18408: Pierre Jean: Re: 18396: Arthur: 18382: Pierre Jean: Fwd: Who is Fritz Joseph? follow-up (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Pierre Jean <pierrejean2004@yahoo.com>

Charles Arthur,

I am not in any way implying one-sidedness on your
part.

Just like you, I believe that both the Aristide camp
and the Opposition are playing the usual game of doing
whatever it takes to gain or maintain power at the
expense of the real victims, the Haitian people.

I do not buy for a minute the argument that Lavalas is
blameless in the rise of these armed gangs in
Gonaives, Saint-Marc, etc. The people of Gonaives
remember all too well the terror that the Armée
Cannibale with Amiot Metayer as its leader exerted in
the name of Aristide to keep anti-Lavalas sentiments
down.

The weapons that this Front (formerly Armée Cannibale)
is using today were financed by the Aristide
government (hence taxpayers money) through deliveries
made by a number of Port-au-Prince operatives,
including a certain Jose Ulysse, a former CNE
honcho-turned-political operator. On that score,
Winter Etienne is not lying when he said that they
were armed by Aristide.

If you recall, when Amiot Metayer was freed from his
Gonaives jail cell and took up arms against Aristide,
it was Jose Ulysse who was sent to pacify him and
brinh him back in the fold. At that point, despite
being un "evadé de justice", Amiot Metayer circulated
freely in Gonaives, never once being apprehended by
the police. Funny form of justice, wouldn't you say?
What message do you send to the population? That it is
okay to maim and murder as long as you pledge
allegiance to Lavalas? What enraged the Front was that
another Aristide operative, Odonel Paul, then
orchestrated Metayer's murder. And that's where we are
today.

Furthermore, as the Fritz Joseph episode suggests (and
there are many more names FRAPH and former attachés at
the service of Aristide), Lavalas has no qualms about
recruiting former murderers/assassins/ criminals when
they can be useful in maintaining the state-sponsored
oppression that is now in place in Haiti.

So I would beg all the Aristide apologists to spare me
the "he couldn't hurt a fly" and "we are all innocent"
speeches that we have been getting. Aristide created
this monster called Armée Cannibale, and it is coming
back to haunt him. Or to paraphrase the Kreyol saying:
if you teach a monkey to throw stones, he will throw
the first stone at you.

And if I am ranting and raving about the
Aristide/armed gangs relationship, that is because I
believe that the gangs have a more evident connection
to Lavalas than they have to the rancid "peaceful"
opposition of the Group 184 and Convergence
Democratique. But that is a whole other topic ...