Rapper is No Friend of Haiti -- Wyclef Opposed Aristide

by Charlie Hinton 

San Francisco Bayview 

August 2, 2010

http://newamericamedia.org/2010/08/rapper-is-no-friend-of-haiti----wyclef-opposed-aristide.php

To cut to the chase, no election in Haiti, and no candidate
in those elections, will be considered legitimate by the
majority of Haiti's population, unless it includes the full
and fair participation of the Fanmi Lavalas Party of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Fanmi Lavalas is unquestionably the most popular party in
the country, yet the "international community," led by the
United States, France and Canada, has done everything
possible to undermine Aristide and Lavalas, overthrowing him
twice by military coups in 1991 and 2004 and banishing
Aristide, who now lives in South Africa with his family,
from the Americas.

A United Nations army, led by Brazil, still occupies Haiti
six years after the coup. Their unstated mission, under the
name of "peacekeeping," is to suppress the popular movement
and prevent the return to power of Aristide's Lavalas Party.
One must understand a Wyclef Jean candidacy, first of all,
in this context.

Every election since a 67 percent majority first brought
Aristide to power in 1990 has demonstrated the enormous
popularity of the Lavalas movement. When Lavalas could run,
they won overwhelmingly. In 2006, when security conditions
did not permit them to run candidates, they voted and
demonstrated to make sure Rene Preval, a former Lavalas
president, was re- elected.

Preval, however, turned against those who voted for him. He
scheduled elections for 12 Senate seats in 2009 and
supported the Electoral Council's rejection of all Lavalas
candidates. Lavalas called for a boycott, and as few as 3
percent of Haitians voted, with fewer than 1 percent voting
in the runoff, once again demonstrating the people's love
and respect for President Aristide.

Fanmi Lavalas has already been banned from the next round of
elections, so enter Wyclef Jean. Jean comes from a prominent
Haitian family that has virulently opposed Lavalas since the
1990 elections. His uncle is Raymond Joseph - also a rumored
presidential candidate - who became Haitian ambassador to
the United States under the coup government and remains so
today. Kevin Pina writes in "It's not all about that! Wyclef
Jean is fronting in Haiti," Joseph is "the co-publisher of
Haiti Observateur, a right-wing rag that has been an
apologist for the killers in the Haitian military going back
as far as the brutal coup against Aristide in 1991. "On Oct.
26 [2004] Haitian police entered the pro-Aristide slum of
Fort Nationale and summarily executed 13 young men. Wyclef
Jean said nothing. On Oct. 28 the Haitian police executed
five young men, babies really, in the pro-Aristide slum of
Bel Air. Wyclef said nothing. If Wyclef really wants to be
part of Haiti's political dialogue, he would acknowledge
these facts. Unfortunately, Wyclef is fronting."

As if to prove it, the Miami Herald reported on Feb. 28,
2010, "Secret polling by foreign powers in search of a new
face to lead Haiti's reconstruction ." might favor Jean's
candidacy, as someone with sufficient name recognition who
could draw enough votes to overcome another Lavalas
electoral boycott.

Wyclef Jean supported the 2004 coup. When gun-running former
army and death squad members trained by the CIA were
overrunning Haiti's north on Feb. 25, 2004, MTV's Gideon
Yago wrote, "Wyclef Jean voiced his support for Haitian
rebels on Wednesday, calling on embattled Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide to step down and telling his fans in
Haiti to `keep their head up' as the country braces itself
for possible civil war."

During the Obama inaugural celebration, Jean famously and
perversely serenaded Colin Powell, the Bush administration
secretary of state during the U.S. destabilization campaign
and eventual coup against Aristide, with Bob Marley's
"Redemption Song."

Jean also produced the movie, "The Ghosts of Cite Soleil,"
an anti-Aristide and Lavalas hit piece, which tells us that
President Aristide left voluntarily, without mention of his
kidnapping by the U.S. military, and presents the main coup
leaders in a favorable light. It features interviews with
sweatshop owners Andy Apaid and Charles Henry Baker without
telling us they hate Aristide because he raised the minimum
wage and sought to give all Haitians a seat at the table by
democratizing Haiti's economy, a program opposed by the rich
in Haiti.

It uncritically interviews coup leader Louis Jodel
Chamblain, without telling us he worked with the Duvalier
dictatorship's brutal militia, the Tonton Macoutes, in the
1980s; that following the coup against Aristide in 1991, he
was the "operations guy" for the FRAPH paramilitary death
squad, accused of murdering uncounted numbers of Aristide
supporters and introducing gang rape into Haiti as a
military weapon.

It uncritically interviews coup leader Guy Phillipe, without
telling us he's a former Haitian police chief who was
trained by U.S. Special Forces in Ecuador in the early 1990s
or that the U.S. embassy admitted that Phillipe was involved
in the transhipment of narcotics, one of the key sources of
funds for paramilitary attacks on the poor in Haiti.

Wyclef runs the Yele Haiti Foundation, which the Washington
Post reported on Jan. 16, 2010, is under fiscal scrutiny
because "(i)t seems clear that a significant amount of the
monies that this charity raises go for costs other than
providing benefits to Haitians in need . In 2006, Yele Haiti
had about $1 million in revenue, according to tax documents.
More than a third of the money went to payments to related
parties, said lawyer James Joseph . (T)he charity recorded a
payment of $250,000 to Telemax, a TV station and production
company in Haiti in which Jean and Jerry Duplessis, both
members of Yele Haiti's board of directors, had a
controlling interest. The charity paid about $31,000 in rent
to Platinum Sound, a Manhattan recording studio owned by
Jean and Duplessis. And it spent an additional $100,000 for
Jean's performance at a benefit concert in Monaco." A
foundation spokesperson "said the group hopes to spend a
higher percentage of its budget on services as it gains
experience."

PLEASE SPREAD THE NEWS: "WYCLEF JEAN IS NOT A FRIEND OF THE
PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT OF HAITI." The floating of his
candidacy is just one more effort by the international
forces, desperate to put a smiley face on a murderous
military occupation, to undermine the will of the Haitian
majority by making Wyclef Jean the Ronald Reagan of Haiti.

Let us be clear. Jean and his uncle, the Haitian ambassador
to the U.S., are both cozy with the self- appointed czar of
Haiti, Bill Clinton, whose plans for the Caribbean nation
are to make it a neo-colony for a reconstructed tourist
industry and a pool of cheap labor for U.S. factories.
Wyclef Jean is the perfect front man. The Haitian elite and
its U.S./U.N. sponsors are counting on his appeal to the
youth to derail the people's movement for democracy and
their call for the return of President Aristide. Most
Haitians will not be hoodwinked by the likes of Wyclef Jean.

[Charlie Hinton is a member of the Haiti Action Committee
and works at Inkworks Press, a worker owned and managed
printing company in Berkeley. He may be reached at
[log in to unmask] ]

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