20266: radtimes: Aristide Charges: White House Behind Coup (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Aristide Charges: White House Behind Coup

-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 18, 2004
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------

HAITIAN LEADER CHARGES: WHITE HOUSE BEHIND COUP
Solidarity Delegation Wins Access to Aristide

By Sara Flounders and Johnnie Stevens
Bangui, Central African Republic

March 9--U.S. agents abducted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti
over a week ago and flew him to this intensely poor former French colony
in the heart of Africa in an attempt to isolate him and keep him from
telling the truth about what has happened in his Caribbean country.

It didn't work. Through his own efforts, and with assistance from a
solidarity delegation that quickly flew in from the United States,
Aristide has been able to tell the world that he did not resign, as the
Bush administration has been claiming, but was forced to leave Haiti
after being threatened by the U.S. ambassador with death--his own, his
family's and thousands of his supporters. At the same time, U.S. troops
were taking up key positions in the capital and convicted murderers
known to collaborate with Washington were advancing on Port-au-Prince in
command of heavily armed troops.

This gangster-style operation to uproot Haiti's democratically elected
president and install a government under the heel of U.S. and French
imperialism has involved a full-court press--in Haiti and here in the
Central African Republic.

The U.S. delegation that succeeded in breaking the blockade around
Aristide included three people representing former U.S. Attorney General
Ramsey Clark: Kim Ives of Haiti Support Network and the newspaper Haïtí
Progrès, Sara Flounders of the International Action Center, and Johnnie
Stevens of People's Video Network. Also in the delegation were attorney
Brian Concannon of Aristide's U.S. legal team and filmmaker Katherine
Kean.

At first we were denied access to the Haitian president and his wife,
Mildred Trouillot Aristide. We went to the Palace of the Renaissance but
were told we couldn't give him a message or send him our phone number,
we could not go in and he could not come out to meet with us.

ARISTIDE REPLACED BY 'U.S. REGIME OF OCCUPATION'

But after a release entitled "Aristide under lock and key" was
circulated around the world in a massive Inter net and media campaign by
the International Action Center and the International ANSWER Coalition,
the blockade was forced open. The CAR authorities acknowledged to us
that they had been taking direction from the U.S. State Department and
the French Foreign Ministry.

By the next morning everything was different.

Foreign Minister Charles Wenezoui, who had refused to return our calls,
set up a meeting with our delegation, told us we could meet privately
with President Aristide, and said that afterwards Aristide would hold a
press conference.

At the meeting with the foreign minister, he told us that the decision
to send Aristide to the CAR was made by the U.S. and France. Not one
Haitian had any part in this decision. The CAR minister was told he must
be in daily contact with Washington and Paris about Aristide, and his
government could not comment on the situation in Haiti.

We then met with President Aristide and Mildred Trouillot Aristide, who
greeted us warmly. Later we attended a luncheon with them and officials
of the CAR, followed by another meeting with President Aristide. The
group discussions were held in English and French. Kim Ives was also
able to speak at length with Aristide in Creole about his kidnapping.

After our first meeting, Aristide was finally allowed to hold a news
conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs--his first public
appearance since the coup. Our delegation scrambled to find a working
cell phone for him, and he has now given several detailed phone
interviews to the international media, including Pacifica Radio's
Democracy Now! program. This program had first broken the news of his
kidnapping during an interview by Amy Goodman with U.S. Rep. Maxine
Waters of the Congressional Black Caucus.

In our conversations and at the news conference, President Aristide was
very forceful about the fact that he had been kidnapped, and that his
government is being replaced by a U.S.-sponsored regime of occupation.
He also said that only his return to Haiti can bring peace, and
characterized the people who carried out the campaign against his
government as "internationally recognized criminals."

Aristide said he had been lied to by the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, James
Foley, who assured him that he was being taken to a press conference to
talk with international and Haitian media. Aristide agreed to leave his
home on condition that he could speak to the media and that his home
would be protected from any attack or looting.

