By Richard Sanders, editor, Press for Conversion! and coordinator, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade.

Pretend for a moment that you are Sherlock Holmes and that the case before you is the mysterious disappearance of hundreds of political prisoners in Haiti following the 2004 coup. To be precise, these prisoners didn’t actually vanish. It was all an illusion, a political sleight of hand, designed to remove living evidence of a crime so massive that even your archenemy—the evil supervillain, Professor James Moriarty—would have blushed.

Let’s begin this true crime story on November 19, 2004, when Paul Martin—during the first-ever visit to Haiti by a Canadian Prime Minister—told a bevy of reporters that: "There are no political prisoners in Haiti."1  We must set aside the mystery of why none of these journalists responded: "But Prime Minister Martin how can you say that? Your counterpart, Yvon Neptune, Haiti’s legitimate Prime Minister has been illegally imprisoned without charge for almost five months." (See "Prime Minister Yvon Neptune: CIDA’s Top Political Prisoner.")

Martin’s statement was contradicted that same month by two sources: (1) the Justice and Peace Commission of Haiti’s Catholic Church, which estimated that 700 political prisoners were then in jail,2  and (2) representatives of the deposed Lavalas government that told the Parliamentary Confederation of the Americas’ Mission to Haiti "that over 4,500 political prisoners are currently being held."3 

The existence of Haiti’s political prisoners was also confirmed by numerous human rights investigations led by such organizations as the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti,4  the Quixote Center,5  the National Lawyers Guild,6  the Ecumenical Program on Central America and the Caribbean,7  the Haiti Accompaniment Project8  and the University of Miami Law School’s Center for the Study of Human Rights.9  Reports issued by these groups and others, all documented the existence of political prisoners during the coup-installed regime’s campaign of terror against political supporters of President Aristide and his elected government.10 

An excerpt from Peter Hallward’s recent book Damming the Flood also reveals the deficit of truth in Martin’s statement. Considering Canada’s central role in the 2004 regime change that had caused Haiti’s jails to overflow with political prisoners, Martin’s denial was a declaration of innocence on behalf of his government.

Martin’s claim would, of course, have been recognized as patently false by Haiti’s political prisoners themselves, and by their families, friends, colleagues and neighbours. But this was irrelevant because our PM’s outrageous utterance was not meant for the ears of these poor Haitian voters who had been robbed of their government by the Canadian-backed coup. Neither were his words aimed at activists who had read the reports cited above, for they would not be influenced by Martin’s swaggeringly false intonements.

The target audience for Martin’s reassuring words was Canada’s general public. They were the ones who needed convincing that Canada’s role in the 2004 coup had not sparked a crime wave of state terrorism surpassing even the excesses of the previous, CIA-backed coup against Aristide in 1991.

An obvious question arises: "Was Martin lying or was he perhaps duped into denying the existence of Haiti’s political prisoners?"

There is yet another explanation. Perhaps Martin was agnostic on the truth of this statement. It was, after all, not his job to confirm the veracity of a PM’s utterances, even when he was that PM. Fact checking, he may have mused, was a job delegated to others much farther down the chain of command.

Legend has it that Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward had a secret source, dubbed "Deep Throat," whose advice for uncovering the Watergate burglary was the famous phrase, "Follow the money." Let’s pretend that we too have such a source, named "Deep Pockets," and that her advice to us is "Follow the lie back to its source."

Since Martin’s political coaches could not be expected to do any actual research, to whom would they turn for their material?

Two well-placed suspects come to mind. Both are known to have vehemently denied the existence of Haiti’s political prisoners, and both would have had the ear of Martin’s handlers.

