> From: Jean Saint-Vil <jafrikay...@hotmail.com>

> Haiti's 'Ambassador' to Canada by Jean Saint-Vil
> http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=55&ItemID=8265

> "As it now stands, the Constitution is somewhat...uh! An exception was
> made..."

> Robert Hans Tippenhauer trying to rationalize his illegal nomination as
> "Ambassador" of Haiti to Canada, June 29, 2005

> -----------------------------------------------------------
> It happened quick and in the very heart of Canada's capital. Early
> this morning of June 29, 2005 when colleague Kevin Skerrett and I
> arrived to cover the story, for a brief moment, we worried that other
> news media had somehow scooped our insider's information. Cameras and
> various recording materials left little standing room for the many
> journalists crowded in the waiting room at Rideau Hall.

> Adding panache to the situation, a dedicated staffer quietly enters the
> waiting room and hushes that Governor General Adrienne Clarkson and the
> first of two distinguished guests are about to meet. They will allow us
> to record the brief encounter but no questions are allowed. So, we
> complied.

> Within a matter of minutes, Robert Hans Tippenhauer enters the room and
> hands over the envelope to Mrs. Clarkson. Those in attendance barely
> noticed when, a visibly nervous Tippenhauer drying his hands on his
> suit, referred to "celui qui me pré-décédait" (the one who has
> "pre-deceased" me!). "Uh ! Mon prédécesseur!"(the one who
> preceded me), he quickly corrected, before proceeding to tell the
> Governor General about his high school days spent in the province of
> Québec. Aside from this suggestive Freudian slip, Tippenhauer did
> relatively well. He and Mrs. Clakrson exchanged a few words, smiled and
> posed happily for the cameras and - the deed was done. Officially, the
> Dominion of Canada and its Queen had accepted the credentials of the
> new "Ambassador" of Haiti to Canada.

> Knowing that there were skeletons in Tippenhauer's closet, I
> reiterated to the friendly Rideau Hall staffer the official request to
> interview the new "Ambassador". This shouldn't be difficult to obtain
> considering, as we had by then realised, all the other media present
> came to cover the new U.S. Ambassador who was next to present his
> credentials to Mrs. Clarkson. After an hour's wait, Kevin and I were
> told that Mr. Tippenhauer declined our request. Reason? - too busy -
> no can do, no time! So, we decided to take our time and patiently
> waited by the entry along with the other reporters.

> Contrary to schedule, Wilkins, the new U.S. Ambassador, was the first
> to come out. He took all sorts of questions, including one which he
> dodged about his impression on Canada's performance in Haiti. Then,
> came « Ambassador » Tippenhauer, the former Chair of the
> Canadian-Haitian Chamber of Commerce, of whom Vancouver-based
> journalist Anthony Fenton wrote: "Should the Canadian government
> accept Tippenhauer's credentials, it will mark Canada's clearest
> official alignment with Haiti's right-wing elites". With his May 16,
> 2005 ZNET article titled "The Canadian Corporate/State Nexus In
> Haiti", Fenton was the first journalist to break news of
> Tippenhauer's nomination. A revelation that shocked many, especially
> members of Canada's Haitian community, who had fresh in mind how,
> following the Feb. 29, 2004 coup that toppled the democratically
> elected President of Haiti, Tippenhauer played a key part in a series
> of diplomatic blunders that led to Haiti's post-coup regime's total
> ostracism by its Caribbean neighbours. Tippenhauer, a Port-au-Prince
> based businessman of German extraction who was also playing the role of
> Jamaica's honorary consul in Haiti at the time, had decided on Mar. 15,
> 2004 to raucously announce his resignation from that honorary position.
> This, in protest to the decision by the Jamaican government to
> temporarily host exiled former President Jean Bertrand Aristide.
> Haitians have not forgotten this recent episode where it effectively
> took a brazen rescue mission lead by Jamaica's Prime Minister
> Percival Patterson and Black American author and human rights activist
> Randall Robinson to facilitate Aristide's return to this hemisphere
> and reunification with his two young daughters. The children were not
> in Haiti the night of the coup, when U.S. Marines surrounded the
> president's residence and took him and his wife in an unmarked white
> plane to the Central African Republic where they knew no one.

> So, as Robert Hans Tippenhauer made his way to the exit, I scrambled to
> decide what to ask him first. Should I ask him why activists in
> Montreal keep accusing Canada's Foreign Minister, Pierre Pettigrew,
> of aiding criminals in Haiti? Should I ask him why the non-elected
> government that he represents is often characterized by Haitians
> everywhere as being an illegal, brutal puppet regime, imposed on them
> by the U.S., France and Canada? Should I ask him why the Caribbean
> Community, Venezuela, the 53 nations of the African Union, Nelson
> Mandela's African National Congress, prominent Congressmen and
> Congresswomen from the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus... all refuse to
> recognize his regime in Haiti? Should I ask him to comment on the fact
> that countless activists from PEI to Victoria, B.C. have accused Canada
> of participating in a racist coup that brought to power through violent
> means a group of Haitians who happen to be, like him, of European
> origin?

> So, I began:

> Q: Your nomination was not ratified by the Haitian Senate. Some contend
> it is illegal...?

> Tippenhauer: Well, everyone is entitled to his own opinion which I do
> respect. However, there has been an accommodation with the «
> international community » to provide our country with an interim
> government that will, indeed, permit us to achieve credible and honest
> elections and make it possible to hand power on February 7th to a
> President who would have been elected by the Haitian People.

