All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).
Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.ca
a
***
“The international community has an important role to play and we need to do everything we can to both help Haitians and to uphold respect for human rights, democracy and international peace.”
– Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs [1]
LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Click to download the audio (MP3 format)
In recent years Haiti, near the bottom of the United Nations Human Development index has been hit hard by a coup d’etat in 2004, a catastrophic earthquake that killed a quarter of a million people, and a deadly outbreak of cholera.
Now, gangs in Haiti take centre stage. The federation of armed neighborhood organizations known by the name FRG9 successfully blockaded for a time the Varreux oil terminal, situated in between two impoverished neighborhoods the gang and its leader, Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier control. [2]
In October, in response to the Haitian Prime Minister’s appeal for help, a resolution seeking a military invasion was prepared. However, the Varreux barricade, the main driver behind the resolution, was removed when Haitian police using armored vehicles from the U.S. and Canada retook control.
But the threat posed by these gangs still continues.
The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the press recently that he was not opposed to establishing a military mission on the ground in Haiti, provided “a consensus across political parties in Haiti” could be obtained.[3]
Canada has already established sanctions on several individuals, including former President Michel Martelly, as elites who “have been directly profiting from violence and instability in Haiti that is harming the Haitian people.”[4]
Although as Haitian-Canadian activist in Montreal, Frantz Andre, pointed out in a recent CBC article, elites like the country’s richest man, Gilbert Bigio, who owns a private port used to smuggle contraband and implicated by the gang leaders are seemingly untouchable. Bigio, and the other oligarchs who really run the country, or so Andre argues, pulls the puppet strings of people like Martelly! [5]
On this week’s Global Research News Hour, we will explore the unpleasant realities behind the pleasant-sounding Canadian sentiments of “putting pressure on these individuals to force them to end their senseless violence.”[6]
In our first half hour, we will hear from Èzili Dantò, a Haitian born lawyer and advocate for the Haitian population about the aim of a Haitian intervention by the U.S., UN and the Core being an imperialist one rather than a “mission of mercy.” She will also examine the role of the gangs and of Chérizier in this context and talk about the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse as an instance of sacrificing a puppet aligning himself with his master’s rivals.
This interview will be followed by Jafrikayiti Jean Saint-Vil. Over the course of the second half hour, St-Vil talks about the history of Canada’s involvement with the Haitian elite, and the systems of control with these people that may be more profound than financial interests in mining, sweatshops and so on.
Èzili Dantò is the founder and President of Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (“HLLN”), a network of lawyers, activists, concerned individuals and grassroots organizations dedicated to institutionalizing the rule of law and protecting the civil and cultural rights of Haitians at home and abroad.
Jafrikayiti, also known as Jean Saint-Vil, is an Ottawa-based author, radio host and social justice activist who publishes in English, Kreyòl and French on his blog http://Jafrikayiti.com. With Solidarité Québec Haiti comrades, Jafrikayiti often tweets #BlackNationhoodMatters. He continually calls on Canada to stop interfering in the governance of his native Haiti.
(Global Research News Hour episode 371)
LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Click to download the audio (MP3 format)
Transcript of Jafrika Jean Saint-Vil, November 29, 2022
Global Research: Claims they need to go into Haiti to protect the interests of the people from violence, cholera, and so on. But the call to action is happening in the interests of the governing forces. You’ve said the last time that you were on the program that about a dozen white families hold political and economic power over the 99% Haitian black population. These individuals are effectively protecting their power with gang organizations of their own. So, can you acquaint us with some of the ways these families are protecting their power that Canada and the US did not feel the need to go in there and protect the interests of the Haitian people?
Jean Saint-Vil: Mm-hmm. Yes, well, you know, it’s a feature of Haitian society that has remained constant from colonial times to the present times. That there is a minority of individuals who are well-protected by outside forces who hold political and economic power on the island. At the time of the colony – the slave colony, of course – these were the French colonizers, or the Spanish, or the British, who were never in extremely high numbers on the island, but they always could count on the armies of their nations – and even the army of the United States nearby – to make sure that the white population on the island gets the backing whenever there would be a rising up of the black population which was enslaved at the time.