The press conference never took place. He was instead forced onto a
plane and taken out of the country. His home was looted almost as soon
as he had left.

'ARMED AMERICANS AND DIPLOMATS' KIDNAPPED HIM

The State Department has given the impression that around 4 or 5 a.m. on
Feb. 29, Aristide called U.S. officials and asked for their assistance
in leaving the country. But Aristide told Kim Ives that, in fact, "armed
Americans and diplomats" came to his residence 12 hours earlier and told
the 19 security guards that have functioned as a presidential security
detail that they should abandon their posts. These security guards were
on assignment from the Steele Foundation and are mostly former members
of the U.S. Special Forces. They were told by U.S. officials that they
wouldn't be protected.

President Aristide asserted that these Steele Foundation security guards
basically obeyed the orders from their former employers--the U.S.
military. On Satur day night, they were flown by helicopter away from
the Presidential Palace, leaving Aristide with no armed protection.

Aristide told Kim Ives that when he was taken to a U.S. plane early in
the morning on Feb. 29, his 19 security guards were already there. They
were all taken--including the one-year-old child of one of the guards--
to the Central African Republic. After spending 20 hours on a plane
flying to a destination unknown to any of them, the security guards were
then flown back to the United States. The trip prevented them from
revealing the details of the coup until long after Aristide was out of
Haiti.

U.S. MOVED BEFORE AID COULD REACH ARISTIDE

Ives reports that "In the course of the discussions with President
Aristide, it became clear that the timing of the coup coincided with
several international developments that could have shifted the
relationship of forces in the Haitian government's favor. While the U.S.
government escalated pressure on Aristide to resign in that last week,
the government of South Africa had sent a planeload of weapons that was
set to arrive on Sunday, Feb. 29. Venezuela was in discussions about
sending troops to support Aristide.

"There was also gathering international support and solidarity for the
maintenance of constitutional democracy in Haiti. African American
leaders were receiving increasing media attention as they denounced the
efforts towards a coup. Two prominent U.S. delegations, one led by
members of the Congressional Black Caucus and another by former U.S.
Attorney General Ramsey Clark, in conjunction with the International
Action Center and Haiti Support Network, were set to arrive within days.

"We can see that there were various converging influences of aid about
to come. This accounts in large part for the timing of the coup. It
explains why the U.S. had to rush in and remove Aristide," Ives
concludes.

Aristide's situation in the Central African Republic is tenuous. His aim
is to return to Haiti to serve out his elected term. He is being treated
graciously by members of the government here, but has limited freedom.
He has not asked for political asylum and does not accept being in
exile.

The timber and diamonds of the CAR enriched the French ruling class
during a century of colonial rule, but today life expectancy is only 42
and the vast majority of people enjoy not one benefit of modern life. On
the Oubangui River, which flows through the capital, people still travel
by dugout canoe. The infant mortality rate is 93 deaths per 1,000 live
births. French troops still remain in the area.

Clearly, if any people have the right to demand reparations for a
history of exploitation and oppression, it is the people of the Central
African Republic--and of Haiti. One of Aristide's crimes, in the eyes of
the imperialist West, is that he demanded just that.

It is at least two days' travel by commercial plane from the CAR to
Haiti, the first Black republic in the world. There is one flight a week
between Bangui and Paris. The best hotel in Bangui has no Internet
connection, and landline phones often don't work.

Nevertheless, Aristide has found ways to get the news from his country.
He pointed out to us that U.S. Marines and other foreign soldiers are
now being housed in what was Haiti's main medical school, effectively
closing it down. "Haiti has only 1.5 doctors for every 11,000 people,"
he emphasized, and now it will have even fewer.

Our meetings with Jean-Bertrand and Mildred Aristide were held on March
8, International Women's Day. Johnnie Stevens informed them of a women's
conference being held in New York that would discuss Haiti's long
struggle and what it means to women. The presidential couple sent their
warmest greetings to the women of the world.

.