Mario Joseph Event

[bcholmes]

I went to this really cool Haiti event, tonight. THAC hosted an event with a couple of speakers. Mario Joseph is, without a doubt, Haiti's leading human rights lawyer, and possibly the most important attorney in the country.

The other speaker is Berthony Dupont, the editor of Haiti Liberté -- one of the most important progressive Haitian papers that serves both Haiti and the American diaspora.

Both of them are in town to speak at a racism conference tomorrow -- the conference is doing a track on Haiti, and they're going to be a featured speakers. THAC leapt on the opportunity to host an event. We didn't have a great turn-out -- about 40 people, I'd estimate -- but the content was very good.

Mario quickly covered a bunch of topics -- students, health (including the cholera outbreak), political prisoners -- but he spent most of his talk on two important issues: people displaced during the earthquake and the elections.

He reminded us that approximately 2 million people were made homeless by the earthquake, and that 1.5 million remain so. Haiti only has a population of 9 million, so that's a pretty scary number. Most of those displaced people are currently living in one of the many tent cities that cover pretty much ever flat space in and around the capital.

Some people don't even have tents. They're living in adhoc structures made of wood and blankets.

There really hasn't been a good effort to try to create any long-term housing situation for people living in the camps. Most of these tents aren't water-proof and don't protect against the heavy rains and flooding of the rainy season. When it rains at night (and most rain that comes tends to be at night), people usually can't sleep. They stand to keep out of the flood waters. It's not feet of water, but it's enough to keep you from sleeping on the ground.

But, more frustratingly, many of the people who own the lands under these tent cities have been trying to shut down these camps. And it seems like they've got the backing of both the Ministry of the Interior and the Haitian National Police (PNH). Police will show up at a camp and order everyone to leave. If people argue, the cops get violent. The people have no place to go if they're forced to leave their camps. Naturally, there's resistance.

And here was some stuff that I suddenly had context for. For several months, I've been reading about the rising crime that's been taking place in the camps. Rapes have been widely reported. And I confess that I haven't known what to make of that. I can't say that this is true in all cases, but Mario was explaining that there's an active campaign on the part of the landowners to make the camps into dangerous places to encourage the camp residents to leave. He was telling us that they have cases where they know who the perpetrator of the rape was, that he's working under the direction of the parties that own the land, and yet they're unable to get the Police to get involved in the matter.

The stories sound awful. Landowners are getting extra trash and feces dumped into the land to make the site unpleasant. (If it didn't seem like the cholera epidemic started in the Artibonite, I'd be wondering about possible links between this behaviour and the epidemic. At the very least, the conditions in the camps is going to exacerbate this epidemic) Arson has been common -- people come by and burn the tents when the family is out in the day making a living. Mario was even aware of one case where a newborn baby was burnt to death in one of these arsons.

It's a horrible situation.

Mario also talked about the presidential elections. He was on "The Current" this morning making the same points. The point is pretty basic: you can't claim to have a legitimate election if 14 parties -- including the most popular party in the country -- have been excluded from the elections for reasons that no one will explain reasonably. (I heard, recently, that one of the rules that's now in effect is that the head of the party must personally deliver the election forms to the Provisional Elections Council. Obviously this is a rule that arbitrarily excludes Lavalas because the head of the party -- Aristide -- is in exile in South Africa).

Mario also talked about how the three parts of government aren't currently functioning. The executive is supposed to be kept in check by the legislative and judiciary parts. But, for example, the position of head of the supreme court has been vacant for four years.

Canada seems to be totally behind the November 28th elections -- it's one of the initiatives that we seem to be actually dispersing money for. Essentially all of that other money that the government promised for Haiti is still sitting in our government's coffers. And partially, that's why people are still living in camps.

Some time ago, icedrake asked if there's any international body that can intervene on the election issue. I asked Mario that question tonight. He says that the two relevant organizations, CARICOM and the Organization of American States, have both side with the current government on the elections. Neither CARICOM nor the OAS recognized the so-called "interim" post-coup Latortue government, so they have a history of taking the right position on events in Haiti. But, in this instance, they seem to have been compromised.

I don't know if I can quite convey this, but the way that Mario answered the question really drove home something for me. I think that, fundamentally, I make the mistake of thinking about activism as a process of getting government agencies to do the right thing. Mario's response reminded me that, really, the goal is to build solidarity between people. You don't try to persuade the government groups to do the right thing: you make them irrelevant. I need to keep pondering this.

Berthony's talk was much broader in scope. He talked a fair bit about Haitian history -- most of which I knew. In my experience, Haitians draw on their history a lot: far more than I perceive Canadians do.

Haitians are so proud of having overthrown the yoke of slavery, and most major events are evaluated in terms of "what does this mean in the context of winning our independence." I don't think that it's a wrong assessment, really. But even after all these years, I'm amazed by how that permeates.

To use an example, Berthony talked about the 2004 coup. He argued that this coup took place in 2004, the exact year that the country was celebrating its bicentennial. He said, "They wanted us to understand that we weren't really free. That we weren't independent. And so we could not celebrate."

I honestly don't know to what extent the bicentennial factored in to the planning for the coup. Did Canada, the U.S. and France choose 2004 to add an extra symbolic "fuck you" to the assault on the popular movement? Or was it just something that those countries didn't think about. And if it's the later, then I think it was a major oversight. Haitians are no strangers to struggle. But every Haitian I've heard speak on this topic feels especially slighted that the coup happened in 2004, and they carry a grudge.

Berthony made a couple more insightful comments. He was talking about the fact that aid money hasn't been dispersed, and he said, "if you can just accept that people live in tents, live in dirt, it's because you don't consider us human beings."

He also argued that the international community wants to punish Haiti for the example that it sets. He asserted that the popular democratic movement that brought Aristide to power in 1990 was the model for Chavez and Morales and Correa. These governments came to power, not through revolutions, but by popular movements. And the work that these movements do is to help the masses liberate themselves. It's a form of democracy that I don't think we can even conceive of, here.

One of his final comments is still rolling around in my head. While talking about how a lot of the modern political context for Haiti goes back to the other nations not being able to tolerate this first black republic, he ended his talk, saying, "Wherever there's a black person, he's Haitian." In one way, there's an essentialism to that statement that I find hard to take at face value. But it's also interesting that there's such a complicated meaning to blackness in Haiti that I'll probably never understand. I mean, I've heard Melanie Newton talk about how the original constitution of the country allowed anyone to come and become a citizen of Haiti. And if they do, regardless of their status in the place they came from, once they came to Haiti they would be a free person. And a black person. That's obviously a difference from how we "read" race in Canada.

There were some other quick talks. My colleague from British Columbia, Roger, talked about the work of the Canada Haiti Action Network. Ryan Sawatsky (pictured above) talked about SOPUDEP.

But the other interesting comment I heard was from another audience member: he said, "our brains are occupied territory. It's only when we're in solidarity that can see the world the way it really is."

One last thing. Much earlier in the day, I found Waldo.