Angry Planet - On the Assassination of Haiti's President

Episode Date: July 23, 2021

Life in Haiti has rarely been easy. It’s the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Corruption is rampant. And it’s been invaded more than once since independence, including by the United States.It’s little wonder that the half-Island nation has suffered repression and political turmoilAnd, on July 7, it’s president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated.To help us understand the current situation -- and a bit of the history as well -- I’m joined by Francois Pierre-Louis of Queens College in New York.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world with their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello and welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Jason Fields. Matthew Galt is hiding around here somewhere, but I'll be damned if I can find. him. Anyway, life in Haiti has rarely been easy. It's the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Corruption is rampant, and it's been invaded more than once since independence, including by the United States. It's little wonder that the half-island nation has suffered repression and political turmoil. And on July 7th, its president, Jovenel Moise, was assassinated. To help us understand the current situation and a bit of the history as well, I'm joined by Francois Pierre-Louis of Queens College in New York.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. You're welcome. Thank you for inviting me. Can you take us through a little bit of what happened a few weeks ago and what led up to it? In fact, I think this crisis began severely on February 7, 2020. when President Jopner-Mois shut down parliament and began to rule by decree.

So as of 2020, we only had 11 elected officials in other country. You had no parliament. You had no local officials. The mayors that were elected locally, their terms were over, and there was no election to renew their term.

and then on February 7th, 2021, he was supposed to leave office. He decided to extend his term by another year. And also, around that time, there was an attempted coup against him. And he used that as a pretext to fire the members of the Supreme Court judges. So by the time he was assassinated two weeks ago, you don't, all the exclusions that could have replaced them were totally dismantled. So therefore, you really have a serious institutional crisis in the country. Was he freely and fairly elected in the first place? No.

I'm sorry I said that so fast. when you go, if you go back to how he was elected, the first attempt to have an election ended in Fiasco. So they had to have an interim government to in order to process the election the second time around. The second time around, Haiti had the series of crisis. We had Hurricane Matthew that destroyed part of the peninsula. You also had a lot of the political parties who realized this was already weak,

that they didn't want to participate. So he was elected by 500,000 votes out of a population of 11 million people. So therefore, you know, how could you express the demands of the people, the needs of the population, money, 500,000 people voting for you? Even though he got those numbers, when he opened up, you know, to start his cabinet, many of the people who went against them gave him the benefit of the doubt, hoping that he was going to bring everybody together

and create a calm so that there can be a dialogue. However, he didn't do that. Pretty soon, he began to thwart the opposition. He began to go after the sector of the private sector. And he began to say that he is the president that after God, he is the only one in Haiti. So the other thing also,

he was supposed to call midterm elections. He never called midterm elections. He didn't empower the electoral board onto whole elections. And in February 2021, he began to come with a new spy agency to inspire on people. He began to unilaterally rewrite the constitution of the country.

And then he began to say that, and I'm the most powerful person in Haiti and saying to the opposition and to the private sector, you cannot kill me, you cannot kidnap me, you cannot poison me, you cannot overthrow me.

Therefore, I am stuck in your throat and no one can get rid of me. People who are looking at you say, either this guy is crazy. How could you be the president of a country with so much problem and that's the way you speak to the population? Meanwhile, he began to disprocess some of the members of the private sector, but not through parliamentary laws the way you can legally do that, but when he disprocessed them, he was building his own empire in the north-east of Haiti.

He acquired a lot of public lands to build his own business. He created his own private companies. He made investments like to irrigate land in the office of Haiti, but a lot of business. their land, we're going to be his land, so that he can continue his business there. So no one is dumb. You don't come in a country like this. You disposses people who've been there for 200 years and families in different businesses. And then you expect them to just sit back and look at you and reaching yourself on their back.

So this is why he got so much in so many enemies. when he got was assassinated, no one knew exactly who might have done it. It became an Agatha Christian story because there are so many people who could have done it. So they all, everyone did it. It's like a murder on the Orient Express, right? I think that's what you were talking about. Absolutely everybody stabbed him and so you're not at all sure who actually killed him. That's right.

That's right. So how did he keep himself in power? Was the military behind him? It had to be something. He kept himself in power by two means. As long as you are supported by the United States of America, you will stay in power. In fact, the shadow power in Haiti is the U.S. Embassy. The police chief has to be approved by the U.S. Embassy.

