The Organization of American States was involved. And the then Assistant Secretary General of the O.A.S., Luigi Einaudi, who famously said on the eve of Haiti's independence, ‘The problem with Haiti is that the international community is so screwed up and divided that we're actually allowing Haitians to run Haiti.’ It’s people like this and sentiments like this that informed these sorts of meetings that took place before the coup, and, you know, the writing was on the wall for Aristide when he was elected in November of 2000. We saw the opposition boycott the elections. The Gallup polls indicated a landslide victory for Aristide, and again we return to the point made by the N.E.D. program officer, it was simply the case that, from the perspective of the United States, Canada, and France, and the European Union, the primary backers of this coup d'etat, that Aristide was consolidating power, that the Lavalas Party, in particular, and that the popular movement was emerging and was taking root, and that is what had to be overthrown and stopped in its tracks, and that's what we're seeing happen today.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Anthony Fenton, on the issue of what is happening in the Cite Soleil with the killings of innocent residents there, also the killings of U.N. forces there, recently you had Reginald Boulos and Andy Apaid, well known anti-Lavalas leaders, holding a major protest, calling for a crackdown on Cite Soleil. Can you talk about that?

ANTHONY FENTON: Yeah, again, this -- I read that as a provocation. They've been -- if you go back to summer of 2005, there was a kidnapping spree, as the The New York Times and the L.A. Times reported it, that was used as a pretext to demand that the U.N. go into Cite Soleil and root out the so-called chimeres, the so-called bandits, the so-called terrorists. Now, I learned through sources inside the prime minister's office in Haiti and through other sources that, again, Youri Latortue, the nephew of Gerard Latortue, was involved in this kidnapping spree, that he was carrying out and overseeing a kidnapping ring of his own that was used as a pretext to go into these neighborhoods and commit massacres. And on July 6th, it’s been well reported and well documented that a massacre did take place, and it was carried out by the United Nations. It buckled to the pressure that was being exerted on it by the likes of Reginald Boulos and other members of the elite, like Andy Apaid.

And so I see, I think, from what I can tell, this is being replayed, and the kidnapping spree -- it’s possible that these assaults on the so-called peacekeepers, the Jordanians who have played one of the more repressive roles in Cite Soleil, that that is another provocation that is intended to pressure the U.N. forces to go into Cite Soleil and fire arbitrarily, as they've been doing repeatedly. You know, within the past few days a number of people have been killed in Cite Soleil, even since that demonstration. Canadian journalists who are there right now, Aaron Lakoff and Leslie Bagg, reported on how four people in Cite Soleil have been killed.

And the U.N. knows that they can't go into Cite Soleil and conduct these operations without killing civilians, and yet people like Reginald Boulos don't seem to mind if civilians get killed. It’s just collateral damage, and he’s said that he is willing to create a fund to assist the victims of Cite Soleil. When we interviewed Mr. Boulos in September, he referred to himself as Mr. Cite Soleil. So, he has a vested interest in putting down this popular movement that's calling for Aristide's return or calling for free and fair elections that would see Rene Preval win in a likely landslide.

AMY GOODMAN: Independent journalist Anthony Fenton, co-author of the book Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority. Haitian elections are February 7. Canadian elections are today.

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