when your government consorts with and abets the criminal Bush regime?
Canada's growing role in Haitian affairsThe Canadian government is following through on its commitment to "take the lead" in Haiti on behalf of the Bush Administration.
It has been almost one year since the nature of this request was made explicit in Canada's Parliamentarian Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs. During one of several meetings which took place about one month after the removal of President Jean Bertrand Aristide, Carlo Dade of the Canadian government funded hemispheric policy think-tank, FOCAL (Canadian Foundation for the Americas), had this to say on April 1, 2004: "The U.S. would welcome Canadian involvement and Canada's taking the lead in Haiti. The administration in Washington has its hands more than full with Afghanistan, Iraq, and the potential in Korea and the Mideast.
Unfortunately our much esteemed northern neighbor (along with France) does indeed have blood on it's hands from their complicity in the murder of Haitian democracy.
Haiti Q & AHaiti has once again fallen victim to a U.S.-orchestrated coup d'etat, and this time the Canadian government is deeply complicit.
<snip>
Who is the interim government?
=> Shortly after forcing President Aristide's departure, the U.S. swept aside Haiti's constitution and produced a handpicked "Conseil des Sages" (Council of the Wise) to appoint a new government.
=> Gerard Latortue, a UN bureaucrat and business consultant, was selected as Prime Minister, along with a cabinet of right wing ideologues and supporters of the old dictatorships.
=> After taking power, the installed government granted a three-year tax holiday to the largest business owners, while firing thousands of government workers and cutting funding for literacy programs, subsidies for textbooks and school uniforms.
=> The U.S.-backed government also stopped paying the wages of doctors and nurses, leading them to go on strike, but managed to find $30 million to pay "back wages" to the disbanded military
=> Violating a 13-year arms embargo with the active complicity of the U.S., the Latortue government purchased $7 million worth of weapons from the American government.
=> The Ministry of Justice has organized sham trials for ex-army officers like FRAPH leader Louis Jodel Chamblain accused of carrying out massacres or assassination during the 1991-94 coup. The defendants have unanimously been acquitted in proceedings described as "an insult to justice" and a "mockery" by Amnesty International.
How is Canada involved in Haiti?
=> In January 2003, Canada hosted the "Ottawa Initiative", a gathering of all the "major players" in Haiti, none of which were Haitian, and reached a consensus that "Aristide must go".
=> Joint Task Force 2, an elite commando squad in the Canadian Armed Forces, was on the ground in Haiti February 29, 2004, securing the airstrip from which U.S. Marines forced Aristide out of the country.
=> Canada also contributed 550 Canadian Forces troops to the French and American forces that occupied Haiti after Aristide's ouster.
=> The Deputy Minister of "Justice" in Haiti, Philippe Vixamar, is an employee of CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) and was given his position by CIDA. Vixamar, who has overseen the illegal arrest and detention of political prisoners while setting free notorious human rights abusers, has said "the United States and Canadian governments play key roles in the justice system in Haiti."
=> 100 RCMP officers are leading CIVPOL, the UN police mission that is training, arming, and patrolling with the new HNP. CIVPOL is helping to integrate the brutal former military into the HNP's ranks while providing a veneer of legitimacy to the police's violent actions.
=> Hypocritically, Canada claimed it cancelled a police training program during Aristide's presidency because of the "politicization" of the police, yet now seems totally unconcerned by the politicization of the police and the egregious abuses this is spawning.
=> Prior to the coup, Canada had cut off all aid to the elected government of Haiti and was channelling the remaining trickle of money to anti-Aristide NGOs. After the coup, however, Canada announced more than $180 million in aid to support the installed government.
=> Canada claims the aid is intended to help hold "free and credible election"; In reality, Latortue's government has done everything it can to assure that free and fair elections cannot be held, by embracing the former military as "freedom fighters" and actively repressing FL, the majority political party in Haiti.
=> The Caribbean Community, the African Union, and Venezuela have all refused to recognize the installed government, and the ANC, Nelson Mandela's party, has started a campaign for the return of democracy to Haiti.
=> The Canadian government, on the other hand, has gone to great lengths to legitimate Gerard Latortue's installed regime. Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew and Paul Martin have both made official visits to Haiti since the coup, and Martin appeared with Latortue at a conference for the Haitian Diaspora in Montreal. Martin et al. continue to echo the interim government's false claims that there are no political prisoners in Haiti.
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