Now, this feature, you could say briefly, was overthrown after the success of the Haitian Revolution up to ten years, max, because as soon as Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the founder of Haiti, was assassinated on October 17, 1806, you had a gradual return of the old order. And today, when we hear talks about, let’s say, the former Haitian Army which was disbanded by President Aristide back in 1995, it would be mistaken to think that this was indeed a Haitian army. When you look at the history of that army, how it was created, I mean it’s not singular because in the Americas, many armies were created by the United States, armed, trained in the School of Americas. But in the case of Haiti, that army was established by the US occupation forces when they landed in 1915. And essentially, the Marines, when they entered Haiti, they did social re-engineering in the society. Basically, they took a group of Middle Eastern refugees, some of them who came from Syria, from Lebanon, Israel, and they established them as the new rulers of the economy in Haiti. And they maintained their power through inter-marriage with the old Mulatto families that were on the island, you know, post-independence.
Now, to protect their interests – because they are a numerical minority, a visible numerical minority, but they have access to education, access to resources, and connections outside of the island. And so, to protect their interests, the military, the US occupation forces that were there from 1915-1934, basically established a racial hierarchy, or – not established, they returned with the old racial hierarchy that was there before independence, okay? And the army that was created, you could see it. For the longest time, there was no officer of that army that was a Black Haitian.
First, they were all White Americans who were in that army and they still called it Forces Armees d’Haiti. But it was all White Americans who were the generals, the lieutenants, et cetera. And then, gradually, they replaced the White Americans with Mulatto Haitians, and then the foot soldiers were Africans. So, that army, whether it is in the early days after the American’s left, or recently up to 1995, their role on the island was to protect the interests of that tiny elite.
And that’s why in all kinds of incidents that have happened, such as in 1937 when Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo assassinated upwards to 30 or even more Black Haitians and Black Dominicans, there was no Haitian army to do anything. To fight back or to retaliate or do anything in the protection of the Haitian population.
Instead, the so-called Haitian government of the time who was led by Stenio Vincent – which is also a Haitian Mulatto – because once the Americans invaded, all of the Haitian presidents were Mulatto. They basically clearly established, ‘These are the people who are going to run that island.’ That one third of the island. And you could see, it’s the same thing that happened on the Eastern side of the island. You know, Dominican Republic, when you look at the Dominican population it’s not that much different than the Haitian population. But the ruling class in Dominican Republic is all the light-skinned Mulattos, and they even created some kind of myth whereas Dominicans don’t even recognize themselves as Africans.
So, you know, I’m simplifying whenever I talk about this, because there is a necessity to, you know, to be concise. But what I’m trying to say here is that, it is really a mistake when people think that White supremacy – which was the ideology under which the Americas were colonized – is something that was done with. Something that became marginal, that only concerns the Ku Klux Klan and things like that. No. It’s at the heart of policies and in the way nations, such as the United States, interact with Haiti, interact with Dominican Republic, and also in the way those societies organized power in the countries.
So, the gangs today play the role that the UN occupation forces played between 2004 and 2017. That is, to keep the masses in check for the benefit of that small minority of 15 white families. And the MINUSTAH of the UN occupation forces that landed in 2004, came in because there was no more so-called Haitian Army which played that role of keeping the masses in check. And so, when you look at the casualities that we observe, either from the Haitian military, or the so-called Forces Armees d’Haiti, or from the UN troops, or from the so-called gangs, they come from the same class of people.
GR: You know, —
JSV: And that tells you what their enemies are – who their enemies are.
GR: I wanted to go back to what you said just a couple of moments ago. I mean, usually there are financial interests that motivate Canada and the United States to respond, to intervene. As we saw in 2004, when they removed the democratically elected government and replaced it with a UN occupation, essentially, that they essentially controlled. But really, is motivating Canada to respond the way it has, I mean, is it the mining interests? Is it the oil interests or sweatshop interests? Or is it, as you say, some sort of a fundamental preference for this – the White supremacists running the show? I mean, from a systemic perspective – I mean, how are these decisions taking place?
