Category: Haiti Post-Coup

Haiti’s democracy was overthrown in 2004 and hasn’t been restored since.

Aristide’s return

For the seven years since he was overthrown in a coup in February 2004 there have been many different speculations about why Aristide never returned to Haiti. People argued that his exile in South Africa was comfortable, that he had fled in 2004 out of fear for his life and didn’t return because of that same fear, that he was waiting for the moment when he could return to power.

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Is there some standard for evidence that we’ve discarded?

I’m working over some of the material I wrote and have never published – it’s one of my summer projects. There are quite a few projects that need a bit of work to push them over the edge. One of them has me revisiting my Haiti files. I have a pretty passive research method – stuff comes to me. The Canada Haiti Action Network (CHAN) for example, is an active community of people, among them very skilled researchers, constantly posting stuff on Haiti politics for years. Looking back at their archives is a pretty amazing exercise.

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Relief, Occupations and the Haiti Crisis (an event in Toronto)

I’ll be speaking with Dan Freeman-Maloy on Haiti in Toronto on Tuesday Feb 2.

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Relief, Occupations and the Haiti Crisis:
Canada/US policy and the regional response

with Justin Podur and Dan Freeman-Maloy

Tuesday, February 2
Centre for Social Justice
489 College St (W of Bathurst), Suite 303
7 – 9pm

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Limited Compassion for Haiti

Everyone agrees that the Haiti earthquake is a serious situation. Serious enough for the US to send thousands of Marines, to take over the airport, to suspend Haiti’s sovereignty and take over the operation. Serious enough to unify the bitter partisan divide and put Bush, Clinton, and Obama together to raise funds. Serious enough for benefit concerts and the invention of new forms of philanthropy, where people can donate through their cell phones. But the Haiti earthquake is apparently not all that serious:

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Fr. Jean Juste

As hard as I tried, I never managed to meet Fr. Jean Juste. I was in Haiti when he was a political prisoner of the coup government/UN regime. At that time, he was also a presidential candidate – the movement put him up while he was in jail. It was a good move, a tactic movements use with imprisoned leaders, to raise visibility and provide some protection. Even when the regime uses procedural tricks to prevent it from happening, as they did with Jean Juste. When I was there, Jean Juste was a contender and was actually the favourite, although his health problems were already known. He was accused of having weapons in his church, a story no one took seriously (His reply: “My rosary is my only weapon”).

In the event, he was allowed to leave prison for medical treatment in Miami, and continued to fight the charges against him from the US and from Haiti, where he returned. The charges were dropped, but not until years later (in 2008).

Despite all their efforts, Jean Juste outlived the coup government. He’ll be remembered as someone who stood strong, fighting cancer from prison because he wouldn’t give up his principles or his people. Haiti’s lost a champion, but not before giving to the world an example of courage, one of many Haiti’s given over the years.