[FORUM] What injustices have your local diasporas highlighted?

[rfmcdonald]

The return of Jean-Claude Duvalier to the Haiti he had governed horribly (and horribly governed) after an exile of twenty-five years perplexes me. Why would a man demonstrably guilty of any number of crimes return to the country he had despoiled? (The Telegraph's article on the torture centre of Fort Dimanche is rather unpleasant reading.) Yes, Duvalier's life in France was straitened once the money ran out, but were things really that bad for him?

Regardless, he's back, and Haitian Canadians are reacting by sharing their sufferings.

When the Air France jet touched down in Haiti and disgorged former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, a middle-aged woman in Montreal watched the scene with such disgust she felt physically sick.

Jan Dominique, a soft-spoken novelist known as J.J., was arrested and imprisoned under the regime of “Baby Doc” Duvalier. The radio station where she worked was ransacked and her colleagues tortured. Her father, one of Haiti’s most celebrated journalists, fled into exile.

For legions of Haitian émigrés like her, Mr. Duvalier was more than a notorious figure from the history books. He was the flesh-and-blood despot whose regime left behind a trail of scarred and disrupted lives.

Now, expatriates like Ms. Dominique are stepping forward to offer first-hand accounts of the repression of the Duvalier regime in hopes of filing criminal complaints against the 59-year-old former dictator, who returned to Haiti on Sunday. In doing so, the vast Haitian diaspora spawned by the very brutality of the Duvalier years could turn into an international force in pushing to bring Mr. Duvalier to justice.

“I am alive and I want to bear witness in the name of all those who can’t,” said Ms. Dominique, who runs a small business with her husband in a shopping mall in suburban Pointe Claire. “I still have nightmares about what happened to me. But I have a duty.”

Dominique's witnessing is part of a broader effort.

Haitian-Canadians are being urged to submit their stories as authorities in Haiti prepare to prosecute the country's former dictator, Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier, for human-rights abuses.

Haitian lawyer Mario Joseph, who works for a human rights organization in Port-au-Prince, said lawyers need people to come forward to build a case.

"I’m calling on the [Haitian] diaspora in Canada to file complaints against Duvalier,” he told a news conference in Montreal on Friday. “I need them to mobilize.

"We need to rebuild the memory of the Haitian people. They need to listen to what happened during the Duvalier regime."

I know all this only because Haiti, as the only sovereign and officially Francophone polity in the Western Hemisphere, is of interest to Canadians because it's Francophone, and hence, because it's a society Canadian Francophones interact with relatively extensively. Something like 1% of the population of Québec is of Haitian immigrant background, of more or less recent origins, and Québec's foreign policy and the attention of its pressed is keyed--as in every society--towards countries and regions with which Québec has some interest, and towards populations represented in its community (disproportionately in French Canada's metropolis). And in the Canadian situation--particularly in a context where the Canadian government has to keep up with Québec's foreign policy initiatives--that also brings the attention of the Canadian government, and the Canadian media, to bear. I suspect that if Haiti's diaspora wasn't present in Canada, wasn't a society of interest with representatives people know on the streets and encounter via the mass media on televisions and in arts and in government, Canadians would care that much less about Haiti. But as it happens, Canadians do know about Haiti more than one might have expected, and the crimes of Duvalier are that much more highlighted.

That's Canada. The example of Canadian Tamils, mostly of Sri Lankan origin and linked to Tamil separatists in that island nation, also comes to mind, although admittedly more negatively than not thanks to the Tigers' spectacular atrocities. And in your part of the world? Are there any diaspora populations in your communities that make the issues of their homeland that much more relevant to you?