17436: This Week in Haiti 21:37 11/26/2003 (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 *

                    November 26- December 2, 2003
                         Vol. 21, No. 37

NEW YORK HAITIAN COMMUNITY DENOUNCES RACIST VIDEO GAME

"Kill all the Haitians" the video game instructs its players, who
tend overwhelmingly to be young teenage boys. Using an arsenal
that includes pistols, shotguns, machine guns, a flame-thrower, a
rocket-launcher, and swords, the player of "Grand Theft Auto:
Vice City" then must bloodily mow down dozens of Haitians,
depicted as evil gun-toting drug dealers. A game character calls
them a "stinking nest of Haitians. We gonna kill them all."

It is this kind of message which brought indignant Haitian
community leaders and activists along with many state and city
officials to the steps of New York's City Hall on the morning of
Nov. 25 to express their outrage.

"Video games such as 'Grand Theft Auto: Vice City' are seeds to
hate crimes," declared Dr. Henry Frank, reading a statement of
Haitian-Americans for Human Rights (HAHR), an impromptu coalition
formed to lead a campaign against the game. "Our objective is to
inform parents and the public, educate our youth, and prevent
further dissemination of racist and potentially dangerous video
games through all available legal means."

Toward this end, the coalition has called upon Sanford
Rubenstein, one of the lawyers for police brutality victim Abner
Louima, to investigate avenues for litigation.

"Freedom of speech as outlined by the constitution does not
protect the freedom to yell 'fire' in a crowded theater,"
Rubenstein said. "Likewise, video games with racist dialog like
'kill all the Haitians' should not be protected either." He said
his firm and the HAHR would press the civil rights division of
both federal and New York State attorney generals to look for
possible civil rights violations. He also called for legislation
"on a federal, state, and local level to prohibit these racist
games from being sold and distributed."

"Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" is not some obscure title. A part
of the "Grand Theft Auto" series, it is the biggest selling video
game in history. Since its release in October 2002, it has netted
Rockstar Games, a subsidiary of Take 2 Interactive Software,
Inc., some $260 million. Such figures are not so surprising when
one realizes that 79% of U.S. children now play video games on a
regular basis.

"Vice City"  first came to the Haitian community's attention when
a New York affiliate of CBS Television aired an expose about the
game on its "Shame on You" series. A few days later, over 100
people turned out for a meeting at the Brooklyn offices of the
Haitian Centers Council where Frank, who was interviewed for the
TV report, is executive director.

Over the next couple of weeks, the HAHR was formed and a
demonstration planned for 10 a.m. on Dec. 15 in front of
Rockstar's offices at 575 Broadway in Manhattan. "There has been
an outpouring of support from the community and even the press,"
said John Alexis, an organizer with SEIU Local 1199 and an HAHR
member. "We expect the demo to be very, very big,"

It is a safe bet, judging by the parade of politicians who turned
out for the Nov. 25 City Hall press conference. "If you are going
to use your power as a corporate entity in the United States of
America to spread hate, to perpetuate hate crimes, then we say to
you that people of goodwill are here to fight back," said
Councilwoman Yvette Clark, who helped organize the press
conference. "The Haitian community are revolutionary people. We
stand with those revolutionary people today."

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz called for a boycott
not only of Rockstar titles, but of stores selling them.
"Violence and hate are intolerable," he said. "The game is over
Rockstar. You're history." State senators, councilmen, and
assemblymen delivered similar messages of solidarity and outrage
at the unscrupulous profiteering of the game's corporate owners.

But lawyer Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights
(CCR) pointed to additional culprits. "Games like this don't just
happen out of the blue," he said in an interview. "This game
comes because of a history of U.S. government attacks and
discrimination against the Haitian people for over a century. The
intellectual authors of a game like this are administration after
administration in Washington. When you put people in jail for
fleeing from repression or being HIV positive, blame them for
AIDS, denigrate their religion, make them out to be people from
another planet, then companies like Rockstar will produce video
games targeting the people vilified by the U.S. government and
society."

At the request of members of the New York Haitian community, the
CCR "will be looking at the possibility of litigation in the U.S.
and Canada," Ratner said. Group libel laws, which would pertain
to this type of video, are very weak in the U.S., but strict in
Canada.

The Haitian government is also investigating legal action.
Haiti's Consul General in New York, Harry Fouché, read a
communique from Prime Minister Yvon Neptune at the press
conference which called for "a huge mobilization to force
Rockstar Games and the stores distributing it to remove it from
their shelves."

"The Haitian government is seriously considering litigation,"
Fouché told Haïti Progrès. "Our lawyer in the U.S. as well as a
team of lawyers in Haiti is reviewing the matter and will be
speaking to and coordinating with the lawyers of the group here
in New York. This video game is an incitation to violence, which
is a violation of civil rights, a violation of the constitution."

Fouché said that just last week in Canada the Haitian government
has sued for damages of $32 million against a Quebec lawyer who
publicly stated that prostitution was "a part of Haitian
culture."

"Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" is a graphically violent game
populated by warring criminal gangs set in a fictional Florida
city closely resembling Miami. One of the criminal kingpins is an
"elderly Haitian matriarch" named Auntie Poulet.  Rockstar/Take 2
Software's website refers to the racism of the game as
"irreverent humor."

The other 79 video game titles produced by Take 2 Software
include 4 x 4, Action Bass, Age of Wonders, Stronghold, Ford
Racing, Hidden & Dangerous, Max Payne, Motocross Mania, and
Midnight Club.

All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Progres.

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