The United Nations' Occupation of Haiti

by Kyle Schafer

Haiti's President Jean-Bertrand Aristide made the mistake of trying to oppose business elites and international imposition of neoliberal economic reforms he knew would harm his country's disastrously poor, many of whom supported him. So, countries like the United States cut off aid, citing such things as human rights abuses and electoral fraud (nevermind that the U.S. has continually supported pro-business dictatorships and a repressive army in Haiti). In February 2004, the U.S. helped kidnap Aristide, flying him to Africa and telling everyone he willfully resigned, even though he wasn't told where he was being flown to and wasn't allowed to address the Haitian people. It was a coup.

The United Nations, led by Canadian forces and commanders, has happily occupied the country since. Economic aid has poured in to the U.N.-backed interim government, despite the fact that it isn't constitutionally elected, like Aristide was, and it has a strong record of political killings targeted at supporters of Aristide, labor unions and so on. While the U.N. claims to be in Haiti helping the government curb violence leading up to elections this November (which won't include the still-popular and constitutional president Aristide), it seems to have a different agenda.

In the middle of the night on July 6, 2005, 300 U.N. "peacekeeping" troops in Haiti made a raid on Cité Soleil, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. They came in at about 3 a.m., reportedly using tear gas and machine guns while blocking neighborhood exits with 18 to 20 armored vehicles (with cannons) and flying a gunned helicopter above.

The official U.N. line admits that five people were killed in the raid aimed to curb violence from "pro-Aristide gangs." One of those murdered was Emmanuel "Dread" Wilme, the supposed gang leader specifically targeted in the attack.

The civilian side of the story is a bit different. At least 20 were killed, they say, including many innocents. A Reuters reporter "saw seven bodies in one house alone, including two babies and one older woman in her 60s," while the director of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in Haiti confirmed that 27 people came to the MSF clinic with gunshot wounds, 3/4 of them women and children, most claiming to have been shot by peacekeepers. The metal shacks of the neighborhood were ridden with holes from machine-gun bullets, including shots from above, presumably from the helicopter, which the U.N. claimed was only there to observe.

Also, to the residents, Wilme wasn't just some renegade gang leader. He was considered a community leader, someone that helped people and worked against a business-backed anti-Aristide gang (whose leaders have not been targeted by the U.N.). Hundreds turned out for his funeral.

The key to this massacre lies in the fact that Cité Soleil was a poor neighborhood known for supporting elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The killings were political. The U.N. is not a neutral force but an occupying force. Along with the coup-installed interim government and the Haitian police force, the U.N. directly targets Haiti's poor, who support their country's President and live in slums like Cité Soleil. Similar massacres and even much more violent executions than this one have been occurring since Aristide was ousted.

But if you read mainstream American media, you would have no idea that this is the situation in Haiti.

On August 30, The New York Times reported on the July 6 massacre. Not surprisingly, The Times painted an extremely biased image of the U.N. role in Haiti and the Cité Soleil slum, and merely described the massacre as an "incident" and Aristide's kidnapping via coup as a "departure".

The article is biased starting right off with the title, "A Haitian's Slum's Anger Imperils Election Hopes," implying that the slum is an inherently angry place that is hurting itself by putting promising elections in danger. The article continues to explain how dangerous the slum is for the U.N. troops stuck trying to restore order:

Cité Soleil is now so foreboding that the international peacekeepers, who wear flak jackets and drive armored personnel carriers, conduct no regular patrols in its densely populated neighborhoods. In their last operation, about 400 United Nations troops entered the slum on July 6 and ended up in a five-hour gun battle with gangs who control the area.
Numerous residents were wounded in the cross-fire, and the incident has further embittered many Aristide supporters as elections near.

The article goes on to explain how gangs control the slum and that the July 6 raid killed gang leader and prime target Emmanuel Wilmer. Only 14 paragraphs later, after painting a picture that the raid was obviously necessary, does it explain that, "The Fanmi Lavalas [Aristide's party] leaders who showed reporters around said they do not believe in violence and they portrayed Mr. Wilmer as someone who tried to protect neighborhood residents from a gang that threatened them."

The article then explains that leaders of the community showed them pictures of people killed by peacekeepers in the raid. The article notes, "Many victims appeared to have been shot in the head, though who fired the bullets – U.N. troops or gang members – could not be independently verified." This doubt of the leaders is successfully placed, and only seven paragraphs later does the article refer to the independent doctor from the MSF clinic who said that "most patients wounded July 6 said they had been shot by international peacekeepers."

Closer to the end of the article, more accurate glimpses of the situation in Haiti appear but are unexamined. After inundating the reader with images of Cité Soleil as a violent, Aristide-supporting place (and linking the two), the article notes, "According to a report released this year by the University of Miami School of Law, some violence in Cité Soleil had been stoked by Haitian business interests who backed an anti-Aristide gang." It also casually points out that "doctors and human rights groups said in interviews that summary executions with machetes were being carried out in other slums around Port-au-Prince." Although the initial reaction may be to blame gangs, based on the rest of the article, the reports are that the executions are carried out by Haitian police. What must be read between the lines in these statements is that the powerful people in the country – "business interests" and police of the interim government (which is supported by the U.N.) – are targeting and killing poor Aristide supporters.

In addition, the article notes also near the end that "members of [Aristide's] political party, Fanmi Lavalas, have been jailed under the interim government, sometimes without due process, according to the U.N. The most prominent of these prisoners is Yvon Neptune, Mr. Aristide's former prime minister." Although the U.N. recognizes this, it continues to violently support the interim Haitian government.

And so in the words of the article, people of Cité Soleil are "embittered", "skeptical" of the election, and violent toward the U.N. No wonder. The U.N. is an occupying force supporting a government that directly suppresses their political party through executions and jailing without due process. The U.N. is carrying out murderous raids that aim to kill their community leaders (Aristide supporters) and also kill bystanders in the process. The U.N. is pushing elections that will exclude their candidate, the already-elected president of Haiti, and will exclude other members of their party who have been jailed or killed.

Yet The New York Times article wants you to think that the residents of Cité Soleil are solely plagued by gangs and are being agitated into resisting the U.N. and disrupting hopeful elections.

Yes, Cité Soleil is a desperate place, and a currently violent one too. But this is in part the fault of the U.N., the U.S., and the Haitian elite who will kill organized poor people and will topple any leader who may act in the interest of the poor.

The end of the article quotes the U.N. leader in Haiti, saying "Force is not a solution for the security problems in Haiti. You have to provide water, food, support in health, in education." He's right. To The New York Times, this means giving the U.N. money. In reality, it means not killing Haiti's poor when they elect leaders who try to help them and who refuse to follow neoliberal economic reforms.

The actions of the U.N. in Haiti over the past year and a half are important to remember when we call for multilateralism and accept anything carried out by the U.N. The U.N. is a body controlled by imperialists (for example, the only legally binding part of the U.N. is the Security Council, where the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China can single-handedly veto anything). At times, that makes the U.N. an imperialist body, too.

Thus, while we oppose the war against Iraq, we can't lose sight of the more general war the world's rich countries are waging on the world's poor and non-white in countries like Haiti. Despite what we hear in the mainstream media, we can't lose sight of the fact that the hailed U.N. and countries like Canada aren't just arbiters of good and peace but instead are often-violent arbiters of the Washington Consensus.