Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits
Kevin Pina (2007)
Film Review
We Must Kill the Bandits carefully documents the systematic war crimes committed by US, Canadian, French and UN forces between 1990 and 2005, as part of the US-led effort to destroy Hait’s pro-democracy Lavalas movement.
In 1990, former Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who headed the Lavalas movement, was elected president of Haiti by a virtual landslide. In 1991, the CIA-backed Haitian military high command undertook a coup against Aristide and forced him into exile in Africa. Shortly before leaving office, President Bill Clinton intervened and allowed Aristide to return to Haiti. After Aristide was re-elected president in 2001, US marines illegally invaded Haiti on February 29, 2004, kidnapped Aristide and forced him onto a plane bound for South Africa.
The poor of Haitai immediately responded with weekly protests demanding Aristide’s return. When the Haitian police and army proved incapable of propping up the US-installed puppet government, US, Canadian and French troops occupied Haiti, routinely rampaging through poor neighborhoods slaughter civilians and arresting suspected Lavalas supporters. Owing to their existing military commitments in Iraq, these forces were eventually replaced by UN peacekeeping forces (Blue Helmets).
The most shocking scenesein the documentary are those of Blue Helmets firing on peaceful demonstrators and killing unarmed civilians during massacres they carried out in poor neighborhoods in 2004 and 2005.
Postscript: The documentary ends in 2005, five years before the devastating earthquake and cholera epidemic that hit Haiti in 2010. In 2011, President Obama allowed Aristide to return to Haiti provided he agreed not to run in the 2011 presidential elections. He refrained from participating in political life until 2015, when he joined the presidential campaign of Lavalas candidate Maryse Narcisse.
The Most Revolutionary Act 