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a1781: This Week in Haiti 20:6 4/24/2002 (fwd)
"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
newsweekly. For the complete edition with other news in French
and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100,
(fax) 718-434-5551 or e-mail at <editor@haitiprogres.com>.
Also visit our website at <www.haitiprogres.com>.
HAITI PROGRES
"Le journal qui offre une alternative"
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *
April 24 - 30, 2002
Vol. 20, No. 6
PROSPER AVRIL RELEASED, THEN REARRESTED
As Prosper Avril stepped out of the National Penitentiary a free
man on Apr. 15, he was immediately rearrested by heavily armed
policemen and charged with involvement in a 1990 peasant
massacre.
Gen. Avril is a former military dictator who took power in a 1988
coup but was driven from power in Mar. 1990 by a popular
uprising.
He was first arrested on May 26, 2001 at a book- signing for his
work entitled "The Black Book on Insecurity in Haiti," in which
he accused President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of being responsible
for political violence in Haiti over the past decade. Avril was
charged with the 1989 beating and torture of democracy activists
and for plotting to overthrow Aristide's current government.
But the Haitian Appeals Court ruled for his release on Apr. 11,
outraging two of the torture victims, Marino Etienne and Jean
Auguste Mesyeux.
Meanwhile in St. Marc, Judge Henri Kesner Noel issued a warrant
charging Avril as an accomplice in the Mar. 13, 1990 assault by
soldiers on the town of Piatre in the Artibonite Valley, in which
11 peasants were killed, dozens of farm animals shot, and over
three hundred peasant huts burned or destroyed (see Haïti
Progrès, Vol. 7, Nos. 51 & 52, 3/21/90 & 3/28/90).
The assault stemmed from a land dispute the peasants had with
Olivier Nadal, a prominent Haitian opposition businessman who has
fled to Miami to escape warrants charging him in the massacre.
Avril's lawyers argue that the Piatre massacre took place three
days after the dictator fled the country on Mar. 10, 1990, and
therefore he cannot be held responsible.
Haitian authorities took Avril to St. Marc to be indicted, but
the hearing was postponed until next week.
Avril was the "eminence grise" of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc"
Duvalier's regime and was briefly part of the neo-Duvalierist
junta which took power after Duvalier's fall.
Members of a special Organization of American States mission in
Haiti investigating the Dec. 17, 2001 attempted assassination of
Aristide and ensuing mob violence met with Avril on Apr. 20 in
the National Penitentiary. It is not clear what bearing Avril's
incarceration has on those events.
ALARMS SOUND OVER HAITI'S ENVIRONMENT
Haiti is in ecological crisis. Eighty years ago, forests cloaked
60% of the country, the United Nations estimates. Today, only
about 18% is covered with forest or other dense vegetation.
As a result, mountains are eroding, soil depleting, the landmass
heating, aquifers emptying, marine life dying, and rivers and
lakes silting. The consequences are particularly harsh in this
mountainous country where 60% of the topography is steep slopes.
On Apr. 17, Pierre Chauvet of the Federation of Friends of Nature
(FAN-Haiti) called for heightened consciousness of Haiti's
environmental degradation. "In addition to laws and political
will, the will of the citizenry is now needed," he said during an
economic forum held at Haitian Press Center in Port-au-Prince.
"Individuals who live in a given region or nation... must realize
that we are above all citizens of the earth since the environment
has no borders." He called for environmental consciousness-
raising in schools and through the media.
On Apr. 13, about 300 people gathered for a forum on Haiti's
environment in Léogane, sponsored by the America's Development
Foundation (ADF), a non-governmental organization supported by
and linked to the U.S. State Department's Agency for
International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for
Democracy (NED). "Of course, there is unemployment and a series
of other problems which make people have to cut down trees," said
the ADF's Pierre Gourraige. "We are trying to sensitize and
educate them so that they are aware that when they cut down a
tree, they should plant five or six new trees so that tomorrow
they can cut down trees again."
While such crusaders argue that Haiti's environmental problems
stem from a lack consciousness among Haiti's peasants, Haitian
progressives argue that the degradation has economic and
political roots. "Haiti's environmental crisis is a direct result
of the miserable conditions to which our ruling classes have
condemned the masses," said Ben Dupuy, secretary general of the
National Popular Party (PPN), during a recent forum in Miami.
"Big landowners let large tracts lay fallow while peasants are
driven to farm on mountainsides. Washington demands that Haiti
lower its tariff walls, while U.S. agribusiness dumps on us cheap
rice and other crops we produce. Ruined peasants flood into the
slums, where there is no gas or electricity. They must rely on
charcoal (charbon), which consumes a lot of wood, greatly
accelerating deforestation. State funds which could protect the
environment, raise literacy, and build healthcare centers are
diverted to pay the debt rung up by Duvalier, that is to pay
interest to super-rich banks in New York and Paris." Dupuy went
on to note the hypocrisy of Washington's officials, who lecture
Haitian peasants about environmental consciousness while
remaining mum when the U.S. "dumps toxic waste in our
independence city [Gonaïves]," "embargos foreign aid aimed at
improving the water system,' and "pays death-squads to massacre
the same people they propose to educate." In short, he concluded,
Haiti's ecological crisis can only be solved by fundamental
political change, including a "true land reform" and development
policies by and for the people, not dictated by Washington.
All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Progres.
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