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"If you ever receive a fundraising appeal in the mail from Amnesty International, DO NOT SEND THEM A CHECK. Send it back, and put on it, 'What about Haiti?'" -- Kevin Pina.
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On Tuesday, November 29, KPFK's Margaret Prescod had on her show (see: kpfk.org) Kevin Pina, a filmmaker and journalist who has covered Haiti extensively(1). He discussed Haiti's much-delayed and highly-controversial election, which is now scheduled for December 27, 2005.
He echoed what Ira Kurzban, former attorney for Haiti, has been saying(2), that the number of polling places in Haiti is going to be substantially lower than in previous elections. The journalist also noted that Haiti's election in 2000, which reelected Aristide, had 12,000 polling places, whereas in the 2005 election, there will be only 800 stations. According to Pina, this will detract the impoverished who live in the countryside, "who, coincidentally, were the backbone of support that catapulted Lavalas(3), President Aristide's party, into power. The average peasant farmer, we estimate, will have to walk five hours to a polling station, will have to spend one-to-two hours waiting in line to vote, and then walk another five hours back home, losing a day working in his fields, feeding his family."
The journalist/filmmaker disspelled a popular misconception--a misconception that he claimed is being created by U.S. and Canadian embassies--that Lavalas is participating in this election. As he pointed out, the party's leader, Jean Bertrand Aristide, is in exile in South Africa. Furthermore, Pina has sources in Haiti who deny that Lavalas is participating.
Also, while members of Lavalas are registering to vote, "you've got to remember that they had to register in order to get a new National Identity Card," he said. "People are frightened out of their minds of the Haitian police, who right now stand as murderers and have committed gross human rights violations. . . . If people have registered, it's because they're afraid of not having that new National Identity Card, but it doesn't mean they're going to vote." In fact, Pina has spoken with numerous Lavalas supporters who are registered but do not intend to vote.
He then lambasted human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for woefully inadequate monitoring of human rights violations in Haiti since 2004. (It was in 2004 when President Aristide and some 7,492 other elected officials(4) were forcefully removed from power in Haiti, and U.S. and U.N. forces were deployed. Since then, the death toll of Haitians under the U.N. supervision has been catastrophic. See: HaitiAction.net.) "If you ever receive a fundraising appeal in the mail from Amnesty International, DO NOT SEND THEM A CHECK," he said with passion in his voice. "Send it back, and put on it, 'What about Haiti?' The level of human rights violations in Haiti merit a permanent team by Amnesty International. Do not send them your money."
Pina expressed hope that he could return to Haiti very soon to try and offset the generally unreliable reporting of the corporate media and other news venues there.
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(1)Additional information about Pina can be found at Black Commentator (http://www.blackcommentator.com/73/73_haiti_pina.html):
"Kevin Pina is a documentary filmmaker and freelance journalist who has been working and living in Haiti for the past three years. He has been covering events in Haiti for the past decade and produced a documentary film entitled 'Haiti: Harvest of Hope [available at Global Exchange online].' Mr. Pina is also the Haiti Special Correspondent for the Flashpoints radio program on the Pacifica Network's flagship station KPFA in Berkeley CA."
His latest film is called Haiti: The Untold Story and details the recent atrocities committed in Haiti by the Haitian National Police with the complicity of the U.N.
(2)Kurzban spoke at length about past and current elections in Haiti during an appearance in Los Angeles last June. See:
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2005/10/137011.php (part 1)
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2005/10/137012.php (part 2)
(3) Lavalas is Haitian Creole for "flash flood," as Aristide's movement flooded Haiti. Source: the Porto Alegre Declaration on Haiti of January 2005.
(4)The number of ousted politicians besides Aristide, 7,492, was given by Kurzban during his Los Angeles appearance in June of 2005.