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ADDRESS
BY THE HON. FRED MITCHELL, M.P.
MINISTER
OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
26th
August 2004, ROTARY CLUB
BUENA
VISTA, NASSAU
I
am pleased to be able to join you here this afternoon.
The
situation in the sister CARICOM country Haiti is one that continues to
be of special interest to The Bahamas. Even though the issues seem to
have slipped from the international headlines somewhat, they remain very
much on the radar screen of The Bahamas.
Just
last week, the Royal Bahamas Defence Force apprehended a group of
Haitians trying to come to The Bahamas. The newspaper article described
the incident as immigration by trickles. I take that to mean that
while there has been no evidence of the huge inflows of the past, there
are still small groups coming into The Bahamas from Haiti. The
complaints certainly continue about the influx of illegal Haitians in
the working class areas of New Providence. Recently, in the area of the
Grove, the police conducted a raid and netted almost 100 illegal
immigrants. This kind of joint Immigration-Police effort is likely
to continue so that the issue can be solved. It will require a
great deal of national will and discipline, including a decision by the
business community that it will not hire illegal immigrants. About
two hours ago, Immigration reported that they caught 49 illegal Haitian
immigrants off Long Island. There is another boat which has been
spotted by the crew of the HMBS Nassau in the vicinity of Long
Island that, as we speak, the HMBS Nassau’s crew is investigating
because the vessel has the profile of a vessel with illegal
immigrants. The Department of Immigration makes the point that it
is seeking to determine what particular situation in Haiti today is
driving this trickle migration, and in the main it still appears to be
economic since the people coming are persons from the traditional
immigrant pools in the north of Haiti, not from the political hot-spot,
Port au Prince.
The
U.S. Coast Guard has been most helpful in the interdictions on the high
seas. I wish again to express publicly the thanks of the
Government of The Bahamas to the U.S. Government for their assistance in
this regard.
The
point is also made that smuggling of Haitians would not be a successful
business if Bahamians were not involved in organizing the smuggling
trips. The public officials are absolutely convinced of this both
that there is a ready market for Haitian workers in the country, and
this in turn drives the smuggling business. An appeal is therefore
made once again to Bahamians to desist in undermining their country by
engaging in smuggling of illegal immigrants. The message should
also be sent out to those who seek to come here illegally that once
caught they will be sent back home.
Inside
Haiti itself, the situation is quite fragile. There are some
bright spots, in that at least from the headline point of view, there is
less alarm, although the situation is one that bears constant watching.
Inside
the country itself, the five Foreign Ministers from CARICOM who visited
Haiti in July of this year on a special mission to the Republic found
that Port au Prince itself is quite calm on the surface and there is a
semblance of order and some hopefulness in the interim administration
that they can turn things around.
There
are doubts about whether the authority of the Government extends further
than the city of Port au Prince, particularly as regards the authority
of the Government to the north. The Foreign Ministers of CARICOM
recommended that relations between CARICOM and Haiti be completely
normalized. And that means for The Bahamas that Haiti should take
its seat at the table when next the Heads of Government meet in November
in Trinidad.
You
might know from the news that this is a view, which is shared publicly
by Barbados and by Trinidad and Tobago. The Prime Minister of
Barbados Owen Arthur has announced in an address to the nation that
Barbados was prepared on its own to engage with Haiti if CARICOM was
unable to make a decision as a group. The Bahamas has in fact been
engaging with it since the day of the transition. It is our view
that this is the only way that we can effectively help the Haitian
people. We will not get too far out ahead before achieving a
consensus position but as with all CARICOM matters, states reserve the
right to protect their own national interests.
Three
countries in the region have said that they will not under any
circumstances sit with the interim Government. They are Guyana,
St. Lucia and St. Vincent. They see it as a democratic principle
at stake, and are not persuaded by the logic of the practical position.
It makes, therefore, a consensus on the matter quite difficult.
You cannot have a meeting of Heads of Government if three of them decide
that they for whatever reason will not attend. The Present Chair of
CARICOM, Dr. Keith Mitchell, Prime Minister of Grenada, is trying now to
decide what to do to achieve the consensus. It appears that the issue
will not be decided any time soon and may have to await the special
meeting in November in Trinidad, without Haiti present.
The
United States is very much in the background on this. They have
been pressuring CARICOM countries to invite the interim administration
back to the table, arguing that this will help the stability of the
Government in Haiti. Their argument is that the Opposition
elements within Haiti are using the lack of recognition by Cariocm as a
means to bolster their hopes of a return to the days of former President
Jean Bertrand Aristide. In our discussion with the Lavalas Party
of President Aristide, they denied that they have any formal
communication links with him. They argue that they have been
prevented from effectively organizing in the country.
The
former Opposition which now supports the interim administration, all
part of the Anti-Aristide faction was quite frank about CARICOM.
