15777: This Week in Haiti 21:12 6/4/2003 (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 *

                      June 04 - 10, 2003
                         Vol. 21, No. 12


PPN RAPS OAS "PROCONSUL"

Last week, the head of the Organization of American States (OAS) Special
Mission to Strengthen Democracy in Haiti, David Lee, publicly complained
that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide did not seek his approval when
appointing Jean-Claude Jean-Baptiste as the new Director General of the
Haitian National Police (PNH) in March.
 During a May 25 program on the conservative Radio Métropole, Lee said that
a high-level OAS/CARICOM delegation last March (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 21,
No. 2, 3/26/03) had requested Aristide to check with him when appointing a
new police chief and other top brass.
 In fact, Lee was just reiterating the displeasure expressed in a May 20
report to the Permanent Council of OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria, who
stated: "The Government named new senior management [of the PNH], notably
the Director General, on Mar. 26, 2003 but opted to inform, rather than
consult with the Mission on its choice." Vaguely citing criticism
"domestically and internationally," Gaviria argued that Jean-Baptiste's
appointment "did not contribute to creation of a climate of confidence."
 In a May 29 press conference, Ben Dupuy, secretary general of the National
Popular Party (PPN), condemned Lee's and Gaviria's statements as yet another
instance of OAS meddling in Haiti's internal affairs and subservience to
Washington's political machinations.
 Nomination of the police high command is a constitutional prerogative of
Haiti's president, Dupuy reminded Lee. "David Lee takes himself for a
proconsul, for a [colonial] governor," Dupuy said. "He says he was not
consulted about the choice of police director.  According to him, this was
his decision. However, he knows that no country in the world allows a
foreigner to decide who will occupy the top post to direct the police or the
army. In the United States, for example, the nomination of the head of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff is a privilege of the president, who can also decide
on his removal.»
 The PPN leader also said that Washington was using functionaries like Lee
and Gaviria to carry out its own agenda for Haiti, steam-rolling misgivings
and objections of the majority of OAS states. He noted that March's "high
level" OAS delegation was de facto led by Otto Reich, who has no standing in
the OAS or even the State Department, but is only President Bush's "Special
Representative for Hemispheric Initiatives."
 "Otto Reich was the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere
Affairs, but he couldn't even stay in that post because the U.S. Congress
would not ratify him due to all the illegal and dubious activities in his
past government service" under the Reagan administration (see Haïti Progrès,
Vol. 21, No. 1, 3/19/03), Dupuy said.  "So what was he doing in the
delegation? The U.S. State Department stuck him in there. This shows how the
OAS demands are in fact engineered by the U.S. State Department which has
become a veritable colonial power and wants all countries to bow to its
approach."
 The U.S. agenda for Haiti seeks to invoke the new OAS Democratic Charter
ratified last Sep. 11 (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No. 26, 9/11/02) to
justify more economic pressure and possibly military intervention to unseat
Aristide. News reports in Haiti have speculated all week about what decision
the OAS Permanent Council will take during its general assembly in Chile
from Jun. 8-10. Other observers question whether May's surge in "insecurity"
(criminal and political violence often carried out by shadowy networks of
former soldiers and paramilitaries) is linked to the meeting, so that the
intellectual authors of such violence can argue that elections cannot be
held in Haiti and consequently justify invoking the Democratic Charter.
 "The United States is putting pressure on certain small member nations of
the OAS to force them to vote for application of the so-called Democratic
Charter against Haïti," Dupuy explained. "Washington wants to prove to the
other countries of Africa and Caribbean, especially during our bicentennial,
that this former colony has failed. This has been a plot for a long time.
Remember that at the first Inter-American summit held in Panama in 1825, the
U.S. vetoed Haiti's participation."
 "Unfortunately for the United States," Dupuy continued, "the vast majority
of the OAS member nations, including those of the CARICOM, have become aware
of this game and are refusing to follow the logic whereby the OAS acts as a
'ministry of U.S. Neocolonial Affairs.'"
 Dupuy dismissed the notion that the OAS could legally invoke the Democratic
Charter, which contains language only to justify foreign sanctions and
intervention against a military coup d'état, not against a democratically
elected government.
 The PPN leader also pointed out to David Lee various articles of the OAS
Charter (regularly violated by Washington) which guarantee any member state
the right to choose without external interference its political, economic
and social system and organize itself in the way that it deems best for the
good of its people and which require the mutual respect for the sovereignty
and independence of States.
 In the press conference, Dupuy also criticized Father Max Dominique for
using the funeral of long-time democracy activist Father Antoine Adrien, who
died May 12, to lambast the Haitian government officials, including
Aristide, who attended. Dominique, who has close ties to the opposition
Struggling People's Party (OPL), charged that Haitians today lives under a
dictatorship as bad as that of the Duvaliers (1957-1986). "Father Max
Dominique wouldn't have the courage to open his mouth to say the slightest
thing under the Duvalier dictatorship because he knows they wouldn't even
have sent him into exile," Dupuy said. "They would have sent him six feet
underground."
 Dupuy also chided Guyler C. Delva, head of the Association of Haitian
Journalists (AJH) for going out of his way to condemn Cuba for supposedly
arresting 26 journalists. Dupuy noted that those arrested had been actively
involved with U.S. diplomats in working to destabilize and overthrow the
Cuban government and that only three of them could be classified as
journalists. "Why doesn't the AJH concern itself with the more than 2000
people which the U.S. has taken from Afghanistan and imprisoned in
Guantanamo where they are reportedly being tortured,  without being able to
see lawyers or their family, all in violation of international law?" he
asked. "Why don't they make a scandal out of that?"
 Dupuy said the AJH would be better off getting worked up about the 2
million people (90% of them black) jailed in the U.S., the country with the
largest percentage of its population imprisoned. He also suggested the AJH
champion the case of Borgela Philistin, a Haitian victim of police brutality
now on death-row in Pennsylvania (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 19, No. 28,
9/26/01), or the case of the celebrated political prisoner on Pennsylvania's
death-row, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is a journalist.

