Bandits or Freedom Fighters?

By Alexandrio Morley
BlackFood News Reporter

THE FACT that Haitians are not in control of their own country was revealed to Bahamians at the screening of Kevin Pina’s “We Must Kill the Bandits”.

The film was shown earlier this month as part of the 6th Annual Bahamas International Film Festival.

The documentary proves that one thing can represent different things for different people. It seems that while the United Nations and the international community regard the people who are resisting the occupation of Haiti as “Bandits”, the majority of Haitians regard them as Freedom Fighters.

The documentary chronicles the illegal ouster of Haiti’s democratically elected President in February 2004, the brutal acts of repression against the poor in Haiti by the United Nation’s military forces, particularly against the Fanmi Lavalas Party/Movement, and the people’s never ending resistance to this oppression.

Over and over again, the documentary shows thousands of Haitian people protesting and marching throughout the streets demanding the return of Jean Bertrand Aristide; the man who most Haitians still consider their democratically elected president.

In an exclusive interview with BlackFood, Pina, a photo journalist who has been writing about Haiti for the last seven years, said that he did not see how anyone who was looking at it objectively can say that Haitians are running Haiti today.

“For them [Haitians],” Pina said, “they consider MINUSTAH, the United Nations military force to be an occupation force, like the 19 year occupation by the United States Marines.”

He added that the international community, particularly the U. S. Embassy in Haiti, hold tremendous sway about what decisions are made in Haiti. “In Haiti there is an army of non-governmental organizations, which are funded by the United States Agency for International Development, by the Canadian International Development Agency, as well as by the European Parliament. These NGOs are involved in every aspect of planning of the Haitian government; everything from budgetary decisions, to how the money will be spent and the agenda in Parliament,” explained Pina.

He also spoke of the fact that MINUSTAH has been accused of many misdeeds in Haiti, including the rape of Haitian women, the torture of suspects that have been illegally detained, and the brutal attacks against the people of Cité Soleil, one of the poorest communities in the Caribbean if not the world. Cité Soleil is also a Lavalas stronghold and MINUSTAH is conscious of that fact.

Pina’s documentary shows us video footage of the July 6th 2005 massacre on Cité Soleil. We see unarmed civilians being targeted by high powered telescopic rifles, people lying in pools of their own blood with single gun shots wounds to the head. Women killed, children killed, a one year old shot in his mother’s arms. A similar attack was revisited on the poor people of Cité Soleil on December 22nd 2006 .

Throughout the film, MINUSTAH justifies these attacks against the poor as they attempt to weed out “the bandits” who they claim are the reason for crime and the political instability in Haiti.

Emmanuel “Dread” Wilme, who was killed during the attack on Cité Soleil in July 2005, was deemed a “bandit”. However, in the film we hear persons describe Dread, and other such persons, as community leaders who took up arms to protect them against a foreign entity that has occupied their country.

During the interview, Pina emphasized the tremendous strength of Haitians and the “miracle” boycott led by the Lavalas Party against the Senate elections in April and June of this year. The successful boycott kept participation down to less than 10%.

“Certainly,” Pina said, “that shows the continuing strength and popularity of the Lavalas Party, but not just the Party but the Movement, because it’s really the base of the poor and the poor slums throughout the capital and the 70% of the peasantry who live in the countryside who form the base of that Movement who were responsible for that successful boycott.”

Lavalas has since been barred from participating in the upcoming 2010 Parliamentary National elections; again on the basis of ridiculous technicalities.

Pina told BlackFood that he could not predict what the Lavalas Party would do in the upcoming Parliamentary Elections but said that history has shown that the resistance will not stop.♦bf