a1734: Re: a1724: (a1720): who is ducking? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tttnhm@aol.com

In a message dated 4/19/2002 1:49:53 PM W. Europe Daylight Time, Greg
Chamberlain writes:

>> Bob Walton wrote:

 << During the 1994 military operation to restore Haiti's legal government,
 the US and the Cedras "government" reached an agreement that provided
 guarantees for the personal safety of many of its senior scum in exchange for
 avoiding a blood-bath.  Would the Haitian people preferred the alternative?

 > Charles Arthur wrote:

 > As to what the Haitian people preferred, I would guess that they preferred
that the US administration told the coup people not to do the coup in the
first place.

 Greg Chamberlain wrote:
 Now, now, don't duck the question.  Of course they would've preferred
 not having the coup.  The question was about the "embarrassing"
 matter of Aristide being brought back by the US military thanks to a
 liberal spasm by a liberal US president a few months after he had
 said he would "never, never, never" agree to be restored to power
 by a foreign invasion. >>

Charles Arthur responds:
No, this is quite wrong, and it is not me who is ducking the question. The
question raised by Bob Walton related to the fact that many of the human
rights violators who ran the military dictatorship in Haiti prior to 1994
have, since then, lived at liberty in the United States. To me it is crystal
clear that the issue at stake here is the struggle against impunity and
whether the United States is doing what it should, or what it could, to
assist.

The immediate context is the 174-page review issued on April 10, 2002, by the
US Amnesty International entitled "United States of America: Safe Haven for
Torturers'', in which Amnesty International said its research shows that
nearly 150 suspected torturers are known to be living in the United States.

As regards Walton's original post and the immediate relevance to Haiti, the
matter at hand is the revelation that the former FADH second-in-command,
Jean-Claude Duperval, is living and working in Florida. Duperval is the
former general who was convicted on charges of involvement in murder,
attempted murder, torture and other crimes relating to his role in the 1994
Raboteau massacre. He was among 30 former FADH and FRAPH men who were
convicted in absentia in 2000 in what was considered to be a landmark trial
by human rights advocates.

In this context it seemed to me that Walton's question about whether the
agreement between the US administration and the 'senior scum' of the Cedras
regime was a good idea or not, missed the point regarding the issue at hand.
Thus my remark about the Haitian people preferring that there had not been a
military coup in the first place sought to turn the spotlight back on the
murder of thousands, and the beatings and rape of thousands more between
1991-94, and the fact that very few of the human rights violators of that
time have been brought to justice causing very serious consequences for
today's Haiti.

Greg Chamberlain is well aware of all of the above but for some reason
prefers to ignore these very contemporary and veryrelevant issues, and
instead bang on obsessively with his critique of 'revolutionaries',
'ideologues', and 'the correct line'.

For too long people have been put in one of two 'boxes' - one, where if you
are opposed to the US policy on Haiti, then you must support Aristide and the
Lavalas Family; the other, where if you oppose Aristide and the Lavalas
Family, then you must support the US and/or its Haitian proxies. The time to
break out of these boxes is way overdue.

Those who wittingly or unwittingly seek to perpetuate this sterile way of
looking at Haitian politics do a great disservice to those who are concerned
about Haiti, and more importantly, to the Haitian people.