, HAITI LIBERTE, July 6-12 Second of two articles [read the first here]. Last week’s installment examined charges that Senator...

WikiLeaks: “Mafia boss... Drug dealer... Poster-boy for political corruption” - WikiLeaked U.S. Embassy Cables Portray Senator Youri Latortue
by Kim Ives, Haiti Liberté, June 29th, 2011 [First of two articles] Youri Latortue is one of Haiti’s most powerful politicians....

WikiLeaks: DemocracyNow! report on how Leaked Cables Expose U.S. Suppression of Min. Wage, Election Doubts and Elite’s Private Army
Democracy Now!, June 24, 2011WikiLeaks: Haiti's Elite Tried to turn the Police into a Private Armyby Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives, Haiti Liberte, June 22, 2011 Leading members of Haiti's bourgeoisie tried to turn the Haitian police force into...

WikiLeaks: Wikileaked cables reveal - as U.S. militarized quake response, it worried about international criticism
By Ansel Herz, Haiti Liberte, June 15, 2011 Even before the Haitian government authorized it, Washington began deploying 22,000 troops to Haiti...

WikiLeaks: U.S. embassy foresaw Haiti's earthquake vulnerability
By Dan Coughlin, Haiti Liberte, June 15, 2011 U.S. officials in Haiti warned that the Haitian government would be unable to handle a catastrophic...

WikiLeaks: Wikileaked cables reveal - After quake, a 'gold rush' for Haiti contracts
By Ansel Herz and Kim Ives, Haiti Liberte, June 15, 2011 Disaster capitalists were flocking to Haiti in a “gold rush” for contracts...

WikiLeaks: Washington backed famous brand-name contractors in fight against Haiti's minimum wage increase
by Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives, Haiti Liberte, June 8, 2011  The U.S. Embassy in Haiti worked closely with factory owners contracted by Levi...

WikiLeaks: Minimum Wage Fight Contributed to PM Pierre-Louis's Resignation
by Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives, Haiti Liberte, June 8, 2011

WikiLeaks: As Rigging Came to Light: U.S., EU Backed Haitian Election, Deeming "Too Much Invested" to Pull Out
by Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives, Haiti Liberte, June 8, 2011
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Wikileaked Cables Reveal Obsessive, Far Reaching US Campaign to Get and Keep Aristide Out of Haiti

07/27/2011

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Picture
Jean-Bertrand Aristide (above) returning to Haiti on Mar. 18. He spent over 
seven years in exile, thanks largely to a secret US diplomatic campaign. 

The cables show how Washington actively colluded with the United Nations leadership, France, and Canada to discourage or physically prevent Aristide return to Haiti. 

On Jul. 15, 2011, former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide turned 58. His birthday was marked in Haiti and its diaspora by scattered celebrations of militants and sympathizers of the Lavalas Family (Fanmi Lavalas), the party he founded in 1996.

During the seven years he spent exiled in South Africa after the 2004 coup d’état against him, Aristide’s birthday was commemorated by large demonstrations in the streets of Port-au-Prince calling for his return. Over the past 25 years, first as a liberation theology-inspired Salesian priest in the 1980s and then as Haiti’s twice elected (1990, 2000), twice deposed (1991, 2004) President, Aristide had become a symbol of the Haitian people’s demands for justice, democracy and sovereignty. He received a spontaneous hero’s welcome from thousands when he finally returned to Haiti on Mar. 18 aboard a private South African jet. Much to the dismay of the Haitian elite and foreign powers which overthrew him, he remained then, and remains now, enduringly popular.

But Aristide is now also under the threat of imminent attack. Since returning, he has ventured out from his home in Tabarre only once, due to security concerns.

Newly installed right-wing president Michel Martelly has, in the past, made no secret of his antipathy for Aristide. He recently cut back Aristide’s security detail and took back the government vehicle which former President René Préval had provided Aristide on his return.

 In a falsely magnanimous gesture, Martelly recently suggested he would grant Aristide an “amnesty” (which he proposed also for recently returned former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier), although Aristide has never been charged, much less convicted, of any crimes whatsoever.

