U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, Brian Dean Curran, verbally slapped the Haitian government across the face twice this week, provoking anger among sovereignty-coveting Haitians throughout this Caribbean nation and its diaspora.
The provocative remarks, issued in two separate interviews, come just over a month after the Haitian government assured its people that $500,000 in loans blocked by Washington would soon be released following the adoption of Organization of American States (OAS) Resolution 822 on Sep. 4. But Curran‚s criticism leaves little doubt that such optimism is misplaced.
Furthermore, last week, David Lee, the Canadian OAS special representative to Haiti, scolded the Haitian government that there "is still much to do" in implementing Res. 822, in particular the round-up and disarmament of government supporters who ransacked opposition homes and headquarters on Dec. 17, 2001, following an assassination attempt on President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Lee called the pursuit of Dec. 17 rioters outlined last month in a Haitian Justice Ministry preliminary report"fictitious" and reminded the government that its treasury-emptying compensation of opposition leaders with millions of gourdes "is not yet completed."
In a long Oct. 11 interview on Radio Kiskeya, Curran brazenly stomped on diplomatic etiquette and accused the government of lying, drug trafficking, and bad faith.
"There are police officers involved in drug trafficking," he told Kiskeya‚s anchor Lilianne Pierre-Paul. Then, like a colonial proconsul, he continued: "We have to restructure the institution. We know these people, and the government knows their names."
He should know those people. For six years after the force was formed in 1995, the U.S. government was responsible for the design, selection, formation, equipping, and training of the Haitian National Police (PNH), which Curran now condemns. Like police forces in the U.S., it has been plagued by corruption and brutality. The PNH replaced the Haitian Army, which was dissolved by Aristide in 1995.
On three occasions throughout the interview, Curran repeated "We must restructure the police," a brazen re-meddling in Haitian internal affairs.
"Such comments illustrate just how compromised our independence has become under the current government," noted Ben Dupuy, secretary general of the National Popular Party (PPN). "Such declarations by a foreign diplomat in most other countries would have caused him to be declared Œpersona non grata.‚"
In the interview, Curran also expressed his dissatisfaction with the results of Operation Hurricane II, the second large-scale joint operation on Haitian soil between Haiti‚s Office of Fighting Against Drug Trafficking (BLTS) and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
PNH spokesman Jean Dady Siméon called the operation as success, saying it resulted in the seizure of drugs and several arrests. But Curran scoffed at these assertions. "They did not seize any drugs, no drugs at all," he said. "I don‚t understand the police spokesman‚s declaration... It is not true."
Washington now estimates that 15% of the drugs coming into the U.S. from South American transit through Haiti, up from 13% last year, according to Curran. "So the amount of drugs passing through Haiti is growing, not diminishing," he said.
Such estimates contradict those recently made by President Aristide to a Dominican daily "El Diario Libre" that since Feb. 7, 2001 the percentage of U.S.-bound drugs passing through Haiti has dropped from 14% to 9%.
In another interview on Oct. 11 with the Associated Press, Curran said: "When you have the press threatened, bad elections, and impunity instead of the rule of law, democracy is threatened." This was the reason Haiti was only invited as an observer to the Washington-sponsored Community of Democracy meeting of Western Hemisphere nations in Seoul, South Korea in November, he said. Also, Cuba was not invited.
As usual, the response of Aristide‚s Lavalas Family party (FL) to Curran‚s remarks was timid. "The ambassador of the United States knows perfectly well that we do not have a magic wand and that we are doing our best to apply Resolution 822," said Culture Minister Lilas Desquiron.
Communication Secretary Mario Dupuy clumsily tried to turn the tables on Curran, as if it was just battle of wits. "Remember that as early as 1994, the president of the Republic wanted to undertake a disarmament campaign in the country and even requested the international community‚s support which he didn‚t receive," he said.
The brouhaha occurs just as the government declared this "Week of the Emperor" in honor of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the father of Haiti‚s 1804 independence. He was assassinated in an ambush at Pont Rouge 196 years ago on Oct. 17. For the commemoration, the government announced that it plans to spruce up Jean-Jacques Dessalines Boulevard, the capital‚s dusty, crumbling, exhaust-coated central avenue.
Not surprisingly, the Washington-backed Democratic Convergence opposition coalition applauded both Curran‚s statements and those of Peter DeShazo, the current U.S. representative at the OAS, who last week called on Aristide‚s government to produce a final report on the Dec. 17 events and to arrest and disarm his supporters involved in the ransacking. "We think that the stand taken by Mr. Peter [DeShazo] is positive," said the Convergence‚s Paul Denis, "and we are waiting to see if the U.S. government will remain in support of the positions on Res. 822 articulated by Peter DeShazo as well as by the U.S. ambassador."
Meanwhile, the PPN in conjunction with several progressive popular organizations and unions is planning a giant march in the northern city of Cap Haïtien on Oct. 17 to protest the subservience of both the FL and Convergence to Washington, the crackdown on striking unionists in Guacimal, the sale to a U.S.-controlled corporation of 1875 square kilometers of Haitian territory along the Dominican border, and the fleecing of thousands of small depositors by government-endorsed fly-by-night banks, among other issues.
"We want to recapture the anti-imperialist, Dessalinien ideals which the Haitian people embraced in 1990 but which today the Lavalas Family and the Convergence have betrayed in order to beg for scraps from Washington‚s table," said PPN‚s Ben Dupuy. "With our mobilizations, we are showing that, despite the efforts of opportunists, the popular movement will not be buried and is ready now to build a new alternative."
