HAITI LIBERTE
"Justice. Verite. Independence."
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *
September 5-11, 2007
Vol. 1, No. 7
ANOTHER OCCUPATION EXTENSION LOOMS
by Kim Ives
The United Nations Security Council mandate for the UN's military occupation of Haiti runs out on October 15, 2007. Now the UN has cranked up its public relations machinery, generating a flurry of conferences, declarations, and appointments, all aimed at selling the longest possible mandate extension to the Haitian and world public.
The campaign to prolong the occupation was kicked off by none other than Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General, during a visit to Haiti on Aug. 2 (see Haiti Liberte, Vol. 1, No. 3, Aug. 8, 2007). During his visit, he declared that the United Nations Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH) "will not leave until Haiti's future is assured," saying that would require "at least another year."

Last week, Defense and Foreign Affairs vice-ministers from the nine Latin American nations which provide the majority of the 6,800 soldiers and policemen making up the MINUSTAH met in Guatemala City on Aug. 31 to "evaluate" the occupation and its future. As expected, they called for a one year extension of the mandate.

The countries represented at the "mini-summit" were Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. Haitian Foreign Minister Jean Renald Clerisme along with representatives from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) also attended.

The vice-ministers also called on the UN to increase its support of the tiny Haitian Coast Guard, which presently commands just a handful of small boats, in patrolling Haiti's coast line against drug traffickers. Already, US Coast Guard cutters and jets regularly patrol Haitian waters and airspace, looking for and finding more Haitian refugees than drug traffickers.

Not coincidentally, the US and France also favor a one year extension of the occupation. The governments of these two nations, with Canada's assistance, engineered and financed the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d'etat against and kidnapping of former President Jean-Bertrand, which provided the pretext for Haiti's third foreign military occupation since the first by U.S. Marines in 1915.

However, China remains somewhat peeved with the Haitian government, particularly that of President Rene Preval, which is one of only 24 countries that give diplomatic recognition to the renegade province of Taiwan (Republic of China) as a nation. (After leaving the presidency in 2001, Preval helped arrange major Taiwanese funding for development projects in his hometown, Marmelade.)

The US encouraged the integration of Chinese forces into the MINUSTAH - China's first participation in "international peace-keeping" - in an effort to solicit Chinese support for a UN mission set in place only to enforce Washington's neoliberal agenda in Haiti. But in June 2005, China used the threat of its Security Council veto to pare down the MINUSTAH extension to a compromise length of only eight months. Washington and Paris could only get mandate extensions of six months in February and August, 2006. Another eight month extension was granted in February 2007.

UN "peace-keeping" missions worldwide generally receive mandate extensions of only six months.

On Sep. 4, the Xinhua press service announced that China is now training 125 riot police who will be sent to Haiti in early December. They will be the sixth Chinese contingent to be sent to Haiti as part of the MINUSTAH, replacing the 125 Chinese riot police currently there. The new riot police are all from southwest China's Yunnan Province, Xinhua reports, and are mostly anti-drug trafficking officers. China has participated in the MINUSTAH since October 2004.

Meanwhile, Latin American Defense ministers from eight of the same nine nations that met in Guatemala converged on Port-au-Prince on Sep. 3 for a two-day conference to "redefine" the occupation. Bolivia's defense minister did not attend; most attribute his absence to the growing outcry against Bolivia's participation in the MINUSTAH from popular movements that make up the power base of President Evo Morales. Outcry from the left is also growing in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.

The ministers met on Sep. 4 with President Preval at the National Palace. OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza is also attending the conference.

The ministers are expected to make reviews of their troops in Haiti and, of course, the obligatory visit to Cite Soleil, the rebellious Port-au-Prince shanty town which has been the epicenter of anti-imperialist resistance to the UN occupation despite a withering crackdown on the population and popular organizations there over the past six months.

Also this week, Tunisian diplomat Hedi Annabi, 63, finally took over leadership of the MINUSTAH on Sept. 1 from Guatemalan diplomat Edmond Mulet, who had held the post since May 2006. The change-over was announced during Ban Ki-Moon's August visit. Mulet has been promoted to overseeing UN "peace-keeping" missions worldwide from the comfort of the General Secretariat in New York.

One more element of the public relations campaign to flood Haiti's airwaves and popular consciousness with the need for and inevitability of "foreign intervention" was the arrival in the Port-au-Prince harbor on Sep. 1 of the USNS Comfort, a US Navy hospital ship.

"President Bush sent the Comfort to the Caribbean and Latin America to strengthen the close ties between our neighbors to provide assistance to the United States friends and neighbors of the region," said Capt. Bob Kapcio at a welcoming ceremony at the residence of U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Janet A. Sanderson.

"It's very important for Haitians to see up close and personal what the United States does for them," said Sanderson. "We have a major assistance program here in the health care sector, but sometimes you don't see that. So today, on the TV, on the radio, and talking to families, they'll be able to see what the United States can do for Haiti and for Haiti's children."

That's the main purpose of the ship's visit: a photo-op showing a U.S. military doctor tending to a sick Haitian child. The Comfort will remain in Haiti until Sep. 7, conducting humanitarian medical operations and community projects in downtown Port-au-Prince, Delmas, Petion-Ville and Croix de Bouquets. The ship is on a four-month deployment to Latin America and the Caribbean providing medical assistance to patients in a dozen countries.

It is clear to most Haitians, however, that the ship's brief stopover is merely a feeble attempt to respond to the long-term medical initiatives launched by Cuba and Venezuela in the region, in particular their joint "Operation Miracle," under which hundreds of Latin Americans have received free treatment and operations for eye ailments. In addition, Cuba currently deploys some 500 doctors throughout Haiti, mostly in the remote countryside.

In spite of the fevered publicity and push for a one year extension, most Haitians resent the continued military occupation of Haiti, which the Preval government embraces. The UN troops are seen, at best, as ineffective in providing security, or, more often, as the very source of insecurity, through their heavy-handed and murderous assaults on popular neighborhoods and the brutal and humiliating treatment they mete out to Haitian citizens, journalists, and even lawmakers. That is why, despite the giant public relations campaign which constantly blares that security has been restored and that the occupation is helping Haiti, the refrain which greeted Ban Ki-Moon in Cite Soleil, and will greet the upcoming extension of the occupation, is: "Down with the MINUSTAH! End the Occupation!"

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