'West stokes war to prove blacks can't rule'

[seemslikeadream]

By Maureen Isaacson

The United Nations is a failure, says Jean Baptiste Aristide, the former Haitian president. And he is relieved that the United States-backed Organisation of American States is investigating his unlawful ousting.

Aristide fled Haiti on February 29 during a coup he insists "had the blessing of the UN".

"For me the investigation means we are standing for truth and we are still for the same truth."

Truth and lies are the two categories that cleave Aristide's world and he would like to set the record straight against "the huge international disinformation campaign" that paints him as a despotic scoundrel.

'Je suis ce que j'etais, pour être ce que je serai'
Aristide says the campaign is funded by economic and political forces who have paid $60-million (about R390-million) a year - last year it was $76-million - to slur his good name and that of the world's first country to be liberated from slavery.

Among the villains of this story are France, Haiti's old colonial master, and the US, which, Aristide says, stoke violence to prove that black people are incapable of self rule.

"Is it because we are black that they don't want the truth to emerge from us?" he asks.

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