15255: Bellegarde-Smith: Vodou is fully recognised as a religion in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: P D Bellegarde-Smith <pbs@csd.uwm.edu>

Vodou is fully recognised as a religion in Haiti
Port-au-Prince, April 5, 2003 -(AHP)- Vodou is henceforth to be fully
recognised as a religion, empowered to fulfil its mission throughout the
country consistent with the constitution and the laws of the Republic,
pending the adoption of a law relating to its legal status.

The presidential decree dated April 4, 2003 relating to this decision
indicates that all Vodou chiefs, temple officials, officials at a sacred
site, as well as all Vodou organisations or associations are empowered to
file a request for recognition by the Ministry of Culture and Religious
Affairs.

According to the decree, the recognition granted by the Ministry of Culture
and Religious Affairs will have the specific effect of enlisting assistance
and protection from any constituted authority. The temples, sacred sites, and
Vodou organisations or associations, endowed with the rights and prerogatives
associated with their functioning, may obtain qualified support from the
State, the decree indicates. Vodou chiefs and temple or sacred site officials
are invited to take an oath before the presiding judge of the appropriate
civil tribunal. Once they have taken the oath, the Vodou chiefs can be
empowered to officiate at baptisms, marriages and funerals.

This decision by the government is based on a set of articles in the
constitution and the laws of the Republic. The presidential decree considers
that Vodou is an ancestral religion, an essential element of national
identity. The authorities consider that it is the duty of the State to
protect the cultural heritage of the nation, especially considering that
Vodou practitioners, who represent a considerable portion of the Haitian
population, have demonstrated through their efforts their desire to structure
their institutions, and considering also the participation by Vodou
practitioners in the social, political and moral development of the Haitian
people.

Vodou leaders greeted the decision by the governmental authorities with
satisfaction. According to one Vodou leader, Evrony Auguste, this decree puts
an end to 500 years of exclusion and discrimination to which Vodou
practitioners have been subjected.

"This is good news for practitioners of Vodou who for centuries have been
marginalized ", Mme. Auguste observed. She sees President Aristide as the new
black Spartacus who has understood, she said, the need to place all religions
on an equal footing. "Like Toussaint Louverture, President Aristide advocates
equality among all Haitians", she emphasised. Evrony Auguste also invited the
Vodou community to unify itself in order to better defend its newest gains,
fearing that other sectors may try to put sticks in the spokes of their
wheels following the president's decree.

She recalled, for example, that tens of thousands of Vodou practitioners were
killed or persecuted following the downfall of the Duvalier regime in 1986 by
people who she said wanted to finish off this religion. The intellectual
authors of this massacre and their henchmen, though known to the public, were
never arrested, or punished under Haiti's system of justice, she remembered.

Hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of Haitians practice Vodou even when
they are officially recognised as devout Catholics or Protestants. For a long
time (and perhaps today as well) and for various reasons a great number of
Haitians have tried to conceal the fact that they consulted Vodou priests and
priestesses. Known practitioners of Vodou have at times found themselves
barred from, for example, receiving baptism, first communion, marriage, or
funeral rites. Children of practitioners have also found that they might not
be admitted into certain Catholic or Protestant schools.



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Forwarded as a service of the Haiti Support Group - solidarity with the
Haitian people's struggle for human rights, participatory democracy and
equitable development - since 1992.

Web site: www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org