16322: Du Tuyau recycling (Part 1) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: ViandeMoulue@aol.com

I was little bit by bit bored thinking too much while cooking salad. I go to internet and I find something for interesting maybe. But it is thing from past.
I no condone nothing in Haiti today that is with intolerance, hiding-in-plain-view OP chief, or anything like that. If anything, we have for keep on fighting for modern Haiti with respect for everybody rights and everything else. But many times before, some people and organizations argumenting that Haiti today gouvernement like Duvalier. So I say while one internet, let me click gargle-google for human rights watch. I find one text in English beautiful, 14 pages, about after coup for 1991. I just want to prove that for true is true, how forgetfullness Haitians all politicians are when interest they have is no fulfill. If you no mind for me to do that, I post 2 times (party 1 and party 2) human rights watch text on your list for people who want for reading to see how bad it was, and how much we need for fighting for it to be better. But all in all, it is no bad like it was. So I say like I say all-time-all-the-time, let's stop throwing the baby with the bath water.

okay, okay, here is part one:

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Human Rights Developments

The year 1991 marked the first time in Haiti's history that its citizens, however briefly, lived under a freely elected government. But the rule of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was violently suspended in September with the re-emergence of brutal military rule after the latest in a series of bloody coups d'état.
President Aristide's human rights record, though flawed, was distinguished by his efforts to extend civilian control over the army _ the chief perpetrator of human rights violations and the main obstacle to democracy in Haiti since the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986. President Aristide pressured generals who had controlled the army under previous abusive military regimes to retire; promoted officers believed to be committed to democracy; and dismissed or transferred to obscure posts others known for human rights violations.
President Aristide also abolished the corrupt and abusive system of rural section chiefs. He admitted reform-minded officers into the police force, which in turn began to curb "insecurity," the rampant and often politically motivated violence that has periodically gripped Haiti's cities since 1986. The seven months of the Aristide government also saw a notable decrease in the loss of lives in rural land conflicts, which in the past had been a source of some of the worst massacres, often at the hands of corrupt soldiers in league with large landowners.
Nevertheless, President Aristide's human rights record was marred by sporadic military killings of civilians and Aristide supporters in the countryside. In addition, five youths were killed by officers friendly to the Aristide administration and the murders were never adequately investigated. Further, there was an apparent tolerance by the Aristide government of the lynching and intimidation of suspected criminals and at times political opponents by mobs of civilians. The popular killings are, in significant part, a symptom of frustration with the dysfunctional criminal-justice system inherited from President Aristide's predecessors. With justifiably little confidence that criminals, regardless of motivation, will be tried, convicted and punished, some Haitians have simply taken the law into their own hands. These underlying weaknesses in the judicial system persisted under the Aristide government despite its efforts to remove corrupt judges and train new ones. Hundreds of detainees _ including those alleged to have plotted against the civilian government in an earlier coup attempt on January 7 _ were permitted to languish for months in prison, under deplorable conditions, before even being formally charged, let alone brought to trial.
In part, however, popular violence contributed to the weakness of the judicial system. Threats of lynchings were used by Aristide supporters to intimidate lawyers who attempted to defend the January 7 coup-plotters and the court that sought to try them, as well as members of Parliament who opposed the president's policies. President Aristide failed to use his tremendous moral influence to call for an end to these acts of intimidation, and in two speeches, in August and September, publicly seemed to endorse such threats of violence. The president's own publicly ambivalent attitude toward popular violence was later cited by the Haitian army as an excuse to commit yet another serious human rights violation by depriving the Haitian people of their elected government.
In the three months since the September 30 coup, the military government has accumulated a disastrous record on human rights. The regime is headed by Jean-Jacques Honorat, once a leading human rights advocate, who was installed as prime minister in a cynical attempt by the army to put the best face on an outlaw government.
In the immediate aftermath of the coup, Haitian troops killed at least three hundred civilians and wounded thousands more, in random shootings and targeted massacres of residents in impoverished neighborhoods who were suspected of being supporters of President Aristide. As many as one thousand may have been killed, according to the Platform of Haitian Organizations for the Defense of Human Rights, a coalition of nine human rights groups monitoring abuses in post-coup Haiti. In one massacre in the days following the coup in Lamentin, just outside Port-au-Prince, soldiers sought to avenge the murder of one or two troops by mowing down pedestrians and shooting into homes, killing some thirty to forty people. On October 2, soldiers killed some thirty civilians in Cité Soleil, an impoverished section of Port-au-Prince with strong pro-Aristide leanings, after a crowd reportedly attacked a police station in the neighborhood. Indiscriminate shooting, heavy automatic-weapons fire, the lobbing of grenades, and mass arrests by soldiers were reported in the early days of the coup in the Carrefours, Carrefours-Feuilles and Martissant sections of Port-au-Prince. Thousands of residents from these neighborhoods, which again generally backed Aristide, have been forced to flee to the countryside.