One was Pierre Espérance, the executive director of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights–Haiti (NCHR-Haiti). (See "NCHR-Haiti: A Prime Source of Canadian-funded Lies.") His fanatical bias against Aristide and all things Lavalas is widely known, and his systematic collaboration with the coup regime in the dirty business of illegally incarcerating many of Haiti’s most prominent political prisoners is easily verifiable.11  Despite all this, in July 2004, Espérance proclaimed to Canadian journalist Anthony Fenton: "I can tell you right now that there are no political prisoners in Haiti."12 

Our other main suspect is Philippe Vixamar, the deputy minister in the coup-regime’s so-called "Department of Justice," which oversaw the country’s police, courts and prisons. He too went on record, in November 2004, as having "denied that there are any political prisoners in Haiti."13 

Our two suspects shared something important—a common paymaster. In fact, their careers are both deeply interwoven with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Vixamar had been given his key post in the coup regime by CIDA, for which he had already been working for four years. And, his salary—as the illegal regime’s Deputy Minister of Justice—was actually paid by CIDA.14 

As for Espérance, within days of the 2004 coup, his outfit—which Peter Hallward referred to as "Haiti’s highest profile human rights group"15—was awarded a $100,000 CIDA contract.16 NCHR-Haiti then proceeded to shamelessly fabricate evidence to incarcerate Lavalas politicians and activists. Before taking on his top CIDA assignment within the coup government, Vixamar reviewed NCHR’s "special project" for his CIDA bosses and concluded: "The project has been effectively launched. NCHR is demonstrating a lot of professionalism."17 

Once CIDA had elevated Vixamar to his coup-government position, he continued to praise Espérance’s work with NCHR-Haiti. In fact, Vixamar is quoted as being "fully confident" in the Justice Department’s "exclusive reliance" upon NCHR "to alert it when the Police or the Courts commit human rights abuses."18  However, Vixamar not only denied the existence of political prisoners, he went much further and "denied that there are human rights and constitutional abuses within the criminal justice system."19 

Both Espérance and Vixamar could easily be considered prime suspects in this case. They shared a highly partisan anti-Aristide worldview, were considered authoritative sources and denied outright the existence of any political prisoners. What’s more, both were culpable in the CIDA-funded persecution of these prisoners. As a result they were both motivated by a keen desire to keep their CIDA jobs, hide their personal guilt and shield their foreign mentor from blame for its crimes against humanity in Haiti.

However, considering all these facts, we must be reconsider our analysis of who was informing who.

CIDA could well have funded other Haitians to monitor and oversee the human rights situation in that country, but it did not. It was CIDA that selected Espérance and Vixamar for their important jobs. By repeatedly hiring such well-known anti-Aristide actors, and by working closely with the Haitian elite against the elected government for several years before the coup, CIDA clearly demonstrated which side of the political fence it was on.

Therefore, Haitian individuals and organizations knew exactly what to say and do in order to win prized contracts from CIDA. They knew exactly what Canadian aid officials wanted to hear. So, when characters like Espérance and Vixamar made ridiculous statements like "There are no political prisoners in Haiti," it would be naive for us to think that these words influenced the powers that be within CIDA.

By extension, we can be sure that these two CIDA employees in Haiti were not powerful puppetmasters pulling the strings of Canada’s top politician. Rather, these employees were themselves puppets in a large-scale Canadian production on the Haitian stage.

A similar dynamic exists between key CIDA-funded players in Canada and their benefactors within the Canadian government.

Following the lead of Prime Minister Martin, and the momentum of the government’s juggernaut in Haiti, these CIDA-funded organizations hid evidence at the crime scene by sweeping political prisoners under a verbal rug. So, to build upon the new transitive verb given to us by survivors of U.S.-backed dictatorships throughout Latin America, these prisoners were "linguistically disappeared."

