Haiti’s Cracked Screen

Haiti’s Cracked Screen: Lavalas Under Siege
While the Poor Get Poorer
=========================

The Black Commentator,
January 15, 2004

http://www.blackcommentator.org/73/73_haiti_pina.html

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Money is power and power is
money. The Bush administration buys and sells political
constituencies every day in pursuit of world
domination. Haiti, which recently celebrated its
bicentennial as the world’s first black republic, is
not otherworldly or immune from purchase. Softening the
ground for the transaction is the corporate media that
blatantly acquiesce to the U.S. State Department’s
campaign to denigrate the rights and humanity of
Haiti’s poor black majority. There is no other way to
describe their current campaign to portray the
opposition in Haiti as the new "freedom fighters" of
the hemisphere, out to topple the repressive
"dictatorship" of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

George Bush’s earlier attempt to destroy the popular
government of the poor in Venezuela only expanded his
learning curve in Haiti. The conclusions to both these
stories are not yet written.

The Washington-forged opposition grows lighter in color
and more brazen with each passing day, while former
Haitian military leaders prance hand in hand with
Haiti’s traditional economic elite, intellectuals and
artists. The poor black majority, who cannot read or
write and continue to support the constitutional
government of President Aristide, has been deliberately
made indescribably poorer in an effort to force them to
turn against their own interests.

Going to bed hungry is not uncommon in Haiti. The
greatest violence here is the violence of hunger and
poverty. It permeates and consumes everything in its
path. Haiti’s phantom "middle class" - the relative few
who have something such as an education to cling to -
can be easily manipulated against a government that has
declared itself to be working on behalf of those who
have nothing save for the conviction that tomorrow may
yield a better future for their children. This is
especially true when the media inside and outside of
Haiti do everything possible to make it so.

Disinformation media

The Haitian press, most notably Radio Metropole, Radio
Vision 2000, Radio Kiskeya, Radio Caraibe and Tele-
Haiti, have shown themselves to be wanton whores in the
campaign to sow confusion and panic among the people.
They are active players in the U.S. campaign to
destabilize Haiti’s constitutional government. With
total disregard for principles of "objective
journalism," they circulate exaggerated reports of
violence by Lavalas, turn a blind eye to violence on
the part of the opposition, and underreport the size
and frequency of Lavalas demonstrations demanding
President Aristide fulfill his five-year term in
office. They regularly produce and air commercials
calling upon the population to "claim their democratic
rights" by joining anti-Aristide street actions. Just
as in Venezuela, where local elites use their media to
spearhead the opposition to President Hugo Chavez, the
clear objective in Haiti is to throw the constitution
in the trash and force President Aristide to resign.

Never mind that Radio Vision 2000 is owned by the same
right-wing Boulos family that funds the Haiti Democracy
Project in Washington D.C. Never mind that Tele-Haiti
was founded by Andre Apaid, the self-proclaimed leader
of Group 184 that was "created from whole cloth" by the
Haiti Democracy Project. (See "The Bush
Administration’s End Game for Haiti," December 4.)

Metropole were funded by the U.S. State Department to
tour the United States in mid-January of this year to
meet with editorial boards around the country to spread
their message of the evils of Aristide’s
"dictatorship." Ignore the fact that they are a major
source of information for the Associated Press, Reuters
and France’s venerable RFI whose reporters can be seen
openly sharing "information" with them buddy-buddy
style on any given day. Here’s the way it works:
Metropole reports a fabrication; AP and RFI pick it up
for their wire services, then Kiskeya and the others
report it again in Haiti backed by the credibility of
the international press. The positive feedback loop of
disinformation for the opposition is now complete.

Partners in crime

On December 3rd the rumor hit the streets of Port-au-
Prince that President Aristide would be forced to
resign on December 5th. Not so coincidentally, the
justification for the latest round of protests against
the Haitian government can be traced to December 5th
and what Apaid and his minions refer to as "Black
Friday." This date was previously etched in the Haitian
popular memory as a day of memorial for the victims of
a bomb that exploded during Aristide’s first campaign
for the presidency in 1990 in Petion-Ville. Instead, it
has now been displaced with an alleged attack against
university students by Lavalas.

