[Shadow_Group] Fw: HAITI - repression, brutal and normal

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

HAITI: Repression targeted at "Aristide supporters" continues.  See Toronto
Star article, below, about awful situation in Haiti.

"Two days later, in a nearby slum area known for its pro-Aristide
militancy, residents said armed men dressed in police uniforms and black
hooded masks executed four young men.  The next day, their rotting bodies
lay face down in the street, covered in flies next to a pile of trash. Their
wrists had been bound with shoelaces and at least two had charred fingers,
suggesting they might have been tortured. ...  Heavily armed former members
of Haiti's now-defunct military, a notoriously corrupt and abusive force
that was disbanded by Aristide in 1995, swagger through the capital and
control large swaths of territory in the countryside with tacit U.N. and
government approval."

NEEDED:
letter writing action / international human rights accompaniment /
tax-charitable donations for humanitarian and emergency relief work in Haiti
[see below].

If you want on/ off this elist: info at rightsaction.org<mailto:info at rightsaction.org>

===

COMMENTARY by Rights Action:

*  The article below was published by a mainstream Canadian newspaper.  It
ignores the complicit role that Canada played - along with the USA and
France - in openly supporting and legitimizing the February 2004 coup that
overthrew the elected government of Haiti.  Haiti's situation of repression
and poverty - already precarious - has spiraled worse since the
western-backed coup.

*  The article refers misleadingly to the "international community", as if
there were some uniform "international community".  There is no such thing.
Three rich and powerful nations - USA, France, Canada - actively supported
and/ or participated in the February coup, overthrowing the elected
government of Haiti.  Meanwhile, most Caribbean nations opposed the illegal
coup and across the globe, human rights and solidarity groups are opposed to
the installed regime in Haiti, and to the complicit role of the mentioned
nations.  This global opposition to the Haiti coup is not being covered up
by the "international" media.

*  Make note of the intentional and malicious use of the word "terrorists"
by the new Justice Minister Bernard Gousse, in this way labeling anyone the
'de facto' government (and related para-militaries) go after as
"terrorists".

*  The United Nations has played a complicit role that legitimizes the
February 2004 coup and legitimizes the present State repression and
brutality.

*  In this context, it is a dire situation for Haiti's community-development
and human rights leaders, political opposition, and - in general - the poor
majority population that largely supports the deposed President Aristide.

*  Pressure is needed on the governments of the USA, France and Canada as
well as the political leadership of the United Nations.  These governments
and institution, so much part of the problems in Haiti, must be pressured to
act to restore the rule of law and functioning democracy in Haiti.

===

"MORE DIE IN HAITI'S STREETS.  NEIGHBOURS BLAME MASKED POLICE FOR SPATE OF
KILLINGS.  BUT U.N. OFFICIALS DEFEND CRACKDOWN IN CAPITAL'S SLUMS", by Reed
Lindsay, special to the Toronto Star [Canada], November 7, 2004.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti-The bodies had been whisked away, but the dried blood
covering a dirt-floored dead end of a twisting alley remained as a chilling
sign that a massacre might have taken place here on Oct. 26.

Residents in the Fort National neighbourhood, which like most of
Port-au-Prince's slums is a bastion of support for former president
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, gathered around the darkening blood the next day.
Some of them who were afraid to give their names said police officers
wearing black hooded masks shot and killed 12 people and dragged their
bodies away.  At least three families identified the bodies of relatives at
the morgue.  "The police officers will say that this was an operation
against gangs.  But we are all innocent," says Eliphete Joseph, a young
resident who was a friend of several of the men believed massacred.   "The
worst thing is that Aristide is now in exile far from here in South Africa,
but we are in Haiti, and they are persecuting us only because we live in a
poor neighbourhood."

Justice Minister Bernard Gousse confirmed that police were in the Fort
National neighbourhood on the day of the killings there, although he said
they were investigating reports of rooftop gunfire.  A police official said
at least eight people were killed. There have been no reports of police
injuries or casualties.

Two days later, in a nearby slum area known for its pro-Aristide militancy,
residents said armed men dressed in police uniforms and black hooded masks
executed four young men.  The next day, their rotting bodies lay face down
in the street, covered in flies next to a pile of trash. Their wrists had
been bound with shoelaces and at least two had charred fingers, suggesting
they might have been tortured.

The killings appear to be the latest example of what rights groups describe
as a campaign of repression against supporters of Aristide, a former priest
who made enemies of the Haitian elite but maintained support among many of
the poor.  Aristide was escorted out of the country on Feb. 29 by U.S.
Marines. Washington says he resigned, but Aristide insists he was forced out
against his will in a coup d'état.