The ministers have to be approved by the U.S. Embassy. So as long as the U.S. Embassy says, okay, this is the guy we want, it's going to be in power. It's very hard to get rid of this guy if the U.S. Embassy doesn't. one. The second thing is that and the members of his political party and members of the private sector who supported them unleash a series of gangs

in every neighborhood. So the minute there were demonstrations against them, who were tests by students, by labor workers, labor unions and different things, you see these students been shot, the population being terrorized, so everyone

would become afraid now to go after them because there would have been unilaterally shot, dismantled, their homes were burned down. And he never expressed any empathy for any of these people who were victims of those gangs. So therefore, the way he kept his power was U.S. support and the gangs terrorizing the public. It sounds like that's something of a pattern in Haiti, would you say? The U.S. supporting dictators, people who they, the United States probably shouldn't support, according to democratic principles.

I guess I'm asking, this is not exactly a one-off in Haiti's history, right? No. In fact, the first organized themselves to vote to Duvalier in 1986. And there stood in line to vote for a new constitution, for a new election in 1987. And the army under the order of support of foreign countries went out there and began to kill people. that were in line willing to go to vote. After that, they still went back and organized and had the first free and fair elections in 1990,

where Jean-Datria Aristide was elected president and he won 67% of the vote. Six months later, the United States organized a coup with the military to overthrow Arrested. Arisville stayed in exile for almost three years in 1994. came back with the support of the Clinton administration because the OAS had passed a resolution not endorsing coup in the Western Hemisphere anymore. So the U.S. had to abide by the OAS and work hard

to bring Alistead back, especially Clinton was a Democrat and trying to appeal to the larger African-American community in the U.S. But what happened is that Clinton went with Alistead to Haiti, but he never dismantled the army by disarming the people. So they let the army go with their weapons. Pretty soon, you begin to have summer killings in the streets of Puerto Queens by members of the military who were dismantled. At that time, you have Jesse Homs, who was the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

And this guy said he would not give one penny to Ari Cid. So, Alice said came back in 1994 with no U.S. economic support, no support from the World Bank, no support from entire American developing bank, no support from any financial institutions that could have rebuilt the country after several years of embargo. Aristideford went back again in 2000 as president, and a few years later, he was overthrown again. and since then there has never been peace in the country. Matelli, Michelle Matali, who became president in 2011, was not the first place candidate.

Secretary Hillary Clinton went from Cairo, Egypt, where she was having a meeting, and led it in the morning in Port-au-Prince and imposed to President Pueval that Matali should be the president of the country. with a lot of threats, to send Prevar into exile to freeze his bank account,

to go after his supporters. So Prevar reluctantly accepted and allowed Matéley to become president. And remember, President Clinton, when he said in 1904, he had, I still agree to let the Rice Corporation

from Arkansas to be the sole sell, export, export of rice to Haiti. So the whole agricultural sector of Haiti was destroyed with imported guys from the U.S. Even Clinton had to apologize because of that decision later on. And how important is the agricultural sector to Haiti? Is it one of the major industries? It used to be, because Haiti is primarily an agricultural economy. people have subsidence agriculture, the backyard or the land that they had,

everything on it so that they can have a meal at night. When they began to dump the milk, the rice, and salt gum, all the other products from the U.S. to Haiti, they completely destroyed the countries. Then you begin to have a population that is very desistuous. There is no industrial jobs. They couldn't go to Miami like they used to go in the United States. Latin Ales or in the Caribbean, they began to swell up

the slums and the, you know, cities around, the Shanditowns around the big cities. And you have an idle population, which is 70% young, 70% of the population is less than 30. So you have all these people, watching TV, watching what life could be, because obviously in every shendipa town,

you have a TV watching Dallas, watching the rich and the famous, and they're asking themselves, how come they cannot have that? So you begin to have a contradiction between what they're imposing on the population and what they want. And whenever a Haitian try to organize themselves to say, no, we don't want the way it has been imposed on us, they're onish terror on the population.