This cover up can be documented by putting the websites of CIDA-funded organizations under our magnifying glass. There are about six dozen Canadian "NGOs" listed by CIDA as government "partners" "active in Haiti"20 during the 2004-2006 coup period. When their 71 websites were subjected to comprehensive electronic searches for occurrences of the term "political prisoners," the results were startling. In scanning the many thousands of documents on these websites, not a single webpage was found in which any of these organizations took a stand to support Haiti’s political prisoners, or to denounce the coup-regime for jailing them. There is not a single instance of any CIDA-funded group calling for the release of these prisoners. In fact, these "NGOs" never even mention the existence of Haiti’s political prisoners, let alone criticise the Canadian government for its role in supporting this grave injustice. As far as CIDA’s 71 "partners" were concerned, it was as if Haitian political prisoners simply did not exist.

It is perhaps not surprising that some of these organizations did not advocate for Haiti’s political prisoners. Most of these government-funded aid agencies active in Haiti, do not consider it part of their work to expose and oppose Canada’s key role in the 2004 coup, or the accompanying repression, murder and imprisonment of prodemocracy advocates and political opponents by the Canadian-backed dictatorship there. But neither do they mention the existence of political prisoners anywhere in the world. However, fifteen of these CIDA "partners" did advocate on behalf of political prisoners in other countries, if not in Haiti. Let us examine how a few of these organizations skirted around, down-played or "linguistically disappeared" the issue of Haiti’s political prisoners.

There are 161 webpages within R&D’s website that refer to political prisoners. These documents draw attention to the horrific plight faced by political prisoners in eleven different countries plus those in what R&D calls the "Arab world." Many of the stories convey heart-rending personal details about specific prisoners and R&D does not hesitate to point the finger at the governments responsible. Most of R&D’s references relate to two countries, Burma and China. There is however not a single reference to the existence of any political prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan or Haiti—three occupied countries where Canada is now focusing the vast bulk of its aid and foreign policy initiatives.

R&D’s blind spot for Haiti’s political prisoners is especially telling because R&D presents its efforts as contributing "to the reinforcement of democratic development in Haiti as a foreign policy priority for Canada."21  Similarly, R&D claims that "Haiti has been an important priority for Rights & Democracy over the past 15 years."22

This CIDA-fund organization published one issue of its newsletter which—plagiarizing from an Agence Haitïenne de Presse report (AHP)23 —mentioned in passing that Lavalas "militants" held a protest on March 4, 2005, "to demand the liberation of all political prisoners."24  EMI’s summary then implied that these «militants» had been violent at a protest on February 28, when in reality—as AHP had made clear—it was Haitian police who had turned violent, shooting and killing five peaceful protesters.25 

The Alternatives website has 41 web-pages referring to political prisoners in 19 countries. Although two of these documents mention Haiti, they actually reveal more about Alternatives’ systematic disregard for Haitian political prisoners than its solidarity with them. One is an interview with photojournalist Darren Ell26  who has often criticised Canada’s role in the 2004 coup. However, the quotations used from Ell’s interview gave no indication that the Haitian political prisoners he was referring to were victims of the Canadian-backed dictatorship. As such, Alternatives’ readers remain uninformed.

The only other reference to Haiti’s political prisoners on Alternatives’ website is a declaration penned at the 2005 World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil (January 2005). This statement—which Alternative’s did not endorse—reads, in part:

This excellent declaration concludes with various demands including: "Political prisoners must be freed, politically-motivated persecution must end."28 

This important document is remarkably out of place on Alternative’s stridently anti-Aristide/anti-Lavalas website. It also stands out as the only indictment of the coup regime to be found on any of the 71 websites published by CIDA-funded partner organizations.

This Alternatives anom-aly has an explanation. Not only does Alternatives claim a major concern for Haitian human rights, it is one of the leading Canadian promoters of the WSF. For example, as Alternatives explained elsewhere, it helped sponsor the participation of 14 members of Canadian NGOs in the 2003 WSF saying that "it is apparent that the expertise of Canadian NGOs, representing a respected democratic society" could "enrich Brazilian society" by "sharing our knowledge of coalition building" including with "provincial and federal governmental authorities."29 

Most tellingly, this Alternatives’ document is dated February 29, 2004, the very day that Canadian commando troops secured the Port-au-Prince airport allowing U.S. Marines to kidnap President Aristide and force him into exile, thus precipitating the coup and a human rights disaster that Alternatives then did its very best to ignore. Remarkably, this Alternatives document, which extolled the value of sharing Canadian NGO "expertise" in collaborating with governments, did not even mention Haiti or the regime change of that day.