On October 7, heavily armed troops surrounded the Legislative Palace, shooting automatic gunfire into the air, and stormed the building. The soldiers forced legislators at gunpoint _ and by threatening to use hand grenades _ to name Supreme Court Justice Joseph Nerette, an elderly jurist, to replace President Aristide. That day scores of armed soldiers badly beat Mayor of Port-au-Prince Evans Paul, a close associate of President Aristide, when they arrested him at the Port-au-Prince airport as he attempted to travel to Venezuela to meet with the exiled president. After hours of beatings and vows by soldiers to kill him, Paul was released the next day and went into hiding. At the same time, in an adjacent room at the airport, another group of soldiers broke up a meeting between a delegation of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the military junta.
In December, the military authorities stepped up their attacks on the Haitian legislature. On December 15, a rural section chief _ under army authority _ shot and killed Astrel Charles, a member of Parliament, in his home in the northern town of Pignon. Charles, a member of the socialist bloc of the Chamber of Deputies which supports President Aristide, reportedly was killed because he was planning to hold a political meeting. In the preceding three days, soldiers had set fire to some fifty houses in the northern town of Plaisance, including the home of the town's legislator, Deputy Jean Mandenave, and slaughtered livestock; and had reportedly shot and killed two Aristide supporters and burned down some thirty houses in a town near Desdunes in the Artibonite Valley.1 The alleged killer of Deputy Charles, section chief Pierre Elium, reportedly turned himself in to the authorities on December 17, and confessed to the killing.
Other leading Aristide supporters have been arbitrarily arrested and sometimes savagely beaten by soldiers. They include popular musician Manno Charlemagne and prominent businessman Antoine Izmery. Since their release, they have been forced into hiding. The army also has been responsible for countless raids on homes and offices of those deemed to be opponents of the military regime, including members of President Aristide's cabinet. The homes or offices of Minister of Information Marie Laurence Lassègue, Minister of Finance Marie-Michèle Rey, and Minister of Planning Renaud Bernadin, among many others, have been attacked, forcing these individuals, too, into hiding.
The army has targeted popular organizations throughout the country such as the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), the Kombit Komilfo, the Labadie Youth Movement, the Planters' Defense Group of the Artibonite, the Autonomous Confederation of Haitian Workers (CATH), the literacy project ALPHA, the Movement of Young Peasants of Lascahobas, the September 17 Popular Organization, KONAKOM and CARITAS, as well as organizations closely identified with President Aristide, such as the National Front for Change and Democracy, the popular ti legliz Catholic church movement, and the boys' shelter Lafanmi Selavi. Members of these organizations have been threatened, arrested or forced into hiding after their offices were raided and destroyed by soldiers.
Most recently, three union activists and a peasant leader were arrested by the police on December 17. Duckens Rafael, general secretary of the state electric company's union, along with fellow union officials Abel Point Dujour and Evans Fortune, reportedly were arrested while attempting to collect paychecks for workers fired since the coup. The police also arrested Dieudonné Jean-Baptiste, an MPP supporter and brother of one of Haiti's leading peasant activists, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the head of MPP. He is reportedly being held in police headquarters in Port-au-Prince.
In the southeastern city of Jérémie in October and in the northeastern city of Gonaïves in November, soldiers disrupted demonstrations by Aristide supporters, shooting into crowds or into the air on several occasions. Demostrations against the military regime have been officially prohibited.
The press has been systematically silenced. The army quickly took aim at Haiti's numerous independent radio stations, arresting journalists, shooting at stations and destroying equipment. Radio Antilles Internationale, Radio Cacique, Radio Caraïbes, Radio Haïti Internationale, Radio Lumière and Radio Métropole all have been attacked and most have been forced to cease broadcasting. Journalists who have been arrested since the coup include Herald Gabiliste, Jean-Pierre Louis and Paul Jean-Mario of Radio Antilles; Frère Roday and a reporter known as Philiare of Radio Cacique; Miché Sully of Radio Galaxie; Michel Favard and Nicolas Sorenville of Radio Nationale; Fernand Billon of Radio Soleil; Masner Beauplan of Collectif Kiskeya in Hinche; and Jean-Robert Philippe of the Voice of America. Other journalists have been physically assaulted or threatened by soldiers, or denounced on the reconstituted state-run Radio Nationale, including Thony Belizaire of Agence France-Presse; Sony Bastien and Lylianne Pierre Paul of Collectif Kiskeya; Jean-Laurent of Radio Plus and an officer of the Association of Haitian Journalists; Edwidge Balutansky of Reuters; and Marvel Dandin of Radio Haïti-Inter. Paul Jean-Mario was badly tortured in the Petit Goâve military post and remains in detention.
