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#4056: Olivier Nadal's Big Lie : Grey comments
From:Racine125@aol.com
Like the apologist in the Apostles' Creed, Nadal has done those things he
ought not to have done, and left undone those things which he ought to have
done - and there is no health in him! The Lord has mercy on such miserable
offenders, but I do NOT! I keep reading his editorial in fascinated horror,
and it seems to me that the central lie of the piece is as follows:
"Aristide was removed from office, and the military stepped in to maintain
order."
Aristide was removed from office... how? He floated away? Piano movers came
and got him? President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was driven from his rightful
role by murderous armed men in the pay of murderous wealthy men. Very
simple. And quite a few of both groups were members of the Haitian Army,
which far from "maintaining order", enthusiastically led the campaign of
death and terror. This was a big change from the period during which
Aristide was in office.
I lived in Haiti during that time, and I saw that people walked the streets
late in the evening, said what they wanted, and did what they thought best.
Following the coup, "when the chickens went up in the trees, we had to go up
on our beds". Gunfire nightly reminded us who was in charge, and what they
were willing to do to stay there.
Pointing to a sham Parliament and a puppet president does no good when those
shammers and puppets go to Governer's Island, sign an agreement, and a little
while later the United Nations Security Council is obliged to declare that
"the mandate entrusted to UNMIH by resolution 867 (1993) could not be
implemented because of various developments in Haiti which constituted
non-compliance by the Armed Forces of Haiti with the relevant provisions of
the Governors Island Agreement." (15 July 1994, Report of the
Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission in Haiti)
Ironically Nadal never objected to this form of so-called government, but he
is sensitive to "fraudulent, Clinton-validated elections"? Is he seriously
calling the President of the United States complicit in electoral fraud in
favor of the Lavalas Party? It's a pity that the same freedom of speech he
enjoys here in the USA is the same freedom of speech his commensals struggle
to repress in Haiti!
Nadal bewails the embargo and the "frozen assets of Haiti" because he is a
businessman, he is interested in making money. That's no sin - but if he
were to tell the truth he would admit that Aristide's enemies made far more
money under the embargo than they ever did before, simply by importing
contraband! It's no secret, why pretend?
No one is going to be fooled by a lot of hollering about an
"Aristide-controlled police force that now coordinates much of the cocaine
traffic", either. These are not new drug dealers, these are the same old
drug dealers. Those of us who were around during the formation of the
Haitian National Police remember how the inclusion of former members of the
Haitian Army was rammed down the throats of the Haitian activists clamoring
against them! In one satellite burg of Port-au-Prince, the chief of police
during the military regime remained the chief of police after the United
Nations intervention. The number of pro-Aristide Haitian National Police
officers killed by other HNP officers early in the formation of that
organization from it's disparate elements indicate what were the results of
that particular power stuggle.
It's boggling that Nadal can see the cocaine trade as a crime against "his
people", yet never bat an eye at the deaths of thousands of "his people"
under the military regime! One would think, to hear Nadal tell it, that the
Cedras regime was a period of unparalleled tranquility and bliss. Yet in the
document cited above, the Security Council found that "The senior leadership
of the Armed Forces of Haiti continue to defy the will of the international
community and to inflict murder, rape and torture on the unfortunate people
of Haiti..."
In the September 1995 document "Three Years Defending Human Rights", the
United Nations / Organization of American States Civilian mission (MICIVIH)
records that "In January 1994 the UN and OAS returned a first group of about
30 observers to Haiti. The observers found the situation to be worse than at
any time during the Mission's presence in 1993. Extrajudicial execution,
enforced disappearance, torture and arbitrary arrest had increased, and a new
phenomenon - that of rape as an instrument of political repression - had
emerged. Many cases of such violations were documented by MICIVIH between
January and July 1994. The perpetrators included members of the Haitian Armed
Forces (FADH), the police, their civilian auxiliaries and members of FRAPH."
Even that most conservative of organizations, the United States State
Department, stated "It is estimated that between 300 and 500 Haitians were
killed in the days following the September coup, and 3000 in the following
three years. The coup created a large-scale exodus from the country; in fact,
the Coast Guard rescued a total of 41,342 Haitians from 1991 to 1992, more
than the number of rescued refugees from the previous ten years combined."
(Background Notes: Haiti, September 1996)
And yet, what is it which remains Nadal's program for Aristide? "Remove him
from power." How boring, how predictable! Is the President of Haiti once
again to float away? Will he be spirited out of the Palais National by piano
movers? Or will the cowardly supporters of tyranny attempt by force of arms
once again to settle the yoke of terror, ignorance, and economic misery on
the shoulders of majority class Haitians?
If so, terrible days lie ahead. No one has forgotten the family members they
lost during the coup, the loved husbands and sons and fathers, yes, and
sisters and mothers and wives and daughters too, whose bodies they had to
leave lying in the gutters to bloat and to be slowly devoured by pigs! No
one has forgotten the screams that used to issue from the neighborhood
"postes" and "Commissariats", those filthy, reeking cells and those horribly
mutilated corpses. And no one is going to put up with it again. Any person
or party or death squad organization which attempts to block Aristide's
return is going to be remembered as the proximate cause of the biggest
uprising since the Haitian Revolution.
I thank the reader for his or her time.
Sincerely,
Kathy S. Grey