Although Alternatives should receive some credit for posting the Porto Alegre declaration on Haiti to its website, it must be noted that it only did so with much reluctance and after receiving considerable pressure. Demands that Alternatives include this declaration on its website were part of a concerted campaign effort launched by Haiti Action Montréal.30 

When Alternatives finally did agree to include the WSF’s Haiti resolution on its website—a full seven months after the document had been launched—this CIDA-funded group made sure to introduce it with a very noticeable disclaimer that stated:

The "critique" that Alternative’s encouraged people to read, entitled "Aristide Lobbyists confront the Haitian delegation" (Colette Lespinasse, "Lobbyistes d’Aristide confrontés à la délégation haitienne," January 31, 2005), is a shrill example of the kind of pro-coup propaganda that fills CIDA-linked websites. For instance, it refers to Haitian human rights activist Lovinsky Pierre Antoine with the elitist slur, "chimère." (See "Epithets without Borders" and "What does Chimère Really Mean?.") Lovinsky founded one of Haiti’s legitimate human rights organizations—the September 30th Foundation—which represented impoverished victims of the two coups against President Aristide. He was one of Haiti’s most honest advocates for democracy and human rights. Tragically, in August of 2007, soon after declaring his intention to run for the Lavalas party in future elections, Lovinsky was kidnapped and has not been returned. Not surprisingly, comprehensive Google searches of the 71 CIDA-funded Canadian partners active in Haiti, do not unearth even one reference to Lovinsky’s organization, or to his very existence, let alone to any documents condemning the capture of this internationally respected human rights defender. Lovinsky was thus "disappeared" both physically and electronically.

Soon after it very reluctantly posted the Porto Alegre resolution to its website, Alternatives ran an article by its director of communications, François L’Écuyer, who harshly criticised this resolution and its proponents. L’Écuyer even went almost as far as to suggest that Canadian activists should not get drawn into supporting the "Aristide lobbyists" behind this declaration because doing so would be akin to endorsing the violence of terrorists in Iraq like "Zarquaoui and the other Talibans of this world."31 

Immediately after the Canadian-backed coup regime was finally ousted by elections in March 2006, D&P published a 13-page report summarizing events in Haiti.32  Although Haiti was just emerging from one of the darkest chapters in its history—when prodemocracy Lavalas supporters were hunted down, killed, exiled or imprisoned—D&P focused all of its vitriol against Aristide, his government and its supporters. In a fashion typical of all the "NGOs" funded by the governments behind the 2004 regime change, D&P’s document ignores or downplays the horrors of the coup-installed dictatorship and actually pretends that things were worse under Aristide’s democratic government.

Although D&P does not actually acknowledge the existence of any political prisoners in Haiti during the coup regime (which it euphemistically calls the "Interim Government"), there is an illuminating two-paragraph section on "Illegal Detentions and the Judicial System." It begins by noting that

In the next sentence, D&P tries to subtly deflect blame for this situation onto Aristide’s ousted government by saying: "Some [of these 2000 prisoners] have been waiting for up to three years," (i.e., since before the coup). D&P does not explain that the Canadian-backed dictatorship filled Haiti’s prisons with Aristide supporters because—just prior to the coup—"rebels" had emptied jails and released thousands of prisoners, including death squad leaders from the previous 1991-1994 coup period, who had been convicted during the Lavalas mandate. These "rebels" were later praised as "freedom fighters" by the coup-empowered president, Gerard Latortue, and publicly congratulated by NCHR-Haiti for "arresting" Lavalas supporters.34 

The D&P statement then states that in "many cases," the prisoners are "victims of trumped up charges."35  D&P does not explain that these prisoners were often not even "charged" but were held unconstitutionally based upon rumours and allegations that were fabricated by none other than NCHR-Haiti. Earlier in the document NCHR-Haiti was referred to as "Development and Peace’s partner the former National Coalition for Haitian Rights."36 

While D&P refused to admit the existence of "political prisoners" during the coup, it made sure to state that those being held were "accused of political violence carried out during the Aristide government."

