http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1530646,00.html

The Guardian - July 18, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1530646,00.html

The Massacre of the Poor that the World Ignored

The US cannot accept that the Haitian president it ousted still has
support

by Naomi Klein

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 Cite 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 Medecins Sans Frontieres 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
Cite 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 Cedras, 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 Cedras'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 Cite
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.