13672: This Week in Haiti 20:35 11/13/2002 (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 *

                      November 13 - 19, 2002
                          Vol. 20, No. 35

ELUSIVE COMMANDOS, TANKING ECONOMY AND LOOMING INTERVENTION
DESTABILIZE HAITI

With pressure from Washington increasing and the economy
spiraling ever downward, the government of President Jean-
Bertrand Aristide this week lashed out against "destabilization
attempts," announcing the arrest of one group of alleged "trouble
makers" and the escape of another.

On Nov. 7, Haitian authorities presented to the press six people
who had been arrested for "acts of destabilization." One of them
professed to have been part of an arson plot involving former
Pétionville mayor Lydie Parent and neo-Duvalierist politician
Vladimir Jeanty. Another said he had come from the northwestern
town of Port-de-Paix to warn Haitian authorities of an attack
being planned by former police chief Guy Philippe, who now lives
in the Dominican Republic.

The Haitian government charges that Philippe master-minded two
attacks which killed 17 Haitian policemen in July and December of
last year. In both cases, the commandos came from and escaped to
the neighboring Dominican Republic (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 19,
No. 20, 8/1/01 & Vol. 19, No. 40, 12/19/01). Philippe has been
living in the DR since a foiled coup plot in October 2000 (see
Haïti Progrès, Vol. 18, No. 32, 10/25/02).

On Oct. 24, Haitian Foreign Minister Philippe Antonio and Police
chief inspector general Harvel Jean Baptiste traveled to the
Dominican Republic to protest the border sorties and the asylum
enjoyed there by plot-hatching former Haitian police chiefs and
soldiers, calling for their expulsion, arrest, or extradition
back to Haiti. Lieutenant General Miguel Soto Jimenez, the
Dominican army chief, brushed off the high-level plea. "We keep
tabs on these people," he said. "But as for their status in the
Dominican Republic, how they enter and exit, that is the matter
which concerns the Immigration Department"(see Haïti Progrès,
Vol. 20 No. 33, 10/30/02).

One of the "trouble makers" presented to the press, Tertulien
Innocent, claimed he had gone to the National Palace on Nov. 6 to
tell of an imminent attack from Philippe. "I came of my own free
will, and what's more, they didn't arrest me," he said,
handcuffed. "But after I gave my information to the National
Palace, they said that I would be detained for investigations."

Another prisoner, Francis Dieulhomme, admitted that he had been
arrested carrying a jug of gasoline as he prepared to set fire to
the Haitian National Television building. He said others had been
hired to burn down the Aristide Foundation--based Télé Timoun
(Children's Television) and the national phone company Teleco's
headquarters. Planning meetings were held at the homes of Parent
and Jeanty, Dieulhomme claimed, but he had not been able to
attend. He said he got the job anyway for a fee of $7000 but
didn't know the man who hired him. "It's a guy I've seen downtown
where I have my clairin (moonshine) business," he said. "When I
met with him, he gave me an advance of $500. I don't know him
personally, but he had seen me around."

Parent, who heads up a newly-formed opposition coalition called
the Patriotic Union, and Philippe, speaking from the DR, both
dismissed the accounts as concoctions of the Haitian government.

Days later, armed men attacked the police headquarters in the
northern city of Cap Haïtien in the early morning hours of Nov.
11, departmental police director Fritz Jean said. The attackers
were dressed in army fatigues and escaped on a small sailboat, he
claimed.

"It was a destabilization attempt by former soldiers and those
nostalgic for the coup d'état," said Jean Myrtho Julien, the
region's government representative. The Haitian army staged a
three year coup against Aristide from 1991-1994. On his return to
Haiti, Aristide dissolved the force.

Jean claimed the police easily repulsed the attack and
recuperated a bag dropped by one of the attackers which contained
ammunition for an M-1, a 9-millimeter pistol, and a 12-gauge
shotgun.

The attack comes on the eve of a Nov. 17 march planned in Cap
Haïtien by right-wing opposition leaders and government critics.
A so-called Citizens Initiative, headed by the likes of
politicians Evans Paul and René Théodore, human rights activist
Jean Claude Bajeux, journalist Nancy Roc, and former putschist
soldier Himmler Rébu, is holding a "unity weekend" and march to
celebrate the 199th anniversary of Vertières, a pivotal battle in
Haiti's independence war.

"It is a very serious situation when citizens are organizing a
military parade," said Cap Haïtien Lavalas Deputy James Dérosin
of the event, in which former soldiers are expected to
participate.

