15349: This Week in Haiti 21:05 04/16/2003 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
newsweekly. For the complete edition with other news in French
and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100,
(fax) 718-434-5551 or e-mail at <editor@haitiprogres.com>.
Also visit our website at <www.haitiprogres.com>.

                           HAITI PROGRES
              "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

                      * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                      April 16 - 22, 2003
                         Vol. 21, No. 5

TWO OR THREE DEMONSTRATORS KILLED, SEVERAL WOUNDED, IN CAP HAÏTIEN

Pro-government demonstrators were fired on and stoned by unidentified
attackers in the Carrenage section of the northern city of Cap Haïtien on
Apr. 6. Donald Julmiste died at the scene, and another demonstrator died
later at the city's Justinien Hospital.

The next day, the body of a third demonstrator was fished out of the ocean
nearby. The cause of death has not yet been determined.

About 10 people were injured in the attack, which popular organizations and
government delegate Myrtho Julien say was carried out by partisans of the
Democratic Convergence opposition front. Opposition representatives deny the
charge.

The demonstrators had marched through town to voice their support for
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and for planned elections, in which the
opposition is presently refusing to take part. The marchers were attacked
when entering the well-to-do Carrenage neighborhood, situated on a sliver of
land between the mountains and ocean at the northern end of the city.

"They were carrying signs and when they arrived in front of the Carrenage
Square, this guy fired at them with a 9 millimeter pistol and one guy went
down right there," a witness explained to Radio Ginen. "He died on the
 spot." Other unidentified attackers threw rocks and bottles at the
demonstrators. A car was also burned in the melee.

Demonstrators blame the police for not offering them protection, but the
police say that they were not informed about the demonstration.

"CARAVAN OF HOPE" PASSES THROUGH GONAÏVES

Haitian opposition leaders brought their traveling road-show known as the
"Caravan of Hope" to the city of Gonaïves this past weekend. Neither
supporters nor opponents massed around the convoy, undermining opposition
assertions that dissent is not tolerated, that elections are not possible,
and that upheaval is imminent.

The "Caravan" is a concoction of the"Group of 184" so-called "civil society"
organizations, which formed last December after Haitian opposition leaders
met with the International Republican Institute (IRI) strategists in the
Dominican Republic (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No. 45, 1/22/03). For the
past month, the "Caravan" has been touring Haiti, trying to drum up support
for the flaccid, unpopular opposition to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's
government. The "Caravan" holds public and private meetings with different
groups, seeking signers to a proposed "new social contract," code for an
anti-Lavalas front.

The "Caravan" met at Gonaïves' Family Hotel on Apr. 13, attracting about a
hundred people, most of whom seemed mainly interested in the free soda and
T-shirts being distributed.

Prominent at the meeting was Pierre-Robert Auguste, who was a government
official during the 1991-94 coup d'état and today is a member of Mochrena, a
hard right-wing party in the Democratic Convergence opposition front.

Auguste is one of the heads of the Association of Entrepreneurs of the
Artibonite (AEA), a "Group of 184" affiliate. In a short speech, he accused
the Lavalas regime of repression and corruption.

The 184 Group and the Caravan are headed by Andy Apaid, a leading light of
Haiti's assembly industry bourgeoisie. He led a delegation which met for
several hours with Gonaïves' two Catholic bishops, Emmanuel Constant and
Yves-Marie Péan, giving each a copy of the "new social contract" proposal.
Apaid said he was satisfied with the response of people to the Caravan,
venturing that people were eagerly waiting for just such a "contract."

"The Haitian people don't want and don't need a new social contract," said
Ben Dupuy during a Mar. 28-30 Congress of the National Popular Party (PPN)
(see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 21, No. 4, 4/9/03). "They already have a social
contract: the 1987 Haitian Constitution." During a PPN mass march through
Port-au-Prince on Mar. 27, demonstrators chanted: "No to the Caravan of
Despair."

Popular organizations in Gonaïves complimented the police on the way they
handled the Caravan, which presented its "contract" to various sectors
around the Artibonite region. Since the Caravan has been able to circulate
freely in Haiti without violence, this proves that elections could be held,
Gonaïves' popular organizations said. They called on the Group of 184 to
encourage the Democratic Convergence and civil society sectors which still
have not sent their representatives to the Provisional Electoral Council
(CEP) to do so immediately.

"It is a lie when they say there is no security in Gonaïves," said Gracia
Joseph, spokesman for the Popular Democratic Organization of Raboteau
(OPDR). "The opposition and their foreign backers want to give the city a
bad image and find an excuse not to support new elections."

Meanwhile, Peter Métayer, a member of the Solidarity and Peace Commission
(KPS) and younger brother of popular organization leader Amiot "Cubain"
Métayer, warned the population of Gonaïves to stay alert to intrigues. "Keep
your eyes wide open so that neither Amiot Métayer nor Jean-Bertrand Aristide
are arrested and carried away to a dungeon the way they did to Toussaint
Louverture," he warned, saying that he is a partisan of neither the
Convergence nor Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party.

Louverture led the war to abolish slavery in the French colony of St.
Domingue, a struggle which culminated in Haiti's 1804 independence. He was
captured in 1802 and died in a French prison in the Pyrenees on Apr. 7,
1803.

In sharp counterpoint to the Caravan's tepid reception, tens of thousands of
Haitians flooded the capital's central square of Champ de Mars for a
government-sponsored rally to mark the bicentennial of Louverture's death.
In his speech for the occasion, Aristide called for "restitution and
reparations" from France on the order of $21.685 billion.

2000 HAITIANO-DOMINICAN CHILDREN MARCH ON DOMINICAN SUPREME COURT

On Mar. 22, some 2000 children born to Haitian parents in the Dominican
Republic demonstrated in front of the Dominican Supreme Court to protest the
state's refusal to provide them with Dominican birth certificates and the
ensuing privileges of citizenship. Although the Dominican Constitution says
that all those born on Dominican soil are Dominican (except for diplomats
and passing travelers), authorities have always refused to give the children
born to Haitian residents birth certificates. The Jesuit Refugee Service
qualifies the practice as "racist." The march was held in conjunction with
the Mar. 21 International Day Against Racism.

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

                               -30-