“It’s time to colonize Haiti”, noted a recent UK Spectator column. According to Bruce Gilley, Canada should oversee “a formal UN trusteeship over the country.”
The Montreal raised, University of Toronto graduate, demonstrates a scarcity of imagination in making his colonialist appeal. Highlighting an openly colonial streak in Canadian politics, prominent voices have repeatedly promoted formally usurping Haitian sovereignty. “The only way to save Haiti is to put it under UN control,” noted a 2022 Globe and Mail headline. In 2014 right-wing Quebec City radio host, Sylvain Bouchard, told listeners, “I would transform Haiti into a colony. The UN must colonize Haiti.” Two years later another Quebec City radio host, André Arthur, labeled Haiti a “hopeless” and “sexually deviant” country populated by thieves and prostitutes that should be taken over by France as in the “heyday of colonial Haiti” (“belle époque de l’Haïti colonial”). “There is no hope in Haiti until the country is placed under trusteeship”, bellowed the former Member of Parliament in 2016. “We will never dare to do it, political correctness, it would be racism to say: So you say to France: … ‘For the next thirty years, you are the owner of Haiti, put it right. Kick the asses that need to be kicked.”
During the 2003 “Ottawa initiative on Haiti” conference to plan the ouster of elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide US, French and Canadian officials discussed putting the country under UN trusteeship while a 2005 Canadian Military Journal article was titled “The case for international trusteeship in Haiti”.
In the US edition of the Spectator – “the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the English language” – Gilley lays out a startlingly biased portrayal of Haiti’s revolution and subsequent history. The Portland State University professor writes, “If only the rebels had waited. The abolition of slavery within the French empire came in 1794. But by then, Haiti was already hurtling towards misery under its new rulers.”
It was the Africans of Saint Domingue freeing themselves that spurred the French to (temporarily) abolish slavery.
After winning their liberation from slavery and colonial rule in a war that killed half the population over thirteen years, Haitians were forced to pay their former masters an astronomical sum for their freedom. Under threat of invasion and the restoration of slavery, Francophile Haitian president Jean-Pierre Boyer agreed in 1825 to pay French slaveholders 150 million francs for lost land and now free Haitians.
In a remarkable inversion, Gilley calls a ransom that took the beleaguered country a century to pay as helping Haiti “get its house into order.” The author of a controversial 2017 Third World Quarterly article headlined “The Case for Colonialism”, claims “the indemnity was the only thing that prevented Haiti from sliding into pure dysfunction in the 19th century.”
While calling for a UN trusteeship, Grilley ignores the abuses of the 2004-2017 United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which consisted of 8,000 foreign troops and 2,000 police (a smaller UN force remained for several more years). After helping oust thousands of elected officials in 2004, 500 Canadian soldiers were incorporated into MINUSTAH as it backed up a coup government’s violent crackdown against pro-democracy protesters between March 2004 and May 2006. The UN force also killed dozens of civilians directly when it pacified Cité Soleil, a bastion of support for Aristide. The UN force was responsible for innumerable sexual abuses and its disregard for Haitian life caused a major cholera outbreak, which left over 10,000 dead and one million sick.
The UN occupation introduced a form of multilateral colonial oversight to Haiti. The April 2004 Security Council resolution that replaced the two-month-old US, France and Canada Multinational Interim Force with MINUSTAH established the Core Group, which includes representatives of the US, Canada, France, Spain, Brazil, OAS, EU and UN. The Core Group periodically releases collective statements on Haitian affairs and meet among themselves and with Haitian officials. It’s a flagrantly colonial alliance. After President Jovenel Moise was killed in 2021, for instance, the Core Group effectively appointed Ariel Henry prime minister through a tweet.
Last year the UN approved a foreign Gang Suppression Force for Haiti. After four El Salvadoran troops were killed a week ago that country has quickly deployed upwards of 1000 troops to Haiti. Its authoritarian President, Nayib Bukele, is using bellicose language, which echoes Gilley’s call for a “Rambo” mission that should tell the gangs we “will wipe you out.”
Those calling for foreign control of Haiti ignore its loss of sovereignty since the 2004 coup. By what standards was the usurpation of Haitian sovereignty successful? By basically any metric, 22 years of US/Canada, UN, Core Group influence in Haiti has been a disaster. But imperialists don’t simply ignore the damaging impact of foreign intervention. In a stark demonstration of how power affects ideology, the more Haitian sovereignty is undercut the more forthright the calls to usurp Haitian sovereignty.
Support Yves’ work. Donate Now.
You must be logged in to post a comment.