But Eliscar Charles, a spokesman for the opposition OPL, claimed
that the Nov. 11 attack was "a scenario" created by Lavalas
authorities as "a means to target the Citizens' Initiative so
that people boycott Sunday's event."

Tensions are also high in the north after rock-throwing
demonstrators in the area of Acul du Nord broke up a pro-
government rally on Nov. 10.

The counter-demonstrators were primarily protesting the severe
economic crisis, which the government blames on Washington's
blockage of $500 million in international aid and loans to the
country. Haiti's national currency, the gourde, was trading for
42 to a dollar this week, up from an average of 25 in past
months. The costs of basic necessities are sky-rocketing. Five
gourdes recently bought three plantains, now it buys one. A big
can (gwo mamit) of "Lucky" rice has risen from 40 to 45 gourdes,
and a can of black beans from 15 to 20 gourdes. A sack of cement
has gone from 165 gourdes to 210.

In a Nov. 12 press conference, Finance Minister Gustave Faubert
reported that the government had lost 1.5 billion gourdes (about
$53 million) in forfeited petroleum taxes in the past two years
and that central bank dollar reserves had fallen precariously
low, now about $55 million after a recent banking panic. "This is
for a simple reason," he said. "The state has obligations it must
meet to keep the machinery running, but at the same time we
haven't received the aid we used to from the international
sector. We are under economic sanctions."

Faubert nonetheless pathetically held out a tin cup to his
tormentor. "We hope that [Washington] doesn't tell us that we
have to use the state's meager resources to hold elections," he
said. Foreign powers have financially sponsored most Haitian
elections since 1986.

Despite a rain of threats and condemnation from Bush
Administration officials, Aristide continues to make futile
gestures of compliance with Organization of American States (OAS)
Resolution 822, which makes a series of impossible demands on the
Haitian government, as such agreements are designed to do. After
missing the Nov. 4 deadline to form a new Provisional Electoral
Council (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No. 34, 11/6/02), the
government released this week a final report detailing its
campaign to disarm and round-up those involved in violence last
year against opposition leaders, as well as  the government's
ensuing monetary compensation of those leaders.

But Bush administration officials are not impressed, and it
appears that a third military occupation of Haiti is being
prepared, said Ben Dupuy, secretary general of the National
Popular Party (PPN), in a Nov. 7 press conference. "All the
meeting and missions of the OAS are just a play aimed at
psychologically preparing the materialization of the United
States' objective, which is none other than intervening to occupy
the country once again," Dupuy said. He compared today's
situation in Haiti to that before the first U.S. military
intervention in 1915, when the country was financially hogtied
and politically pushed towards the chaos.

Meanwhile "the civil society, this beautiful pseudonym we use for
our bourgeoisie, demands technical assistance from the OAS, as
provided for by Resolution 822," Dupuy said. "In fact, technical
assistance is just a euphemism for military assistance, which
they want for their protection."

NOV. 14: HAITIAN BICENTENNIAL PRELUDE

To commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of Vertières, in
which Gen. Jean-Jacques Dessalines's Haitian troops defeated
Napoleon's French imperial forces in 1803, the Latin American and
Caribbean Studies Program at Long Island University, Brooklyn, is
sponsoring "Haitian Bicentennial Prelude" night on Nov. 14 from
6:00 to 9:00 p.m. in collaboration with the Haitian Information
Center and the Haiti 2004 Initiative.

Daniel Simidor, one of the producer-hosts of "Haiti: The
Struggles Continues" on WBAI 99.5 FM in New York, will be the
featured speaker, along with a performance by Paulette St. Lot,
the Ibo Dancers, and free Haitian food. Admission is free.

The event will be held in LIU's Main Building Cafeteria, near the
corner of Flatbush and Dekalb Avenues. For more information,
contact LIU, Brooklyn's Department of Foreign Languages and
Literature at (718) 488-1252.

NOV. 19: PROTEST AT THE IDB

The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial and the Boston-based Partners in
Health will hold a protest on Nov. 19 from 7:30 to 10:00 a.m. in
front of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), at 1300 New
York Avenue, NW in Washington, DC. The action is called to
protest the blockage of $146 million in IDB loans to Haiti for
health care, sanitation, education and road works. For more
information, contact Lee Woodyear at lee@rfkmemorial.org.

All articles copyrighted Haïti Progrès, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED
Please credit Haïti Progrès.

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