JSV: Mm-hmm. Well, you know, it’s always difficult when we’re trying to, you know, separate those issues, because it’s usually several issues together, several motivations.
Of course, Canada’s foreign policy is tied to the hip with the US foreign policy, okay? Usually, wherever the US stands, that’s where Canada stands, with some nuance, okay? But not with fundamental difference. So, that’s the first element. And just like you see that, if there is a war in Europe, for instance, like in Ukraine right now, you won’t see Canada standing one way and then the US standing another way. They walk together, okay? So, in terms of – and to illustrate that, there’s the quote from our foreign minister, our former foreign minister, Bill Graham, who was quoted in Janice Gross Stein’s book saying that, you know, when they made the decision to participate in the coup in 2004 against Haiti, they got another arrow in their quiver, because you cannot – there’s a limit to how much you can say, “No,” and quote, “to our political masters in Washington.” That’s what Bill Graham said.
And so, you know, we were offside in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and we came onside on Haiti and got another arrow in our quiver. So, the subservient posture of Canadian leaders towards Americans in terms of their foreign policy is nothing new. And so, Haiti is not a difference in that particular area.
The second element, is that it’s easy to attack Haiti. It’s easy to side with the minority in Haiti especially when your population is ignorant of what’s really happening on the ground. You know, I am surprised to see so many people who are hearing for the first time that Haiti is ruled by 15 white mafia families. Yet, imagine how many reports have been made by CBC, by CNN, by BBC, by France24 about Haiti. They talk about everything else, except who actually owns those, you know, for instance gas stations in Haiti.
The other day, to justify the occupation, they were saying that there’s a gang that took over, you know, a gas stockage area, and therefore we need to liberate that so the people can have access to gasoline so they can send their children to school and blah blah blah. But they’re not telling you that this gas depot is owned by Gilbert Bigio, the richest man in the Caribbean who owns Total in Jamaica, Total in Haiti, and the direct connection that those guys have with the gangs is not only linked to the fact that some of the gangs have admitted that their weapons come directly from these families, okay? It also comes from the fact that they have private ports. And one of the famous private ports is called Lafito, which is one of the most elaborate ports in Haiti, where regularly there are illegal weapons – war-grade weapons – that are caught at that port. So, it is not something that is mysterious, it’s not something that’s not documented, but you don’t see it in media.
And even with the so-called sanctions that the United States and Canada decided to announce in tandem, okay? You know, and they keep on putting out there that, ‘Oh, this is only the beginning. We’re going to –’ and they started to use general terms, like ‘Oh, we’re going to go after corrupt people in the political and the private sector.’ But they never mention people from the private sector by name, okay? And the reason why they don’t do that is because those folks, okay, highlight who the allies of the United States and Canada in Haiti are and they know it looks ugly, okay?
And the same thing happened with the situation in Venezuela. When people started to find out that there are right wing criminals in Venezuela who were supported, you know, with Guaido and all of that, Canadians and Americans, they don’t want to admit that. The same thing when you have those right wing in Ukraine, you know, neo-Nazis, et cetera. So, it’s a pattern, you see that everywhere.
The alliances that the United States nurtured in many of the countries that it invades stand to the extreme right, racist right. And it doesn’t matter whether you have a Democratic or a Republican administration in the United States. It doesn’t matter if you have a Liberal or Conservative government in Canada, they always side with the extreme right wing in those territories. And that’s why, when we talk about it, you cannot isolate the question of ideology.
But when it comes to – always this question comes: ‘Well, Haiti is an impoverished country, so what is there to gain?’ you know? What is the financial or the economic interest? But you cannot look at it in isolation. First of all, it’s not just the island. Yes, the island has resources. Okay?
When Christopher Columbus was stealing the gold, they didn’t have sophisticated equipment. So, it was surface gold that they were digging. And so, there’s plenty of gold in Haiti. But I think it’s more linked to energy, because there is a thirst for energy and some of the prospectives that they’ve done on the island on both sides, Dominican side and on the Haitian side, shows that there’s natural gas on the island and there are some oil deposits in Haiti and in the water as well.
