[IPSM] THURSDAY DEMO: Confront the Coup!

[Dru Oja Jay]

Please Forward Widely . . .
 
CONFRONT THE COUP! 
Solidarity with the people of Haiti,
Struggle against Canadian-backed tyranny

June 16-17, 2005
Queen Elizabeth Hotel
900 Rene Levesque Blvd Ouest 
 
DEMO/MARCH: 

THURSDAY June 16, 12pm NOON, leaving from Place d'Armes metro
 
 From June 16-17 2005, Canada will play host to the “Montreal 
International Conference on Haiti,” a critical forum for the 
governments – including Canada -- that have toppled Haiti’s democracy 
and are propping up an installed and illegal regime. In response, Haiti 
Action Montreal will be staging a two-day gathering to show our support 
for the Haitian people’s struggle against foreign-backed tyranny.
 

Since the February 29, 2004 overthrow of democratically-elected 
President Jean Bertrand Aristide, Haiti has been living under the kind 
of brutality that characterized its many years of Western-backed 
dictatorships and military juntas. Poor neighborhoods and mass protests 
are shot up by paramilitaries and Canada-trained police; free meal and 
literacy programs have been disbanded; prices for basic stapes such as 
rice and oil have shot up; hundreds if not thousands of political 
prisoners languish in prisons, almost all held without formal charges, 
including the country’s overthrown Prime Minister and its leading 
folk-singer, 70-year So Anne Auguste. 
 
All of this has been directly supported by the United States, France, 
Canada, the World Bank and the IMF, who have consistently opposed 
Aristide and his overwhelmingly popular Lavalas party. As their 
representatives gather in Montreal to plan for the next stage, 
demonstrators, speakers and musicians will be there to Confront the 
Coup that they are trying to consolidate. 

 
The Montreal International Conference on Haiti comes at a critical time 
for the installed regime and its foreign backers. The illegality and 
brutality of the Haitian regime is becoming harder and harder for 
Western governments to keep under wraps.  By showing our support for 
Haiti, we can help stop the international community from manipulating 
its fate, and help restore justice and democracy to the poorest nation 
in the hemisphere. 
 
 
Background:
 

* On February 29 2004, Jean Bertrand-Aristide, Haiti’s first 
democratically elected President, was overthrown in a coup backed by 
the US, France, and Canada. The country – the poorest in the hemisphere 
-- has returned to the levels of violence and despair that pervaded in 
its many years under US-backed dictatorships and military juntas – the 
remnants of which have been increasingly resuming their old roles. 
 
* The University of Miami’s Center for Human Rights reports that police 
and paramilitaries “routinely enter [poor neighborhoods] to conduct 
operations which are often murderous attacks, often with firepower 
support from the UN Civil Police and Peacekeeping forces," leaving 
victims that “prefer to die at home untreated rather than risk arrest 
at the hospital.”
 
* The Haitian Supreme Court recently ordered the release of a former 
death-squad leader convicted for the 1994 massacre of slum residents in 
Raboteau, a trial that had been hailed by human rights groups as a 
victory for justice in Haiti. 
 
* With its democratically-elected leaders in exile or in hiding, the 
World Bank, the IMF and the installed “interim” regime (whose Prime 
Minister, former UN bureacrat Gerard Latortue, has spent the bulk of 
the last 40 years living in Boca Raton, Florida) are trying to ram 
through a neo-liberal agenda that keeps Haitian wages low and the 
country’s assets privatized – a long term goal that Aristide has 
consistenly opposed. A World Bank funding proposal recently noted how 
“the transition period and the Transitional Government provide a window 
of opportunity for implementing economic governance reforms… that may 
be hard for a future government to undo.”
 
* Canada, which supported the crippling international aid freeze on 
Haiti after Aristide refused to follow through on privatizing 
state-enterprises, has pledged over $180 million to the installed 
Latortue government. On a visit the country in November 2004 – the 
first ever by a Canadian Prime Minister -- Paul Martin solemly declared 
that “there are no political prisoners in Haiti”, despite the fact that 
his direct counterpart, elected Haitian Prime Minister Yvon Neptune was 
sitting in jail across town. 

 
* Since July 2004, Canada has provided training for the Haitian police 
and logistical planning for the UN force that has been backing them. On 
December 2nd, the Brazilian UN commander complained of being “under 
extreme pressure from the international community to use violence" to 
quell Haiti’s unrest, naming Canada in particular. Foreign Minister 
Pierre Pettigrew has left no ambiguity over who we have in mind, 
telling Parliament in October that the “extreme violence” has been 
“carried out by armed groups, primarily the chimères,” the derogatory 
French term applied to armed supporters of Lavalas. Despite 
overwhelming evidence, Pettigrew has said nothing about the murderous 
tactics of the Haitian police, and no more of the paramilitaries and 
former soldiers closely aligned with the wealthy Haitian opposition.


--
http://www.dominionpaper.ca