Haitians Resist Foreign Intervention as U.S. Pushes for Unelected “Transition Council”

We begin today's program in Haiti, where deadly violence between armed groups and police continues and the PTO struts its stuff Tuesday. UN rights chief Vulker Turk deplored what he called the unprecedented scale of human rights abuses. In Haiti there has been a shocking increase in murders and kidnappings, sexual violence in particular. Targeting of women and girls is widespread and has most likely reached levels never seen before, as the number of internally displaced people now rises to more than 360,000, according to the data, as does an increased risk of sexual violence. as people are farther from their homes and communities.

The scale of human rights abuses is unprecedented in Haiti's modern history and has inflicted a humanitarian catastrophe on an already exhausted people. The spiral of political unrest in Haiti appears to have no end in sight. Recently resigned Prime Minister Ariel Enri, who remains excluded from Haiti by armed groups, raised questions this week about the constitutionality of a

transition

al

council

that is being formed to serve as an interim governing body until elections are scheduled. This comes as Canadian forces have been sent to Jamaica to train Jamaican Biz and Bahamian troops to join the unauthorized mission to Haiti led by Kenya Last week the UN Human Rights chief called for an arms embargo on Haiti calling The situation there is cataclysmic, most of the weapons that arrive in Haiti are smuggled from Florida and other parts of the United States.

For more, we are joined by two guests here in New York. Kim IES is with us, the editor of the English section of the weekly Haiti. liberté where she also co-directed the documentary series another vision and in Vancouver Canada Jima Pierre is a Haitian American professor at the Institute of Social Justice at the University of British Columbia in Canada and a research associate at the University of Johannesburg, we welcome them both back to democracy. Now, Professor Pierre, let's begin: can you lay out in general terms the situation right now in Haiti with a resigned president who cannot return to Haiti, are you condemning a

transition

al panel to govern Haiti um and uh this auto Caribbean group um led by Kenya um training to move into the so-called UN blue helmets good morning Amy, thanks for inviting me back, uh, what's going on?

In Haiti there are several armed groups, at first they came together to say they were working together as an informal coalition, but the violence has been mainly in the Porter Prince area and I have to emphasize that because Western media is presenting this as a Civil War National and so on, but there is some violence outside of Pter Prins, but most of the violence, gunshots are actually in the Pter Prince areas. mainly in and around the popular neighborhoods, and especially now, where you have some of these groups trying to take over parts you know, trying to have battles with the police, so that's the first and the second.

What we have to talk about then is this supposed Presidential Council that the United States is organizing and using CARICOM as a front party. CARICOM is the Caribbean community using CARICOM as a front party. Basically they say they have a supposedly Haitian solution for a transition in Haiti. The problem with that so-called H H solution is that it is the United States, France and Canada, who, as we have known before, are the main forces that have destabilized Haiti. uh at least in the last 20 years they are the ones who um lead the discussion we France Canada Brazil um leading the discussion together with the Caribbean Community um but as we said before, it is necessary that there be Haitian participation, they You have to accept that the Force of National Security multinational, multi uh, come in basically to be able to participate in this conversation.

You have to be okay with a

foreign

invasion, which in itself is a problem and basically tells us that the United States is controlling. The current situation of this

foreign

military force people will have to remember that it is not a Force it is not sanctioned, which is surprising, right? But it is a force that is coming with absolutely not even clear what its mandate is. There is a 33. Page P document that talks about the Security Force, but we don't know what you know what the rules of engagement will be, how we will prosecute, you know the inevitable war crimes that I think will happen when foreigners come. and shooting at a population, but the other thing is that Canada is training Jamaicans and Bahamians to go into a war zone and that in itself bodes ill for us in and for the people of Haiti and So I think This is a terrible situation in the sense that what is happening in Porter Prince is a result of weapons being brought into the country from the United States, the Dominican Republic to Jamaica, but the other thing is that whatever solution the United States is having It is a completely inadequate, unconstitutional and illegal solution and even the military force that the United States is trying to bring in we have to remember that they tried to get Brazil to be led by Canada to be led by everyone said no, um, that the Force itself is not constitutional because was asked by an AI of the illegitimate government of 2022, so it's a terrible situation, but I think the idea that this is a Haitian and that a haian leg solution is coming is actually false and misleading and, uh, professor Pier.