And that's a tradition going back to the Duvalier regime and probably even before then. Because remember, the Americans occupied Haiti, in 1915 and they stayed there for 17 years. The research of the economy and since that time, until today, they have never really left Haiti. In other words, whenever a government comes in

that they don't like or they didn't impose it, they undermine that government. I'm going to go very far back now, if that's okay with you. Sure. Haiti has a fascinating history, not least because it was, the only successful slave rebellion in all of history. There have been rebellions, there were

rebellions against the Roman state, there were rebellions down through history, but Haiti is unique. Yes. And I've heard it said other places that that has been part of the problem ever since for Haiti. Can you explain that thought and how important the history of Haiti is to what's happening now? Yes. Let me start by saying that when Haitians had revolution in 1804. Haiti was the richest colony of France. Many of the owners of these plantations

came to the United States. They landed in Baltimore and Louisiana. And they began to have a propaganda against Haiti against a revolution. Thomas Jefferson, in his driving, one of his key aspect was to keep Haiti at bay.

No diplomatic relations of Haiti after the revolution. Try to contain Haiti in a west that this revolution wouldn't come to the south of the U.S. So historically, Haiti was never seen as a country that took progress. In fact, the saying is that whenever other Caribbean countries wanted to get the independence, the French and the colonial English would say, oh, you want to be like Haiti, meaning that we have to set an example that white supremacy can never be overcome.

And what took place in Haiti was the first successful revolution where the idea of white supremacists was undermined the sense that first all human beings are created equal. And the first constitution of Haitians of Haiti in 1904 was that as long as you come to the land of Haiti, it doesn't matter what color you were. Where you came from, you were given independence. There were historically in the past where slaves have. landed in Haiti coming, the U.S., and they ended in Haiti. Instead of returning the slaves to the Americans, the president of Haiti bought those slaves so that they can stay in Haiti. So you have a universal freedom, universal human rights being declared in Haiti,

not on the basis of color, but on the basis of being. And this was a challenge to the white supremacist idea that blacks are supposed to be inferior. So even in France, that never taught the school children about the Haitian evolution, because it became a shame for France that those slaves that they took to so as commodity and some humans were able to defeat the greatest army in the world at that time, Napoleon. It was because of the French defeating the Haitians, defeating the Napoleon army, that Napoleon decided to sell the Louisiana purchase to Jefferson. so that you can expend the United States

to what it is today. So therefore, we have contributed a lot to the wealth of the United States, but the United States has never helped us build a society, a democratic society. And still today, imagine, Jason, that Jordan Morris was assassinated. Within a few hours, the UN representative

and the state department, recognized his Jopal Mouis fired Prime Minister, Claude Joseph, as Prime Minister of the country, without even consulting with anyone in Haiti to ask them what do you guys think? When his name was linked to the assassination of Jol Mouin, the U.S. backtracked and now recognized Ariel Henri as the Prime Minister, but there was never any consult.

any discussion or dialogue with members of civil society that have been working for the past two years in trying to mend the fabrics of Haitian society so that they can find a common agreement on how to govern the country. So until today, the U.S. bypass members of civil society and dictating as if they're talking to their children. And the new prime minister was appointed by loathe. and seemingly authoritarian. Yes. So what do you think, what's the outcome going to be in the near term, do you think?

And first, the president cannot appoint a prime minister without the parliament, because the parliament had to ratify the prime minister. So whether it was Claude Joseph or the current prime minister, they are both unconstitutional and illegitimate, because there was no other institutions in the country to legitimize, give them legitimacy. What is going to happen? I hope it doesn't happen. First, civil society groups are not going to stand by and let the U.S. continue this process.

Many of the people right now in the current government, right, are linked to the previous government. And the number one reason that Jopin Mawis was supported by the U.S. and several sectors in Haiti was because he decided not to go on with the corruption scandal. that's involved with the Patriot Caribbean money. Remember, Haley, when Maté Lee was in power, and then he handed the power to Jopal, Haley had $5 billion to spend on infrastructure, work projects, housing, education, and different other things.

Right now, Harry's work, and Jason, if I take you to Haley right now, you will not see anything that was built with that money. all that money was siphoned out of Haiti by all the powers that be, and no one wants to be held accountable for spending that money to keep the Haitian people in the misery that they are today. One thing I've been curious about for a long time is, again, it's a pretty basic question, but how do people actually get by on a day-to-day basis?

How do they find food to eat? I've met people in Haiti sometimes I haven't eaten for two days or three days. They're just drinking water or salt water. But typically, Haitians are less than a dairy. They can only have one meal or what is with no meat, maybe rice or cornmeal, something basic. Many times also there is a lot of solidarity. It's very common to see that if you are cooking today, there will be an extra plate of food. in the house for a neighbor, a friend, someone who is having a hard time.

