12269: This Week in Haiti 20:12 6/5/2002 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: "[iso-8859-1] Haiti Progrès" <editor@haiti-progres.com>

"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>.
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                           HAITI PROGRES
              "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

                      * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                        June 5 - 11, 2002
                          Vol. 20, No. 12

HAITIAN GOVERNMENT SUPPORTS BIG LANDOWNERS IN CLASH WITH PEASANTS

In 2000, many Haitians voted for President Jean Bertrand Aristide
and his Lavalas Family party (FL) thinking that these politicians
would defend Haiti's workers and peasants against the violence
and greed of big landowners and the comprador bourgeoisie.
Instead, this week, Aristide's government has sanctioned the
brutal smashing of a peasant demonstration, the lynching of two
demonstrators, and the imprisonment without charges or medical
attention of two journalists and ten demonstrators, most of whom
were badly beaten by a big landowner's armed goons.

On Monday, May 27, peasants and workers in the northern town of
St. Raphael tried to organize a march to reclaim land from which
they had been expelled by the family of Jacques Novella, a big
landowner and merchant from Cap Haïtien who owns an orange and
lemon tree plantation called Guacimal S.A.. The workers
organization Batay Ouvriyè (Workers Struggle) (BO) sent
delegations in two pick-up trucks from Cap Haïtien and St. Michel
d'Attalaye to march in solidarity with the peasants, who are
unionized. But the demonstration was cut short when thugs
attacked and dispersed the marchers (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20,
No. 11, May 29, 2002).

In the confrontation, two local officials -- a CASEC and an ASEC
(communal section administrators) -- were wounded, either by
rocks or bullets, one in the eye, one in the head. Rumors that
one died in a Cap Haïtien hospital were unfounded. Meanwhile, the
landowner's thugs killed with machetes and buried an elderly
peasant couple from BO's St. Michel delegation.

In the following days, the home of Sintes Estimé, the Guacimal
Union's General Secretary, was burned to the ground, according to
Batay Ouvriyè. He and his family have been forced into hiding.

Police arrived on the scene as the skirmish was ending and
arrested 10 demonstrators and two journalists, Darwin St. Julien
of Haïti Progrès newspaper and Allan Deshommes of Radio Atlantik,
based in the northern town of Quartier Morin.

On May 28, the police took the journalists to see a doctor. St.
Julien had been struck with a machete in the eye. The doctor said
that he was in danger of losing the eye and recommended that the
journalist immediately see an eye specialist, a Cuban doctor
stationed in the area. Meanwhile, Deshommes periodically loses
consciousness, and the doctor prescribed that he urgently see a
head specialist.

On May 29, a prosecutor and investigating judge from Grande
Rivière traveled to St. Raphael to investigate the arrests. But
at 8:30 a.m., a police helicopter from Port-au-Prince arrived to
take the prisoners. The Grande Rivière judges refused to turn
them over, explaining that the prisoners needed medical attention
and belonged to their jurisdiction. Angered, the seven heavily-
armed black-clad policemen flew back to Cap Haïtien.

The judges then traveled with the prisoners and two other judges
to Grande Rivière to undertake a judicial review and decide
whether to charge the detainees, as is required by law within 48
hours after arrest. But before the process got far, the
helicopter landed in Grande Rivière with the policemen aboard
brandishing a letter from the Northern Departmental Police Chief,
Fritz Jean, demanding that the prisoners be turned over.

Although the departmental police chief has no authority to
overrule the judges (the police are auxiliaries of the justice
system), the prisoners were turned over to the agitated and
aggressive cops aboard the helicopter, which then flew back to
Port-au-Prince. The two journalists and eight of the
demonstrators were then placed in the National Penitentiary,
which is only supposed to house convicted criminals. Two female
demonstrators were sent to the women's prison at Fort National.
At press time, nine days after their arrest, none of them had
been charged nor had received necessary medical attention. Haïti
Progrès was repeatedly denied access to the prisoners and even to
its own reporter.

The crackdown on the Guacimal workers by St. Raphael officials is
no surprise. An arch-foe of the union, Fernand Sévère, an FL
member, was the town's mayor until he was fatally riddled with 18
bullets in an inter-FL power struggle last December. His brother,
Adonija Sévère, succeeded him in the post.