D&P then names five of these accused Lavalas leaders but neglects to explain why its website had never previously mentioned them during the entire two years that they had rotted in jail without a shred of evidence ever having being presented against them. The five prisoners listed were:

A web-wide google search finds hundreds of examples of media reports and human rights organizations that refer to one or more of these five individuals as "political prisoners."38 

But not only does D&P refuse to refer to these five as "political prisoners," it actually says this about them:

This outrageous D&P statement leaves many questions unanswered, and still more unasked. For example, why did D&P have such difficulty "classifying" these prisoners as "nonviolent" when no evidence of their guilt had ever been presented? And, although it says that these prisoners "are believed to be" violent, why did D&P neglect to mention the basis for their presumption of guilt? Had this CIDA-funded human rights organization never heard of article 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? It states that

Perhaps D&P believes that this basic human right to a "presumption of innocence" does not apply when political prisoners are held without charge by a regime that was installed with the help of R&D’s primary financier—the Canadian government.

Just as D&P felt no compulsion to cite any evidence supporting their apparently, faith-based contention that these Lavalas leaders were "implicated in violent crimes," the coup-imposed regime’s CIDA-funded "Ministry of Justice" displayed a similarly startling disregard for due legal process and international law. Eventually, after the 2006 elections had vanquished the illegal Canadian-backed dictatorship, the prisoners named by D&P were vindicated when all charges against them were finally dropped.

The ludicrous travesty of justice inflicted upon these five prominent Lavalas leaders was repeated ad nauseum against hundreds—perhaps thousands—of other lesser known political prisoners in Haiti. In December 2006, Haiti’s Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, published a "partial list" detailing 117 cases of political prisoners."41  When this author used COAT’s custom Google.com search engine to scan the websites of 71 CIDA partners active in Haiti, not a single reference to any of these 117 political prisoners was found.

However, the extent of this CIDA-backed coverup is far more disturbing than merely ignoring the existence of Haiti’s political prisoners. These prisoners were an open secret visible to all who cared to see. They were hidden in plain sight on the tip of a monumental iceberg of Haitian victims. Lurking beneath the surface of Haiti’s brutal prison system is the fact that the entire country is home to millions of citizens who were robbed of their entire elected government by the Canadian-backed coup d’état. And, impoverished supporters of the elected but deposed Lavalas government reside in a prison of poverty from which they are still heroically struggling to escape, not unlike their enslaved ancestors.

The Haitian elections of 2006—funded, overseen and falsely sanctified as free and fair by the Canadian government42—were widely seen as the key to allowing Haitians an escape into the open air of democracy. The alleged purpose of overthrowing Haiti’s elected government was to bring democracy to this "failed state." However, to see Haiti’s election through Canada’s rose-coloured glasses is to ignore not only the many practical faults of that electoral process but also to disregard a major function of the political persecution that occurred during the preceding two-year coup period.

The murder, exile, imprisonment and wholesale intimidation of thousands of Lavalas leaders and activists had a massive impact upon the outcome of the 2006 elections. The regime’s brutal witch hunt prevented many Lavalas leaders from running, campaigning and organizing—let alone voting—for Haiti’s most popular political party.

