15379: Hermantin: U.S. citizen petitions human rights commission after being attacked in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Sun-Sentinel

U.S. citizen petitions human rights commission after being attacked in Haiti



By Madeline Baró Diaz
Miami Bureau

April 21, 2003

Almost three years after armed police officers barged into her home in
Haiti, held her hostage, beat her and burned her, Carmel Moise Bley still
awaits justice.

Moise, a U.S. citizen born in Haiti, has given up on the criminal justice
system in her native country and is pinning her hopes on a petition she has
filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

"It was like a movie," she says of the two-hour ordeal at her Petionville
home on the morning of July 6, 2000.

In her petition, Moise said that men dressed in police uniforms barged into
her bedroom, holding her cousin hostage. Demanding jewelry, drugs and
$200,000, the men fired a shotgun at her bed, ripped phone lines from the
wall and smashed her windows.

When Moise told them she didn't have what they were looking for, the men
grabbed her maid's 7-year-old daughter, thinking she was Moise's daughter.
They held a cordless drill to the child's head and threatened to perforate
her skull.

Convinced by the maid's pleas that the child was not Moise's, the men left
the girl alone and continued their rampage. They asked the maid for an iron
so they could use it on Moise. The woman refused. They beat her.

The men ransacked the house, but only found some jewelry and $2,500.
Enraged, they hit Moise with their guns, so hard that some of the guns
broke.

They then tied her up and used an iron to burn her back and arm several
times. Moise almost passed out from the pain and from having to smell her
own burned flesh.

Moise later got medical treatment, filed a report with the Haitian police
and sought help at the U.S. Embassy.

"It went nowhere," said Moise's attorney Pedro Martinez-Fraga. "All efforts
in Haiti were stonewalled."

Late last year, Moise finally decided to take her case to the human rights
commission, an arm of the Organization of American States. The commission is
in the early stages of reviewing her petition.

If Moise's case is found to be valid, the commission or the Inter-American
Court of Human Rights could determine that Haiti must compensate her or take
action, such as finding those responsible and prosecuting them, said Roxanna
Altholz, staff attorney for the Center for Justice and International Law in
Washington, D.C.

Enforcing a judgment could be difficult, even if a country accepts the
court's jurisdiction and has signed the American Convention on Human Rights,
which is the basis of claims brought before the commission.

"This is like most international tribunals and bodies -- there's no police
force," Altholz said. "This is enforcement through shame and political
pressure."

Critics of Haiti's record on human rights say the island nation needs to be
shamed.

Amnesty International, for example, has documented many human rights abuses
over the past decade in Haiti.

In its 2001 report on Haiti, which covered events in 2000, Amnesty
International said the "human rights situation deteriorated sharply, despite
some positive steps toward accounting for past human rights violations."

The report stated that there were several reports of unlawful killings by
police, mostly of criminal suspects, and cited an incident in which 25
children and men were rounded up and beaten by unofficial agents of the
mayor's office in Petionville.

Moise was lucky.

When the men found Moise's passport and realized she was a U.S. citizen,
they called a higher-up on a cell phone for instructions on how to proceed.
They then put the cell phone to Moise's ear. She recognized the voice on the
other end as that of the Petionville police chief, she says, whom she'd met
a few days earlier.

The man on the phone threatened to kill her, and the officers told her to
pick out a dress for her funeral because they were going to get rid of her
right away.

They didn't. After determining that she had no drugs and didn't have as much
money or jewelry as they thought, they blindfolded her and told her to leave
the country within four hours because if she reported them they would kill
her.

Moise, 47, lives in Miami-Dade County, but the life she once knew is gone.

The magazine she ran at the time of the attack folded. She doesn't go out.
She sometimes visits Haiti but says she'll probably stop going after her
petition becomes public knowledge.

"I tried everything in Haiti," she says. "I devoted my life to that
investigation. I stopped working. You don't feel like doing anything any
more."

But while Moise found safety abroad, her countrymen continue to suffer.

According to Amnesty International, instances of police abuse in Haiti
worsened in 2001, with reports of mistreatment of suspected criminals during
arrest and the use of excessive force in crowd control situations.

After President Jean-Bertrand Aristide declared a "zero tolerance" policy
against lawbreakers, nongovernmental organizations reported an increase in
killings of alleged criminal suspects, some by police officers and others by
crowds carrying out "popular justice."

Justice officials in Haiti had no comment on Moise's petition.

Moise thinks her story is not unique because others in Haiti also have been
the victims of police brutality. But unlike her, they are afraid to speak
out because they have to remain in Haiti.

"Nobody can stop me from talking," Moise said. "They had to burn someone
like me to get the word out."

But even pressure from U.S. officials hasn't brought Moise a satisfactory
resolution to her case.

"The word `justice' doesn't exist in Haiti," she said.

Taking the case before an international court could force Haitian
authorities to act, Altholz said.

She said her organization has gotten people out of prison, had land returned
to indigenous people and obtained compensation for victims through cases
brought in international court. It's easier, she admits, with countries that
are politically stable. However, she said that with a country like Haiti,
which has dealt with political and economic strife, it could be more
difficult to get them to comply with a judgment.

Because there are hundreds of cases pending before the commission, it could
take years to bring a case to fruition, Altholz said.

As such, bringing a case before the commission is really an advocacy
strategy. Once the court agrees to hear a case, it's an opportunity to bring
a government to court and confront it directly on abuses, massacres and
other violations of human rights, Altholz said.

"It's a way to expose on the international arena that a certain violation is
occurring," she said.

Madeline Baró Diaz can be reached at mbaro@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5007.
Copyright © 2003, South Florida Sun-Sentinel


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