Open Forum Between a Sharp Tongue and a Blind Eye: The Politics of Criticism and Propagada
Reeves, Tom & Leech, Garry M.
I. The Crackdowns in Cuba and Colombia The Bush administration's propaganda machine has taken advantage of Fidel Castro's recent crackdown on his country's dissident movement by cranking...
...His enraged friends found Brignol Lindor in the street...
...We cannot provide new jobs, because those with the money to invest will not invest-and that's a vicious circle because of their propaganda against us, and the refusal of the World Bank and the IMF and IDB to make good on their promises, all of this because of the U.S...
...The responsibility of shedding light on human rights abuses in countries allied with Washington has been left to non-governmental organizations such as the CPJ, which has reported: "The [Colombian] government's failure to prosecute these crimes perpetuates a climate of impunity that leaves the media wide open to violence and has led many journalists to go into exile...
...The offending media outlet can also be shut down...
...Lindor was a Convergence supporter with a weekly radio show...
...It is easy from the outside to bewail Aristide's failures...
...Meanwhile, human rights groups and the media closely watch and scrutinize the government, but seem to ignore the opposition...
...Rights groups are absolutely correct to monitor abuses by police, government and the FL party-and such abuses certainly exist-yet those same human rights groups refuse to monitor political violence against FL or its affiliates...
...interests and international financial institutions, the entrenched prerogatives of the elite and its corruption of the political class, and the rapidly rising expectations of the people and their champions among the intellectuals and the NGOs...
...Indeed, constant criticism of the Aristide government may be giving support to U.S...
...On May 7, Dominican police arrested five Haitians, including the former Cap Haitien Mayor, at a meeting near the Dominican-Haitian border, which they say was a recruitment session for a planned attempt to overthrow the Haitians line up f Haitian government...
...According to human rights groups, right-wing paramilitary death squads are responsible for the huge majority of these killings...
...soldiers patrol with the Dominican army...
...He doesn't conform-he's not politically and economically correct...
...We have to put a stop to the national pastime of plotting and coups...
...Of course, "democracy" is sometimes a code word for "U.S...
...Aristide is absent-we just don't know where he is," a young man named Wesner, a former Famni Lavalas (FL) supporter in Cap Haitien told me...
...Another woman, Elitane Atelis, a member of Women Victims of Military Violence, expresses a deeper suspicion of U.S...
...Noriega sees Article 20 as a formula for intervention...
...Under the military, I would be shot...
...The Colombian president has been pushing a counterterrorism bill through that country's congress that calls for eight to 12 years in prison for anyone who publishes an article considered to be "counterproductive to the fight against terrorism," or whom the government deems is "boosting the position or image of the enemy...
...Republican Party...
...Dr...
...Neither the mainstream media nor the numerous public petitions condemning the arrests of the Cuban dissidents and the executions of three ferry hijackers have called the Bush administration to task for its selective parading of human rights principles...
...Paul Farmer, a prominent public health figure, works with Haitian AIDS patients-there are an estimated 300,000-at his rural clinic at Cange...
...more than 20 were forced to leave their region or the country...
...Brian Concannon is a U.S...
...And all sides have noted the military build-up along the Dominican border, where according to the Miami Herald, 900 U.S...
...One cannot, however, ignore the fact that Cuba's crackdown occurred within the context of ongoing aggressive U.S...
...Duverger is almost never mentioned...
...government...
...My criticism of reporting on these cases is that the complexity and history are ignored, and only one side of the struggle comes out...
...The Convergence is the official Haitian opposition, recognized as such by the Organization of American States and the U.S...
...An FL supporter, Joseph Duverger, was attacked by a machete-wielding, pro-Convergence mob, and left for dead...
...The Failings of Aristide BY TOM REEVES imes are hard in Haiti...
...Until that happens, there will be misery and hunger and inequality...
...The name of one of them, Luis Eduardo Alfonso, had appeared on a death list issued by the right-wing paramilitary organization, United SelfDefense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which is closely allied with the U.S.-backed Colombian military...
...Neptune defends limited privatizations: "On privatization, under both Preval and Aristide, we have managed to limit the firms we sold off to the two most unprofitable, concrete and flour...
...He is also author of Killing Peace: Colombia's Conflict and the Failure of U.S...
...It is surprising, however, that so many prominent progressive intellectuals in the United States have signed petitions condemning Cuba without criticizing the Bush administration's strategy of using the crackdown on dissidents to politicize human rights...
...Last year alone, 184 Colombian unionists were killed, more than in the rest of the world combined...
...policies-including the ongoing economic embargothat have targeted the island for more than 40 years...
...Now the opposition says, 'Let's do it again!' By bringing back the military whom the U.S...
...When was it not so...
...Take Venezuela, what is happening with Chavez is, I would say, quite telling, so it gives you a pretty clear idea why President Aristide has been going through so much...
...What we need more than a new government, is a responsible opposition...
...It consists mostly of "particules," or tiny political parties...
...But who could govern in this atmosphere, squeezed by the enormous power of U.S...
...money directly funds opposition-including violent opposition-to democratically elected governments...