The dead body of one journalist, Jacques Gary Siméon of Radio Caraïbe, was found shortly after his arrest by soldiers on the first day of the coup. On December 10, Felix Lamy, director of Radio Galaxie, was abducted from the radio station by heavily armed soldiers who also beat up two employees, shot at the station and destroyed equipment. The military government has denied responsibility for the abduction and Lamy's whereabouts are unknown. After this most recent attack, the last three independent radio stations broadcasting news _ Radio Galaxie, along with Radio Métropole and Radio Tropic FM _ ceased operations.
On November 12, between 100 and 150 students were arrested after the Federation of Haitian Students (FENEH), together with members of various popular organizations, held a press conference to support the OAS's call for immediate and unconditional restoration of President Aristide and to back its embargo against the military regime. The press conference was held the day after an OAS delegation arrived in Port-au-Prince to meet with members of the regime. The students' gathering was violently disrupted even as anti-Aristide demonstrations by Haiti's economic elite were allowed to take place elsewhere in Port-au-Prince. Several truckloads of heavily armed soldiers stormed the Science Faculty building at the State University of Haiti, where the press conference was held, and clubbed and arrested students and journalists. Some eight journalists were arrested and have since been released. Their equipment was destroyed and some had their press cards confiscated. One group of students was taken to the National Penitentiary and another group to the Anti-Gang Police Service detention center. Some were eventually transferred to the "Cafeteria" police station. Many of the students were badly beaten while in detention, according to several among them. After a court ordered all the students released, most were eventually freed. However, the army has refused to comply fully with the court order and at least forty are said by their lawyers and reputable Haitian human rights groups to remain imprisoned. The state-run Radio Nationale has denounced the students as "déchoukeurs" (lynch mobs), "thieves" and "drug-addicts."
Two additional killings occurred in the first hours of the coup. Sylvio Claude, a prominent politician and critic of President Aristide who had just given an anti-Aristide speech, was killed on September 29, the night before the president was ousted from the country, as the coup was underway. He was murdered in the area of Les Cayes, a city in the south, but there are conflicting reports of how he died. By one account, a crowd of Aristide supporters killed him after learning that a coup was in progress; by this account, soldiers may have tried to stop the crowd but retreated, fearing for their own lives. By another account, he was killed by soldiers in a military post under orders to eliminate this formerly popular politician as a player in post-coup Haiti.
The second killing involved Roger Lafontant, the convicted coup-plotter who was serving a term of life in prison. He was shot in his cell in the National Penitentiary on September 29. The current military government alleges that President Aristide ordered the killing. President Aristide's minister of planning, Renaud Bernardin, has alleged that it was probably a coup collaborator who killed Lafantont to prevent his emergence as a rival for power after the military takeover. Some of the other participants in the January coup attempt who had been convicted with Lafontant were freed or allowed to escape in the chaos provoked by the Lafontant shooting.
The Right to Monitor
Haitian human rights groups and international human rights organizations were allowed freely to monitor human rights violations under the Aristide government. Jean-Jacques Honorat, the civilian figurehead of the subsequent army-installed regime, complained that while President Aristide was in office, at a time when Honorat still headed the Haitian Center for Human Rights (CHADEL), he received threatening telephone calls. Throughout the period of the Aristide government, CHADEL issued a monthly newsletter on human rights in Haiti and received access to the National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince. The threats may have been prompted by CHADEL's public stance against the popular intimidation of lawyers seeking to represent those accused of participating in the January coup attempt, as well as CHADEL's criticisms of serious due process violations at the trial of the alleged plotters, including sentences in excess of the legal maximum because of threats against the court by a crowd outside.
Under the de facto Honorat government, however, it has become very dangerous for Haiti's leading activists to continue to report on human rights. On October 2, three days after the coup, the Reuters news agency cited unnamed diplomatic sources to report that "troops were going door-to-door searching for aides to Aristide, cabinet ministers and human rights activists named on arrest warrants." Some human rights activists have fled the country or been forced into hiding. Others continue to monitor human rights under the military regime with extreme discretion.
Virginie Sénatus, head of the women's section of the Lafontant Joseph Center for the Promotion of Human Rights, was arrested on November 12 at the FENEH university students' press conference described above. Since then, Raynand Pierre, director of the Center; Loby Gratia, head of publications; and other members of the organization have been forced into hiding.
A member of the Platform of Haitian Organizations for the Defense of Human Rights was prevented from traveling outside the country on October 25 because his name appeared on a list at the international airport. The list, which he was shown, contained an estimated two hundred names. One other name he recognized was of a member of the FENEH student organization.
The Legal Assistance Group (GAJ), a member organization of the Platform coalition based in the northern city of Cap-Haïtien, has also been targeted. On October 1, the home of GAJ member Joseph Fernel Manigat was shot at and ransacked by soldiers, and some of his belongings were burned. Soldiers also stole equipment from the GAJ office.