By Richard Sanders, Editor, Press for Conversion!

Immediately after the Canadian-backed coup that deposed President Aristide, the now-defunct International Legal Resources Centre (Centre International des Ressources Juridiques - CIRJ) criticised the Canadian government for not designating all members of Aristide’s Lavalas government as criminals.

CIRJ was a CIDA-funded1 and -supported2 organization in Montréal that belonged to the Roundtable on Haiti, an extremely partisan anti-Aristide grouping of organizations in Québec. (See pp.48-49.)

CIRJ’s director, Catherine Duhamel, made her organization’s urgent recommendations in March 2004 while testifying before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. She told MPs that the Canadian government "should designate the Aristide regime, just as those of Duvalier and Cedras were...already designated under our Immigration and Refugee Protection Act."3  This Act (C-36), which became law soon after September 11, 2001, includes provisions for barring the entry of any

In other words, CIRJ’s lawyer wanted to blacklist all of Aristide’s top officials. Besides the two previous Haitian dictatorships mentioned by Duhamel, Canada has only ever "designated" eight governments: the Bosnian Serb regime, the "Marxist" and Taliban regimes of Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, Habyarimana’s Rwanda, Barré’s Somalia and Mengistu’s Ethiopia.5  (Interestingly, Canada has not "designated" a single U.S.-backed dictatorship from Central or South America.)

At the time of Duhamel’s impassioned speech to MPs—soon after the popularly-elected Lavalas government had been overthrown in a Canadian-backed coup—many Haitians were experiencing sheer horror. Aristide’s top officials and thousands of his Lavalas Party supporters were the subjects of a brutal witch hunt. They were being tracked down and executed, or illegally imprisoned, driven into hiding or forced to flee for their lives to places like Canada. (See "Revenge of the Haitian Elite," pp.14-15.)

But none of this figured into CIRJ’s presentation on "concerns related to justice and accountability."6  Duhamel did not make a single comment, even in passing, on the violent disposal of Aristide’s government or the human rights atrocities then occurring in Haiti. Her attention—like that of her colleagues from the other hand-picked CIDA-funded agencies summoned by MPs that day—was focused on the faults of Aristide, and the need to prosecute those who she called "his cronies." (See pp.23-24.)

The CIRJ’s specific recommendations included the following:

Blacklist Aristide "cronies"
"Canada," Duhamel insisted, "should immediately take action to prevent alleged Haitian offenders from entering the country, by cancelling their travel documents."7  She noted that CIRJ had written to Prime Minister Paul Martin on February 25, 2004, to ask what Canada was doing "to avoid becoming a sanctuary for alleged Haitian criminals?"8  This was when CIA-backed military and death squad leaders—from the already "designated regimes" of Haiti’s real dictators—were rampaging across the country, targeting Aristide’s elected officials, burning down police stations and setting prisoners free. Were these the "alleged Haitian criminals" that CIRJ was so worried might come to Canada? No. Duhamel specifically states that the legal actions CIRJ wanted "would mean that members of the Aristide regime would be ineligible for entry to Canada."9 

Charge Aristide officials
Canada, CIRJ insisted, "should also lay charges...against individuals who are already in Canada, particularly those who hold Canadian citizenship." These "investigations and the prosecution of alleged offenders in Canada" should "immediately be launched." Again, there was no doubt as to the political affiliation of those CIRJ wanted to target. She notes that "[m]ost of these purported Canadians held senior positions in the Aristide government" and that "approximately ten Haitians purported to hold Canadian citizenship...were members of the Aristide regime."10 

Put "Aristide regime" on Trial
"In the short term," Duhamel urged,

Although CIRJ’s representative later mentions the UN and the International Criminal Court, she specifically cites the international tribunal in Sierra Leone as the model that Canada should follow in Haiti. This is disturbing in that the main donor of that "Special Court" is the U.S. government, which—says the International Crisis Group—wants this "new model" to succeed in order to "reduce the widely perceived need for the new International Criminal Court that the Bush administration strongly opposes."12 

CIRJ’s suggestion of a "bipartite tribunal" with "national and international" backers, would be empowered by two sets of totally-biased authorities:

Fund Coup’s Legal System
Canada, CIRJ insisted, should fund

The Canadian government followed this suggestion by spending millions to boost the coup regime’s police, courts and prisons. When Philippe Vixamar, a CIDA employee, was appointed by Canada to become the coup regime’s Deputy Minister of Justice, he remained on CIDA’s payroll. His extremely partisan anti-Aristide political prejudices, and those of his U.S.-installed boss, the Minister of Justice, included overseeing the illegal arrest and imprisonment of about 1000 political prisoners.13 