One of Haiti’s most prominent political prisoners during the coup period was "Sò Anne" Auguste. (See "Why was Sò Anne Imprisoned for 27 Months?") She explained during her long, unjust and illegal imprisonment that:

By putting Haiti’s political prisoners under the illuminating lens of his unbiased scrutiny, the illustrious Sherlock Holmes would surely have discerned the huge fraud of the case before him. He would quickly have realised that it was not simply a matter of discerning the hidden origin of a single political lie, namely, "There are no political prisoners in Haiti." Obviously, this huge case cannot be solved by merely saying that Canada’s prime minister was strung along by some CIDA-funded confidence men in Haiti or that he was fleeced by CIDA’s well-paid and compliant "NGOs" back home in Canada. Martin’s statement cannot be so easily decontextualized from the awful tapestry of disinformation that the Canadian government—and its many "non-governmental" agents—had been weaving around Haiti for several years.

However, by carefully tugging away at this one thread, Holmes would no doubt have been able to unravel a whole woolly mass of deceptions that were carefully woven together into the cultural blindfold that is now so firmly pulled down over the eyes of Canada’s population. This example of mass deception is but one disturbing jingle in a widespread propaganda campaign that was used to sell Haiti’s 2004 coup to Canadian taxpayers.

Even Holmes would likely be disturbed to note that the culprits behind this complex intelligence operation are still at loose and will likely never be held accountable. As is so often the case, the biggest criminals are those protected as the creators, guardians and enforcers of law and order. When dealing with such crooks, who can possibly jail them? As such, even Holmes could not ensure that justice could be done in this case. Nevertheless, he would see to it that the culprits involved, and the powerful institutions behind them, were revealed. We can only hope that by shaming those guilty of complicity in these crimes against humanity, that we can at least help to prevent similar crimes from taking place in the future.

References

1. "Canada in Haiti for long run, says PM," Caribbean Net News, Nov. 19, 2004.

www.caribbeannetnews.com/2004/11/19/long.htm

2. Cited by Brian Concannon, "Political Prisoner Father Gérard Jean-Juste Released,"

www.epica.org/haiti/haiti_new.htm

3. "Good Offices Mission in Haiti, Nov. 12-15, 2004," COPA

http://www.copa.qc.ca/eng/missions/Bons-offices/CR-Ha%EFti%202004-a.pdf

4. "Human Rights Violations in Haiti, Feb.-May 2004," IJDH, July 19, 2004.

www.haitiaction.net/Media/PDF/ijdh7 _19_4.pdf

5. "Emergency Haiti Observation Mission," Quixote Center, March 23-April 2, 2004. Cited in "Index of Documentation for Haitian Asylum Cases."

www.gbls.org/immigration/Haiti_Index_ 2004_articles.doc

6. Summary Report of Haiti Human Rights Delegation—March 29 to April 5, 2004. Phase I. National Lawyer’s Guild. p.1.

www.nlginternational.org/report/Haiti_delegation_report1.pdf

and NLG Haiti Delegation Report, Phase II, April 12-19, 2004. p.17. Google cache:

www.nlg.org/programs/international/Haiti_delegation_report_phaseII.pdf

7. EPICA’s Investigative Delegation Report on Haiti. Web archive:

www.epica.org/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=epica&Product_Code=06-008&Category_Code=6

8. Laura Flynn, Robert Roth, Leslie Flem-ing, "Report of the Haiti Accom-paniment Project, June 29-July 9, 2004,"

www.haitiaction.net/News/hap6_29_4.html

Second Report of the Haiti Accompaniment Project: Human Rights Conditions in Haiti’s Prisons, July 30-August 16, 2004.

www.haitiaction.net/News/HAP/8_16_4.html

9. Thomas Griffin, "Haiti Human Rights Investigation: Nov. 11-21, 2004," p.33.

www.ijdh.org/CSHRhaitireport.pdf

10. Richard Sanders, "The Canadian-backed Coup Regime’s Reign of Terror: How CIDA’s NCHR-Haiti Cleverly Pro-moted and then Covered up Atrocities" Press for Conversion! #61, pp.3-19.

