A boot stomping on a human face forever

[bcholmes]

I wish I had more fun things to talk about. Today was a bit of a downer, in many ways.

Today, we went downtown to the offices of the Bureau des Advocats Internationaux. BAI is the sister organization to Brian Concannon's Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Like IJDH, BAI has a powerhouse leader -- the human rights lawyer, Mario Joseph.

We weren't meeting with BAI; instead a large number of people and organizations arrived to make statements to our group. The statements involved everything from complaints about political prisoners kept in legal limbo, abuses by MINUSTAH, and the frustration the people were feeling about the elections.

I've mentioned the elections already. The Provisional Elections Council (CEP) has ruled that the most popular party in the country, Fanmi Lavalas, can't run in the elections because they don't believe that the paperwork that Lavalas submitted is legit. Last year, they were excluded for a similarly bogus reason -- paperwork wasn't signed by the party leader (because their leader was in exile in South Africa and has no passport) -- and so this year, their paperwork was signed by Aristide in South Africa, witnessed by a Haitian Notary, and hand-carried back to Haiti. CEP's decision seems to be entirely political: I can't tell, as an outsider, whether this is something directed by the international community to keep Aristide's party from power, or whether this is Préval trying to ensure that there's no competition for his new Unity party. I just can't tell.

I've been annoyed by the decision for months. But I'm getting a clear sense of just how devastated and frustrated people here are. Again and again, people are saying, "the international community needs to refuse to recognize these elections" and "the international community needs to stop funding the elections."

Yesterday, someone made the comment that, in the last election, Canada was the first country in the world to criticize the CEP's decision to exclude Lavalas, but also the first country in the world to formally recognize the results of the election. These people are not unclear about the political machinations that are going on.

One of the things I noticed was that many of the people we spoke to would talk about neoliberalism -- the Haitian nickname is "the plan of death". Most of my friends don't know what neoliberalism is; I find it fascinating that Haitians are so fluent in this vocabulary. It's not surprising, mind you. Their lives are far more negatively affected by neoliberalism than ours are, so of course they'd gravitate toward language that describes the component forces. Later, one of the Latin American solidarity activists commented that the same was true in countries like Nicaragua. That, really, it's countries like the U.S. and Canada that are 30 years behind in their ability to carry on a conversation in these topics.

People's pain over the election situation is so tremendously palpable, I feel some times like I could just cry.

Unfortunately, we've had other sobering news.

A coupl'a years ago, I went off to Wiscon, but while I was away, I loaned out my condo to house a group of Haitian labour organizers that the Toronto Haiti Action Committee had come in to Toronto to do some presentations. The group was making a number of visits to different cities across Canada to talk about the status of Haitian workers. One of those people was a Haitian man named Lulu. Lulu is the head of the major umbrella union in Haiti called the Confederation of Haitian Workers (CTH). We helped build relationships between Canadian unions and CTH, to help provide funding. I also saw a lot of Lulu during the 2007 delegation, including visiting CTH.

Today, we heard some pretty sobering stories about the status of labour unions. One of the privatization schemes over the last few years has been the privatization of the dock/port workers. Dock workers were unionized, earning a reasonable wage (HTG 15,000 per month -- approx. HTG 500 per day). They've all been laid off with some severance and replaced with contract workers at HTG 150 per day.

Now, if you're one of those weenies who things that this is a Good Thing, 'cause the real market value is shining through even if it means destroying people's livelihoods, please take that argument to another blog. There are two elements of this story that are especially problematic. First is that, prior to the layoffs, Préval announced that the layoffs were coming, he promised the workers 36 months severance, 1 year of insurance (I'm not sure what kind of insurance) and 2 years of training for new jobs. They appear to have been given about 20 months of severance, and no insurance or training. They've got all kinds of documentation that they were able to show us: promisary letters signed by Préval, etc. But the deal hasn't been honoured, and no one seems to care.

The second element that's especially alarming is that the dock workers' unions appear to have been completely co-opted prior to the layoffs. The union leaders have been given new cars and security guards. And, surprise, they're not really fighting for the workers. They're encouraging the dock workers to leave quietly.

And this co-opting appears to have gone right up to the top: Lulu, we're told, has also been given new responsibilities in the Préval government. He's sitting on the elections counsel (CEP), and he's got a new car and a fancy new house. This was a man who was pretty damn poor two years ago.

Actually, there's a third thing that I think is unsettling. Apparently, MINUSTAH was on hand on the day that the layoffs became effective. Since when was it MINUSTAH's mission to ensure that companies privatize without trouble? Jeezuz.

We've certainly heard a litany of complaints about MINUSTAH. People allege that they're using their power to engage in petty theft, inappropriate sexual behaviour, goat stealing, power-tripping, excessive force, and a host of other complaints. Certainly, there's truth to some number of those complaints -- I mean, there was a high-profile case in 2007 when 108 Sri Lankan members of the MINUSTAH forces were sent home for disciplinary action because they were engaged in sexual abuse involving minors.

During some questioning on this point, one person pointed out that Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine took part in a press release to speak out against the case of the Sri Lankan MINUSTAH contingent, and within a few months he was disappeared.

Lovinsky's name has come up every day that I've been here. Often, activists drop his name into conversation, to use him as an example of how important Lavalas leaders are killed with impunity.

On the one hand, it almost seems like there's this constellation of really interesting reasons why someone might want to get rid of someone like Lovinsky. Another way of looking at it is that Lovinsky has taken on almost mythic status in some circles. It's a weird thing to observe.

The day was long, and involved seeing many, many people. At one point, we left for lunch and came back to find the porch filled with people -- so many that we knew we couldn't possibly see all of them today. But it seems we've taken on mythic status as well. We're An Important Delegation With Access To The International Community!! Everyone suddenly wants an opportunity to speak to us.

And at some point I realized that the one strand echoing out from every person's story was this: everyone was saying, "we've tried everything to be heard, but no matter what we do, nothing is changing, and we desperately need to be heard."

That's a sober thing to realize.