...government has a chronic allergy to Haitian democracy," and that "without social and economic rights, political rights have no soil to grow in...
...In total, more than 116 journalists have been killed in Colombia during the past 15 years...
...Intervention...
...Aristide has gone ahead with U.S.-supported "free trade zones" on the Dominican border, working with the Dominican conglomerate Grupo M. According to Prime Minister Neptune, the Free Trade Zone agreement is part of a deal to allow debt reduction for both Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
...Last year in Colombia, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), "Eight journalists or media assistants were killed...
...Such 'structural violence,' which has been perpetrated from above and without, will be reflected in local violence...
...Of course," he says, "there should be protection for journalists...
...When local political violence against government critics occurs, little or no media coverage reflects previous or subsequent violence against FL members...
...and eight attacks or attempted attacks by means of explosives were reported...
...Secretary of State Colin Powell met with President Uribe in Bogotd in December 2002 there was no criticism of the Colombian military's escalating human rights abuses and close ties to paramilitary death squads...
...State Department statements strongly condemning Cuba for its recent actions, when U.S...
...Concannon says, "In Gonaives, as elsewhere, such incidents stem from long-standing feuds between neighborhoods or families-originating long before Aristide...
...But you don't have a single political issue or an issue of values, just personal rivalries on the local level...
...human rights attorney with the Bureau of International Advocates (BAI), a group of international and Haitian lawyers sponsored by the Haitian government to assist the judiciary with human rights cases...
...There is convincing evidence of coup planning in Haiti, and of ongoing violence by former military with Convergence complicity...
...This mostly military aid is up from $300 million in 2002...
...Most Haitians I have spoken toworkers, peasants, intellectuals, activists-severely criticized Haiti's government for inaction at best and rampant corruption at worst...
...The notion of a leftist regime next to Cuba, creating a wedge of anti-capitalist initiative right in the U.S...
...Interests Section...
...wenty-eight of the jailed Cuban dissidents were journalists...
...He is among those who believe the Haitian government must be supported at once in its demands for the release of international aid...
...Concannon argues that the necessary nuances are missing in international coverage of Haiti...
...It is obvious hypocrisy to label Cuba the region's worst human rights offender while providing hundreds of millions of dollars in annual military aid to the Colombian Armed Forces who, in addition to their own abuses, are closely allied with murderous right-wing paramilitary death squads...
...policies that seek to isolate, censure and possibly remove Haiti's elected president from office...
...Article 20, he said, "lays out a series of actions to be taken...in the event that a member state should fail to uphold the essential elements of democratic life...
...created for the express purpose of oppressing the Haitian people...
...As U.S...
...Local leaders--like oldtime U.S...
...Appalling as this may be, it pales in comparison to the Colombian government's record regarding the ongoing slaughter of journalists in that nation...
...motives...
...Such violence often takes place in rural areas as in Petit Goave in the south, and in Gonaives where massacres of Aristide sympathizers occurred during the last military coup...
...A Haitian poet-for years a staunch champion of Aristide-went further: "Aristide is the smallest man I've met," he said, "the most ignorant president we've had...
...We got rid of a real tyrant, Duvalier, but it took us four years to get even minimal stability...
...His "diagnosis" of the problem is that the "U.S...
...demonization of Cuba...
...While we all have a responsibility to condemn human rights abuses everywhere, it is just as important that we reprimand our own government for distorting the region's human rights reality in order to achieve its political objectives...
...Lindor is in every human rights report [as one of the murdered journalists...
...President Chdvez and 0 or food handouts in Port au Prince...
...To the contrary, Secretary Powell announced that the United States would provide Colombia with $573 million in aid for 2003...
...Nobody is running the country...
...But many don't...
...When I saw Himmler leading the demonstration by the Convergence last November, I was really scared...
...policies toward Haiti to those in Venezuela and Cuba...
...On March 10, the Cuban government requested that Cason stop making provocative statements and organizing meetings with Cuban dissidents...
...President Aristide have...contributed willfully to a polarized and confrontational environment," he added...
...But you can't expect miracles when you have a justice system that has never been either swift or fair, and when you have all the institutions in the society under siege, and all the promised international aid and resources to help the system blocked by the international community...
...Army Special Forces troops are currently operating as part of Washington's global "war on terror...
...The Convergence was a product of "Democracy Enhancement" undertaken by the International Republican Institute in Haiti-tied to the U.S...
...During March, the same month as Cuba's crackdown, three Colombian journalists were assassinated...
...And risky as it is to work as a journalist in Colombia, trade unionists find themselves in an even more perilous position...
...They complained bitterly of a lack of direction...
...interests...
...Aristide and his weak government are easy targets...
...At least now, I can sit here with my friends and complain...
...It's the army I really despise," he says...
...On April 3, State Department spokesman, Philip T. Reeker, declared: "The Castro regime's actions are the most despicable act of political repression in the Americas in a decade...
...There has also been no comment from the Bush White House on recent efforts by the Uribe administration to increase censorship of the media in Colombia as part of the "war on terror...
...Following the arrests and sentencing of 75 dissidents and Cuba's re-election to the UN Human Rights Commission, Washington's ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council, Sichan Siv, pointedly stated that Washington views "Cuba as the worst violator of human rights in this hemisphere...