"Alleged" is indeed the case. A videotape has been
discovered of events at the university that day which
appears to refute the description given by Radio
Metropole and Tele-Haiti. Both outlets reported that
popular organizations aligned with Lavalas broke
through a back wall of the university, destroyed
computers at the site and then proceeded to break the
legs of the university’s Rector after he entered the
facility. However, the videotape clearly shows that
Lavalas militants were outside of the building when
these transgressions occurred and that the so-called
"students" were in complete control of the facility
when the Rector entered. Although they claim that
Lavalas militants had burned a hole through a back
wall, the opposition "students" can be seen pummeling
the police and the press with large rocks and small
boulders as they attempt to approach the building. As
the Rector proceeds to enter with a police escort, the
"students" can be heard chanting "no police" several
times from behind the large metal gate, at which time
the Rector is heard asking the police to let him enter
unescorted. This does not sound like a compound under
siege from within, but rather a site under the complete
control of those inside. As you hear the crashing
sounds of computers in the facility being broken,
Lavalas popular organizations members comment on the
tape, "Oh my god. They are going to blame us or the
police after this is over." Photos have been taken of
the "students" who controlled the facility from their
rock throwing perch on the balcony, and some sources
have said that arrests for questioning are imminent.

The tape irrefutably shows that the only camera crew
allowed to enter the facility was Tele-Haiti, while the
rock-throwing students kept the other media outside. In
that case, how could it be that Lavalas militants were
inside and in control of the university facility? One
university student who left the campus bloodied may
hold the key. "We were attacked by student members of
the opposition for being pro-Aristide," he stated.
"After they broke the computers they realized they had
gone too far and held a quick meeting. They had cell
phones and talked with someone on the outside. Then
they brought into the room the faculty member
responsible for the computers and he talked for several
minutes with someone on the cell phone. I could not
tell who it was but he agreed with them."

The Haitian police appear to have been equally
confused. The tape allows us to easily identify the
faces of the rock throwing "students" casually standing
on a balcony above while the police arrest a mere two
persons alleged to be Lavalas militants below. Were two
persons responsible for the entire damage done to
facility? As I watched the tape I could sense that the
"facts" had been rehearsed. The "students" shamelessly
forced tears as they left the facility blaming the evil
Lavalas grassroots organizations for attacking them. To
this day the Rector of the university has refused to
comment on the incident.

Out of the shadows

Following the claims of "Black Friday" came a torrent
of protests against the government from "students"
supposedly violated by Lavalas. But Andre Apaid’s Group
184 clearly emerged as the true leadership of the
demonstrations. December 22 saw a large protest by
Apaid’s group calling for the resignation of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide. These surrogates of
Washington’s war against the poor in the Caribbean and
Latin America, filled the streets with nearly 10,000
people while a smaller contingent of Aristide’s Lavalas
movement guarded the national palace. Michael Norton of
the Associated Press, as well as a heavy contingent of
France’s press, witnessed this to conclude that it was
merely a matter of time before Aristide and his ugly
little experiment in democracy for the poor would fail.
What they did not know, or could not know, was the
depth of the creative resistance of the poor black
majority in Haiti. It’s difficult to fault the foreign
media’s judgment, however, for money is power and power
is money and they can afford their next meal while the
impoverished majority in Haiti cannot. In a country as
poor as Haiti, this is the difference between knowing
what is real and what is false. What non-Haitians must
try to understand is that if only half of the negative
propaganda about Lavalas were true, particularly that
President Aristide no longer enjoys wide support in the
country, this government would have fallen long ago.

In the wake of the fabricated events of December 5 the
Haitian government and Lavalas endured weeks of
clandestine attacks, while the opposition demonstrated
under heavy police protection. Then, on December 26,
the great silent beast of Haiti’s poor, portrayed as
violent and anti-democratic by the Haitian press and
their friends in the international corporate media,
awakened. Tens of thousands of Lavalas supporters hit
the streets with a singular purpose and objective: that
Haiti’s constitution be respected and President
Aristide be allowed to fulfill his five-year term in
office.

The real battle had just begun, as Haiti’s long-
oppressed millions prepared to celebrate the 200th
anniversary of the world’s only successful slave
revolution and the first black republic.

In Pina’s next report: The Haitian media and U.S.-
backed opposition risk political suicide in their
attempt to spoil the Bicentennial.

[Kevin Pina is a documentary filmmaker and freelance
journalist who has been working and living in Haiti for
the past three years. He has been covering events in
Haiti for the past decade and produced a documentary
film entitled "Haiti: Harvest of Hope". Mr. Pina is
also the Haiti Special Correspondent for the
Flashpoints radio program on the Pacifica Network’s
flagship station KPFA in Berkeley CA.