La cohérence du Bloc

« Convergence was formed as a broad group with help from IRI [International Republican Institute, un groupe basé à Washington]... it also includes former backers of the hated Duvalier family dictatorship and of the military officers who overthrew Aristide in 1991... The most determined of these men... express their desire to see the U.S. military intervene once again... to get rid of Aristide and rebuild the disbanded Haitian army... the CIA should train and equip Haitian officers exiled in the neighboring Dominican Republic so they could stage a comeback themselves» (Washington Post, February 2, 2001).

Incredibly, this is exactly what happened 3 years later, in February 2004 ! A group of thugs trained and equipped by the CIA, led by Guy Philippe and Louis-Jodel Chamblain, crossed the Haiti - Dominican Republic border and prepared the way for U.S. Marines to enter the Haitian President's residence and complete the regime change, discussed and planned years in advance.

All the while the Canadian Armed Forces secured the Toussaint Louverture Airport to facilitate the U.S. Marines' dirty work.

Abandon this Neocolonial Adventure!, Jean St.Vil, 24 décembre 2005

Le Bloc Québécois serait anti-colonialiste pour les québécois, mais colonialiste pour les haïtiens? Yves Engler écrit:

[...] supposedly "left-wing" groups based in Quebec share a political analysis with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. While the Bloc asks questions about CIA "torture" planes landing in Canada, the separatist party criticizes the NDP for using the word "removal" to describe what happened on Feb. 29, 2004 to Haiti's elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

In a recent meeting of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Bloc MP Pierre Paquette insisted the NDP's Alexa McDonough use the word "departure" instead. This is also the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs Pierre Pettigrew and U.S. President George W. Bush. Removal is the word preferred by Haiti's neighbours in the Caribbean community (Caricom) and the African Union. Both organizations have called or inquiries into Aristide's ouster and have refused to recognize the interim government.

A Bloc MP who met with members of the Montreal Haiti Action Committee refused to see the irony of agreeing with the Bush administration on Haiti; Rice went out of her way recently in Ottawa to praise Canada's role on the island nation. Willing to condemn the U.S. war in Iraq, the Bloc remains silent on Canadian "aid" that for three years went almost exclusively to NGOs opposed to the Haitian government and now flows to groups who ignore the human rights disaster that has resulted from the overthrow of the president and thousands of other elected officials. Neither the Bloc nor the Conservatives have asked the government why the deputy minister of "justice" for the first 15 months of the interim government, Philippe Vixamar, was on CIDA's payroll for four years until July 2005.

How bad are the current human rights and social conditions in Haiti? On Aug.20, machete-wielding men, protected by Haitian National Police, chopped to death as many as 50 spectators in a crowd of 5,000 at a soccer game paid for by USAID in a poor Port au Prince neighbourhood. After UN "peacekeepers" attacked a "gang" leader in a Port au Prince slum, Ali Besnaci, head of Doctors Without Borders in Haiti, aid: "We received 27 people wounded by gunshots on July 6. Three quarters were children and women." 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."

On pourrait demander à Yves Engler quelle est la cohérence d'un lobby anti-colonialiste oeuvrant in english only à Montréal. Ceci dit, sa position est correcte et aux prochaines élections je voterai spécifiquement pour May Chiu, et non pour le Bloc.