Haiti: The mess after the coup - An interview with journalist and activist, Jean Saint-Vil
KEVIN SKERRETT recently spoke with JEAN SAINT-VIL on the current situation in Haiti. Saint-Vil is an Ottawa-based activist within the Haitian diaspora in Canada. He has been a featured political analyst on CBC television’s (now cancelled) Counterspin, CPAC’s Talk Politics, and CBC Radio’s The Current. He is also a radio journalist, host of CKCU-FM’s “Rendez-Vous Haitien” and CHUO-FM’s “Bouyon-Rasin.”
KS: First of all, the recent devastation of Haiti by Hurricane Jeanne has brought Haiti back into the media’s lens. Of course, the focus is on the humanitarian plight of those killed and suffering, which is understandable. However, the continuing struggle over the territory of Haiti, among the armed gangs and ex-military under Guy Philippe, the small UN military force, and the national police force is never discussed. What are your comments on what is happening now, and the consequences of the February 29th coup that brought to power an unelected, US-selected government?
JSV: These things are linked. What’s happening right now in Haiti is the consequence of not having an operating state apparatus. There was no effort to evacuate the population before the flood, when people knew that flooding was going to happen as a result of Jeanne passing through this area. Seven days after the events, there has been no effort to relocate the people affected. Some of the convoys going to Gonaives are being attacked. And, what is not presented in the news is that one of the reasons for these riots is that the local authorities are not there. When people talk about the coup, they talk about it being against President Aristide, they don’t recognize that it’s also the elected officials from the year 2000 elections that were cancelled. In place of those elected officials are criminals, gang leaders, former CIA employees that were hiding in the Dominican Republic and armed by the US and used to overthrow the government. You have a situation where the population is completely left to its own devices, and seeing some of its former torturers who are now walking side-by-side with UN soldiers, and basically controlling the food rations after they’ve spent days without food, without water, etc. So, it’s unfortunate that so many media reports are focused on the sensational images, but not on the true story of what is happening.
Now people are talking about all the help that Canada and France are sending, but the doctors that are actually in Haiti are Cuban. And the Cuban doctors that are there have been there for some time, as there was a program of collaboration between Haiti and Cuba and there are actually Haitians from the peasant class in Cuba studying to become doctors, and part of their contract was to come back to Haiti. So, it’s the Cuban doctors that are in Haiti right now that are doing most of the help.
KS: Let’s talk about life in Haiti after the coup. There have been a number of international human rights delegations to have visited post-coup Haiti, and all of them – from what I’ve read – have concluded that the coup government installed by the US and France (with Canadian complicity) has unleashed a wave of terrible repression against the population, particularly activists from President Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas movement. Various reports have suggested that hundreds have been killed, and thousands are in hiding. Virtually none of this has been reported by the mainstream media. In general terms, what is your sense of life under the coup government of Gerard Latortue?
JSV: Everyone is complaining. Even those who participated in the coup, from the private sector, who financed the coup, some of them if you go on their websites right now, they are complaining. Of course, they’re complaining for all the wrong reasons. They’re complaining because their business is not up and running fast enough, they’re complaining because there’s corruption in the government, etc.
But the real nightmare is for the general population. Food prices have gone up astronomical amounts. In terms of security, people have been killed in significant numbers. Just this week, I just read that they discovered 14 bodies in Delmas between Saturday and Sunday. And, it’s not making the news here, it’s very slowly filtering out, because the attitude of the French, the American and Canadian media is that, you know, we’ve restored peace and stability in Haiti, and those things don’t fit that propaganda image, so you don’t hear them talk about it.
KS: What is the latest word on when they are promising that elections will take place?
JSV: Oh, they keep on talking about December 2005. But, already we are hearing people say that it’s probably not going to happen.
KS: Many Canadians probably recognized the hand of US imperialism in what happened, but were still influenced by the demonization of Aristide in the mainstream media. It is also the case that what we might call the “left” in Haiti did have its divisions. How do you view President Aristide, and what he represented politically, and the different responses to him on the ground in Haiti?