That may soon change. Right-wing mouthpieces like former International Republican Institute (IRI) agent Stanley Lucas, pro-coup historian Michel Soukar, and former anti-Aristide opposition spokesman Sauveur Pierre Etienne have all recently taken to the airwaves in Haiti and its diaspora to call for Aristide’s prosecution with lurid and far-fetched charges of corruption and political murder.

 Haïti Liberté has also learned from protected sources that a U.S. government team is investigating Aristide (not for the first time) to see if it can concoct a credible human-rights case against him.

This comes as no surprise. In reviewing some 1,918 secret Embassy cables from April 2003 to February 2010 procured by the media organization WikiLeaks, Haïti Liberté unearthed a behind-the-scenes look at how the U.S. State Department was pushing for Aristide’s removal from power in February 2004 and strongly opposed his eventual return in March 2011.

 But Washington feigns neutrality. A U.S. Embassy spokesman in Haiti told Haïti Liberté after a press briefing last Nov. 23 that Washington had no position on Aristide’s return to his country. “Aristide’s return? That’s a Haitian question, that’s a Haitian decision,” said Jon Piechowski.

“So the U.S. would have no say in that. . .”

 “No,” Piechowski responded, “I think whether Aristide stays where he is or comes back to Haiti, that's between him and the people of Haiti.” The secret U.S. diplomatic cables show those statements are unequivocally false. The cables not only bolster existing evidence of U.S. involvement in the 2004 coup, but portray a sophisticated, globe-spanning campaign afterwards to marginalize Aristide and imprison him in exile.

When Aristide himself or officials from Caribbean nations like the Bahamas talked of his rights, the United States flexed its diplomatic muscles to oppose them. On one occasion, a U.S. ambassador went so far as to angrily “pull aside” and scold the Dominican Republic’s President.

 The cables show how Washington actively colluded with the United Nations leadership, France, and Canada to discourage or physically prevent Aristide return to Haiti. The Vatican was a reliable partner, blessing the coup and assisting in prolonging Aristide’s exile.

The cables also show continuity between the policies of the Bush and Obama administrations toward Aristide. Under Bush in 2004, a U.S. Navy SEAL team escorted Aristide on a jet into exile in what Aristide called a “a modern-day kidnapping.” Six years later, when Aristide announced his desire to return and help after the devastating 2010 earthquake, Obama’s diplomatic corps mobilized to block him. Obama himself called South Africa’s President in a desperate failed attempt to keep Aristide off the jet that finally flew him home.

More than two decades after Aristide first became President, Washington’s campaign against him continues. Its last big victory was the 2004 coup d’état, where we begin with the intimately detailed information contained in the WikiLeaks cables. ....continued after the break
Wikileaked Cables Reveal Obsessive, Far-Reaching US Campaign to Get and Keep Aristide Out of Haiti by Ansel Herz and Kim Ives, www.haiti-liberte.com, July 28, 2011


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Wikileaks Haiti: Leaked Cables Expose U.S. Suppression of Min. Wage, Election Doubts and Elite’s Private Army

06/24/2011

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Drawing on almost 2,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables on Haiti released by WikiLeaks, a partnership between The Nation magazine and the Haitian weekly, Haïti Liberté, exposes new details on how Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Levi’s worked with the United States to block an increase in the minimum wage in the hemisphere’s poorest nation, how business owners and members of the country’s elite used Haiti’s police force as their own private army after the 2004 U.S.-backed coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and how the United States, the European Union and the United Nations supported Haiti’s recent presidential and parliamentary elections, despite concerns over the exclusion of Haiti’s largest opposition party, Lavalas, the party of Aristide. We speak with the reports’ authors, longtime Haiti correspondent Dan Coughlin and Haïti Liberté editor, Kim Ives. [includes rush transcript]

June 24, 2011 report. 
Picture
Longtime Haiti correspondent Dan Coughlin and 
Haïti Liberté editor, Kim Ives (on left).
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Wikileaks: Haiti. US Embassy not irked by killings in Haiti, irked by Democracy Now reporting of killings