MIAMI:
DEMONSTRATION AGAINST CONTINUED IMPRISONMENT OF HAITIAN REFUGEES

On May 30, some 130 demonstrators rallied in front of Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) on 79th Street in Miami to protest the Bush
administration's policy of imprisoning Haitian refugees. In April, Attorney
General John Ashcroft defied a court order for their release, citing
"national security" and claiming that Haïti is serving as a "staging point"
for Middle Eastern terrorists intent on attacking the United States.

On Oct. 29, 2002, a boat carrying 219 refugees landed at Key Biscayne (see
Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No. 33, 10/30/02).  In an operation that was
televised worldwide, authorities rounded up the refugees, sometimes at
gunpoint, and jailed them in prisons like the infamous Krome Detention
Facility. Children were locked up in Boy's Town, a Catholic institution, or,
if with their mother, in local hotels.
 Since then, 89 of the refugees have been repatriated to Haïti while 52 have
been granted political asylum, Greg Gagne of the Executive Office of
Immigration Review told the AP. Washington has appealed 49 of the 52 asylum
decisions, the report said.
 "Brothers and sisters, we are here ounce again to decry the racist policies
of the Bush administration," said Marlène Bastien of Haitian Women in Miami,
a spokeswoman of the demonstration which was organized by the
Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition and co-sponsored by the ACLU, NAACP,
SEIU1199 in Florida, and other groups.
 "For 8 months now they have kept our children, women, pregnant women, and
men locked down in detention," she said. "These people have not committed
any crime. Like everybody else, they came here in search of a better life."
Other migrants are released on bail to friends and relatives while awaiting
asylum decisions.
 Ashcroft's court-defying decision in April to keep Haitians locked up
without bail scandalized the Haitian community and their defenders. Even
State Department officials said that they saw no evidence to support
Ashcroft's charge that terrorists were transiting through Haiti.
 Yolette Jean Baptiste, a recently released refugee from Acul de Nord,
attended the demonstration with her two sons, Bral Nelson, 12, and Bensley,
6. "I spent 6 months detained in a hotel with my two children,"she said. "My
husband was in Miami, but they would not let me see him. I couldn't even
talk to him. The children cried a lot. They wanted to go outside but
couldn't.  They had to stay inside all day."
 "These are the terrorists John Ashcroft is talking about," said Bastien.
"They are imprisoning innocent children.  Shame on Ashcroft! Shame on
President Bush!"
 On June 4, the organizers plan to take to Washington a delegation of some
30 politicians, among them Miami-Dade mayor Alex Penelas, to lobby for a
reversal of Ashcroft's decision.


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