Asim Rafiqui

In early 2005 I traveled to Haiti and found a reality that did not reflect what I had been led to believe. I witnessed an ongoing campaign of violence and repression by Haiti’s current leaders, installed by the USA and France, to eliminate the still vastly popular Lavalas (pro-Aristide) movement and its supporters. Hundreds of Lavalas activists lie without charges in jail while hundreds of others have been killed while protesting in the streets or during Haitian National Police (HNP) raids into strongly pro-Aristide neighborhoods (1).
Entire communities suspected of pro-Aristide leanings have been surrounded by UN (MINUSTAH) and HNP checkpoints and the residents denied services like water and electricity (2).
And yet both the USA and France have stood firmly behind the “interim” government. Recently the USA decided to restart economic and military aid to this government. This is in sharp contrast to its attitude towards the democratically elected President Aristide whom it placed under economic sanctions in 1995 and then worked tirelessly to topple by funding and courting his opponents. The sanctions withheld nearly $500 million from one of the poorest nations in the western hemisphere and caused severe social and economic devastation in the country. At the same time the US government provided financial and political support to Aristide’s opponents and even arranged conferences in neighboring Dominican Republic for Aristide's opponents to meet those from Washington who shared similar political views. As Amy Wilentz, a journalist with extensive experience in Haiti, wrote: “In a country... where the military has been disbanded for nearly a decade, soldiers don't simply emerge... they have to be reorganized, retrained and resupplied... and someone has to organize [them].” (3)
Today the “interim” government consists of a cabal of a business-industrialist elite that has set about dismantling the social and political institutions that Aristide had implemented during his rule. Many of these men were once part of the brutal Duvalier regime and are now back dressed as the new democrats. MINUSTAH has been given a “peacekeeping” task for which it appears undermanned and unprepared. Meanwhile it has become a collaborator in the ongoing campaign of repression (4).
And yet, further pressure is being put on MINUSTAH to use greater force, compelling the Commander of the UN forces, General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro, to complain that "we are under extreme pressure from the international community to use violence. I command a peacekeeping force, not an occupation force.” (5)
With elections planned in October/November of 2005, the “interim” government is determined that the “democracy” Haiti gets is one that it and its international supporters want. What kind of “democracy” can we expect from a group that ousted a sitting democratically elected President? We will have to wait and see. The images being shown at Visa pour l’Image-Perpignan document how Haiti’s new “democracy” is being constructed at the point of a gun. These images are part of a long-term project to document the issues behind Haiti’s continuing agony and its people’s struggle for democracy and social justice.

1 Haiti Human Rights Investigation, University of Miami School of Law, 2004

2 Keeping the Peace in Haiti? Harvard Law School, Clinical Advocacy Group, 2005

3 Amy Wilentz, The Nation, March 4th & April 9th, 2004

4 Keeping the Peace in Haiti? Harvard Law School, Clinical Advocacy Group, 2005

5 Haiti’s Transition: Hanging in the Balance, International Crisis Group, 2005