The
Caribbean has now proven that it is even more hopeless at diplomacy
than
it is at cricket. And, as in cricket, those who are considered
guilty
are not those at the top but the foot-soldiers.
Our
gutless leaders--unable to look a principle in the face--are, as I
write
on Friday, busy selling the Haitian people down the river...again.
Meanwhile,
the bombastic Latortue, fresh from embracing a choice
assemblage
of bloody-handed murderers, desires to sit at the table with
people
who consider themselves upright, law abiding and above all,
respectable.
The Bahamas put our position best: We simply have no choice
but
to deal with whatever Haitian regime is there. Of course, if we
don't,
the US might just find it necessary to issue a travel advisory
about
Bubonic Plague or Ebola fever in Nassau or Negril. Condoleezza
Rice
has apparently threatened Jamaica directly, telling Patterson to
get
rid of Aristide or face unspecified consequences.
But,
even as we speak, the Bush Administration is beginning to unravel,
unconscionable
lie by unconscionable lie. But we do not understand that
the
slavemaster is in deep trouble and that we need not follow illegal
orders.
I have been re-reading some of the columns I wrote 10 years ago
and
what surprises me is that some of them might have been written last
week.
"We know that a corrupt army,
representing a corrupt ruling
class, has for 80 years enslaved the
people of Haiti, shot them
down in cold blood, tortured and
beaten them, burnt them alive,
raped them, flogged them to death, and
tried by every means to
reduce a once proud and defiant and
independent people to the
status of zombies, lesser than
animals, things without souls .
We know that there are many Americans
who are ashamed of their
government's complicity in these high
and stinking crimes, we
know that there are many others of all
races in this world, who,
if they knew, would be in the struggle
to restore Haiti to its
peace and dignity." ('Accomplices
to Murder'--Jamaica Herald,
June 5, 1994).
Now,
listen to someone else, a man who is now a judge at the
International
War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. He too is a Jamaican;
his
name is Patrick Robinson. In 1994, he was a member of the
Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights. On the very day my words
above
were published, Robinson was in Belem, Brazil, presenting a report
by
the Commission. I quoted him in a later column ('The New Slave
Trade'--Ja
Herald, June 26, 1994)
Rape
as an instrument of policy
"The people in Haiti have the
same emotions and aspirations as
the citizens of any other state in the
organisation. They have
within themselves an enormous capacity
for warmth and love and
friendship and endurance and a great
yearning for peace, justice
and democracy. But a people do not
endure the hardships, the
deprivation, the violence, the
victimisation and the enormous
disappointments that the Haitians have
experienced over the past
32 months without their faith in
humanity and their expectations
of decency and justice being
challenged in a serious way ."
Mr
Robinson then goes on to detail just how seriously the Haitians were
challenged.
As you read his words, please remember that Mr Robinson is
speaking
about some of the same people embraced last week by Mr
Latortue:
"[We] received information of
severely mutilated bodies
deposited on the streets, and a member
of the delegation
actually saw one such body . the
purpose of these acts is to
terrorise the population . human
corpses are being eaten by
animals . numerous reports of
arbitrary detentions routinely
accompanied by torture and brutal
beatings . 55 cases of
political kidnapping and
disappearances during February and
March ."
Robinson's
report told of the actions of the so-called Haitian army and
its
assistants, the 'attaches' or tontons in their campaign of terror
against
ordinary people who supported Aristide. Rape, he reported, was
used
as an instrument of policy. "The Commission received reports of
rape
and sexual abuse of the wives and relatives of men who are active
supporters
of President Aristide .women are also raped, not only because
of
their relationship to men who support President Aristide, but because
they
also support President Aristide; thus, sexual abuse is used as an
instrument
of repression and political persecution."
Patrick
Robinson is now doing in The Hague what he and his fellows
should
have been asked to do in Haiti. In the court across the Atlantic,
they
are trying people accused of very serious crimes, but few as
noisome
and depraved as those committed against the men, women and
children
of Haiti. The world thinks it necessary to punish those in
Yugoslavia
who warred like savages against their own people for two and
three
years, but they forgot about those who had oppressed, murdered,
maimed,
raped, tortured and otherwise terrorised millions in 'peacetime'
in
Haiti for more than 30 years.
I
don't believe that people were killed in Bosnia simply for trying to
escape
the country. As I reported in 1994, "the Haitian Goonocracy
obviously
regard escaping from their island prison as a capital offence.
Yet
the American authorities, operating from Jamaican territory,
continue
to send back to Haiti, men, women, children and babies who have
committed
this 'offence' and are therefore likely in President Clinton's
words,
"to have their faces chopped off".
And
the men who were doing the chopping were, last weekend, on a
platform
in Gonaives glorying in the embrace of the newly anointed prime
minister
of Haiti. Latortue was brought to the scene in US Army
helicopters
and accompanied by the resident representative of the
Organisation
of American States.