But I don’t think that’s the main thing, okay? Because they already have – Haiti is kind of like a territory that they already occupy. And the model that they’ve used for the past 200 years where they have these minority families through which they have access to whatever they need, which is mostly cheap labour.
Because Haiti was making sweatshops – we have sweatshops making t-shirts, all kinds of undergarments, and at the same time we were making baseballs for American companies. And of course, the use of impoverished Haitians in the plantations in Dominican Republic for sugar cane and all of that.
So, in reality, it’s really also the fact that Haiti is considered like – the control. If you cannot rule over Haiti, if you cannot impose a Black-faced dictatorship in Haiti, you will not be able to do the same in Salvador, in Costa Rica, in Nicaragua, and in – you know, and you see many countries in Latin America are moving left. Okay? They are coming out of the sphere of influence of the Americans.
And they don’t want to give up that model of imperialist control where you have, you know, fake elections, puppet leaders who you basically ask to make decisions that are in favour of multi-national corporations that are owned by Americans. And so, it’s only difficult to understand if you isolate Haiti as a singular country.
But if you look at it as, okay, if you lose control of Haiti, then you know, it will be very difficult for you to maintain control in Bolivia, in Colombia. And these places have shown that even when the United States and Canada manage to conduct a coup in those countries like they did in Bolivia, for instance, the population can continue to resist and overturn that coup. And there again, it’s about resources, because the lithium of Bolivia, they wanted to have access to it without paying the fair price.
GR: Trudeau is – currently he’s trying to interest other Caribbean countries, the CARICOM countries, to go into Haiti by force. Perhaps there is sensitivity to the idea that this is going to be another 1915-style invasion, otherwise. But how likely is it that he will succeed in – by hook or by crook – in getting these countries to put Blackface on this White supremacist foreign intervention?
JSV: Yeah. I think they were very, very overconfident in this ridiculous adventure. Because, you know, they were claiming victory very early because there were a couple of countries like The Bahamas and I think even some folks in Jamaica were saying that they were ready to send troops.
And for people who are not familiar with the Caribbean, these things might sound plausible, but these are ridiculous ideas, because a country like Barbados – or, not Barbados because Barbados is not truly independent. But The Bahamas or Jamaica are still under the control of the Queen of England. So, these are not even independent countries.
So, where are they going to send their – they’re going to find these armies to send, okay? What they’re really talking about is exactly as you said it, they’re putting a Black face to a White supremacist intervention.
And so, you had leaders – because there are a few real leaders in the Caribbean, such as the prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Although, it’s a tiny country that also has these contradictions with (inaudible) to its own independence. But prime minister Ralph Gonsalves always stood his ground with regards to the bullying that the United States has exerted in the Caribbean, whether it is against Haiti or against Venezuela. And he said, you know, very clearly that sending troops now in – under the umbrella of the United Nations in Haiti would be, you know, trying to say that there is a legitimate government in Haiti that we’re supporting. And he doesn’t want anyone to make any mistake about that, that they don’t recognize this fool who was hand-picked by the BINUH, or the UN mission in Haiti, because that’s not how the Haitian constitution says you establish a prime minister.
So, this guy, Ariel Henry, was named by the former puppet-president, Jovenel Moise, and the day he was going to I guess ratify him as a prime minister, which would have still been illegal. Okay? Because, according to the Haitian constitution, the president names the prime minister and he is supposed to be ratified by the parliament. But this illegal regime that the foreign occupation forces established in Haiti has never organized any elections throughout the time it was there. So, there is no parliament, okay?
But even that did not happen, because they killed the president the same day that he was supposed to have the assermentation of the prime minister. So, this guy is completely illegal, but what do we notice? He has not only sat there, no one knows what his expiry date is. Because the prime minister is supposed to have a mandate, and his term is supposed to expire as the term of the president expires. There is no president. This guy is prime minister with no end date, okay? And he has named a president of the judicial system, La Cour de Cassation, the highest court of the nation. Which even on paper, you cannot have a prime minister have anything to say. There is no role for a prime minister in naming a president of La Cour de Cassation. It’s the president, again, who is supposed to name this person. There is no president.
