13592: Fw: Haiti: Latinamerica Press article (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Max Blanchet <MaxBlanchet@worldnet.att.net>

Alliance strengthens impunity - Latinamerica Press
by James Joseph.
Oct 31, 2002

People walking by Martyr’s Place on the anniversary of Haiti’s 1991 coup
were shocked by the sight. Standing shoulder to shoulder in the shadow of a
monument honoring the 3,000 victims of the military government (1991-94)
were
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been the coup’s principal target,
and Calixte Delatour, former legal adviser to Gen. Raoul Cedras and Police
Chief Michel François, who engineered the military takeover.

In a move emblematic of the impunity that has characterized the country
since
a US-led invasion returned Aristide to office in 1994, the president named
Delatour as Haiti’s new minister of justice on Sept. 30, the very
anniversary
of the coup.

Delatour replaces Jean-Baptiste Brown, who resigned in late September after
only seven months in office, saying he did not receive support for the
reforms he had planned. Brown had been conspicuously silent since the Aug. 3
Gonaïves jailbreak of Aristide supporter Amiot Métayer (LP, Aug. 26, 2002).

Although a warrant has been issued for his arrest, Métayer — leader of the
"Cannibal Army," a group of armed civilians that liberated 160 prisoners and
set fire to a number of public buildings, including the courthouse — gives
interviews just a stone’s throw from the Gonaïves police headquarters. A
report by the Organization of American States (OAS) implicated Métayer in
mob
rampages and a lynching that targeted opposition parties after an attack
last
December on the National Palace, which the government claimed was a coup
attempt (LP, Dec. 31, 2001, and Aug. 12, 2002). So far, none of those named
in the report has been arrested.

More recently, police arrested the leader of the National Coordination of
Credit Union Victims, a group that has criticized the government’s handling
of the collapse of a pyramid scheme involving financial institutions (LP,
Sept. 23, 2002).

On Sept. 23, armed civilians and a SWAT team searched the home of Rosemond
Jean without the presence of a judge or other witnesses. Claiming they had
found a grenade in the children’s room, they took Jean away in handcuffs
with
a plastic sack over his head. He was charged with possession of illegal
weapons and association with criminals. Rights groups have protested the
detention, and Jean has been on hunger strike since Oct. 15.

Brown resigned several days after Jean’s arrest.

At an Oct. 18 sit-in at the Ministry of Justice, representatives of human
rights organizations called for an end to state-sanctioned impunity. Holding
posters saying "Enough is enough!" and "We won’t accept any more gags!" they
demanded Jean’s release.

Located not far from the National Palace, Martyr’s Place is also close to
the
former Army headquarters. As adviser to the military regime, Delatour used
to
shuttle between the two buildings.

"I call Delatour a ‘palace musician,’ since he has been in every government,
including the Duvalier dictatorship regimes," said Pierre Esperance,
Director
of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR) and a leader of the
Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organizations (POHDH) in Port-au-Prince.
"The nomination of Delatour encourages impunity. It is a deception for
victims of the coup d’etat and anyone working for a state of law in Haiti."

Delatour takes office at a moment when the judicial system and National
Police have been discredited in the eyes of Haitian and international
observers. Esperance and another POHDH officer, Maxime Rony, flew to
Washington on Oct. 16 to meet with the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights.

"The country is in danger of returning to the dark times of systematic human
rights violations if the government does not change its current policy of
impunity," they told the commission. "Threats, illegal and arbitrary
arrests,
arbitrary detentions, summary executions, disappearances and police
brutality
are everyday events."

Freedom of the press is also at risk. In September, one journalist fled the
country and three radio stations closed their newsrooms for a day after
repeated threats. Investigations into the murders of two journalists, Jean
Dominique on April 3, 2000, and Brignol Lindor on Dec. 3, 2001, are stalled
(LP, Oct. 1, 2001). The NCHR has accused Petite Goâve Assistant Mayor Dumay
Bony and other officials of Aristide’s Lavalas party for Lindor’s death.
Human rights defenders call a recent judicial report, which cleared the
officials, a whitewash.

Instead of combating threats to freedom of speech, Aristide — whom the
French-based Reporters without Borders named a "predator of press freedom"
earlier this year — has fanned the flames. "In 1991, they used big guns for
their death campaign, but today they are carrying out a campaign of
denigration and disinformation against Haiti. When they plot and lie to make
people think there is no freedom of the press, that is a prolongation of the
1991 coup d’état!" Aristide said of his opponents at a mass meeting of
Lavalas party members in late September.

"This government is not interested in justice," said the Rev. Jan Hanssens,
director of the Catholic Church’s National Justice and Peace Commission. The
commission, which is also a member of the POHDH, is working on a judicial
reform project. Its research has found the Haitian judicial system to be
arbitrary, exclusive, excessively formal and bureaucratic.

"We need to work for a reform from below, a reform where the principal
actors
are the people," Hanssens said.




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