6/7: The Massacre
The World Ignored
By Naomi Klein
19 July, 2005
The
Guardian
When
terror strikes western capitals, it doesn't just blast bodies and buildings,
it also blasts other sites of suffering off the media map. A massacre
of Iraqi children, blown up while taking sweets from US soldiers, is
banished deep into the inside pages of our newspapers. The outpouring
of compassion for the daily deaths of thousands from Aids in Africa
is suddenly treated as a frivolous distraction.
In this context,
a massacre in Haiti alleged to have taken place the day before the London
bombings never stood a chance. Well before July 7, Haiti couldn't compete
in the suffering sweepstakes: the US-supported coup that ousted President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide had the misfortune of taking place in late February
2004, just as the occupation of Iraq was reaching a new level of chaos
and brutality. The crushing of Haiti's constitutional democracy made
headlines for only a couple of weeks.
But the battle over
Haiti's future rages on. Most recently, on July 6, 300 UN troops stormed
the pro-Aristide slum of Cité Soleil. The UN admits that five
were killed, but residents put the number of dead at no fewer than 20.
A Reuters correspondent, Joseph Guyler Delva, says he "saw seven
bodies in one house alone, including two babies and one older woman
in her 60s". Ali Besnaci, head of Médecins Sans Frontières
in Haiti, confirmed that on the day of the siege an "unprecedented"
27 people came to the MSF clinic with gunshot wounds, three-quarters
of them women and children.
Where news of the
siege was reported, it was treated as a necessary measure to control
Haiti's violent armed gangs. But the residents of Cité Soleil
tell a different story: they say they are being killed not for being
violent, but for being militant - for daring to demand the return of
their elected president. On the bodies of their dead friends and family
members, they place photographs of Aristide.
It was only 10 years
ago that President Clinton celebrated Aristide's return to power as
"the triumph of freedom over fear". So it seems worth asking:
what changed?
Aristide is certainly
no saint, but even if the worst of the allegations against him are true,
they pale next to the rap sheets of the convicted killers, drug smugglers
and arms traders who ousted him. Turning Haiti over to this underworld
gang out of concern for Aristide's lack of "good governance"
is like escaping an annoying date by accepting a lift home from Charles
Manson.
A few weeks ago
I visited Aristide in Pretoria, South Africa, where he lives in forced
exile. I asked him what was really behind his dramatic falling-out with
Washington. He offered an explanation rarely heard in discussions of
Haitian politics - actually, he offered three: "Privatisation,
privatisation and privatisation."
The dispute dates
back to a series of meetings in early 1994, a pivotal moment in Haiti's
history that Aristide has rarely discussed. Haitians were living under
the barbaric rule of Raoul Cédras, who overthrew Aristide in
a 1991 US-backed coup. Aristide was in Washington and, despite popular
calls for his return, there was no way he could face down the junta
without military back-up.
Increasingly embarrassed
by Cédras's abuses, the Clinton administration offered Aristide
a deal: US troops would take him back to Haiti - but only after he agreed
to a sweeping economic programme with the stated goal to "substantially
transform the nature of the Haitian state".
Aristide agreed
to pay the debts accumulated under the kleptocratic Duvalier dictatorships,
slash the civil service, open up Haiti to "free trade" and
cut import tariffs on rice and corn. It was a lousy deal but, Aristide
says, he had little choice. "I was out of my country and my country
was the poorest in the western hemisphere, so what kind of power did
I have at that time?"
But Washington's
negotiators made one demand that Aristide could not accept: the immediate
sell-off of Haiti's state-owned enterprises, including phones and electricity.
Aristide argued that unregulated privatisation would transform state
monopolies into private oligarchies, increasing the riches of Haiti's
elite and stripping the poor of their national wealth. He says the proposal
simply didn't add up: "Being honest means saying two plus two equals
four. They wanted us to sing two plus two equals five."
Aristide proposed
a compromise: Rather than sell off the firms outright, he would "democratise"
them. He defined this as writing anti-trust legislation, ensuring that
proceeds from the sales were redistributed to the poor and allowing
workers to become shareholders. Washington backed down, and the final
text of the agreement called for the "democratisation" of
state companies.
But when Aristide
announced that no sales could take place until parliament had approved
the new laws, Washington cried foul. Aristide says he realised then
that what was being attempted was an "economic coup". "The
hidden agenda was to tie my hands once I was back and make me give for
nothing all the state public enterprises."
He threatened to
arrest anyone who went ahead with privatisations. "Washington was
very angry at me. They said I didn't respect my word, when they were
the ones who didn't respect our common economic policy."
The US cut off more
than $500m in promised loans and aid, starving his government, and poured
millions into the coffers of opposition groups, culminating ultimately
in the February 2004 armed coup.
And the war continues.
On June 23 Roger Noriega, US assistant secretary of state for western
hemisphere affairs, called on UN troops to take a more "proactive
role" in going after armed pro-Aristide gangs. In practice, this
has meant a wave of collective punishment inflicted on neighbourhoods
known for supporting Aristide, most recently in Cité Soleil on
July 6.
Yet despite these
attacks, Haitians are still on the streets - rejecting the planned sham
elections, opposing privatisation and holding up photographs of their
president. And just as Washington's experts could not fathom the possibility
that Aristide would reject their advice a decade ago, today they cannot
accept that his poor supporters could be acting of their own accord.
"We believe that his people are receiving instructions directly
from his voice and indirectly through his acolytes that communicate
with him personally in South Africa," Noriega said.
Aristide claims
no such powers. "The people are bright, the people are intelligent,
the people are courageous," he says. They know that two plus two
does not equal five.
· Research
assistance was provided by Aaron Maté.
· A version
of this column was first published in the Nation (www.thenation.com).