12307: This Week in Haiti 20:13 6/12/2002 (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 12 - 18, 2002
                                Vol. 20, No. 13

THE GUACIMAL AFFAIR:
JOURNALISTS RELEASED BUT NINE OTHERS LANGUISH, UNCHARGED, IN JAIL

On Jun. 8, the Haitian government released journalists Darwin St.
Julien of Haïti Progrès and Allan Deshommes of Radio Atlantique,
thirteen days after they were severely beaten and illegally
arrested on May 27 while covering a demonstration in Guacimal
near St. Raphael (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No. 11, 5/29/2002).
They were never charged with any crime.

Upon release, the two were immediately rushed to receive
specialized medical care, which was pointedly denied them during
their two weeks in detention. St. Julien was struck with a
machete in his right eye, from which he still cannot see and
which he might lose. He also suffers from severe headaches.

Deshommes, who received head injuries, is also being closely
monitored.

The two journalists were beaten by armed men, led by local
authorities and the "watchmen" of big landowning families -- the
Zéphirs and Novellas -- who have denied peasants the right to
farm on 365 carreaux of land which they have cultivated for
generations. The peasants were demonstrating on May 27 to plant
on the fallow land when they were attacked.

Nine people arrested during the demonstration remain in prison in
the capital without charges, in flagrant violation of the
Constitution which specifies that detainees be charged within 48
hours. Six are peasants, including two elderly men and two
elderly women, members of the union Batay Ouvriyè (Workers
Struggle). The other three prisoners are drivers who brought the
unionist in pick-ups to take part in the peasants' demonstration.
All were arrested on May 27 and transported by helicopter on May
29 to the National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince. The two women
are being held in Fort National (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No.
12, 6/5/2002).

The prisoners are enduring abominable conditions, lack clothes
and shoes, and need medical attention. There is no medicine in
the dispensary at the National Penitentiary. One peasant, Urbain
Garçon, is in danger of losing his leg.

Two peasants from St. Michel d'Attalaye -- Francilien Exilien and
Ipharès Guerrier -- were killed by the big landowners' goons on
May 27 and buried on the spot. Authorities in St. Raphael, allied
with the big landowners (known in Haiti as grandons), have issued
warrants to arrest 19 other demonstrators, all of whom have fled
the area or gone into hiding.

During a Jun. 6 sit-in in Cap Haïtien protesting the arrests,
radio journalist Delima Sévère said that his cousin, St.
Raphael's mayor Adonija Sévère, told him not to visit the town
because there was going to be "more trouble." Other reliable
sources claim that the grandon's thugs -- many of whom are
"dissidents" who left the Batay Ouvriyè union -- are being paid
about $30 daily (a princely sum in Haiti) since the May 27
confrontation to remain mobilized against the return of the
unionized peasants.

A massive wave of indignation from national and international
journalist and human rights groups forced the Haitian government,
controlled by the Lavalas Family party of President Jean Bertrand
Aristide, to release the journalists.

On Jun. 10, the Association of Haitian Journalists (AJH), which
played an instrumental role in bringing pressure to bear on the
government for the journalists' release, gave a press conference
to lay out its response to the arrests. "We will take legal steps
to make sure that these two journalists are compensated for the
abuse they endured, for their illegal arrest, their illegal
detention, the medical care that was denied, the poor treatment
they received, as well as suing the people who beat them," said
Guyler C. Delva, the AJH general secretary. "We are also going to
take measures with our lawyer to file suit against the
authorities who were in complicity in this illegal arrest."

"We also affirm that the government is responsible for the fact
that Darwin St. Julien risks losing his eye because he was not
examined by a specialist," Delva continued. "Once incarcerated in
the National Penitentiary, they preferred to isolate him from his
family instead of allowing him to be seen by a doctor."

In the press conference, the two journalists described how they
were accosted by the grandons' thugs. "While we were interviewing
some demonstrators, some individuals, headed by a "watchman" and
some local authorities, attacked us," St. Julien recounted. When
arrested later, the police fired their guns near the journalists'
ears, he said.

Deshommes described the terrible conditions in which they were
held in the National Penitentiary. "They treated us very badly,"
he said, "as if we were assailants, or terrorists, all the names
the authorities flung at us. They fed us like dogs, just throwing
the food down and saying 'take it.'" The journalists slept on the
prison's slimy fetid cement floors, since they could not obtain
one of the rare cots fought over by prisoners.

In a Jun. 10 press release, Haïti Progrès thanked the AJH and
other rights groups which fought for the journalists' release,
but warned that the battle is not over. "Haïti Progrès asks the
press and its association to remain mobilized: the release of the
journalists should not make us let our guard down," Maude
Leblanc, Haïti Progrès' co-director, wrote. "There are other
people arrested during the demonstration in Guacimal -- peasants,
members of Batay Ouvriyè -- who are still in jail illegally.
Others are being persecuted and have been forced into hiding
while the group close to the power is burning down their houses.
The press has the role to denounce arbitrary acts, and
intolerance is gaining ground in the country more and more."

In a release the next day, Evariste Wilson of the National
Popular Party (PPN) echoed this position. "The Lavalas Family
government is trying to turn the liberation of the two
journalists into a diversion so that it can black-out attention
on the incident in Guacimal," he said. "They want to cover up the
truth of what really happened on Monday, May 27."

Wilson denounced that the prisoners still being held include four
elderly peasants. "Are these the people the Lavalas Family
government wants to pretend are terrorists?" he asked.

The PPN called for the liberation of the remaining nine
prisoners, reparations for the two journalists, and some response
from a delegation of five deputies, which traveled to the area on
Jun. 5 but has made no statement.

"Governmental bodies like the INARA (Agricultural Institute)
should take up the matter of the 365 carreaux of land in
Guacimal," the PPN concluded. "Because the local authorities in
St. Raphael, particularly Mayor Adonija Sevère and various other
authorities in the Northern Department, are in bed with Nonce
Zéphir, who is a big landowner who has all the reason in the
world to continue to create incidents which could be even more
serious in St. Raphael."

Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, NY, Haitians gathered on Jun. 8 to listen
to Paul Philome, a Haiti-based militant of Batay Ouvriyè, and Ben
Dupuy, secretary general of the PPN, condemn the Haitian
government's support of rampaging big landowners in St. Raphael.
Following the meeting, a demonstration was called for Thursday,
Jun. 13 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in front of the Haitian Consulate
in Manhattan (271 Madison Avenue) to demand the immediate release
of the nine Batay Ouvriyè prisoners.

For more information on the Jun. 13 demonstration, call the
Global Sweatshop Coalition at (212) 947-7744.

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

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