...Perhaps the starkest example of the double standard by human rights groups and media, Concannon says, "was coverage of the opposition attack on the National Palace in December 2001...
...How can you rebuild Haiti without massive resources...
...There is no question that the outrage against the Castro government is justified: The brevity of the closed trials of the 75 dissidents, the apparent lack of due process, the excessive sentences of six to 28 years for political dissidence and, perhaps above all, the summary executions of the three ferry hijackers, are all outrageous and worthy of condemnation...
...I. The Crackdowns in Cuba and Colombia The Bush administration's propaganda machine has taken advantage of Fidel Castro's recent crackdown on his country's dissident movement by cranking up the ever-present U.S...
...The FL group killed him...
...While the Bush administration is eager to point out the Cuban government's repression of opposition members in order to demonize the Castro regime, it is again conspicuously silent regarding the ongoing massacre of Colombian unionists critical of their government...
...Never mind that both presidents were elected democratically...
...intentions...
...But he was even more critical of the opposition: "Aristide must stay and finish his term," he argued...
...His criticism is echoed by Wesner, the young man from Cap Haitien...
...You'd think that progressive observers, at least, would make this connection...
...The aptly named Himmler is Himmler Rebu, a former army officer involved in several previous coup attempts...
...embargo...
...determination to be rid of Aristide: "We want to develop relations with nations like Cuba, to find ways not only of surviving, but how to live with globalization and not be drowned or enslaved by it...
...As Washington's concern for human rights in Cuba is broadcast around the world, there has been no official comment from Washington on a UN Human Rights report issued in March noting that the U.S.-backed Colombian military's direct involvement in human rights Garry M. Leech is editor of the online journal Colombia Report, <wwwcolom- biareport.org>, and founder of the Information Network of the Americas...
...The much-maligned government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide has made precious little headway against the spiraling costs of basic items like rice and gas, an ever devalued national currency, an unemployment rate of about 70% and an average wage equivalent to $1 a day for those lucky enough to find work...
...abuses escalated last year and that "many of these actions were carried out as part of the new [President Alvaro Uribe] government's security policy...
...Yet she added, "the Haitian people own that store...
...Most Haitians I have spoken with, no matter how critical they may be of Aristide, are wary of U.S...
...backyard must enrage the Bush team, which includes Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte and Otto Reich, all of whom were deeply involved in the Iran-Contra scandal and committed interventionists...
...Washington made it clear that "normalization" with regard to international aid was dependent on Haiti's cooperation in the plan...
...Prime Minister Yvon Neptune explained this key element in the U.S...
...ward bosses-or gang leaders will take a political side...
...Meanwhile, Haiti is trapped in a neoliberal box...
...Alas, for the poor, the lives of hundreds of thousands hang in the balance...
...Cason ignored the Cuban government's request and organized another meeting of dissidents at his residence only two days later...
...He has also traveled throughout Cuba to meet with opposition groups and to hand out thousands of short-wave radios that provide Cubans with access to Radio Marti, the anti-Castro station based in Miami...
...Some U.S...
...More than three thousand labor leaders have been killed in Colombia over the past 15 years without a single culprit being brought to justice...
...Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, speaking just after Colin Powell at an April 28 conference of the Council of the Americas in Washington, linked U.S...
...Two of the ten journalists on the list have been killed and the other eight have fled the department of Arauca, which has left no journalists to report on Colombia's most hotly contested region-a region in which U.S...
...Of course there is great poverty in Haiti," says the Prime Minister...
...Washington is more comfortable with the Caribbean of travel brochures than with a region trying to forge a viable and independent economy...
...On that same day, armed men attacked and disabled the largest electrical plant in the country, killing two workers, in what many see as the beginning of a concerted attempt to destabilize and overthrow the government...
...It is not surprising that the mainstream media has once again served as the mouthpiece for the administration with regard to obediently demonizing the White House's foreign target of the month...
...A peasant woman, a heavy load of laundry on her head, told me, "If the store fails, the manager should get out of the business...
...U II...
...They range from Maoists to Macoute rightists and free market liberals-united only in their desire to oust Aristide...
...In sharp contrast to U.S...
...While the Bush administration has focused the human rights spotlight on Cuba, it has ignored the repressive conditions under which journalists in Colombia are forced to work...
...Every Haitian baby knows the game Bush is playing," she told me, referring to a widespread Haitian perception that Washington is out to destabilize the Aristide regime...
...diplomatic mission in Havana, James Cason, has repeatedly met with opposition activists inside the U.S...
...Let us decide when he should go...
...He congratulated the OAS for overcoming its "irrelevance in past years" by adopting the Inter-American Democratic Charter...
...FL is the Party built by Aristide when he split with another faction in his Lavalas"cleansing flood" movement...
...aid props up the hemisphere's worst human rights abusers, the Bush administration distorts the regional human rights reality in order to fulfill its own political agenda...
...The chief of the U.S...
...citizens might find it surprising that U.S...
...around 60 were kidnapped, threatened or physically attacked...
Vol. 37 • July 2003 • No. 1
