Flashpoints Radio special marking the 9th anniversary of the Feb. 2004 coup in Haiti
Author Jeb Sprague joins Flashpoints guest host Kevin Pina on the ninth
anniversary of the 2004 coup in Haiti to discuss his new book Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti
Three years ago on January 25, 2010, critical reports began to surface of the US military stalling earthquake relief operations in Haiti. Flashpoints Senior Correspondent Kevin Pina provided this live report from the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port Au Prince.
Placing himself and his camera between the gun barrels of masked
death squads and UN accompanied Haitian police, Kevin Pina in his
documentary “Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits” (2011) shows what happened
in the slums of Haiti’s capitol in the years leading up to it’s
decimation by the January 2010 earthquake. Following the 2004 coup that
ousted Haiti’s democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, massive demonstrations pouring out from the impoverished slums
of Cite Soleil, Bel Air, and other communities, challenged the interim
authorities that had been put in place by the U.S, France, and Canada.
To halt the protests and barricade with barbed wire the poor into the
slums, authorities carried out a campaign of political violence,
targeting the popular Fanmi Lavalas movement and the neighborhoods where
it was strongest. Whereas most often violence against the majority
poor goes unreported by the media, Pina along with local Haitian
photojournalist Jean Ristil risked their lives, being jailed, beaten and
threatened in acquiring the footage for this documentary. Often with
the only camera on the scene, Pina documents a U.S. and U.N. sanctioned
campaign of political violence between 2004 and 2007- where Haitian
police snipers shoot demonstrator after demonstrator, aiming for the
head in state-sanctioned assassinations. The responses from UN and state
bureaucrats ooze in condescension.
A documentary that should
be viewed by all who are interested in Haiti and the Caribbean, where
state-sanctioned violence has also recently exploded in the slums of
Kingston, Jamaica, this documentary should be seen in tandem with Pina’s
other films on Haiti: Harvest of Hope (1997) and Haiti: The UNtold
Story (2005). Together these films are amongst the most important
documentation of the mobilization of the Haitian people at the turn of
the twenty first century, starved of resources and braving the bullets
of neo-Duvalierist gunmen and their foreign allies, Pina’s documentary
is a testament to the human spirit and its quest for justice.
This Special Report from Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio originally aired on January 12, 2010, the day a devastating earthquake struck the island nation of Haiti.
