Anyone trying to decipher the international community’s compulsive obsession with stabilizing Haiti would realize that politic is so hard to understand because, unlike other disciplines, things never add up. It defies every thread of common sense that Haiti is actually on the list of the world’s most violent countries, behind luminaries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan where car bombings and other terrorist acts are part of daily life. Moreover, how exactly Haiti, a country with the lowest rate of criminality in the Caribbean and the Americas as a whole poses a threat to international peace and security remains, as the late Sir Winston Churchill might have said, “a riddle warped into an enigma”.
Sadly, because of the Security Council’s unchallenged role of keeper of peace and security in the world, everyone nods in agreement, although the facts tell otherwise. Unless the offending classification takes into account the violence wrought upon the country’s citizenry by the occupation force (MINUSTAH), it is pathetic and should have come with a disclaimer. This brings the notion whether Haitians are victims of geography or more importantly race, because in recorded history, no other nation, besides the Jewish people, has been the object of such virulent persecutions and punishments by the international community.
An article that appeared in a Caribbean newspaper on December 1 made light of the fact that Britain’s Institute for Public Policy Research has identified Haiti among 27 weak states that could provide a heaven for terrorists. Without a doubt the Institute’s policy thinkers would be at lost explaining Haiti’s connection to Britain’s security. However, the unsubstantiated and obviously biased report is likely to be taken as an article of faith by the Security Council, hence legitimizing the unwarranted occupation of Haiti. The report further asserts “If these states can be lifted out of conflict or kept from failing into it…this could be an immense contribution to international peace, stability and prosperity, if, on the other hand, they cannot achieve this status and are allowed to deteriorate further, they are likely to become increasingly vulnerable to instability, conflict and state failure”.
Assuming the report’s outrageous speculation is correct, what, if anything, is being done to prevent Haiti from descending into the uncharted road of generalized violence? From what has been happening under the occupation, it could be said that the occupation force (MINUSTAH) is creating the conditions it is supposedly entrusted to prevent. Under the rules of the occupation even legitimate grievances, like the riots over rampant inflation in April, are considered terrorist behavior that must be dealt with harshly and expeditiously. The penalty: 8 dead and a population traumatized by the determination of the occupiers to impose their will.
The degree of persecutions and unaccountability is such that historians would question the rationale behind the occupation that centers on establishing the rule of law in Haiti. Currently the politic of fait accompli reigns. Once a deed is done, it goes unpunished whatever its magnitude. An outspoken critic of the occupation, Pierre Antoine Lovinsky, disappeared without a trace while the government remains indifferent to his fate, not counting the thousands of other Haitians who died or have disappeared from March 2004 to the present. A prominent journalist, Joseph Guyler Delva, has just been sentenced in absentia to one month in jail for alleged defamation of Reginald Boulos, a member of one of Haiti’s richest families. His crime: questioning the decision of the infamous ex-senator to ignore a subpoena issued by the judge in charge of investigating the April 3rd 2000 cowardly murder of Jean Dominique, one of Haiti’s finest journalists. Meanwhile, Reginald Boulos has yet to be charged for his flagrant violation of the country’s electoral laws by fraudulently claiming Haitian citizenship and getting elected senator of the republic.
While Haitian children are suffering from malnutrition and other health issues associated with deprivation, the occupation force continues to emphasize the need to stabilize the country through the eradication, by means of military might, of pockets of resistance. Meanwhile the country’s politicians, conscious of the retributive power of the occupiers, acquiesce to every demand without any complain. The ramification is obvious; Haitians everywhere are targeted for unlawful persecutions, especially in the Caribbean.
In next door Dominican Republic where a million of Haitians reside, they are subjected to cruel and inhumane treatments that equal or surpass the worst excesses of slavery. This week there is video circulating on the internet showing a gruesome scene that makes any human being cringe. In it, a bleeding and apparently helpless Haitian has both his hands chopped by a machete yielding Dominican. Though no one has yet to come forward to authenticate the video, the images could not possibly be Hollywood-style special effects. Indeed it is part of a pattern of indiscriminate violence against Haitians in the Dominican Republic that seems to escape the attention of successive Haitian governments and their Dominican counterparts. The villainous crime is all the more shocking because the man, apparently knowing what was in store for him, cooperated with his psychopathic aggressor.
This pattern of collective punishments cannot stand since it demeans life itself. Moreover, It brings to light the fact that Haitians have been reduced to a cataleptic state that makes them immune to humiliations and tortures or indifferent to life itself. Because any cornered animal always reacts aggressively, Haiti’s liberation is no longer a matter of if, but when.
ddjougan@yahoo.com
Haiti: a brutal reality