Blacklist Backfires
Although the Canadian government did not use Bill C-36 to officially "designate" Aristide’s government as guilty of "crimes against humanity and war crimes," it did so in practice. In May 2006, after René Préval was elected Haiti’s President, the Canadian government prohibited his Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, and various other top Haitian officials, from entering Canada. Others on the list included "former Cabinet ministers and other officials who served under deposed... Aristide or Préval," including Rudolph Malebranche, a former Health Minister and Philippe Rouzier, a former Préval adviser then working as a top official with the UN Development Program in Haiti.14 

In response, Préval "expressed outrage," and Alexis—who had "served during Préval’s first presidency" and was "appointed to coordinate his [2006] transition team"—said: "This is outrageous. It is an insult to all honest Haitians and we demand a public apology from the Canadian government."15 

Although the Canadian government admitted that it had "no specific evidence against Alexis,"16  and Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay later "expressed regrets,...he did not provide a public apology" to Alexis—who had been "banned from entering Canada for the past two years"—or to any other blacklisted Haitian officials.17 

(1) Police Violence:
In trying to justifiy its blacklisting of Alexis, the Canadian government made

In contrast, although Haitian police were responsible for countless, heinous crimes committed during the Canadian-backed regime that usurped power in 2004, they were not held accountable. Following Préval’s electoral victory in 2006, top officials with Haiti’s National Police spoke out

These problems may have resulted because by November 2004, some

This integration of former soldiers into the HNP was vetted by the National Coalition for Haitian Rights–Haiti, a thoroughly-discredited, phoney human rights group that received generous funding from CIDA.21  And, during the coup regime, the HNP received at least $27 million in CIDA funding for RCMP efforts, including training and crowd control.22 

(2) Diplomatic Support:
Not only were Haiti’s Prime Minister and other officials barred from travelling to Canada during Préval’s 2006 trip to Ottawa, the whole "visit was almost invisible," with "few of the normal trappings associated with a foreign dignitary." The Canadian government issued "no news releases or briefings," "[t]here was no joint news conference..., [and] the prime minister’s office made no announcement of the visit beforehand."23 

In contrast, Canada heralded the coup-imposed regime of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue with more than the usual diplomatic gestures. Martin hosted Latortue, and his unelected and unfettered entourage, at an international conference in Montréal, organized by the CIDA-funded FOCAL. (See p.9.) Martin further legitimized Latortue’s regime by making the first-ever trip to Haiti by a Canadian prime minister. Later, Latortue was the first head of state that Prime Minister Stephen Harper chose to meet.24 

Canada pledged $180 million (but spent $190) assisting Haiti’s coup regime. But when Préval came to visit, without his Prime Minister, Canada pledged only $48 million—"to promote good governance and democracy in Haiti"—of which $18 had already been pledged during Latortue’s regime.25 

(3) Evidence of Crimes:
Before U.S. President George Bush visited Ottawa in 2004, Canadian lawyers and human rights organizations presented "extensive evidence" of his "responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity" but

So said U.S. attorney Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. He had worked in Haiti between 1995 and 2004 helping to prosecute the top military and paramilitary leaders of Haiti’s 1991-1994 dictatorship for massacres.27 

Accusing people of human rights atrocities is a serious business. What evidence or authority did Canada turn to? The Canadian press said "political adversaries" of Préval and Alexis "might have misled the Canadian government."28  In speaking of Canada’s decision to bar Alexis’ entry, then-Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said "there is much detail that’s a bit sketchy...—these are just allegations...." He also spoke of "respecting Haiti’s position on this" and said:

However, when MacKay referred to "authorities in Haiti," he was not speaking of Haiti’s recently elected government, but of the Canadian-backed regime installed by the 2004 coup.

In a letter to MacKay, Jean Saint-Vil—a Haitian Canadian activist with the Canada Haiti Action Committee—linked the Conservative government’s barring of Alexis from Canada with a statement by the Liberal’s former Minister for La Francophonie, Denis Paradis, who justified Canada’s role in the 2004 coup by saying "there were strong, strong rumours that Aristide had diverted a lot of millions of dollars outside the country.’"30  Saint-Vil connects the dots by saying that the "embarrassing and unfortunate" blacklisting was "the logical legacy of a foreign policy based on rumours and hearsay."31