19054: Esser: The Reappearance of the FRAPH/FAD'H is Nothing Less than a Stinking Stain on Today's Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimaoil.com

Haiti Support Group
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FEBRUARY 23, 2004 10:25 AM

CONTACT:  Haiti Support Group
Charles Arthur: haitisupport@gn.acp.org


The Reappearance of the FRAPH/FAD'H is Nothing Less than a Stinking
Stain on Today's Haiti


WASHINGTON - February 23 - In December 2003, the Workers' Struggle
(Batay Ouvriye) organisation succinctly summed up the main
protagonists in the struggle for political power in Haiti: "Lavalas
and the bourgeois opposition are two rotten buttocks in a torn pair
of trousers."

Today, 23 February 2004, as Haitians wake up to the news that the
northern city of Cap-Haitien has fallen to a rebel force composed of
former Haitian Army (FAD'H) soldiers led by FRAPH leader, Louis Jodel
Chamblain, we can perhaps continue with this analogy, and say:

"The reappearance of the FRAPH/FAD'H is nothing less than the
excrement that's making a stinking stain on the torn trousers that is
Haiti today."

The Haiti Support Group wholeheartedly endorses Amnesty
International's 16 February press release which stated, "The last
thing that the country needs is for those who committed abuses in the
past to take up leadership positions in the armed opposition."

As a solidarity organisation that believes that
internationally-recognised human rights standards can lend valuable
protection to individuals and organisations struggling to overthrow
tyrannies and dictatorship, we are deeply concerned that the Haitian
opposition - grouped in the Democratic Platform - has failed to
unequivocally condemn the emergence of notorious human rights abusers
at the head of the armed movement to oust President Aristide.

We are also greatly alarmed to see statements in the media which
indicate that the rebel force intends to reinstate the disbanded
Haitian Army (FAD'H). Ever since its creation during the US
occupation (1915-34), the Haitian Army's primary roles have been to
defend the country's tiny and reactionary economic elite and to
repress movements for political change. We fully expect a reborn
Haitian Army to play exactly the same role.

For this reason, the Haiti Support Group - a solidarity organisation
that has supported the Haitian people's struggle for justice, human
rights, equitable development and participatory democracy since 1992
- cannot accept that a reborn Haitian Army will serve the best
interests of the Haitian majority.

In this context we are obliged to point out that elements within the
Democratic Convergence opposition coalition have long intimated their
support for the reinstatement of the Haitian Army, and that, more
recently, the continued silence on this issue on the part of the
Democratic Platform is a strong indication that it is willing to
accept a reborn Haitian Army in exchange for the early departure of
President Aristide.

As the desperately grim scenario unfolds in Haiti, we are reminded
once again of this extract from an article published in The
Washington Post newspaper on 2nd February 2001:

- The (Democratic) Convergence was formed as a broad group with help
from the International Republican Institute, an organisation that
promotes democracy that is closely identified with the U.S.
Republican Party. It includes former Aristide allies -- people who
helped him fight Haiti's dictators, then soured as they watched him
at work. But it also includes former backers of the hated Duvalier
family dictatorship and of the military officers who overthrew
Aristide in 1991 and terrorised the country for three years. The most
determined of these men, with a promise of anonymity, freely express
their desire to see the U.S. military intervene once again, this time
to get rid of Aristide and rebuild the disbanded Haitian army. "That
would be the cleanest solution," said one opposition party leader.
Failing that, they say, the CIA should train and equip Haitian
officers exiled in the neighboring Dominican Republic so they could
stage a comeback themselves."

Background on rebel leaders whose forces are now in control of over
half of Haiti:

Louis Jodel Chamblain

Chamblain was joint leader - along with CIA operative Emmanuel 'Toto'
Constant - of the Front révolutionnaire pour l'avancement et le
progrès haïtien, (Revolutionary Front for Haitian Advancement and
Progress) known by its acronym - FRAPH - which phonetically resembles
the French and Creole words for 'to beat' or 'to thrash'. FRAPH was
formed by the military authorities who were the de facto leaders of
the country during the 1991-94 military regime, and was responsible
for numerous human rights violations before the 1994 restoration of
democratic governance.

Among the victims of FRAPH under Chamblain's leadership was Haitian
Justice Minister Guy Malary. He was ambushed and machine-gunned to
death with his body-guard and a driver on October 14, 1993. According
to an October 28, 1993 CIA Intelligence Memorandum obtained by the
Center for Constitutional Rights: "FRAPH members Jodel Chamblain,
Emmanuel Constant, and Gabriel Douzable met with an unidentified
military officer on the morning of 14 October to discuss plans to
kill Malary." (Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, the leader of FRAPH, is now
living freely in Queens, NYC.)

