The Haitian revolution established the first free country of free men in the Americas, but it drew the bitter hostility of a colonial world that has persisted through Haiti’s tortured history. This evocative film pointing to Canada’s role in the 2004 coup d’état portrays yet another chapter of sordid betrayal. This film should be a call to action.
-Noam Chomsky
Trailer
SYNOPSIS
AS CANADIANS, WE OFTEN TAKE PRIDE IN OUR INTERNATIONAL REPUTATION AS PEACEKEEPERS AND DEFENDERS OF DEMOCRACY.
But there is a dark side to our foreign policy — a policy that has thwarted the Haitian people’s struggles for freedom and self-determination over the last two decades.
In 1986, Haitians joined their voices together in a cry for a new kind of society. Emerging from years of brutal dictatorship, they dreamed of a democracy that would serve the poor, listen to their voices and bring an end to impunity. And between 1991 and 2004, Haitians managed, against all odds, to elect a succession of governments committed to realizing this dream. The pro-democracy movement’s efforts, however, were ultimately derailed by powerful local elites and their allies in the international community.
Haiti Betrayed reveals how Canada, once seen by Haitians as a constructive partner, conspired with the United States and France in 2003 to topple the democratically-elected government. Seven years in the making, Elaine Brière’s film meticulously reconstructs Canada’s role in the events that culminated in the United Nations-sanctioned coup d’état on February 29, 2004 and the bloody aftermath that followed. Haiti Betrayed is a searing indictment of Canadian leaders’ complicity in the international oppression of this long-suffering nation.
With the country in the throes of a new popular uprising against corruption and authoritarianism, Brière’s film shows that the roots of current crisis can be found in the coup d’état backed by Canada since 2004.
“We never had that democracy.
It's like putting a seed on the ground.
We never see it grow because someone keeps on coming
and steps on it.“
-Garry Auguste, Former member of Haitian National Police
HOW IT STARTED
IN 2009, I ACCOMPANIED MY PARTNER, DAVID PUTT, WHO WAS IN HAITI TO WORK ON CLEAN WATER PROJECTS IN SOME OF THE RAWEST SLUMS IN PORT-AU-PRINCE.
A few weeks after arriving I was taking photographs in Cham Mas, a major square in the centre of Port au Prince. A poor but neatly dressed older man approached me with his arms out, shouting in broken English. “Blan, blan, (foreigner) you don’t know what is happening here.” He thought I was a journalist. He wasn’t being aggressive – I walked towards him, afraid that the UN soldiers patrolling the square would harass or arrest him. Taking off his hat, he spoke again: “they are killing us! We are poor people. Life is very hard. Tell them, them what they are doing to us. Tell them to stop! Tell them to stop!” He began to cry. I held his hand until he composed himself. He put on his hat and slowly walked away.
This encounter moved me to the core and was the beginning of a deeper awareness of the plight of the Haitian people. I later learned that many people had been killed in Cite Soleil, where the man was from. On a personal level this film is a response to the impassioned plea of the man I met in Cham Mas.
-Director, Elaine Brière
Elaine Brière is an award-winning filmmaker and photojournalist. Her photographs have appeared in the Globe & Mail, the New York Review, Canadian Geographic, Amnesty International, and Neue Zurcher Zeitung (Switzerland). She has exhibited in Holland, Sweden, Australia, Japan, the USA and 2006 World Urban Forum. East Timor, Testimony was published in 2004 by Between the Lines.
Bitter Paradise: The Sell-out of East Timor won Best Political Documentary at the l997 HOT DOCS! film festival. Her work is collected by the Visual Heritage Division of the National Archives of Canada and she is a recipient of the Order of East Timor. Her current film, Haiti Betrayed released in September, 2020.
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This powerful film, with its heart-stopping footage, captures the brutality of what the “advanced” world has done to the people of Haiti since their heroic revolution against slavery. Canada’s shameful role – braying about human rights even as it provides political cover for the US overthrow of Haitian democracy – exposes the lie behind Canada’s good-guy image in the world.
-Linda McQuaig, Author, The Sport & Prey of Capitalists
Canada always looks so cute, clean and a non-profit country. Nobody talks about Canada in the international news. This film is so interesting because we can see another Canada.
-Jaume Barrull, Diari Segre, Barcelona
Haitian Lives Matter. This fact has eluded the Canadian media, and the general Canadian population, which prefers to think of itself as good guys when it comes to foreign policy if they even give foreign policy a second thought. Elaine Brières deeply researched and highly engaging documentary “Haiti Betrayed” lays bare a hidden history that -now of all times- we all need to pay attention to.
-Mark Achbar, The Corporation
A Haitian man, standing across the street from the Canadian embassy in Port-au-Prince, screams remonstrations against the edifice in Haitian Creole: “We don’t have anything against Canada! Why are you against us?” To answer the question of the impassioned gentleman from Haiti Betrayed, why are we against Haiti? Well, the same reason we appear to find ourselves constantly destabilizing and taking advantage of less powerful nations: because we can, and because the myth of our peacekeeping
nature lets us get away with it.
-Andray Domise, MacLeans Magazine
Haiti Betrayed may be the most important documentary ever made on Canadian foreign policy.
It is a powerful indictment of Canada’s role in overthrowing Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s elected government in 2004 and the devastating consequences that decision had on Haitians. All Canadians should watch this film about a country born in struggle to make Black lives matter.
-Bianca Mugyenyi, Director, Canadian Foreign Policy Institute
“Haiti Betrayed” is an indispensable tool for those who wish to understand the challenges facing not only the Haitian people, but struggling masses the world over.
-Kim Ives, HAITI LIBERTE
The modus operandi of Canada remains colonial at home and abroad. This film is so important because it pulls the curtain away to show what is going on in a place far from the minds of Canadians – which is where the government would like it to stay.
-Henri Robideau,
Photographer & Social Commentator