[As Canada and other foreign powers consider renewed intervention
in Haiti, the history of the Ottawa Initiative offers an urgent
reminder of the catastrophic consequences.]
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A LEGACY OF CANADIAN INTERVENTION IN HAITI, 20 YEARS ON  
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Jean Saint-Vil
January 31, 2023
NACLA Reports
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_ As Canada and other foreign powers consider renewed intervention in
Haiti, the history of the Ottawa Initiative offers an urgent reminder
of the catastrophic consequences. _

U.S. Marines patrol the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti during the
2004 coup against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, (Tech.
Sgt. Andy Dunaway, U.S. Air Force, Wikimedia Commons)

 

In January 2003, Haitians were in the midst of planning celebrations
for their bicentennial liberation from the white slavers of Spain,
Britain, and France. Famous Black actors, activists, and intellectuals
like Danny Glover, Dr. Molefi Asante, and South African President
Thabo Mbeki, together with progressive minds of all shades and
origins, were making plans to travel to Haiti. At the same time, a
group of white women and men gathered with very different plans at a
Canadian government resort.

Adding to a long history of foreign conferences on “fixing Haiti”
with catastrophic consequences, the Ottawa Initiative on Haiti
[[link removed]] (OIH) took
place near my hometown on January 31-February 1, 2003. At the
invitation of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s Liberals, the event
brought together officials from the United States, France, and the
Organization of American States (OAS) to discuss ousting Haiti’s
democratically elected president, establishing a Kosovo-like
trusteeship, and reinstating the U.S.-subservient Haitian armed
forces. As Canada and the United States now consider another round of
foreign intervention in Haiti, remembering the OIH’s immense impacts
and legacy is crucial. As a result of those talks, the people of my
native land went from having 7,000 duly-elected officials 20 years
ago, to none today.

In his March 2003 article, “Haiti put under U.N. Tutelage?
[[link removed]],”
Michel Vastel described how parliamentarians of former colonial powers
present at the OIH framed their plans in terms of a “Responsibility
to Protect” (R2P). Thirteen months later, on February 29, 2004,
while Canadian soldiers stood guard over Toussaint Louverture
International Airport, U.S. officials forced Haiti’s president and
first lady into an airplane. According to renowned African American
author and activist Randall Robinson, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
and his wife Mildred were effectively abducted against their will.

Soon after the brutal coup, a UN force known as MINUSTAH launched an
occupation of the Caribbean nation that continued for 13 years.
MINUSTAH engaged in widespread sexual misconduct, carried
out extrajudicial killings [[link removed]], and,
through reckless sanitation practices, introduced cholera to the
country, which killed as many as 50,000, according to scientific
studies. The documentary film _Haiti: we must kill the bandits
[[link removed]]_ by
journalist Kevin Pina is essential educational material for this
period of history.

Barbaric as it was, the 2004 coup’s brazen act of terrorism was
unique only in its details. Black Haitians form a nation which is
permanently under attack by white arsonists dressed as firefighters.
As activist Vélina Charlier said at a U.S. hearing on Haiti
[[link removed]] in September 2022:
“When we have boots on the ground, we get raped, we get
cholera…There are honest Haitians with integrity, who are competent
to run our country, but we never get the chance because the U.S. keeps
its hand on the scale, supporting corrupt governments and making it
impossible for a Haitian solution
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emerge.”

I arrived in Ottawa with my parents in mid-April 1983. Two days later,
an excited teenager experiencing beautiful falling snow for the first
time, I attempted to describe for former school mates, now pen pals in
Haiti, the concept of living under “below zero” temperatures.
Forty years later, Haiti appears to have reached its own “below
zero.” There are no legitimate elected officials at the helm and no
evident plan to organize credible elections in the UN-occupied
country. Meanwhile, gangs of kidnappers and their foreign-appointed
political allies claim all powers.