11. Richard Sanders, "NCHR-Haiti Reviews Coup Regime’s ‘First 45 Days,’" Press for Conversion! September 2007, pp.20-22.

coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/61/20-23.htm

12. Anthony Fenton, "Human Rights Horrors in Haiti," Dissident Voice, July 27, 2004.

www.dissidentvoice.org/July2004/Fenton0727.htm

13. Griffin, Op. cit. p.33.

14. Griffin, p.32.

15. Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood, 2007, p.160.

16. CIDA documents obtained by Anthony Fenton through Access to Information, Yves Petillon and Pierre Espérance, "Accord de Contribution," March 11, 2004, pp.18-22.

17. Ibid., Email on "NCHR," from Vixamar to CIDA. March 26, 2004. pp.35-36.

18. Griffin Op. cit.

19. Ibid.

20. "Canada-Haiti Cooperation - Interim Cooperation Framework"

www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/CIDAWEB/acdicida.nsf/En/NIC-6199425-J3U

21. "Supporting Human Rights Defenders in Haiti," Election Observation in Haiti

www.dd-rd.ca/site/publications/index.php?id=614&page=3&subsection=newsletter

22. R&D website, Americas

www.dd-rd.ca/site/what_we_do/index.php

23. AHP, March 4, 2005.

www.williambowles.info/haiti-news/2005/lavalas_demo.html

24. Brève chronologie des événements relatifs à la situation en Haïti, March-May 2005.

www.web.net/~emi/chronoh_mars_mai2005.pdf

25. AHP report, Op. cit.

26. Ariane Lafrenière, "L’injustice dans la mire d’un photographe," Sept.28, 2006.

www.alternatives.ca/article2681.html?lang=en

27. Déclaration de Porto Alegre sur Haïti

www.alternatives.ca/article2118.html?lang=en

28. Ibid.

29. "North-South Exchanges: Participation of Canadian NGOs in the World Social Forum," February 29, 2004.

www.alternatives.ca/article1180.html?lang=en

30. Personal communication, Yves Engler, February 24, 2008.

31. François L’Écuyer, "Le débat qui divise la gauche," October 17, 2005.

www.alternatives.ca/article2117.html?lang=en

32. "Background Paper on Haiti: Addressing the Issue of the Departure of Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide," March 2006.

www.devp.org/devpme/documents/eng/pdf/Haiti-March-2006_ENG.pdf

33. Background Paper on Haiti, Op. cit.

34. Open letter to the Minister of Justice and Public Safety, October 31, 2006.

www.ijdh.org/pdf/politicalprisoner10-31-06.pdf

35. Background Paper on Haiti, Op. cit.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. Google internet search engine

www.google.ca

39. Background Paper on Haiti, Op. cit.

40. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948.

www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

41. "Liste Partielle des Militants du Parti Politique Fanmi Lavalas Illegalement Arretes sous le Gouvernement Alexandre/Latortue et encore Detenus Arbitrairement."

www.Ijdh.Org/Pdf/Headline1-10-07.Pdf

42. Richard Sanders, "Overseeing the Whitewash of an Election Fraud," Press for Conversion! March 2007, pp.35-40.

coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/60/60-9.pdf

43. Flynn, Roth & Fleming, Op. cit.

The above article is from Press for Conversion! magazine, Issue #63 (November 2008)
"Lies without Borders:
How CIDA-funded 'NGOs' waged a propaganda war to justify Haiti’s 2004 coup"

Previous issues of this Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade publication include:
#62 "Putting the Aid in Aiding and Abetting:
CIDA's Agents of Regime Change in Haiti's 2004 Coup"

#61 "CIDA's Key Role in Haiti's 2004 Coup d’état:
Funding Regime Change, Dictatorship and Human Rights Atrocities, one Haitian 'NGO' at a Time"

#60 "A Very Canadian Coup d’état in Haiti:
The Top 10 Ways that Canada’s Government helped the 2004 Coup and its Reign of Terror"

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