The unpalatable truth is that Haiti just does not matter very much.

A very interesting article on the continuing fallout stemming from the recent US orchestrated coup in Haiti. It offers a seldom seen window into the problems affecting the beleaguered island nation. The title of this post unfortunately is the painful truth. The people of Haiti suffer constantly as the victims of international neglect, rarely discussed in the mainstream news reports and then only when a change of government takes place or the UN is sent in to restore order, the quiet tragedy continues unabated. I have traveled through Haiti working on relief aid projects sponsored by the United Methodist Church, I have helped build schools and wells, etc.. You can't begin to understand the island until you travel there and witness it first hand, I urge all Americans to go there, it probably wont be a fun vacation but it could very well change your life and the way in which you view the world.

Faking Genocide in Haiti
Canada’s Role in the Persecution of Yvon Neptune
by Kevin Skerrett
June 23, 2005

The US, Canada, and France-backed coup d’état that overthrew Haiti’s elected President on February 29, 2004 put an end to almost ten years of constitutional democratic government in that country. Ostensibly, the removal of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was an expression of the “international community’s” desire to “re-establish democracy” in Haiti. But having seen similar rationales used to justify support for an attempted coup in Venezuela in 2002 (as part of a long-term and continuing destabilization program there), observers of US, French, and Canadian intentions in Haiti are well advised to examine what has happened there – both prior to and following the 2004 coup – with an especially critical and skeptical eye.

Such a critical eye now finds a growing number of very credible and well-documented human rights reports revealing that the human rights situation in this desperately poor country has now completely unraveled. The unelected post-coup “Interim Government of Haiti” (IGH), backed by Canada, the US, and France, is now carrying out what many observers have referred to as a low-grade civil war of repression. Hundreds of political killings have been reported, as well as summary police executions, more than 700 political prisoners held without charge in Haitian jails, and court decisions exonerating the convicted paramilitaries and killers who carried out the first visible phase of the coup. All of this has followed Haiti’s “coup for human rights”.

In the midst of these countless tragedies, one particular human rights case has attracted more attention than any other since the coup – the case of Haiti’s most famous political prisoner, the constitutional (now former) Prime Minister Yvon Neptune. Neptune turned himself in to police on June 27, 2004 upon hearing that a warrant had been issued for his arrest accusing him of responsibility for what some opponents had referred to as a “genocide” during the violence in Haiti preceding the February 29 coup.

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