There's a lot of sharing taking place in Haiti. And also, you have about a million Haitians living out in the diaspora, primarily in the United States. Many of these people send money back home. Sometimes they send $20,000, sometimes they say $100, every weekend, when you go to the transfer agencies, you will see a line of people selling money, not necessarily to their family members.

but to a friend or to someone they grew up with who is having a hard time in Haiti and they're sending some money to them. So the diaspora supports Haiti a lot. But a lot of that money goes toward eating, not so much for investments or anything like that. The other thing also that happens. Since culture was destroyed,

the international community is very happy to distribute surplus food to Haitians. So you have a lot of people. NGOs, their main business is grow around and distribute sub rice, supply food, peanuts, different things that I don't need anymore

in their country, they're bringing it to Haiti. And these people, they have feeding centers where they can go get a meal. Now, people may not realize that. It destroys your ego and who you was. When you work up in the morning, you have to go somewhere and stand in line to get

a bowl of, you know, when you could have, you know, been very productive yourself. So right now, because of the crisis for the past two years, there is a famine that's hidden in the country. And there's a real food deficit in the country because we have different issues. First, the global warming, some of the places that Haitians use to do culture are no longer able to sustain agriculture because they cannot control the season anymore. The rent comes whenever it wants to.

There's no rainy season they used to have, regular rainy season. The second thing is that many of them are working on primitive means of cultivating the land so you don't have machines, you don't have irrigation, water. So they would depend on goodwill of the sun or the rent to take care of it. So you have a depletion of production. And third, there's never been a reinvestment in the agricultural sector. So even if they wanted to really improve the agricultural sector, there's no money there because of the corruption.

So you have that is really creating more havoc in the rural areas, in addition to the corruption that has taken place. So people really live on charity, which is not the right way to keep a population going. Are you a member, I didn't want to just assume, but are you a member of the diaspora yourself? Yes, I am. And my story is, I came here when I was 14 in the United States. My parents were really here because my uncles were killed by Duvalier.

I have a long story of persecution in the family. All the men on my mother's side were killed by the body. And so that created a lot of havoc for my dad, for the, So my dad came here in 1965, my mom came in 1970, and then we came in in 1974. But as I was growing up here, realizing what was happening in Haiti, I decided to be more involved with Asian politics. So in 1986, I went back and lived there. And I organized in Haiti, and that's how I got to meet Aristide.

And I was very close to him in the campaign. In 1991, I was in his private cabinet. So when the coup happened in 1991, I came back to the state again. But I've been back and forth to Haiti on a regular basis, working with a lot of the groups, especially the sectors of the democratic society during training. I work promoting present associations, helping with microcredit, and getting people to do the leadership development. I do different things because I think you don't,

human being cannot just stay and be dependent on other people. And there's one, if you go to Haiti and you go in the countryside, you meet with the people, you wonder how come you have 11 million people, you have less than 11,000 police officials in Haiti and no one is killing each other. It's because Haitians are peaceful people. They're very religious. The poverty doesn't define them. And they understand that they are poor, not because they're stupid or they cannot read, they are poor because it was designed by the international community to keep them that way. And every time they try to step out of it, the international community comes in, put their boots on their head, and so that they can be questioned stay where they are.

and that to be serving as an example to other people who are earning for their independence and freedom. I guess it's fair to say that U.S. officials have a different view. I have one more question which was about the earthquake, which was, God, how many years ago was that now? That was 2010. It's almost 11 years. And that had a huge and ongoing impact on Haiti as well. Does that feed into instability and poverty? And I'm telling you, when I came back here in New York with my family, I spent two months, I was totally numb.

What I saw in Haiti, when you survived something like that, you saw two things. You saw the destruction, the carnage, but you see, you also saw the capacity of the human dignity. to, you know, I was helping the swimming food in one place, and I met a good friend of mine. His mother died, and they were doing separating the death from the people that, you know, wanted or alive. They were helping, feeding them and all of that. And I said, my God, he's a guy who just lost his mother. It's still active, organizing.

And you ask yourself, how could this guy have the courage to be? that to do that. And a lot of people were doing that. There was no looting. There was a sense of we got to come together because this is a real crisis. And the earthquake provided an opportunity to reset the situation in Haiti. And everybody had hoped with all that money and the solidarity from the international community, that was going to be the starting point to redo Haiti. We had President Clinton was in charge of the reconstruction, along with the Haitian government. But not much came out of that. No one knows exactly how that money was spent.