In September 1995, Chamblain was among seven senior military and
FRAPH leaders convicted in absentia and sentenced to forced labour
for life for involvement in the September 1993 extrajudicial
execution of Antoine Izméry, a well-known pro-democracy activist. In
late 1994 or early 1995, it is understood that Chamblain went into
exile to the Dominican Republic in order to avoid prosecution.

Guy Philippe

Guy Philippe is a former member of the FAD'H (Haitian Army). During
the 1991-94 military regime, he and a number of other officers
received training from the US Special Forces in Equador, and when the
FAD'H was dissolved by Aristide in early 1995, Philippe was
incorporated into the new National Police Force. He served as police
chief in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Delmas and in the second city,
Cap-Haitien, before he fled Haiti in October 2000 when Haitian
authorities discovered him plotting what they described as a coup,
together with a clique of other police chiefs. Since that time, the
Haitian government has accused Philippe of master-minding deadly
attacks on the Haitian Police Academy and the National Palace in July
and December 2001, as well as hit-and-run raids against police
stations on Haiti's Central Plateau over last two years.

Ernst Ravix

According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report on
Haiti, dated 7 September 1988, FAD'H Captain Ernst Ravix, was the
military commander of Saint Marc, and head of a paramilitary squad of
"sub-proletariat youths" who called themselves the Sans Manman
(Motherless Ones). In May 1988, the government of President Manigat
tried to reduce contraband and corruption in the port city of Saint
Marc, but Ravix, the local Army commander, responded by organising a
demonstration against the President in which some three thousand
residents marched, chanted, and burned barricades. Manigat removed
Ravix from his post, but after Manigat's ouster, he was reinstated by
the military dictator, Lt. Gen. Namphy.

Ravix was not heard of again until December 2001 when former FAD'H
sergeant, Pierre Richardson, the person captured following the 17
December attack on the National Palace, reportedly confessed that the
attack was a coup attempt planned in the Dominican Republic by three
former police chiefs- Guy Philippe, Jean-Jacques Nau and Gilbert
Dragon - and that it was led by former Captain Ernst Ravix. According
to Richardson, Ravix's group withdrew from the National Palace and
fled to the Dominican Republic when reinforcements failed to arrive.

Jean Tatoune

Jean Pierre Baptiste, alias "Jean Tatoune", first came to prominence
as a leader of the anti-Duvalier mobilisations in his home town of
Gonaives in 1985. For some years he was known and respected for his
anti-Duvalierist activities but during the 1991-94 military regime he
emerged as a local leader of FRAPH. On 22 April 1994, he led a force
of dozens of soldiers and FRAPH members of the CIA-linked death squad
FRAPH to attack Raboteau, a desperately poor slum area in Gonaives
and a stronghold of support for Aristide. Between 15 and 25 people
were killed in what became known as the Raboteau massacre.

In 2000, Tatoune was put on trial and sentenced to forced labour for
life for his participation in the Raboteau massacre. He was
subsequently imprisoned in Gonaives, from where he escaped in August
2002, and took up arms again in his base in a poor area of the city.
At various times he has spoken out against the government, and at
other times in favour of it, but since September 2003 he has allied
himself with the followers of murdered community leader, Amiot
Metayer, and vowed to overthrow the government by force.

Jean-Baptiste Joseph

Joseph is a former Haitian Army sergeant who, following the
disbanding of the FAD'H in 1995, headed an association of former
FAD'H members. The formation of the Rassemblement des Militaires
Révoqués Sans Motifs (RAMIRESM), the Assembly of Soldiers Retired
Without Cause was announced at a 1 August 1995 press conference in
Port-au-Prince. During 1995 and 1996, RAMIRESM was closely associated
with Hubert De Ronceray's neo-Duvalierist party, Mobilisation pour le
développement national, (MDN) Mobilisation for National Development.

On 17 August 1996, Joseph was one of 15 former soldiers arrested at
the MDN party headquarters and accused of plotting against the
government. Two days later, approximately twenty armed men,
reportedly in uniforms and thought to be former soldiers, fired on
the main Port-au-Prince police station, killing one bystander.

Since then nothing had been heard of Joseph, until he emerged in
Hinche with the rebel forces last week. The right-wing MDN party is a
leading member of the Democratic Convergence coalition.
.