Next week the Prime Minister will travel to Colombia and Haiti. One is the home of a right-wing government with direct connections to paramilitaries responsible for human-rights abuses. The other is home to a supplanted government that we helped put in place after participating in the overthrow of the democratically elected leader of that country in 2004, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Free trade is worth more than lives. Well, the lives of those deemed of less importance than those that free trade agreements benefit.

Colombia has, for years, been a recipient of US military aid, both in terms of training assistance and funding. It is also a country in which government complicities with regards to the backing of those responsible for human rights abuses have been widely excused…

“A May 22 news report in the Washington Post summed up Colombia’s ever-widening scandal: “Top paramilitary commanders have in recent days confirmed what human rights groups and others have long alleged: some of Colombia’s most influential political, military and business figures helped build a powerful anti-guerrilla movement that operated with impunity, killed civilians and shipped cocaine to U.S. cities.”

Yet the Bush Administration wants to sign a “free trade” agreement with Colombia, which is the Bush Administration’s closest ally in Latin America and receives $700 million annually in mostly military aid. Congress is threatening to block the agreement, and they should.

The word “paramilitary” is a euphemism. In the 1980s, when the Reagan Administration was supporting the mass murder of tens of thousands of civilians in countries like Guatemala and El Salvador, these organizations were called “death squads.”

The Colombian death squads - which are classified as terrorist organizations by the US State Department — were mostly demobilized in recent years under an agreement that allows lenient sentences for the murderers in exchange for telling the truth about their crimes. But the truth has shown increasingly close ties between the death squads and high-ranking allies of President Alvaro Uribe. More than a dozen legislators, mostly Uribe allies, have been arrested, and his foreign minister has resigned. As the investigation progresses, including to President Uribe’s home state, it is becoming clear that the death squads have been an integral part of the government.

One of the most sinister revelations has been the government’s role in the murder of trade unionists, which continues despite the incomplete demobilization. Last year 72 trade unionists were killed, making Colombia the most dangerous place in the world by far for a union activist. According to witnesses co-operating with the Colombian Attorney General’s office, the government’s intelligence services provided names and security details of union activists to the death squads. The former chief of the intelligence service - who managed Uribe’s 2002 presidential campaign in the state of Magdalena - has been arrested and charged with conspiring with the death squads to kill union leaders and others.” - Znet

Hopefully, as was the case in meetings with Putin and Hu Jintao, Mr. Harper will make it a point of mentioning human rights issues. Then again, as the saying goes – money talks…

Michel Vastel’s article in L’actualité in March of 2003 exposed the reality of The Ottawa Initiative on Haiti, held in Montreal in early 2003 – that within a year regime change in Haiti needed to occur.

Not surprisingly, a little over a year later, President Aristide was removed from power in a coup engineered by the United States, Canada, and Chile (see Operation Secured Tomorrow).

The reason? Privatization.

Of course, Aristide’s removal bore all the hallmarks of a Western engineered coup – the media painted him as another Latin American leader headed towards despotism, the country in financial ruins, its people suffering human rights abuses at the hands of the authorities – the standard dossier that’s released when we decide to dispose of someone who has the audacity to tell us that they’re considering privatizing, if even partially, their own industry.

Canada’s direct role in the coup was the securing of the airport, from which Aristide was whisked out of the country by US forces. This was done, of course, by Joint Task Force 2.

At the time, Mr. Harper’s government was not in power. But something tells me that he isn’t about to condemn our role in the coup, or even mention it for that matter. I have this sneaking suspicion that he’ll focus more on the role of our peacekeepers, as well as the assistance being provided by the RCMP. After all, having helped do the dirty work, we might as well protect our interests.