Thursday, December 29, 2005

Haiti Quebec's Shame

Yves Engler, Paul Maritn heckler, the writer and director of a film critical of Canada's role in the coup de dat on Aristide in Haiti has an excellent column in today's Toronto Star. The Bloc and Liberals align on Haiti policy

In an earlier article I refered to Haiti as Canada's colony, perhaps the actual term should be Quebecs colony. As Engler says;


Reuters and Associated Press have reported numerous police killings of
unarmed protesters over the past 18 months. On June 28, UN Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, described the situation in Cap Haitien, the country's second largest city, as worse than that in Sudan's devastated Darfur region.
More recently, Thierry Faggart, director of the human rights section for the UN mission in Haiti, admitted that the post-coup human rights situation is "catastrophic."
Yet Canadian-funded NGOs working in Haiti (largely based in Quebec) who criticized the Aristide
government and called for his removal remain curiously silent on the abysmal record of the interim government.
Officials from the Quebec Federation of Labour blocked a resolution originating in English-Canada union locals criticizing Canada's role in Haiti at the Canadian Labour Congress's annual
convention in June.
Even Quebec-based Alternatives, a "progressive" news organization that receives CIDA funding for work in Haiti, effectively supports the Liberal government despite growing grassroots opposition to Canada's
shameful role in Haiti.
Why are the Bloc and Quebec "left" organizations siding with what has been described as "Canadian imperialism" in Haiti? Could it be the numerous Quebec-based companies that do business there? Or the diaspora that sent many members of the Haitian elite to Montreal? Or the fact that the Aristide government promoted the Creole language at the expense of French?



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