So, we’re dealing here with a situation. And while they’re doing that, you know, it’s like a chess game. What they’re trying to do is to set the stage for someone to replace the current fool, and keep Haiti in a perpetual situation of a leader whose legitimacy is questioned. And whose only source of power is the foreign instances that says, ‘Yes, he is the president,’ or, ‘He is the prime minister,’ or is whatever of Haiti. Just like they did with Juan Guaido in Venezuela. It didn’t work in Venezuela. But in Haiti it is working, because the population doesn’t have enough power to overthrow the system yet.
To me, it’s only a matter of time, because like you saw, Justin Trudeau has had to back-pedal, you know. Whereas, they were announcing that, you know, they were ready to enter Haiti and they are looking for troops in Africa. They mentioned Kagame in Rwanda as a place where they were going. There was an op-ed in the Globe and Mail saying that, yes, this is what we need to do, you know, invade Haiti and get Kagame to lead the troops.
These folks are not stupid, they understand that, whereas Haiti is a very impoverished country, as, you know, folks who are watching movies, they can see the references to Haiti in the Black Panther 2 movie. In the Black world, Haiti is considered a Mecca. We understand that Africans, even corrupt African leaders, know how ugly it would look if in 2002, their populations see them as fools who are sending soldiers, okay, to support an invasion whose objective is to protect 15 White mafia families in the Mecca of the Black world. And there are all kinds of people who are making those political decisions who don’t pay any attention to the psychological situation.
And that’s why they conducted the coup in 2004, not realizing that 2004 was the year of celebration of the end of racial slavery in the Americas. And that, to them, is no big deal, you know? Only White history is important. Well, when you see this coup took place, and you see folks like Danny Glover, like Harry Belafonte, like Maxine Waters, the Black world, okay, any Black leader of importance in the world condemned the coup. Because we all understood, this coup was conducted as a result of a handful of white men and women meeting at Meech Lake, okay, on January 31, Februay 1, 2003, and deciding that Haiti must be overthrown and be put under UN tutelage. And then, a year later, they send their White soldiers to kidnap the president of Haiti, okay? And to this day, you know, they’re trying to lie and say that, ‘Well, this guy was no angel,’ as if the folks who are saying that are angels themselves. As if there are angels on the planet, you know? Totally irrational talk, okay? To —
GR: Yes.
JSV: — try to justify a racist coup. And it wasn’t, you know, a banna. And when they talk about that, they talk about it as if it’s, ‘Okay, well, oops, we made a mistake.’ No, you didn’t make a mistake. You conducted a coup where thousands of people were murdered.
GR: Yeah.
JSV: And if we really had a justice system in the world, like you know, the so-called Coupinal Internationale or the International Crimes Tribunal, some of these folks would have been condemned and judged for that coup in 2004. But of course, we live in the world where there is no such justice system. But thinking that in 2022 it was going to be easy for them to mobilize troops in Africa and Caribbean was absolutely stupid. And sometimes I wonder, ‘Who are the advisors of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau?’
GR: Mm-hmm. Well, I guess we’re going to have to close it there, but thanks again for your brilliant insights, Jean. We’ll talk again as this situation develops in the future but thank you for time.
JSV: Thank you very much, Michael. And I also want to thank Global Research, because you guys have covered this story and I like the fact that, you know, you go into depth. And that’s something that I find unfortunately, in Canada, people don’t realize how much what we’re calling the mainstream media is not about information. Okay? And so, we do need information as opposed to, you know, official propaganda.
The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .
Other stations airing the show:
CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.
WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.
Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.
CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am.
Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.
Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time.
Notes:
- https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2022/11/canada-imposes-sanctions-against-haitian-political-elites.html
- https://canada-haiti.ca/content/frg9-makes-high-stakes-gamble-dislodge-pm-ariel-henry
- Dylan Robertson (Noveber 22, 2022),’Haitian political parties must all agree if Canada leads military intervention: Trudeau’, The Canadian Press; https://globalnews.ca/news/9293242/haitian-political-parties-canada-military-intervention-trudeau/
- https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/haiti-canada-sanctions-1.6660887
- ibid
- https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2022/11/canada-imposes-sanctions-against-haitian-political-elites.html
