Stuart Trew
Mr. Dithers he may be on local matters, but Paul Martin has obviously made his mind up about Canadian foreign policy, well ahead of the release of DFAIT’s much-hyped new direction.
Martin was in Europe this week to try and convince NATO countries like France and Germany that George W. Bush needs another 100 or so soldiers to help train the Iraqi army … in Jordan. We’ll be sending troops (to Jordan) at a cost of $1 billion. Germany and France are leery about doing the same because, like Canada, they didn’t support the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Martin obviously hopes to convince these guys that training Iraqi troops in Jordan, instead of in Iraq, does not imply support for the war in any way.
For the beginnings of this new era of supporting Washington in international relations, we have to go back a year, to when Martin tried to convince us that sending troops to help the United States remove a democratically elected leader from power was a “humanitarian” mission.
On February 28, 2004 U.S. forces invaded Haiti to remove President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who in elections at the end of 2000 secured 90 per cent of the popular vote. Aristide was escorted (he says “kidnapped”) from his government palace in Port-Au-Prince and stuffed onto a plane. One hour before the end of the 20-hour flight, he and his wife were informed they would be landing at a French military base in the Central African Republic. Aristide was told he would never be allowed to return to Haiti, and to the people who had chosen him to lead them out of despotism and just maybe to prosperity.
The coup was merely another sordid chapter in the history of U.S. doctoring of Caribbean and Latin American politics. Not that there wasn’t some Haitian support for Aristide’s departure. A small business elite profited from U.S. companies exploiting abysmal minimum wages which the ex-priest politician wanted raised. And the disgruntled military could never forgive the man for dismantling it in 1995 with (somewhat casual) U.S. army support.
But this was the second time the Haitian army (established by the U.S. during its occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and financed through 40 of the country’s bloodiest totalitarian years) had removed Aristide from power with CIA backing. U.S. support has always depended on Haiti’s economic subservience to Big Brother from the north. And it just so happens that in Haiti, that subservience has somehow always meant government death squads, disappearing political dissidents, quashed labour unions and general mass murder. In other words, the coup was business as usual for almost everyone involved.
Everyone but Canada, that is. In January 2003 then secretary of state for Latin America, Quebec MP Denis Paradis, joined a meeting at Meech Lake of “players” in Haiti’s affairs-minus any Haitians of course-that decided Aristide must go. When a year later U.S. troops were coercing Aristide onto a plane, Canada’s elite JTF2 soldiers were occupying Haiti’s main airport. This was a full day before the United Nations Security Council voted to deploy a multinational force to protect Haiti from civil unrest. So much for Canada’s doctrine of working within the boundaries of international law-the reason we stayed out of Iraq.
The Caribbean Community and Common Market had asked the UN to deploy forces with a different mission (i.e. to protect the democratic government from collapsing) and the Caribbeans still won’t recognize the interim government of Gerard Latortue. Canada does, and in December Martin held a party in Montreal, attended by the ex-Floridian, to celebrate the injustice.
Martin told an international conference with the Haitian diaspora on December 11 that since the Washington conference on Haiti’s future in July 2004, “We engaged in a forthright dialogue not only with the members of the provisional government, but with the representatives of civil society and of all the main political parties, including Lavalas, assembled there.”
Including Lavalas, he said. Wow. That’s the party that won a majority in the last (and only) three Haitian elections and is now being crushed by the new, illegal, U.S.-backed Haitian government. International observers said the May 2000 election was a great success and downplayed problems with eight seats where a plurality, but not a majority of votes put Lavalas party members into power. The recently “elected” Bush administration, mired in election fraud of its own, imposed an embargo on financial aid to the country for desperately needed literacy, clean water and health programs.
The Canadian International Development Agency also skimped out a bit during this period, pushing down to $30 million per year what was in 1997 closer to $35 million. Now democracy is over, Martin told the diaspora that “we must build on the future, not on nostalgia for the past … the opportunity is there for a new start, for reconstruction based on the rule of law, democracy, security and the possibility of decent living conditions for all Haitians.” Canada will contribute $180 million to Haiti over the next two years.
Yves Petillon, CIDA’s director of the Haiti Program, recently told me most of that will go towards improving the justice system and strengthening electoral institutions. I asked him why, then, was CIDA’s hired adviser to the current Haitian justice minister denying that human rights abuses were being carried out by anyone but an alleged pack of pro-Lavalas “thugs,” despite evidence the police were arresting without warrants and executing Lavalas supporters in the street. “He was not speaking for CIDA. And we don’t endorse anything of what he said. I cannot comment on his personal point of view,” Petillon said. We’ll pay him, though, because the Haitian justice minister’s “personal point of view” couldn’t possibly have political consequences.
If you’d like to show Mr. Dithers that his lack of personal point of view should have political consequences for the Liberals, there will be a demonstration against Canadian involvement in Haiti on February 28 at the eternal flame on Parliament Hill, 1 p.m. For the adventurous, a bus leaves Saturday morning (February 26) at 9 a.m. sharp from Boulevard I Shopping Centre, 1235 St. Laurent Blvd. (at Donald St.), for a Montreal rally ($10 donations much appreciated for the ride). Contact Kevin Skerrett ([email protected]) for full details.
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