I wanted to ask you about this transitional Council. It's supposedly been going on for several weeks now and nothing seems to have come out of it. What is the decision-making of this Council even like? Is it so transparent? Is it done by consensus voting? Could you talk a little more about the advice? Well, we don't know much about the

council

. And it is not transparent. These are supposed to be negotiations between Kakam and especially the president of Guyana, um, um, who and you know who has been very belligerent. about these members of this community, um, the Haitians who elected to participate in this discussion, who have to accept this multinational mission, apparently they came up with this, you know, the council members have been elected, some people dropped out.

In terms of leadership, the council is made up of supposedly people elected by members of the American political class, the old political class that people don't really want anything to do with, but they are key members of that and there is infighting. uh among them, but recently I think a few days ago, the Guyana um president sent a letter to AO to get his permission to ratify this Transitional Council, which in turn should tell us everything we need to know about the fact of that this came to light. The illegal and illegitimate prime minister has to have a say in this transitional council, so I'm not sure they know that at the beginning they said they were giving them 48 hours to come up with a council that would allow this transition and the United States believes that is the case.

You need this Council to make it look like a military force coming into Haiti is legitimate, but I'm not sure how far we're going to go with that because I think for the Haitian people this is a completely dark process that takes ordinary people out of discussion, yes, I would like to bring Kim IES from 18 uh free um Kim, you recently helped an American, your personality there, Addison Pierre Maloof, uh, who was kidnapped, got his release. Could you talk about what? happened there and your idea of ​​what's happening in Haiti, yeah, uh, this was a YouTuber who came down and thought he was going to drive from Cap Haitien, where he flew to Port-au-Prince and interviewed Jimmy Sherier, known as barbecue uh and it was kidnapped on the road he spent 17 days in jail uh he paid a ransom or his family paid a ransom to some friends and once they paid they were not released the kidnappers wanted more and that's when they published the last On Friday, Dan Cohen, the co-director from another vision, and I saw this appear on the radar and immediately called Sher Z and told him what was happening.

I thought they were stopping, they were going to arrest the kidnappers and him. he said, let me move on, and a few days later, he managed to convince or pressure LaMore Sanu, the kidnapper, to release your fellow Arab, as this YouTuber is called, and yes, it was, I could say, a victory. for the Vivon Su Coalition that Sher Zer has formed, which are basically her anti-crime groups versus the former criminal groups that are supposed to be abandoning her, but as we can see, they're still kidnapping, can you talk more about going? go ahead Juan no no, I was just going to ask you about this issue of what we hear in the media is that these are all criminal gangs that are operating, but you have a different perspective on that and I wonder if you could give more details. about the distinctions that you've tried to make with some of these gang groups or these or these paramilitary groups really sure, completely, this is a revolutionary process that we're seeing unfold in Haiti.

These are basically armed neighborhood committees, some of them. They have followed a criminal path, others are fighting criminals and as a result, the United States is afraid of this because anti-criminal groups like Sher and they have a revolutionary agenda, they want to change the system in Haiti that they want to overthrow. and the United States marked him as a danger from the beginning. We have been investigating it carefully for the last four years and we have seen that, as far as we can see, it is a genuine article and they are always trying to demonize the Haitian people.

They did this a century ago, in 1915, when the heral charlatan organized what were also considered bandits at the time, the kacos, who had been sort of rural ruffians who would ride into Port-au-Prince and overthrow the government and that sort of thing, um. but he forged them into a guerrilla force that fought against the US Marine occupation in 1915, that landed, was in the country until 1934 and they were all called bandits, so they always have to demonize. I criminalize the

resist

ance of the people and that is what we are. watching today when they tried to put all the armed groups of the popular classes of Hades in a single bag called The Gangs Kim wanted to go to a documentary series that you did in 2022 called another Vision that tells the story of Jimmy Shier's barbecue and the Forces revolutionaries of the G9 family and their allies um, let's go to a clip yeah, sick dad, what do you have?