Some Haitian and international rights observers are beginning to make
comparisons with the darkest days of the 1991-94 military regime and with
the 1957-86 dictatorships of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son,
Jean-Claude "Baby Doc."  One difference, they say, is that the current
government has the blessing of the international community.

Neither the United States nor the United Nations - which maintains a
peacekeeping force of more than 3,000 troops in Haiti - have censured the
abuses committed under the government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, who
took power in March after Aristide was ousted.   "When 20 to 30 people were
getting killed a year (under Aristide), there was a cascade of condemnation
pouring down on the Aristide government," says Brian Concannon, Jr.,
director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.   "Now that as
many as 20 to 30 are getting killed in a day, there is silence .... It is an
obvious double standard."

U.N. and government officials deny that government security forces are
murdering opponents.  "The government is not violating people's rights,"
says Gousse. "We've made it very clear to the police. We have to fight
terrorists but also protect the civilian population. We will not accept
human rights abuses."

Rights observers in Haiti concede that it is difficult to document exactly
how many people have been killed and by whom.  There are a myriad of armed
groups in the country, including some gangs that support Aristide and others
that have shifting political allegiances.

Meanwhile, heavily armed former members of Haiti's now-defunct military, a
notoriously corrupt and abusive force that was disbanded by Aristide in
1995, swagger through the capital and control large swaths of territory in
the countryside with tacit U.N. and government approval.

What is clear is that the government has gone on the offensive against
members of Aristide's Lavalas party in recent weeks, raiding poor
neighbourhoods, searching homes and arresting people without warrants. Jails
are holding many prisoners who have never been charged with a crime.

"A lot of us were hoping the human rights situation would improve after
Aristide left. Now, it is worse," says Renan Hedouville, head of the
Lawyers' Committee for the Respect of Individual Liberties, an organization
that was sharply critical of Aristide's government for rights abuses.
"People are being arrested without warrants and for political reasons and
being put in jail without seeing a judge. Women are being raped by police
and ex-military, and Lavalas members in poor neighbourhoods are being
killed.
"The international community needs to condemn these abuses. If they don't
make a clear statement, they will be complicit."

The most publicized case has been that of Gerard Jean-Juste, a Catholic
priest who was arrested in his parish without a warrant on Oct. 13 while at
a soup kitchen he runs for some 600 children.  Justice Minister Gousse says
the priest - a friend of Aristide and fellow proponent of liberation
theology who established a centre in Florida to help Haitian refugees - is
suspected of hiding "organizers of violence."

"That's completely false," says Jean-Juste, a prayer book under one arm as
he stands in the shade of a towering concrete wall outside his cell in the
national penitentiary.  "People say I was arrested because I could be a
potential (presidential) candidate.

"Nobody is following the Constitution now. We need to return to democracy,
to the rule of law.   "I lived many years under Duvalier. He killed so many
people, but he never kept a priest in jail."

Less than two weeks earlier, Haitian police had burst into a Port-au-Prince
radio station and without a warrant arrested three former Lavalas party
legislators who had appeared on a program criticizing the government.  Other
prominent prisoners include folksinger and Lavalas activist Annette Auguste,
prominent pro-Aristide university professor Pierre Reynold Charles, former
prime minister Yvon Neptune and two other top officials under Aristide.

According to Hedouville, most of the prisoners are young, poor men from
Port-au-Prince's slums who are not politically active but have been targeted
because they resemble armed pro-Aristide militants.

Human rights observers say the former soldiers who control cities such as
Petit-Goave in western Haiti - where they have chased out the police and
appointed themselves governors - are arresting and persecuting Lavalas
supporters in a similar fashion to what the government is doing in
Port-au-Prince.

"We fought to bring democracy to Haiti, but since this government took over,
it's been a dictatorship," says Mario Joseph, a human rights lawyer who has
worked to bring past human rights abusers to justice under Aristide and now
represents 54 people he claims are political prisoners.

Government and U.N. officials have defended the crackdown as an attempt to
end the violence that has left dozens dead in the last month. They blame
Aristide supporters, whom government officials habitually refer to as
"terrorists" and "bandits," with killing police officers and trying to
destabilize the Latortue administration.

"What we have seen in this country during the last month or two has been a
resurgence of brutal violence organized probably in order to provoke a
process of political destabilization," says Brazilian Juan Gabriel Valdes,
who heads the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti.   "Any state has the
right to defend itself. We were sent by the United Nations to help and to
assist a government, and this task was given to us by the Security Council
of the United Nations."

===

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To support humanitarian relief work in Haiti, make check payable to "Rights
Action" (writing "Haiti Fund" on the memo-line) and mail to:

UNITED STATES:  1830 Connecticut Av, NW, Washington DC, 20009.
CANADA:  509 St. Clair Ave W, box73527, Toronto ON, M6C-1C0.

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===





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