13414: This Week in Haiti 20:31 10/16/2002 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
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                           HAITI PROGRES
              "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

                      * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                       October 16 - 22, 2002
                          Vol. 20, No. 31

FACED WITH U.S. ARROGANCE, NEW POPULAR MOVEMENT GROWS

U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, Brian Dean Curran, verbally slapped the
Haitian government across the face twice this week, provoking
anger among sovereignty-coveting Haitians throughout this
Caribbean nation and its diaspora.

The provocative remarks, issued in two separate interviews, come
just over a month after the Haitian government assured its people
that $500,000 in loans blocked by Washington would soon be
released following the adoption of Organization of American
States (OAS) Resolution 822 on Sep. 4. But Curran's criticism
leaves little doubt that such optimism is misplaced.

Furthermore, last week, David Lee, the Canadian OAS special
representative to Haiti, scolded the Haitian government that
there "is still much to do" in implementing Res. 822, in
particular the round-up and disarmament of government supporters
who ransacked opposition homes and headquarters on Dec. 17, 2001,
following an assassination attempt on President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. Lee called the pursuit of Dec. 17 rioters outlined last
month in a Haitian Justice Ministry preliminary
report"fictitious" and reminded the government that its treasury-
emptying compensation of opposition leaders with millions of
gourdes "is not yet completed."

In a long Oct. 11 interview on Radio Kiskeya, Curran brazenly
stomped on diplomatic etiquette and accused the government of
lying, drug trafficking, and bad faith.

"There are police officers involved in drug trafficking," he told
Kiskeya's anchor Lilianne Pierre-Paul. Then, like a colonial
proconsul, he continued: "We have to restructure the institution.
We know these people, and the government knows their names."

He should know those people. For six years after the force was
formed in 1995, the U.S. government was responsible for the
design, selection, formation, equipping, and training of the
Haitian National Police (PNH), which Curran now condemns. Like
police forces in the U.S., it has been plagued by corruption and
brutality. The PNH replaced the Haitian Army, which was dissolved
by Aristide in 1995.

On three occasions throughout the interview, Curran repeated "We
must restructure the police," a brazen re-meddling in Haitian
internal affairs.

"Such comments illustrate just how compromised our independence
has become under the current government," noted Ben Dupuy,
secretary general of the National Popular Party (PPN). "Such
declarations by a foreign diplomat in most other countries would
have caused him to be declared 'persona not grata.'"

In the interview, Curran also expressed his dissatisfaction with
the results of Operation Hurricane II, the second large-scale
joint operation on Haitian soil between Haiti's Office of
Fighting Against Drug Trafficking (BLTS) and the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA).

PNH spokesman Jean Dady Siméon called the operation as success,
saying it resulted in the seizure of drugs and several arrests.
But Curran scoffed at these assertions. "They did not seize any
drugs, no drugs at all," he said. "I don't understand the police
spokesman's declaration... It is not true."

Washington now estimates that 15% of the drugs coming into the
U.S. from South American transit through Haiti, up from 13% last
year, according to Curran. "So the amount of drugs passing
through Haiti is growing, not diminishing," he said.

Such estimates contradict those recently made by Dominican
president Hipolito Méjia to a Dominican daily "El Diario Libre"
that since Feb. 7, 2001 the percentage of U.S.-bound drugs
passing through Haiti has dropped from 14% to 9%.

In another interview on Oct. 11 with the Associated Press, Curran
said: "When you have the press threatened, bad elections, and
impunity instead of the rule of law, democracy is threatened."
This was the reason Haiti was only invited as an observer to the
Washington-sponsored Community of Democracy meeting of Western
Hemisphere nations in Seoul, South Korea in November, he said.
Also, Cuba was not invited.

As usual, the response of Aristide's Lavalas Family party (FL) to
Curran's remarks was timid. "The ambassador of the United States
knows perfectly well that we do not have a magic wand and that we
are doing our best to apply Resolution 822," said Culture
Minister Lilac Desquiron.

Communication Secretary Mario Dupuy clumsily tried to turn the
tables on Curran, as if it was just battle of wits. "Remember
that as early as 1994, the president of the Republic wanted to
undertake a disarmament campaign in the country and even
requested the international community's support which he didn't
receive," he said.

The brouhaha occurs just as the government declared this "Week of
the Emperor" in honor of  Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the father of
Haiti's 1804 independence. He was assassinated in an ambush at
Pont Rouge 196 years ago on Oct. 17. For the commemoration, the
government announced that it plans to spruce up Jean-Jacques
Dessalines Boulevard, the capital's dusty, crumbling, exhaust-
coated central avenue.

Not surprisingly, the Washington-backed Democratic Convergence
opposition coalition applauded both Curran's statements and those
of Peter DeShazo, the current U.S. representative at the OAS, who
last week called on Aristide's government to produce a final
report on the Dec. 17 events and to arrest and disarm his
supporters involved in the ransacking. "We think that the stand
taken by Mr. Peter [DeShazo] is positive," said the Convergence's
Paul Denis, "and we are waiting to see if the U.S. government
will remain in support of the positions on Res. 822 articulated
by Peter DeShazo as well as by the U.S. ambassador."

Meanwhile, the PPN in conjunction with several progressive
popular organizations and unions is planning a giant march in the
northern city of Cap Haïtien on Oct. 17 to protest the
subservience of both the FL and Convergence to Washington, the
crackdown on striking unionists in Guacimal, the sale to a U.S.-
controlled corporation of 1875 square kilometers of Haitian
territory along the Dominican border, and the fleecing of
thousands of small depositors by government-endorsed fly-by-night
banks, among other issues.

"We want to recapture the anti-imperialist, Dessalinien ideals
which the Haitian people embraced in 1990 but which today the
Lavalas Family and the Convergence have betrayed in order to beg
for scraps from Washington's table," said PPN's Ben Dupuy. "With
our mobilizations, we are showing that, despite the efforts of
opportunists, the popular movement will not be buried and is
ready now to build a new alternative."

WBAI HAITI SPECIAL ON OCT. 24

The Haitian Collective at WBAI will host a two-hour special
program on Haiti on WBAI 99.5 FM in New York on October 24 from 7
p.m. to 9 p.m.. The program will include interviews with poet
Paul Laraque and former Duvalier dictatorship prisoner Patrick
Lemoine, new developments in the case of Pennsylvania death-row
prisoner Borgela Philistin, as well as the latest news from Haiti
and a live performance by renowned drummer Frisner Augustin of
the Twoup Makandal.

Special gift packages of music CDs and books will be offered to
listeners during the program. Hosts include Haitian community
activists Christian Lemoine, Daniel Simidor, Kim Ives, and
Margaret Dominique.

The program is available on the Internet at www.wbai.org.

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

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