You have pain, pain in your leg, I can't even get up, you can't get up. You went to the hospital? Because? You go to the hospital I don't have money I don't have anything You don't have money to go to the hospital It's not okay I'm going to finish making this video to show the whole world the conditions you're living in This is a person born Aian with his hair up like a diaper, a boy with the same design as me, where a group of men took the country hostage and joined a group of politicians and reduced people to the misery they live in today, so that's barbecue jier talking to a man in a flooded area, very poor neighborhood, um, talk about why it got the name barbecue and what you see happening right now, um, it has like Professor Pierre was saying, uh, why is Ariel HRI intervening now if he had not resigned and It was Sherier who demanded along with the other armed groups that he not return and that he resign, yes, well, Sherier is the one responsible for keeping Ariel out after finally removing him from power, since almost all of Haiti had been demanding for the last uh 3 years um essentially just to get to your first question, he got the name barbecue because in his neighborhood growing up there were three jimmies and they gave each one the nickname of what his parents did and his mother sold roast beef, so it became Jimmy BBQ, but disinformation agents have said that it burns people alive and this kind of stuff.

They've been trying to demonize him the whole time, but this uprising is basically a threat to this political class that America has been using. Ariel Enri and they held on to him too long. It's hard to change horses when you're galloping down the path of uh toward disaster, so they were loathe to leave Ariel until it was absolutely necessary and that finally came on February 29 when Sher Zer more or less gathered all of the armed groups of pter Prince, even to the criminal groups he has been fighting for 4 years and basically said you can't land at the airports and the people in Okap which was the only other airport where Ariel could have landed also organized to block landing his plane there, so he was out.

The US had to change, but they created this seven-headed monster that everyone is shocked and all of its members have discredited themselves, completely disgraced themselves in transitional IL because they had to. accept a foreign military

intervention

now Haiti just ended a foreign military

intervention

just 5 years ago in 2019 it was the end of the minust that followed Minista 13 years of Minista, so it had 50 UN peacekeeping forces just the first after Arist was overthrown On the US side, the US installed the Mina, which again was a minor military forceprice to occupy Haiti for 13 years from 2004 to 2017 and then from 2017 to 19 they added a kind of Relaxation Force called minust, so 2019 is when minust.

He left and here we are, four years later, with the same problem. This is not a problem that can be solved with military force. It is a socio-economic problem, since Sher Zer always says that people need to eat, they need schools, hospitals, roads, sanitation, electricity. Internet need the basics of life and this is what he has been fighting for and this is the essence of any of these revolutions that we have seen throughout history, I mean the Bolsheviks made their revolution on the basis of the land, peace and bread, so people demand change and right now this political class, which is basically the oligarchy, was using criminal gangs to attack those who have been fighting for the last four years. now Sherer has taken them over or tried to bring them into some kind of alliance, we'll see how long it lasts.

It's a bit, you have to think like Maong with Shankai Sheek in the early 40s to expel the Japanese from China. He had to do it. They allied themselves with some of his bitterest enemies, but they were successful, so we'll see how far Vivon's UB Coalition goes. It's going to be a complicated process, as revolutions always are. Professor Pierre, I would like to know his opinion on the situation. and also Kim I's analysis that some of these armed groups have revolutionary or Pro potential or are attempting a revolution, well, the truth is, well, it's not the truth, but part of my, um, the reality is a lot. people, a lot of people, I haven't seen that, so part of this is a controversial shot of Kim, who I respect.

I think I'm actually much more agnostic about what's going on in terms of these weapons. groups and what they will end up doing in this um um in the future, but at this point a lot of people in the poor neighborhoods and so on see these armed groups as the groups that have really um really uh impacted their lives in the poor neighborhoods and not they see them as people who get weapons and money from the oligarch of the political elite and they don't necessarily make that distinction and so You know what I, so my point of view is you know if this is a revolution, we're waiting for it to actually come to fruition. , but in the meantime what is happening is that many people are being displaced. and what are they are um that they are seeing that their biggest f are these armed groups that many of them mix as one because what they see, you know, what they feel are bullets, what they hear are bullets and what they see is um . um uh, they are living in a space where there is a lot of violence and a lot of pain and such and such, so if there is a revolution there has to be a particular type of ideology that takes over the entire country and that continues to be seen