06/24/2011

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Democracy Now is mentioned in a US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks that cites our 2005 report on a deadly raid in the poor neighborhood of Cité Soleil by United Nations forces. "You accurately reported on what was going on and the embassy was alarmed by it," says our guest, longtime Haiti correspondent Dan Coughlin. "What they were upset about is there wasn't PR push back on Democracy Now! by the U.N." Another cable shows U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called embassies around the world to tell them to "get the narrative right" with editors and fight negative portrayals of U.S. deployment in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

To download the podcast, read the transcript, and for more Democracy Now! reports on WikiLeaks visithttp://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/24/leaked_wikileaks_cable_2005_democracy_now
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Oil in Haiti. Paret Petroleum Begins Geological Survey For Hydrocarbons in Haiti

06/13/2011

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Paret Petroleum LLC a U.S. Oil and Gas Exploration Company begins geological survey on Haiti's Hydrocarbons
Jun 13, 2011 – Paret Petroleum (P/P) is interested in drilling for oil and gas in Haiti onshore! ; Prospect areas are Port-au-Prince, Hinche, Mare Criton and La Gonave. As of November 2010 the executive team of Paret Petroleum decided to begin hydrocarbon evaluations in Port-au-Prince and Hinche . P/P has started evaluating the primary areas of interest and they believe it is very promising.  P/P's goal is to drill 6 successful oil wells at 18-23 thousand feet in Cul-de-sac,and Hinche they will be using a 2000 horsepower movable land rig to do the drilling. This will be a 40 Million dollar project.
Paret Petroleum Begins Geological Survey For Hydrocarbons in Haiti by prlog.org, June 13, 2011
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Slain bank chairman, Guiteau Toussaint, would have launched Haiti's first public mortgage program. Shot inside his home.

06/13/2011

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Picture
Guiteau Toussaint
MIAMI HERALD STAFF AND WIRE REPORTSA well-known Haitian banker credited with turning around a once struggling state-owned bank was fatally shot inside his home after armed men broke in Sunday night, Haitian police said.

Guiteau Toussaint, 56, was shot in the head after several men broke into his home in Vivy Mitchel, an affluent neighborhood east of downtown Port-au-Prince, Frantz Lerebours, a spokesman for the Haitian National Police, said Monday. His death is under investigation.

“This is for Haiti an awful loss of a competent, hard-working and serious individual ... the type that is most needed for this country,’’ said Maxime Charles, president of Haiti’s bankers association and country chief for Scotiabank.

Toussaint’s death came as a shock to Haitians, especially those in the private sector who describe him as a professional who was well-liked by his staff.

He is the second prominent banker to be killed in Haiti in the last year. In June 2010, Michèle César Jumelle, the executive director of SOFIHDES, a private investment bank focused on small and medium enterprises, and her husband Yves Clément were shot to death in the yard of their home in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Thomassin.

Toussaint headed the board of directors of the National Bank of Credit and has been credited with saving the state-owned commercial bank from bankruptcy after taking it over in 1999 and restructuring it. By 2008, the bank was paying dividends. It is considered the public sector’s private bank.

“In 1999, BNC was in pretty bad shape. He aggressively restructured it by bringing in quality people and launching an expansion program. He turned the bank around,’’ said Daniel Dorsainvil, a longtime friend and Haitian finance minister from 2006-09.

Dorsainvil, who has been friends with Toussaint since 1996, spoke with him Sunday. They made arrangements to see each other later this week. Toussaint, he said, “was excited” about a mortgage program the bank planned to launche Tuesday.

Known as “Kay Pam” or “My House,’’ the program marks the first time Haitians will have access to long-term mortgages at competitive rates.

“It is a great loss for the country. He was a great manager. But most of all, he was a great guy who was really concerned and dedicated to change in Haiti,’’ said Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive.

Miami Herald Staff Writer Jacqueline Charles contributed to this report.
Prominent Haiti Banker Gunned Down, miamiherald.com, June 13, 2011
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Kim Ives short history of Haiti (video)

06/10/2011

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Uploaded by adycousins on Apr 5, 2010
http://www.haiti-liberte.com/
http://www.counterfire.org
Camera: Clare Solomon [ http://www.solomonsmindfield.blogspot.com] 
Edit: Ady Cousins

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