Fixing Black Haiti: A White Obsession

At the end of January, mayhem engulfed the streets of Port-au-Prince.
Police officers who have seen several of their comrades killed by
government-allied paramilitary bandits (aka gangs) are angry. But, to
whom might they address their just grievances? The de facto prime
minister, Ariel Henry, is no more accountable than Police Chief Frantz
Elbe. Members of the international community in Haiti, known as the
Core Group, make all key decisions about Haiti’s future but shoulder
zero accountability for any resulting mess.

The 2003 OIH was a precursor to the Core Group, which is made up of
ambassadors of the United States, Canada, France, Brazil, Spain, and
Germany as well as representatives of the European Union, United
Nations, and Organization of American States. Functioning as de facto
overlords, since 2004, the Core Group has propped up successive
regimes of illegal “rulers” in Haiti. Presidents Jovenel Moïse
and Michel Martelly, both of the Haitian Tèt Kale Party (PHTK), were
selected through fraud and violence in 2017
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respectively.

More recently, following the brazen assassination of Moïse on July 7,
2021, the Core Group anointed Henry as prime minister_, _despite
calls from Haitian civil society to organize a transition government
with different leadership. The PHTK, including Henry, has failed to
organize elections, leaving the country with no elected officials
after the terms of the last 10 senators expired in early January.
Moïse had been ruling by decree for more than a year at the time of
his assassination due to the lack of legislative elections.

Time and again, Haitians chose visionary leaders like founder
Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1804), Lysius Salomon (1879), Dumarsais
Estimé (1946), Daniel Fignolé (1957), and Aristide (1990). Yet these
leaders were each viciously attacked and Haiti’s treasury ransacked,
subjected to outrageous ransoms collected by invaders. For instance,
the sum France collected between 1825 and 1947 as an “indemnity”
for freedom from slavery represents well over $100 billion
[[link removed]],
even if calculated at minimal interest rates. This was just one of
many episodes of gun-boat diplomacy against Haiti, which together with
a history of white solidarity among the colonial powers, deprived
Haiti of its precious resources.

In a recent article
[[link removed]] discussing
how to “fix Haiti,” author Bertrand Laurent writes: “To have
long term effect, a winning strategy would target not only the gangs
but also corrupt business forces and the high-level corrupt
politicians in Haiti along with their international enablers, money
launderers, and weapons suppliers.” We must probe who these forces
are and what has rendered them untouchable all these decades.

[UN troops from the MINUSTAH operation that occupied Haiti for 13
years stand in formation during a 2015 ceremony in Port-au-Prince.
(Logan Abassi / United Nations / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)]

UN troops from the MINUSTAH operation that occupied Haiti for 13 years
stand in formation during a 2015 ceremony in Port-au-Prince. (Logan
Abassi / United Nations / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Foreign Intervention Revisited

In October, Henry appealed to the international community to
militarily intervene in Haiti. Canada has since sent two shipments of
armored vehicles to Haiti, while a fact-finding mission is assessing
Ottawa’s next steps. Canada’s UN Ambassador, Bob Rae, who is
advising the Canadian government on the situation in Haiti, told CBC:
"We are not interested in repeating the mistakes of the past." Yet Rae
has expressed support for re-mobilizing the defunct Forces Armées
d’Haiti (FAdH). This position, notes author and activist Yeves
Engler, is blind to Haitian history
[[link removed]].

"Originally established during the US occupation of 1915–34, FAdH
was created to crush resistance to the US presence,” Engler writes.
“The army, notes Haitian historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot, ‘never
fought anyone but Haitians.’” During the 1957 military coup
against leftist president Fignolé alone, the FAdH killed as many as
500
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in the Port-au-Prince neighborhoods of La Saline and Bel Air for
protesting.

The real motivation to resurrect the FAdH is plain and simple.
Imperialist forces and their allies on the island require forces of
repression to maintain the established “dis-order”—that is,
keeping the Black masses in check under socio-economic racial
apartheid.