They saw CARICOM as a pro-Aristide group that prevented an orderly
transition in Haiti. They are not persuaded that CARICOM was right when
it asserted that if it had been involved in overt action to remove
President Aristide such an act by CARICOM would have been an unlawful
interference in the internal affairs of Haiti. They think that the
present government there has been too lenient to the pro-Aristide party,
more than fair.
While
The Bahamas is very practical about all of this, and remains engaged
with Haiti, we have concerns about the fairness of the judicial and
legal processes in Haiti. We made the case directly to the interim
administration that it was unwise and inappropriate for the former Prime
Minister of the country Yvon Neptune to have been arrested and charged.
It seemed to us that this could well be interpreted a witch-hunt.
This case sticks out even more when one realizes that no charges have
been brought against persons identified by human rights groups and
governments as involved in murders, and certainly in this latter case in
the killing of police officers and the overthrow of a legitimately
elected government. Some of these persons appear to have been embraced
by the interim administration. The situation was further
compounded within the last week where Chamberlain, one of the more
notorious of the persons, was freed by a court of the charges for which
he had been convicted in absentia on the ground of insufficient
evidence. This makes normalization all the more difficult and the
interim administration and its international patrons should be more
sensitive to this issue.
While this is clearly a serious concern, however, we do not think that
it is enough to stop the forward engagement between The Bahamas and
Haiti and Haiti and CARICOM generally. We should proceed to
normalize relations. The Bahamas is even now exploring what it can
do within the OAS context to assist Haiti further, particularly as its
interim administration seeks to organize elections next year, which
would then fully normalize the situation in Haiti and with its CARICOM
neighbours.
The decision to admit Haiti into CARICOM was not a capricious one. The
Prime Minister of Jamaica, P.J. Patterson, explained that it had been
his view that Haiti should be fully a part of the region. He moved
to invite Haiti to join. They accepted the invitation. You
all know that this is a world that operates in regional blocs.
Small nations such as ourselves are incorporated into regions and this
is how we deal with the outside world. The Cubans and the
Dominican Republic were seen as part of the Latin American bloc.
Haiti is the only French speaking, African republic in the hemisphere
and before joining CARICOM was attached to no bloc at all. Jamaica’s
Prime Minister persuaded his CARICOM colleagues that Haiti needed to be
a part of us. The decision was taken to join and they joined.
The interim administration of Haiti made the case that CARICOM then
didn’t take the next step, which was to engage in public education
about CARICOM, as a regional bloc. I think everyone in CARICOM
agrees that the organization was too closely identified with President
Aristide and that not enough was done to deepen understanding and
CARICOM links on a people to people basis. I know that The Bahamas
will be working to help to rectify that situation.
The Bahamas and Haiti have had a long and complex history. It is a
continuing and complex story. This morning I read a piece in the Nassau
Guardian in which it described the state of persons born to Haitian
parents in The Bahamas as stateless. The article goes on to point
out that this is in fact incorrect. The problem is that parents
who are Haitian who have children born in The Bahamas do not want to
claim the Haitian citizenship, which is available to them as of right.
A simple application at the Embassy of Haiti in The Bahamas will provide
them with the passport that they require. But most of them prefer
to avail themselves of the Bahamian travel document until they reach the
age of 18 when they can apply for citizenship of The Bahamas. There is a
view that if they embrace anything that is officially Haitian, they lose
the right to apply for Bahamian citizenship. Many of them do not
avail themselves of the right to apply at age 18 before their 19th
birthday, and are then stuck in a kind of legal limbo.
We now have a group of persons, presently not counted, who can be of
potential benefit to this society, who can be a potential problem.
The Bahamas has to decide how it will deal with this issue, given the
labour shortages that are being predicted for the economy within the
next three years. I do not represent that it is easy.
From
the Foreign Affairs perspective, our foreign policy has been effective
in the sense that there is not a huge influx of illegal immigrants with
which to contend as a result of the political instability with Haiti.
Our relationship with the interim administration is good, and we remain
engaged with our neighbours to move the process of engagement forward.
This does not change our fundamental position that the elected
government of Haiti should not have been removed by unlawful force.
At
present, The Bahamas Ambassador remains in Nassau. A consular
officer goes to Haiti on an itinerant basis staying some ten days at a
time to deal with any consular matters. He is there now. This
itinerant service at the Embassy will continue to be the case for
sometime, until we are assured that the security situation has improved.
We have also agreed that flights can resume on a commercial basis
between The Bahamas and Cap Haitien.
When
I began this job I said that the whole business of policy toward Haiti
was not one that you could deal with in the sense of using a guillotine,
dropping it and saying that the problem has been solved. It is a
public policy issue that has to be managed, on a continuous basis.
We are doing that to the best of ability and so far it has worked well.
I
wish to thank the public for its support of what we are doing. I
thank you for inviting me here to speak.
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