Who got it? Out of all that promise. So it seems like every time there's a crisis, it presents an opportunity to rebuild. You have a total deception of how that happened, and people become disappointed by how the leaders, the people that trust. you use those resources, they use them for themselves and for the population. But the earthquake was really, could have been the starting point

to rebuild Haiti to do a new society, but it was not given that chance. The Patriot Caribbean money, the $5 billion that Haiti was able to negotiate with Venezuela, was supposed to be another opening also to rebuild the society. And that the whole money was stolen from the people without any accountable.

accountability. I think what happened in Haiti, not for Haitians to have peace, to have closure. You must stop the impunity that's taking place in Haiti. You kill judges, no one goes to jail. You assassinate lawyers, no one goes to jail. You massacre people in the Islam's, no one is held accountable. Now, you see, the president was just assassinated, I doubt very much the way there would be justice. the way they kept, you know, changing the narrative. It's a way for people to lose track. And sooner or later, there will not be anyone being held accountable for such an organized systematic assassination of a president.

So as long as you have impunity in Haiti, the people who are powerful can feel that they can do whatever they want. And they will never be held accountable for these things. And you cannot start building a society. if there's no justice. But it's a vicious cycle circle as well in that you can't have that sort of justice without some sort of civil society that's functioning. Yes, but the thing is that the minute you begin to administer justice, or people accountable for the things that they've done, you begin to rebuild the civil society.

In fact, what we really need in Haiti is a truth and reconciliation like they had in South Africa. Obviously, people are not talking about revenge. You're talking about the fact that there are wrongs that have been committed. There are wrongs that have been done that you need to have closure about these things. It doesn't make sense that the guy was walking on the street took your father away, kill your father in jail. and now is walking, walking next to you as a powerful man, and no one can say anything to him.

You may not want to go kill the guy or bring him to court, but that is an apology. You know, I did this. I'm sorry, I did it. I hope I'm repeating. I hope that won't happen again. Then you have reconciliation. But if a guy is still in power,

his son now is inheriting the power because that person knows he has the backing of the U.S. and the international institutions, that they can do whatever they want, then that's how the cycle continues, of people being felt that the wrong has been done to them, and there is no way they can seek justice. That's why when things happen in Haiti,

you see people destroying things, you see a lot of chaotic situation. It's not because those people weren't in that way. It's because there was no other avenue for them to seek justice. What do you see happening next? Do you see a path forward towards justice? I am an internal optimist. You cannot give up.

I hope that Ariel Lange would really try to bring a sense of calm and dialogue. Unfortunately, the way it was chosen by the international community, what they call the group of countries, those who sanctioned more years, who accepted all the country. the things he did are the ones who chose him. And there he has a lot of members of Maurice's cabinet in his own cabinet. So therefore, I hope they can be a new opening. I don't see how it's going to happen right now if this is continues right now, the way it is.

If there is justice, if they can find who the killers are in Haiti of the Provisident Jovdon Maurice, the Haitian government will not be able to bring them to justice, but the international community can because it is an international crime too because you have Colombians involved you have Americans we don't know who the backers are who finance it maybe you have international financing

for the crime if you can bring all these people to get a trial either here or outside of Haiti then you can begin to have rebuilding civil society and building trust in the population but if it goes like all the other then still the crisis is going to continue.

Do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share before we go? You know, the situation is so chaotic and the gangs killing people at random. Yeah. You might go out shopping and then you get killed. You know, it's a just, you know, I hope you never live in a situation where you hear a gunshot. You cannot call the police station

because it's a police that's shooting people. And you don't want to call them because you don't want to let them know where you are so that they don't come after you. So, you know, I live that situation in Haiti after the coup when I still had the coup in 1991 where they were going door to door, going after people from La Valaas,

and I had to go into hiding, leaving my family in Haiti, my two young sons and my wife, not knowing what would happen the next day. And you wake up every day, you hear people be caught, kill, their house is revoked into. So you don't know where to turn.

It's really, you know, I can feel like what happened in Bosnia and other places in Rwanda, when they state is against you. So you have no protection at all. It's a scary situation. Francois, Pierre-Louis, thank you so much for joining me today. You're welcome. Thank you for inviting me again.