JS-V: I see President Aristide as I see Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, or Patrice Lumumba of the Congo. Human beings who were given incredible responsibility that they could only achieve with the collaboration of other people that had the same vision as them. Unfortunately, like Nkrumah in Ghana, like Lumumba in Congo, Aristide was operating in an environment where his enemies were powerful and his friends, at best, confused.
As you just said, there is a powerful minority of the left in Haiti that has visibility and access and privilege, who opposed Aristide and made those calls of ‘dictatorship’ and whatever, whereas when you compare what Aristide has done in his term in office with what the history of Haiti has been, or even, I would dare say with leaders such as Putin in Russia or George Bush in the United States, Aristide should be considered an angel when compared with them.
KS: It seems to me, one of the first measures that you have to take in terms of the ‘dictatorial’ character of a government is, how much freedom of expression and opportunity to express opposition on the ground. So, let me ask you, how much room was there for the opposition to maneuver on the ground over the last few years of Aristide’s government?
JSV: The opposition had more room than the government! OK? I went to Haiti in December. I would wake up in the morning, the first thing you would hear on the radio – and the radio is controlled by the small business elite in Haiti – would be criticisms of the government going as far as obscenities. What they were doing was daily street demonstrations on the main area where people have to go about their business, they were closing schools, and everything. And that was being encouraged by the US embassy and the Canadian and the French embassies.
KS: Probably the most important thing I learned when I went to Haiti in April of this year was the importance of Kreyol, as a language and a culture of the people, for understanding Haitian politics. In particular, President Aristide seems to have revolutionized the political culture there by using and supporting Kreyol, something that the educated and wealthy elite – including some on the ‘left’ – never did. What are your comments on the importance of Kreyol to Haitian political life?
JSV: Not only to Haitian political life, but Haitian life, period. Nothing serious gets done in Haiti other than in Kreyol. People will say, what are you talking about, all the state documents are in French. Well, that’s because those things are not the serious things. Let’s just take an example. An architect in Haiti may speak French, but none of the masons working to build the house speak any language other than Kreyol.
So, when President Aristide started out as a priest, he was following the liberation theology line of the church in Haiti. Because, it’s not every priest in Haiti that speaks Kreyol – in fact, that in itself was a revolution within the church, and that’s why the church split in two. The liberation theologians used Kreyol, and introduced drums in the church, whereas the elite kept with the clergy that was more powerful with the Vatican, and they kept French. They even kept Latin for the longest time. And, of course, they had practices where there were some rich people in Haiti that had their own pews reserved for them. That was a totally different Catholic church in Haiti than the church that Aristide was working within. When he became a politician, he had an advantage over all of these politicians, and that’s why even today, if you ran an election in Haiti right now, he would win again. Even if you put those 15 parties that the US has put together to create the [Democratic] Convergence, he would beat them again. And that’s why the coup was necessary. Otherwise they would have had a referendum like they tried in Venezuela, but they would have lost.
KS: One last question. I wanted to ask about the extent to which you saw solidarity activists and anti-war activists take up Canada’s role in the coup in Haiti. You spoke at a rally here in Ottawa on March 20th, and I understand that the anti-war group in Vancouver has taken it up. However, there was a lot of confusion among many, and so anti-war and anti-imperialist messages remain focused on the occupation of Iraq. How would you like to see the issue of Haiti taken up by progressives and activists, who do understand US imperialism?
JSV: I think we started to see some good things happen. Haiti has not drawn attention like Iraq, or Afghanistan, but of course, the situation in Iraq, you can’t belittle that either. That’s a brutal destruction of a people’s culture, civilization and everything, and it’s in the news every day. But, I think for instance that the major demonstration that we had on March 20th, right here in Ottawa, the anti-war movement at that time realized what was going on in Haiti and recognized that there was a need to decry the occupation of Haiti, and since then, there’s been some things happening. For instance Canadian journalist Anthony Fenton has done some amazing work unmasking the role that Canada has played in the coup. ★
For further information on the situation in Haiti, see the collection of material at Znet (www.zmag.org), as well as San Francisco’s Haiti Action Committee (www.haitiaction.net).
Kevin Skerrett is a trade union researcher who traveled to Haiti in late April of this year with a delegation of US-based trade unionists investigating the labour and human rights situation of Haiti following the February 29, 2004 coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.