Last year, Novella paid about $14,000 US to Fernand Sévère to
sabotage the Guacimal peasants' union and their demands,
according to Levainceur Sévère, who is the deceased's cousin and
a prominent journalist and community activist in Miami. "For this
money, Fernand used to arrest the Guacimal peasant organizers and
put them in jail," Levainceur Sévère, born and raised in St.
Raphael, explained. "Now his brother and successor, my cousin
Adonija, is taking the same approach, only worse. He has gone
even further. According to my information, Adonija and his agents
have even killed peasants. I don't know if he has been paid money
by Novella or if he just wants to be paid money like his brother
was, but he is out to crush the Guacimal peasant movement in the
same way. And the central government supports his version of
events. We can say that the central government and Adonija Sévère
are one and the same."

Indeed, after Adonija Sévère characterized the peasants,
solidarity unionists, and journalists as "terrorists," Mario
Dupuy, State Secretary of Communication, declared that people in
BO's two pick-ups had "heavy weapons, military weapons" and that
"these two pick-ups came with these people, they invaded the area
to chase the peasants, we don't know for what reason." He
justified the journalists' arrests by arguing that "they came
[from Cap Haïtien] in the same car as the assailants, which was
loaded with guns, which came to carry out an operation in St.
Rafael."

Guy Delva of the Association of Haitian Journalist (AJH), who led
a delegation to St. Raphael on to investigate the matter,
ridiculed the government's assertions. "When we got there, the
police couldn't even tell us why they had arrested these guys,"
he said. "They told us that the journalists were there while
people were violating the law, were protesting, demonstrating
without authorization. But they couldn't tell us what the
journalists had done other than cover a public event. This is
extremely grave, arbitrary, totalitarian, I don't even know what
word to use to characterize this act." Delva and the AJH
denounced the arrests before the Interamerican Commission for
Human Rights and has threatened a press boycott of judicial and
even governmental affairs if the journalists are not released.

AJH's lawyers have also denounced the shell-game being played by
Haiti's justice system. Authorities in Port-au-Prince say they
have not charged the prisoners and will not allow visitors to see
them because the case is in the hands of authorities in the
North. But Northern authorities disavow any responsibility for
holding the prisoners.

Amnesty International has also lambasted the attacks on the
peasant unionists and journalists, calling for an investigation.
"Once again, the rhetoric of 'terrorism' is being used to violate
basic human rights, including the right to be notified of charges
and to have access to medical care in detention," Amnesty
International said. " This is not acceptable."

Other groups denouncing the crackdown include the Paris-based
Reporters Without Borders, the London-based Haiti Support Group,
the Haitian Press Federation (FHP), the Lawyers Committee for the
Respect of Individual Liberties, the Louverturian Movement for
the Liberation of Haiti, the National Coalition for Haitian
Rights, and the Ecumenical Center for Human Rights.

On Jun. 6, AJH, FHP, Northern Journalists Solidarity, and Inter-
Face "Koze Lakay", plan a demonstration in front of government
offices in Cap Haïtien to demand the release of the journalists.

In a Jun. 3 press conference in Port-au-Prince, Evariste Wilson
of the National Popular Party (PPN) pointed out that the police
have not produced any evidence of the alleged weapons, even
though a state television (TNH) crew arrived in St. Raphael on
May 28. "Why hasn't TNH shown the weapons as they always do in
these cases?"  Wilson asked. "How did these people come armed all
the way from Cap Haïtien? If the government had this information
beforehand, as they claim, why didn't they arrest these people
and prevent the confrontation?... It seems to us that the
government is embarrassed by this case and they don't yet know
what to do because they have not yet had a chance to fabricate
'evidence.'"

He denounced the emerging "facade democracy, a democracy which
rests on words and on the same old methods as the former Macoute
regime." Wilson called for the immediate release of not only the
two journalists but all the Batay Ouvriyè demonstrators who
languish uncharged and untreated in the capital's squalid
prisons. "The persecution of the Guacimal workers, whom the
authorities want to paint as 'terrorists,' seems to reflect a new
alliance of dark forces, both inside and outside of the country,
which aims to destabilize and target Haiti's progressive forces,"
Wilson said.

All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Progres.

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