On December 5, 2022, with much fanfare
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Canada announced sanctions
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Haitian billionaire Gilbert Bigio and fellow businessmen Sherif
Abdallah and Reynold Deeb over links to gangs. Previously, Ottawa
sanctioned former presidents Martelly and Laurent Lamothe, and others,
for the same reason. Yet the sanctions announcements are a mere
smokescreen. As I told CBC News
[[link removed]] (although
my comments were not aired) in response to the PHTK regime’s
purchase of armoured vehicles from Canadian manufacturers, the risk
that these Canadian death machines end up in the hands of the very
people—gang warlords—that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claims to
hit with sanctions is very high.

A Call for Sovereignty and Solidarity

The historical record demonstrates that the foreign, white
supremacist intervention that is sporadically proposed as a potential
means to “fix” Haiti is, in fact, the primary ill plaguing my
beleaguered native country. Instead of making amends by paying
long-overdue reparations, imperialists press on with the OIH playbook.
As it stands in Haiti, no election has been called, the streets are
reputedly too dangerous for schools to operate, yet PHTK-allied
politicians like former acting prime minister Claude Joseph have been
campaigning
[[link removed]].

Whenever the racist undertones of their actions become problematic,
imperialists are prone to resort to Black enablers. In recent
months, African and Caribbean leaders have been actively courted
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join another invasion of Haiti, charged with an obviously inadmissible
goal: salvaging an established neocolonial disorder or, as dubbed in
popular Haitian lingua, “Sistèm nan” (The System).

What ought to be done, now? As often expressed by Solidarite Québec
Haiti
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the PHTK is a terrorist organization of which any current and past
leader, minister, or accomplice is considered collectively and
individually suspect of multiple blood crimes, financial crimes,
crimes against humanity, and/or crimes of high treason against their
nation. They must be arrested and judged accordingly.

The people of Haiti deserve, need, and demand global solidarity to
help prosecute and convict all warlords and their associates,
regardless of skin color and nationality. If found guilty, all assets
of actors like Martelly, Lamothe, Bigio, Deeb, Abdallah, and others
must be nationalized. With the recuperated stolen assets, the nation
could establish a Haiti Building Fund that legitimate Haitian
governments could, henceforth, access for the national budget.

Canada, the United States, European Union, OAS, and UN must finally
normalize their dysfunctional relationship with Haiti. This means in
plain English respecting Haitian nationhood and treating Black
Haitians as they do white Europeans.

Finally, as Bloc Québécois member of parliament Mario Beaulieu
presented by petition
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the House of Commons on March 22, 2021, Canada must finally publish
all (uncensored) documents relating to the Ottawa Initiative on Haiti,
including its link to the Core Group. The government’s dismissive
response
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the request was both unacceptable and shameful.

At the end of the 19th century, as it conspired to steal Haiti’s
Mole St-Nicolas, the U.S. Government briefly called upon
[[link removed]] famous
abolitionist Frederick Douglass to serve as “U.S. Ambassador to
Hayti.” Two years later, in July 1891, Douglass resigned
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disgust at U.S. policy. By his dignified behaviour, Douglass taught us
that, whereas taming the wickedness of racist imperialists might be
beyond our individual powers, behaving honourably towards one’s
ancestors and people remains forever a sacred duty.

Note:  _An extended version of this article is available
[[link removed]] on
Jafrikayiti.com._

_JEAN SAINT-VIL, also known as Jafrikayiti, is a political analyst and
artist-activist. He is cofounder of two self-help organizations,
AKASAN (Ayisyen ki ap soutni Ayisyen nètalkole) and Jaku Konbit, and
host or co-host of several weekly radio programs focused on Haiti. He
writes at jafrikayiti.com [[link removed]]._

_For over 50 years, NACLA has been a leading source of
English-language news and analysis on Latin Am__erica. With your
support, we pledge to continue our mission of furthering hemispheric
solidarity through original reporting and in-depth coverage of the
region, on the web and in print. _  Donate
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* Haiti
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* colonialism
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* imperialism
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* Racism
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* Canada
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