14142: Edouard - News -U.S. Lobbyists for Regime in Full Cry (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Felix Edouard <loveayiti@hotmail.com>

U.S. Lobbyists for Regime in Full Cry
Raymond A. Joseph, 2002-12-12
New York Sun


            Faced with a countrywide movement to oust him, Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide has affirmed his intention to serve out the remaining
three years of his term. But he will have to use the crudest repression to
make his will stick.

            The situation turned ugly on Tuesday when planned demonstrations
in Port-au-Prince and several other cities were violently disturbed by
partisans of the president armed with rocks, sticks, bottles of urine,
plastic packets of feces, bullwhips and 8-1/2 x 11 pictures of the
president. In the capital, for example, around 6:00 a.m., Lavalassians, as
the followers of the ruling party are called, occupied the United Nations
Plaza by the seaside. By 10:00 a.m. when the opposition was to begin its
march, about 2,000 partisans of Mr. Aristide were in the spot for which the
original marchers had obtained a police permit. When some legitimate
demonstrators began arriving, the Lavalassians attacked and pandemonium set
in. The lashing with the whips was particularly brutal, because the whips,
made of cowhide, have tiny bits of lead attached to their tips.

            President Aristide took to the air to thank “the people” who had
“manifested their will” in his behalf. “I cannot tell them not to
demonstrate,” he said, adding “but I cannot stop the people from expressing
themselves.” According to predictions, the Tuesday march of the opposition
would have topped the approximately 60,000 that took to the streets of Cap
Haitien, Haiti’s second largest city, on November 17. The regime decided
that it couldn’t afford that gamble.

            On Monday, government agents in official vehicles were seen in
various shantytowns around the capital, especially at Cite Soleil. They were
distributing money to insure a big turnout Tuesday morning. According to a
Haiti-Observateur source in the banking system, earlier that Monday the
government had taken 120 million gourdes (about $3 million at the current
exchange rate) from the ONA Fund, as the employees’ retirement fund is
called.

Also the regime turned to Aristide’s Voodoo medium “Sister Anne,” whose real
name is Anne Auguste, to “bless” and distribute the whips, which came neatly
packaged in carton boxes. Another Voodoo medium, Alina Sixto, who hails from
Stamford, Conn., was also on hand for the major operation against the
opposition. One wonders whether those two naturalized Americans -- (“Sister
Anne,” has a home in Brooklyn) and Mrs. Sixto -- aren’t in violation of U.S.
laws for participating in violence overseas. The same could be said for Mr.
Aristide’s Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, from Freeport, L.I. He always uses
his American passport to travel back and forth between Port-au-Prince and
New York. Moreover, Mr. Aristide depends on American bodyguards provided by
the Steele Foundation of San Francisco for his personal security. It is,
therefore, understandable that the Haitian authorities exploit the
ambiguities of U.S. laws to claim that they have some support from America
to carry out repression in Haiti.

            The regime also permitted its thugs to desecrate the St. Pierre
Catholic Church in the upscale suburb of Petion-Ville where a mass was being
celebrated in memory of Brignol Lindor. Mr. Lindor, a respected journalist
in Petit Goave, was hacked to death on December 3, 2001 by the savages of
“Sleep in the Woods,” a so-called popular organization closely tied to the
regime. Early Tuesday intruders had placed photos of Mr. Aristide on all the
pews and even posted some on walls of the church. They also hassled people
coming into the church. Obviously Mr. Aristide, a defrocked Catholic priest,
was thumbing his nose at an official declaration of the Bishops’ Conference,
the highest deliberative church authority in Haiti. After a conclave of
several days, the bishops made several suggestions in a statement released
Monday. They said the president could “voluntarily resign for the greater
good of the nation, magnanimously shorten his term by calling for general
elections or undertake major reforms to enhance the credibility of the
government and regain [the public’s] confidence.”

            It is almost impossible for the regime to regain the public’s
confidence. Following the crude attacks of Tuesday, leaders of political,
business, labor, school and other professional organizations called for a
spontaneous strike Wednesday to show their displeasure. A nationwide strike
closed banks, schools and businesses Wednesday. Another nationwide strike,
which was previously scheduled for December 10, is being reviewed more
methodically.

            Violence by the regime’s thugs has also made some victims
elsewhere. In Gonaives, a bastion of the opposition, Amiot “Cuban” Metayer
of the “Cannibal Army” carried out a raid Sunday on the Jubilee section of
town, burning more than 20 houses and killing three people. Cuban, it should
be recalled, had escaped from jail on August 2, following a jailbreak
engineered by his followers in complicity with the government. Another
fugitive from that jailbreak, Jean Pierre, better known as Jean Tatoune, has
become a fierce rival of Cuban.  But unlike Cuban, he has declared himself
against Mr. Aristide. In a telephone interview, Tatoune confirmed that an
aide of Cuban, who also acted as chauffeur, was killed in a skirmish last
Saturday night. “His own people shot him in error,” said Tatoune, who also
revealed that another anti-Aristide group confiscated last week a truckload
of weapons and about $25,000 destined to Cuban.

Oddly, Ira Kurzban, an American lawyer representing the Haitian government,
said in a release last week that in its first “major armed attack,” the
opposition Convergence Democratique had seized several weapons from seven
policemen who had abandoned their vehicle to escape being hurt. Former
Congressman Ron Dellums of San Francisco, a lavishly paid lobbyist of the
Haitian government, lamented that by its action, the Convergence was
depriving poor Haitians of food and medicine. For the opposition group
claims that it won’t participate in any election as long as Resolution 822
of the Organization of American States isn’t fully complied with by the
Haitian government. As previously mentioned that resolution calls for the
arrest and disarmament of the thugs. Amiot Metayer is specifically
mentioned. Also reparations should be paid to the victims of the destruction
of December 17, following a bogus coup d’etat and an impartial electoral
board to oversee the upcoming elections should have been in place last
November 4.

            “Certainly there can’t be any elections with this regime, which
must be ousted,” said Professor Leslie Manigat, a former president of Haiti,
who himself was toppled in a military coup d’etat in 1988. Mr. Aristide
disbanded the army in 1995 and now relies on his irregular thugs to carry
out repression in conjunction with a politicized police. But popular will is
definitely solidifying against the Lavalassians. Hopefully, a plan will be
in place to forestall the destructive dechouquage (uprooting of lives and
property) that accompanied the overthrow of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier
on February 7, 1986.






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