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Yves EnglerThere's more certainly than in 2004. There's starting to be a bit more criticism. There's a civil society, Canadian Labor Congress, most of the Quebec unions, the biggest NGO group here in Quebec, have all signed statements and put out statements in recent weeks critical of Canada's role in Haiti and calling on Canada to stop propping up Moà ¯se. The media is still downplaying the issue, but there's been a few breakthroughs.
But, yeah, in my book, the propaganda system, I look at, go back at coverage of the war in Haiti and two elements that are really extreme in terms of the history of foreign policy, media suppression. One is the Ottawa Initiative on Haiti that we've talked about, and I did a Canada newsstand search on that, and I think there was like after the coup between 2004 and 2006, it was four mentions in Canadian English language daily newspapers about the Ottawa Initiative on Haiti.
And I think all of them were mentioned by activists when they had a call, I had one or two in the Ottawa Citizen mentioned briefly by activists, but probably even more startling example of media suppression was after the earthquake, Canada in 2010, the terrible earthquake that left a couple hundred of people dead, Canada decided to send two thousand troops alongside ten thousand fifteen thousand U.S. troops.
They didn't send heavy urban search and rescue teams that were based in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Halifax. They decided not to send them, and we got or actually the Canadian press got the internal government documents of the decision making for why they sent soldiers instead of heavy urban search and rescue teams, and it was because they were concerned about a power vacuum. That's the internal government quote "and they were concerned that Aristide, who was then in exile in South Africa, might return to Haiti." So after the horror of this earthquake, that everyone who has any ounce of human solidarity within them are obviously totally troubled by people being stuck under rubble, getting health care. What not.
The decision-makers in Ottawa were concerned about controlling that. Maintaining political control. Now, a year after the earthquake, the Canadian Press reported on this, these internal government documents. In my committee newsstand search, only one newspaper had the Canadian Press story into their paper. That was the Kamloops Daily News, a small paper in the interior of British Columbia. Now, almost every newspaper has access to the Canadian press wire.
Of course, a few outlets put it on the website. Only one paper, totally marginal paper, put it in the actual paper, and that's a pretty extreme example of a bias in the dominant media, and things have broken down a bit today because the protest is so big and because more of the intellectual sectors of the Haitian society are critical of Moà ¯se, whereas Aristide, a lot of them sided with the U.S., France, Canada, coup.
So the situation's changed a little bit today, and also within the Haitian community in Montreal, I think there's more dissent on the matter, but mostly the dominant media follows the federal government's perspective, which is backing up the dictatorship.
Paul JayBefore we finish, and I think we'll have to do another episode on this and probably several as the struggle continues, but talk a bit about the struggle Jafrika. Hundreds of thousands of people, you said it might even be a million, two weeks in a row. That's a big deal, especially in a country that has a repressive police force and so on. What are the politics going on there in terms of opposition parties, movement organizations, unions? What's happening?
JafrikayitiWell, it's very telling the number of people who are in the streets. If you just compare it, for instance, with the situation in 2003 when I went to Haiti and I saw these demonstrations because there were demonstrations against Aristide, which were organized by those 11 families and the U.S. embassy, etc., but you would have an anti-Aristide demonstration on Saturday that would have, let's say, I don't know, fifty thousand people in the streets.
The next day you'd have two hundred thousand pro-Aristide demonstrators in the streets, and I filmed it. I saw it myself. And so that's why when Yves was telling you that after the earthquake in 2010, all of these powers and in special cables, you could see that they were all nervous, the United States, France, Canada, watching the population because they knew that the population did not accept the post-coup regimes, that they were unpopular.
Today, you don't have any pro-government demonstrations in the streets of Port au Prince, OK, because this guy, Jovenel Moà ¯se, was completely unknown when he was hand-picked by Martelly to replace him. They kind of created a personality out of nothing. So the rich families, what they did, they funneled money through his bank accounts, OK, he had, I think, 13 bank accounts when the investigation took place, and so all of a sudden, he becomes this very rich guy and the title of entrepreneur is given to him.
And he supposedly has a banana farm that is producing banana that is so precious that while Haiti is importing banana from the Dominican Republic, these Haitian bananas are going to Germany and they're so fancy that Haitians cannot eat them. So in reality, this whole thing was fake. There was only one container of bananas that went to Germany and the whole thing collapsed. There was never any real farm. So they created this personality, and of course, some people bought into the idea because he's a dark-skinned Haitian, because the Haitian they had before, as the first puppet was a light-skinned Haitian, Michel Martelly.
And his entourage was all from the [inaudible]. Guys who are lighter than me, and people started to question what is this government of Haiti that we have that doesn't look like us? And so they did what this oligarchy has been doing for hundreds of years. Whenever they get caught in the puppet regimes, they go and find someone who is as dark as possible to put in front as president, but the reality is, just like you mentioned, you had under the carpet playing that key role back in 2004.
Well, guess what happened? One day after that, Jovenel Moà ¯se term legally expired he extended his term, and the very next day he issued a decree which is illegal because he's not supposed to be issuing decrees like that. There's supposed to be a parliament. But what's in that decree? He gives eight thousand six hundred hectares of land to who? This white American guy Andre' Apaid and is supposed to be using that land. I mean, this is such a huge territory in Haitian terms because it covers three different departments of the countr, and he's supposed to be producing something called stevia, which is used in Coca-Cola.
Now, imagine this, and this is land that can produce food, OK? Now, this guy is taking it to do a monoculture which relies, which is completely dependent on one company, OK?
And Jovenel Moà ¯se gives this land to him with the additional gift of $18 million to develop that. So what people are realizing more and more is that the real person who is president of Haiti is Andre' Apaid and Jovenel Moà ¯se is just the puppet that they put in front, and sooner or later he's going to be deposed. Now, in the last couple of weeks, the reason why you have more gathering of people and it's not just politicians who are running those demonstrations.
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