I was told that the ambassador for the coup government in Haiti was on CSPAN yesterday. I have not seen it yet, but it was described to me in the following manner:
"Ugh. Haiti's so-called ambssador to the US, Raymond Joseph, was on the
last 1/2 hour (9:30-10:00 am EDT) segment of CSPAN this morning. I
missed the first 10 minutes, but here is what I got from it:
-On 3 or 4 occasions he said that President Aristide had created
numerous factions in poor neighborhoods and he referred to these
factions as "the Sadam Hussein Army , Red Army, Cannibal Army" -- it
was pathetic because he kept repeating it like a mantra
-He said that Haiti would welcome the US Marines and when asked how many
Marines might be needed in Haiti, he said that since Haiti has about the
same number of people as NYC, Haiti should get the same number of
Marines as NYC has police -- 50,000. (I'm going to check on this figure
when the videotape is posted).
-When the interviewer raised the story about the 10 Democratic members
of Congress who signed the letter to Condi Rice saying that the
US-backed interim gov't. in Haiti was an "instrument of repression,"
Joseph responded that he was glad "it was only 10" democratic members of
Congress. He said that the Democrats have not been particularly
supportive of Haiti.
The people who got through on the phone focused on things such as
adoption and travel to Haiti.
Probably within a day or two you can go to the C-SPAN site:
www.c-span.org and click on Washington Journal for Sunday, June 12 and
see the videotape of the show."
The story about Aristide's hideously named army factions is obviously invented. He might as well have called Aristide "Skeletor." It is still the same story line as the one that the Haitian government and media were spreading about "Operation Baghdad" in which thugs in the slums were said to be turning to Iraqi tactics of kidnappings and beheadings. This language was picked up by the AP and the BBC and has sinced been used by Haitian government officials. However, Haitian protesters and the Lavalas party have repeatedly said that the "operation" was an invention of the interim governemnt or the pro-coup media. It is a blantant campaign of lies to manipulate international opinion against the elected government and Haitian democracy.
This government official should be held accountable for such deception. Do we really want to send more American Marines to do the dirty work for the CIA, based on such blantant lies as those above?
1 comment :
I watched part of the video on the c-span website. it was pretty rediculous. I think he said they could use 15,000 troops, not 50,000. The callers were mostly pretty pointless from my perspective. One caller did ask about the legitimacy of the coup govt to which the ambassador responded that if the United States and other members of the international community supported the government its clearly legitimate. So if you wanna watch some pretty infuriating video I highly reccommend this. Its general stuff you'd expect to hear about how the coup has liberated Haiti from the oppressive Aristide government.
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