A
Miasma foretold
That
the assassins are still there was foreseen by me in 1994. I had
listened
to the words of two top US policymakers and drew my
conclusions.
James Woolsey, then head of the CIA, said that the
political
problem in the Haitian military was that it was the rank and
file
hooligans who were the engine of change in the military. "It
presents
a very difficult situation for the policymakers."
Defence
Secretary William Perry told the Canadian defence minister that
opposition
to Aristide extended deep into the lower ranks of the Haitian
military.
Yet, Mr Perry told Meet The Press that the United States
"would
want to use as much of the existing military and military police
as
is capable". I said at the time: "This would seem to suggest that the
Pentagon,
and by extension the CIA and the State Department), wish to
preserve
their assets in Haiti and to build into any new Aristide
government
an American capacity for subversion and destabilisation on
demand."
('Imagine That!'--Ja Herald, July 24, 1994).
I
said at the time that the interests of the Haitian Bourbons clearly
coincided
with the interests of the American right. I wrote then :
"Aristide
and his people agreed to allow an amnesty to the murdering
hoodlums
in the military and the private sector who had supported the
Duvaliers
and the Generals who had followed them. Aristide and his
people
could have made government impossible in Haiti, army or no army.
They
tried, instead, to work within the system." ('When You Sup with the
Devil'--Ja
Herald Sept 25, 1994.)
Liberating
the Vampire
In
1994, the Americans were intervening for the 29th time in Haiti. It
was
my opinion that their latest mission had "liberated the vampire from
its
coffin and made it an officer and a gentleman. They have legitimised
the
illegitimate and promised impunity to the raging lumpen who feast on
blood,
pain and the physical and sexual abuse of women and children.
They
have sanctified the fanatical band of nigger-hating mulattos who
prey
parasitically on the Haitian body politic and call themselves the
elite.
The American white power structure is making its peace with its
natural
allies, and as in 1915-1934, when Jim Crow reigned in Haiti,
hell
is going to break loose". (Sept 25, 1994).
When
Aristide was at last restored, in October 1994, I watched the
proceedings
on television and I wrote about them in a column entitled "A
Love
Song for Haiti". It began by reporting Jean-Bertrand Aristide's
words
to his people: 'Look at us; We are a great people, we are a grand
people
.don't be surprised that I am in love with you . I love all of
you.'
Against all odds, Jean-Bertrand Aristide is back in Haiti and as
far
as his people are concerned, everything is going to be beautiful,
'Isolated
we are weak,' he told his people, 'Together we are strong'.
I
commented: "They need to be both optimistic and cautious. Shortly
before
Aristide and his entourage landed in Haiti, CNN interviewed a
pretty
young mulatto woman, a member of the Haitian elite. In her looks
and
her attitudes she seemed almost Jamaican. "It is the Aristide
supporters
who need to reconciliate," she said, and she did not say that
she
and her ilk are the 'civilised'--the masters--at least in their own
minds.
She had no intention, it was clear, of admitting any fault, any
responsibility
for the thousands of Haitians, slaughtered, raped, beaten
and
driven into exile by the elite and their myrmidons over the
generations."
'It is people like Meyrelle Bertin with whom Aristide's
supporters
will have to walk hand in hand . In South Africa there is a
Mandela
and there is a de Klerk. In Haiti there is only Aristide.'
Sadly,
Meyrelle Bertin was herself assassinated a year later, and her
murder
was blamed on Aristide. Everything was blamed on Aristide. As I
reported
in 1994: "Aristide was generous in his gratitude to the
Americans
and all the others who helped him get where he is. He did not
worry
about the political and journalistic wars which brought his cause
to
the brink of disaster. His message was acceptance and discipline. He
was
generous to his enemies, to those who want to kill him. He offered
them
love, reconciliation. To his people he said: 'Be patient once
again;
you will find your dignity and your pride once again.'"
As
I commented: "The Haitian people's indomitable courage won them their
independence,
and their pride and their dignity are about all that kept
them
alive through generations of oppression; [Now] they are counselled
by
'Titide' to be patient once again." I urged our Caribbean people to
come
to the assistance of Haiti. "We cannot provide economic
assistance--that
anyway, is the responsibility of those who have
profited
from Haiti's misfortunes for so long. We can provide trained
manpower
to patch some of the holes in the Haitian body politic ...Our
debt
to Haiti cannot be defined in material terms. It is a debt of
honour
and of love, among other things. We may not be able to define it
at
all, but it is immense and past due." ('A Love Song for
Haiti'--Jamaica
Herald Oct 16, 1994)
But
that was 10 years ago.
[John
Maxwell, Jamaica Observer]