> Q: Therefore, in the interim, during the transitional period, the
> Haitian constitution is not being followed because it stipulates, for
> instance, that « the President of the Republic, following approval by
> the Senate, names ambassadors»?

> Tippenhauer: But, this is an exceptional case because, we do not have a
> government - at that time. We did not have an elected government.
> It's only now, you know that and we are doing all that is possible
> for us to do in order to have a government and precisely where the
> president will swear in on February 7, 2006. And, we are working
> towards that.

> I was not sure whether the "Ambassador" had just acknowledged
> representing a non-existent government. But, knowing that even in
> Washington, D.C., the regime's representative, Mr. Raymond Joseph,
> bears the title of Chargé d'Affaires, I pursued...

> Q: But, the normal procedure would have been to name a « Chargé
> d'Affaires » since you are not constitutional...?

> Tippenhauer: No! You are the one who says that I am not constitutional.

> Q: But, it's the Constitution that...?
> (showing him a copy with the relevant section highlighted in yellow)

> Tippenhauer: As it now stands, the Constitution is somewhat...uh! An
> exception was made because, as I have told you and am repeating it,
> there has been an international consensus, you know, to go over this
> difficult and fragile transition that we are currently subject to -
> that the country is subjected to. And, precisely, to allow the country
> to have a president who is elected and who will be elected - an elected
> government...

> "A legitimate one !", I tried to interject.

> Tippenhauer:... coming from elections, you know, that will take
> place...uh! at the end of this year.

> Thus, Robert Hans Tippenhauer, who was fraudulently named Ambassadeur
> Plenipotentiaire de la République d'Haiti on June 29, 2005,
> confirmed that the Constitution of the Republic he represents has
> effectively been put on hold. He came close to saying it in so many
> words. But, even more important than his statements, it is
> Tippenhauer's actions that have the most dire consequences for
> millions of people.

> My colleague Kevin Skerrett probing Tippenhauer's views on the
> well-documented dreadful Human Rights situation in post-coup Haiti,
> asked him about the country's most recognizable of over 1000
> political prisoners:

> Q: Mr. Tippenhauer, former Haitian Prime Minister Yvon Neptune is still
> in jail and his health situation is quite serious and we hear that no
> evidence has been presented against him. What can you tell us about his
> situation?

> Tippenhauer: Well, uh! As far as his situation, he is at the
> disposition of Haitian justice which, precisely, by the separation of
> the justice from the legislative and ... the executive, Haitian justice
> is independent. And, he is in the hands of Haitian justice.

> Q : But, what is your reaction to the condemnation by Amnesty
> International and by Juan Gabriel Valdes, chief of MINUSTAH (U.N.
> Mission in Haiti), on Mr. Neptune's situation? Your reaction?

> Tippenhauer: And, what is that reaction?

> Q : Mr. Valdes recently declared that Mr. Neptune's situation is a
> violation of his rights. And, this is consistent with comments made by
> Mr. Fagart as well as several others.

> Tippenhauer: I am totally ignorant of this declaration. Therefore, I
> cannot comment on it.

> Such were the reflections of the man officially confirmed this June 29,
> 2005, "Ambassador of the Republic of Haiti" by Her Majesty the
> Queen of Canada.

> Along with all the other unlawfully appointed leaders of Haiti,
> Tippenhauer is now fully habilitated to take state-binding decisions,
> including signing multi million contracts, on behalf of an impoverished
> people that never had chosen him to be their representative. Not
> surprisingly, among the beneficiaries of lucrative contracts with
> Haiti's illegal regime are Canadian companies: SNC-Lavalin and Gildan
> Active Wear.

> If the corporate incentives to lend a blind eye to the illegal nature
> of this regime are plain enough, what might be the mid-to-long term
> impact of Prime Minister Martin's pro-coup Haiti policy on Canada's
> image in the Caribbean? Can our Department of Foreign Affairs truly
> pretend not to have realized the evident flaws in the "credentials"
> presented by Mr. Tippenhauer?

> In a sensitive area like foreign affairs is it not important to be
> mindful of perceptions? If Haitian-Canadians taking part in recent
> Ottawa call-in shows are any indication, the response of the Haitian
> community to the nomination of Tippenhauer is unequivocal: "He does
> not represent us", "He is no ambassador", "His nomination is
> illegal". Such reactions were rather predictable since it is no
> secret that the Tippenhauer family counts some of the most prominent
> supporters of the coup that toppled Haiti's constitutional government
> in 2004. In addition to Robert Hans Tippenhauer's own reactionary
> credentials, his nephew, also named Hans Tippenhauer, a former member
> of the Washington establishment's Center for Strategic and
> International Studies (CSIS) and a sweat-shop magnate is a key member
> of the E.U. and USAID- funded Group of 184 opposition front. He is
> credited to be the first to have assigned the term "freedom
> fighters" to the murderous paramilitaries, some of whom are convicted
> criminals, who paved the way to the coup. Tippenhauer's Group 184 is
> prominently led by two other white businessmen operating sweatshops in
> Haiti, Charles Henri Baker and the American Andre Apaid.

> Considering all these facts, accepting Tippenhauer's credentials, not
> only mark Canada's official alignment with Haiti's right-wing elites,
> it also gives credence to the disturbing allegations of an insidiously
> racist dimension to the 2004 overthrow of Haiti's elected government.

> Jafrikayiti

> «Depi nan Ginen bon nèg ap ede nèg!»

> http://www.jafrikayiti.com