Canadian Occupation Officer Killed in Haiti

The news of the death of retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer Marc Bourque, who was in Haiti under the auspices of a security mission for Haiti's controversial elections on behalf of a government-funded NGO, Canadem/Canpol, is grabbing many headlines  across Canada today.

The Canada Haiti Action Network (CHAN) issued this press release on Bourque's death.

"A growing network of Haiti solidarity activists in Canada has expressed regret over the tragic killing of retired RCMP constable Marc Bourque in Haiti yesterday."

Further from the CHAN release:

"There is no question, this death is a tragedy, and our condolences go out to the family of Marc Bourque," said Jean Saint-Vil, a founding member of the Canada Haiti Action Network.  "But it is important to understand that this tragedy has occurred within the larger tragedy of a Canadian policy in Haiti that has brought about thousands of Haitian deaths, hundreds of illegal detentions, and the toppling of an elected government.  Hopefully, this incident will force our political leaders to address this dire situation."

A Canadian police officer Grahame Muir (one of 100 in Haiti) heads the 1,600 strong and 33-country deep UNPOL mission, which is fully integrated into the MINUSTAH framework. Muir replaced another Canadian, David Beer, in April 2005. During a September 2005 interview with Muir in his Port au Prince-based UNPOL headquarters, he describes the nature of the mission:

"MINUSTAH as it's known here, is one of the very first efforts at effectively putting into the field what we know as an 'integrated mission,'...the mandate clearly now for us is to deliver on security around free and fair elections...we of course at the same time have a primary role in terms of the developing of the Haitian National Police, and we have ancillary responsibilities to actually assist in the delivery of operational policing services; so it's a fairly robust mandate and a fairly complex mission in that regard...[B]ecause it's an integrated mission we come to work in the morning and we deploy with our military counterparts and a rather unique element of this mission, and it falls within the aegis of the policing side, so effectively reporting to my office is what we know as formed police units."

"Formed police units are a very new edition to UN policing in particular; you have to picture in your mind autonomous groups of police coming from country's such as Nepal, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, many many countries and they come in numbers of anywhere between 100 and 150. Chinese are here as well, and they come specifically to do crowd control work, so as opposed to the typical model of UN policing where we come in contingents and we deploy almost as indivuals in a mission, the formed police units, they come and they set themselves up on compounds and they move as formed units to support crowd control, so we have all of that going on here, and the policing part are really those three elements that I previously described; elections security; helping to develop a future Haitian National Police, and concurrently, assisting in the delivery of operational policing services."

Muir later responded to a question about reports concerning the continued presence of Canadian Special Forces Unit Joint Task Force 2:

"The de facto Canadian military presence here on this mission is nominal; there are not defined units, per se. There are staff officers here, who are contributing to the intelligence cell or part of the operational support apparatus of the mission, but we don't have any standing Canadian units operating on the ground here."

"With regards to JTF2; if they were moving in and around the mission here I can assure you that they are not a de facto element of the mission that's in play, they tend to move, globally, in support of protection of Canadian assets and Canadian senior public officials from time to time, well known to do so, and my response to you might be that if in fact they were to have any presence on the ground here it would be a very transient thing and [inaudible] that level of security for Canadians moving around."

According to the CBC, "United Nations security officials have entered Haiti's largest slum [Cite Soleil] to look for the killers of retired RCMP officer Mark Bourque."

Cite Soleil has been the site of many UN-led incursions. Earlier this month, Canadian freelancer Isabel Macdonald witnessed UN forces firing arbitrarily into residential areas of this neigborhoods. She cites mainstream sources to corroborate her report:

"The Associated Press (AP) has reported that 15 residents of Site Soley have been killed, and Doctors Without Borders has confirmed that 28 more have been shot, amidst heavy firing by MINUSTAH in the last week."

Macdonald further states:

"At a press conference on November 28, Juan Gabriel Valdes, the head of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, denounced the journalists and critics who have represented  MINUSTAH as a repressive force that is killing civilians. However, regardless of MINUSTAH’s stated official intentions, the killing of civilians seems an almost inevitable by-product of the military strategy MINUSTAH is using—namely going with tank-like machines and automatic weapons into a densely populated civilian neighbourhood and opening fire."

In a December 20 interview with Radio Metropole on the fatal shooting of Bourque, the top UN spokesman in Haiti, Damien-Onses Cordona, stated:

"Listen. [This prompts us] to carry on with this job jointly with the Haitian National Police [PNH]. As we have said several times, this is a joint and long-term project. These are not problems that can be resolved from one day to the next. We must continue with the same job."

Asked Metropole host Jean-Wilkens Merone:

"Can we count on Minustah for special measures in the next few days?

"[Cardona] One can always count on Minustah, which will continue to do its job of helping jointly with the PNH."