On July 29th, the Commander of the Canadian Forces contingent in Haiti, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Davis, acknowledged to a well-attended media teleconference call that at least 1,000 people had been killed in Port-au-Prince since February 29th. He also acknowledged that occupying forces took part in a massacre of between 40 to 60 Lavalas civilians in the neighbourhood of Belair on March 12th.
Neither of these events merited mention in subsequent news reports. On the contrary, the Toronto Star headline read “Haiti mission called success: shops open, children smiling.” This is consistent with other illusions presented to the Canadian public to characterize the performance of Canadian Forces in Haiti. On July 29, new Minister of Defence Bill Graham said, ominously, “Our mission in Haiti was instrumental in bringing peace and stability to this troubled country.”
The reality of the March 12th massacre Davis described is much different from that which was reported at the time. Davis said “I'm not denying that these things have taken place. The US battalion the five previous evenings had taken ambush attacks. . . . You need to appreciate what the [US] battalion was attempting to do, what it came here to do. . . . It was chaotic on a night to night basis. . . . Within a matter of days we had clamped down on things.”
The mainstream reports about the evening of March 12th only mentioned a mere “two people slain by American troops” (Truro Daily News, March 13, 2004). According to a US Marine, “The two men killed late Friday during a patrol had previously fired on the soldiers, although their weapons were never discovered.” According to witnesses, however, “the dead were bystanders,” and “those killed were not armed or militant.” The brother of one of the deceased revealed, “He was playing basketball when the Americans and French began firing.” Later, it was reported in the National Post that “residents said as many as 11 people were killed in the cross-fire.”
Many people including eyewitnesses told the Quixote Center Emergency Observation delegation to Haiti, March 23 to April 2nd, that as many as 70 people were slain on March 12 during the events that were described to the delegation as the “Belair Massacre.” Even anti-Aristide people, such as the Democratic Convergence's Camille Chalmers(1), told the delegation to pay particular attention to human rights abuses by the occupying forces. Chalmers spoke of “some 60 people” being killed on March 12th in Belair.
While US Marines are “officially” implicated in the deaths of two people it is unclear as to who carried out the rest of the killings. The French were cited in official follow-up reports and eyewitnesses repeatedly asserted that were present on March 12th, with laser-guided machine-guns blazing, night-goggles, and APCs. Since Colonel Davis is so familiar with the events of March 12th, the question of whether or not Canadian troops were involved in the massacre merits serious scrutiny.
A small contingent of Canadian troops had arrived earlier that evening and it is possible that they could have taken part in the invasion. What requires further scrutiny, however, is the whereabouts of Joint Task Force Two [JTF2] soldiers on this evening, as they were indeed in Haiti on March 12th.
Despite Defence department denials regarding their presence in Haiti, Canada's secret commandoes were photographed on March 3 rd in that country, and they were “armed to the teeth,” equipped with lightweight laser-guided machine guns and plenty of ammunition. This revelation clarified that it was JTF2 forces that were sent down to “secure the embassy” on February 25th, four days before the coup. It might also account for the RDI report on the night of Aristide's overthrow, that Canadian troops were present at the airport when Aristide was flown to the Central African Republic. The RDI report was quickly retracted and the presence of Canadian forces during Aristide's overthrow were denied and have never since been investigated. The Ottawa Citizen's David Pugliese confirmed that the JTF2 was in Haiti until at least March 18th, and has written extensively about how JTF2 activities are always shrouded in secrecy.
What is clear about the March 12 massacre is that the rest of the people killed were piled into “ambulances that the soldiers had brought with them” and carted away (another fact not denied by Davis). The consensus amongst Haitian eyewitnesses who have come forward is that this event would never have been reported had residents of Belair been unable to secretly remove the two bodies from the murder spree crime scene.
When reporters were alerted as to the events the next morning, all but two of the bodies had vanished and the official word was that only two people were killed.
This account doesn't even wash with that of Pierre Esperrance, head of the US and Haitian elite-backed human rights group, the National Coalition for Haitian Rights [NCHR]. Esperrance admitted during a recent interview that his office had confirmed at least four of the deaths in Belair on March 12th. His office refused to investigate the massacre until over a month after it took place, admitting that the people in Belair did not even trust the NCHR to do so.
Not coincidentally, the Belair Massacre also took place in the context of an announced US military intention to “actively disarm” Lavalas militants, according to US General Hill's declaration on March 11th.
The questions posed to Davis were also in the context of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti human rights report, released on July 19th. Many gruesome photos and extensive details reveal clearly the systematic persecution of Aristide and Lavalas supporters since the February 29th coup. Covering only the Port au Prince and Central Plateau areas, the IJDH report accounts for over one thousand deaths. Relative to the overall estimated body count of over 3000, the IJDH report only accounts for a “tiny fraction of the violations committed during the period covered.”
Davis called into question the credibility and validity of the report which he admits to having seen “parts of,” claiming, “photographs can be produced, doctored.” Director of the IJDH, the well-respected human and civil rights attorney Brian Concannon, said in response: “If the Canadian Colonel was right in that all of these stories were fake, that in fact all those disappeared people are alive and well, that all the decapitated bodies are really faked photographs, that would make my day, because that would be a lot fewer people who are suffering from persecution. But the reality is that very good information shows that there is this widespread persecution.”
There are many other questions outstanding as to Canada's role in the planning and execution of the illegal regime change of a popular and democratically-elected leader (and over 7,000 other elected officials), and the subsequent politicide that is being carried out to silence the voices of the Haitian masses while paving the way for so-called “free and fair elections.” The general silence toward these realities across Canada's political spectrum must be broken, these realities must be exposed publicly, and a full inquiry into these horrific matters must take place. |
