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18277: This Week in Haiti 21:47 02/04/2004 (fwd)
"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,
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HAITI PROGRES
"Le journal qui offre une alternative"
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *
February 4 - 10, 2004
Vol. 21, No. 47
AS CARICOM MEDDLES:
HAITI'S OPPOSITION SEEKS VICTIMS
In recent weeks, the Haitian opposition, led by a U.S.-born
sweatshop owner and financed by U.S. and European governments,
has come up with two basic formulae for creating havoc in Haiti:
1) deviate from an agreed upon march route and provoke a battle
with the police or 2) throw rocks at or beat up pro-government
counter-demonstrators and provoke a melee with them.
After such confrontations, the bourgeoisie's radio stations,
relied upon and echoed by most of the U.S. corporate press,
shrilly relate the latest crackdown of the "Lavalas
dictatorship," integrating the called in, anonymous "reports" of
"listeners," which have often proved later to be inaccurate,
exaggerated or complete fabrications.
This past week, the formula exploded in the face of the
opposition and its media allies, once again discrediting them
both. This is what happened.
In light of the growing aggressiveness and violence of the
opposition's marches, which regularly beat-up onlookers (one
recently to death) or journalists they perceive to be pro-
government, the Higher Council of the National Police (CSPN)
issued a Jan. 27 order that "any group wanting to make known its
demands through demonstrations can do it on the Place of Italy in
the Bicentennial district." But the opposition saw this as yet
another opportunity for provocation.
The next day, Jan. 28, some students of the state university,
under the banner of the opposition's "Group of 184," organized a
symbolic funeral for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide near the
United States Consulate, far from the Place of Italy, and even
burned the symbolic coffin. Following their ceremony, these
demonstrators were setting off to join other protestors when they
encountered a group of Lavalas militants calling for respect of
Aristide's five year mandate.
The opposition's "students" (who often turn out to be nothing of
the sort), some of whom were inside the Law School, started to
throw stones at the government's partisans. The pro-government
crowd threw stones back, and a confrontation began.
The police's Company for Intervention and Maintenance of Order
(CIMO) arrived on the scene and fired teargas grenades to break
up the skirmish. One of the projectiles hit Lionel Victor, a 29-
year-old father of two girls, in the back.
He was taken by ambulance to the Canapé Vert hospital, where he
died a few minutes after arrival.
Opposition demonstrators, always in search of fresh corpses to
hold up, insisted that he was a student at the Medical School.
One opposition leader, Hervé Saintilus, even went on the radio to
say that the victim had been seen several times taking part in
meetings at the university's rectory. Law School Professor Aviol
Fleurant was trotted out to declare that he recognized Victor as
a university student.
Meanwhile, the opposition's "students" ignited burning tire
barricades in front of the Canapé Vert hospital to demand that
Victor's body be turned over to them. That was, until his wife
showed up.
Islande Gélin, the mother of his Victor's children, Samantha and
Cindy, arrived at the hospital with a picture of their family to
prove her relationship to him. When questioned by journalists,
she confirmed that her husband was not a student at all, but a
Lavalas militant.
Professor Fleurant quickly recanted his "testimony." Just as
quickly, the opposition's "students" left the scene, enraged.
They vented their fury on Rood Chéry, a photographer for the
state newspaper L'Union, whom they found outside. He was severely
beaten, the second L'Union photographer to be physically attacked
in the past two weeks.
On January 30, President Aristide received Islande Gélin and
other family members of Lionel Victor at the National Palace to
present his condolences. During the meeting, Islande Gélin
explained how "students" had badgered her at the hospital as she
sought to claim the body of her husband.
The Associated Press and Reuters also reported that Victor was
"student," with no ensuing corrections, in stories that slyly
blamed the government for the violence and Victor's death.
Meanwhile, at Washington's behest, CARICOM has taken the lead in
meddling in Haiti's internal affairs, supplanting for the moment
the long-stymied Organization of American States (OAS). A gaggle
of Haitian businessmen, who increasingly speak on behalf of the
opposition instead of long-discredited professional politicians,
met with CARICOM "mediators" in Nassau, Bahamas on Jan. 20 and
21.
(Arch-reactionary Miami-based Haitian businessman Olivier Nadal,
an eccentric precursor to the more successful factory-owner-cum-
opposition-leader André Apaid, revealed the bourgeoisie's rage at
two renegade businessmen, F. Carl Braun and Edouard Baussan of
Unibank. In a public email polemic, he castigated the two for
independently meeting with CARICOM officials, where they
reportedly gave a more balanced account of events in the
country).
Refusing any participation or even observation by the Haitian
government, the opposition representatives claimed they wanted
only to present their grievances and update CARICOM leaders
Prime Ministers Perry Christie of the Bahamas, P.J. Patterson of
Jamaica, Patrick Manning of Trinidad & Tobago on the situation
in Haiti (as if Haiti were not a part of CARICOM and as if
CARICOM did not have representatives on the ground in Haiti) in
meetings held under the watchful eyes of delegations from the
U.S. State Department and the European Union. The OAS's assistant
secretary general Luigi Einaudi was also on hand.
On Jan. 31, President Aristide then went to Kingston, Jamaica to
engage in one day of talks with the same set of CARICOM leaders
and "observers" from Washington and Europe.
Aristide once again agreed to enforce within the next two months
the same set of unenforceable and unrealistic demands that he had
agreed to in previous OAS Resolutions 806 and 822. These include
"dismantling all armed groups," most of which are opposition-
aligned and more heavily armed than the police; creating a
"neutral and impartial" police force, as if the opposition will
ever accept any corps which thwarts their push for Aristide's
overthrow; and "solving" murky episodes like the Dec. 5 clash
between demonstrators at the State University (see
http://www.blackcommentator.com/73/73_haiti_pina.html ) or the
Jan. 13 attack on radio station transmitters (see Haïti Progrès,
Vol. 21, No. 45, Jan. 21, 2004). Following the meeting, Aristide
overruled the CSPN's Jan. 27 order circumscribing demonstrations,
opening the gates for renewed, escalating confrontations.
In short, CARICOM, like the OAS before it, called on the Haitian
government to "establish a climate of security," which Washington
is actively involved in frustrating. As the Council on
Hemispheric Affairs recently wrote, "Some foreign journalists and
the [U.S.] administration's leading group of radicalized regional
policymakers accuse the Aristide government of prolonging a
political stalemate and failing to establish a climate of
"security," neglecting to acknowledge that it is the
intransigence of the U.S.-sponsored opposition that has crippled
democratic processes in Haiti" (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 21, Nos.
45 & 46, Jan. 21 & 28, 2004).
Finally there was the all-important call for "international
supervision" of upcoming elections, in which the opposition has
openly declared it has no intention of ever participating.
All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Progres.
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