HAITI VIDEO: Is Haiti Happening in Honduras?

Port-au-Prince, Haiti, JUNE 2004 – US Marines notoriously threatened demonstrators from the poorest neighborhoods with guns.  Kevin Pina is the guy on the left in white shirt and jeans with a camera in his hand.

Six weeks after the 2004 coup in which the US kidnapped the democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, I arrived in Haiti as part of a delegation to investigate the US role in the coup.  It was a horrible scene of people running for their lives, dead bodies in the streets, elite businessmen instrumental to the coup’s success having us followed, and harrowing stories about human rights abuses against some of the poorest people you can imagine committed by US Marines and the Canadian and Chilean militaries.  I probably would still be in Port-au-Prince today scratching my head trying to figure it all out  had it not been for a guy by the name of Kevin Pina.

Kevin is the founder of the Haiti Information Project, a  journalist and documentary filmmaker and Special Correspondent for the Flashpoints program on KPFA Radio in Berkeley, CA.  Kevin worked as a journalist in Haiti for several years and was there during the 2004 coup.  Kevin made a very important film about the coup entitled, “Haiti:  We Must Kill the Bandits.”

What the members of our delegation learned  from Kevin in 2004 about recent Haitian history and the political context surrounding the coup was invaluable.  Kevin and I are good friends now and I am pleased to say that he continues to educate me.

Kevin has made a short video entitled, “Haiti:  We Will Bend But We Will Not Break” and I post it on this blog because the similarities with Honduras are striking.  A coup d’etat planned between an elite business class and the  US government to topple a president beginning to make social changes such as doubling the minimum wage and devoting 20 percent of the country’s budget to education. And after the coup, an audacious display of state-sponsored terror that left thousands dead and illegally detained and a country in economic shambles.

And now on to Kevin’s video.

HIP – A new educational video released today by journalist and filmmaker Kevin Pina entitled Haiti: We will bend but we will not break highlights the resistance before the coup of Feb. 29, 2004. In this 20-minute video we see the roots of Haiti’s movement representing the majority of the poor struggle to contain the juggernaut of the coup fomented and supported by the Bush adminstration, the OAS an the international community.

Part 2 is scheduled to be released shortly. Pina stated, “I wanted to give those interested in Haiti a chance to digest the complex information in the first part before releasing the second. This is a history and footage that is largely unseen and a story mostly censored by the corporate media. I hope it will resonate given the current situation in the country.”

The Haiti Information Project (HIP) is a non-profit alternative news service providing coverage and analysis of breaking developments in Haiti.

Winner of the CENSORED 2008 REAL NEWS AWARD for Outstanding Investigative Journalism

For further information about the Haiti Information Project (HIP) visit: http://www.teledyol.net/HIP/about.html
Contact: HIP@teledyol.net

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