20506: Esser: Democracy Now!: Aristide About the Coup Leaders and U.S. Funding of the Opposition in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org

March 17th, 2004

Exclusive: Aristide Talks With Democracy Now! About the Leaders of
the Coup and U.S. Funding of the Opposition in Haiti


Part II of Democracy Now!s exclusive broadcast of Amy Goodman's
interview with Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide aboard his
flight from the Central African Republic to Jamaica. [Includes
transcript]
Since winning independence from the French 200 years ago through a
revolutionary slave revolt, Haiti has seen 33 military coups.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide is the man overthrown in the two most recent
ones.

In 1991, less than a year after becoming the first
democratically-elected leader in Haiti's history, Aristide was
overthrown by paramilitary death squads working closely with US
intelligence agencies. After a few years in exile, Aristide returned
to Haiti in 1994 in a US military plane to serve the remaining few
months left in his term.

In 2000, Aristide won the presidential election a second time. Once
again, a few years after being elected, Aristide has been overthrown
in a coup - by many of same men who led the armed insurrection
against him a decade earlier. People like Louis Jodel Chamblain, the
former number 2 man in FRAPH convicted in absentia for 1994 Raboteau
massacre and the September 11, 1993 assassination of
democracy-activist Antoine Izméry; Guy Philippe, a former police
chief who fled Haiti in October 2000 after authorities discovered him
plotting a coup with a clique of other police chiefs who had all been
trained by US Special Forces in Ecuador during the 1991-1994 coup and
Jean Tatoune another leader of FRAPH, also convicted of massacre in
Raboteau.

Two weeks ago after being taken by force to the Central African
Republic in what Aristide calls a US-orchestrated coup d'etat, the
Haitian president defied Washington this weekend and returned to the
Caribbean. He is now in Jamaica, just 130 miles or so from Haiti.

I was one of two journalists allowed on the plane that took a
delegation of US and Jamaican officials to escort President Aristide
and his wife Mildred back to the Caribbean. As we crossed the
Atlantic on our way to Kingston, Jamaica, I had a chance to conduct
an extensive interview with President Aristide on-board the
Gulfstream jet.

Today we play Part II of my interview with Aristide, where he
discusses his time as president, the first coup, disbanding the
military and more:

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: We had an army of 7,000 soldiers controlling
40% of the national region. Not only they led those coup, they had 32
coup d'etats, the last one 33. After the coup they led in 1991, they
and members of a criminal organization, well known FRAPH, killed more
than 5,000 Haitians. Some people don't like to hear 5,000 because for
them it could be double or more than that. Let's say more than 5,000
people were killed by the army at that time with the help of the
well-known criminal organization called FRAPH. When i went back on
October 15, 1994, it was obvious that the Haitian people couldn't go
ahead with killers. The Haitian people wanted people to protect them,
not people to kill them. So, the army was disbanded. Now they reached
a way to have more drug dealers, like Guy Philippe who was arrested
for drugs in Panama, sent back to Santo Domingo and then back to
Haiti with the assistance of those who pretend to restore peaces to
Haiti, Chamblain was already convicted twice and now he is back. So
having criminals, drug dealers, thugs who were convicted to come back
with an army, then when they guess what we had through those 32 coup
d'etats, leading Haiti from misery to misery while we want to move
from misery to poverty with dignity, this is maybe what they have in
their minds.

AMY GOODMAN: When the CARICOM U.S. Group came and negotiated the
U.S.-backed peace plan that you accepted with Noriega, Roger Noriega,
Assistant Secretary of State representing the United States, how did
they refer to the opposition, how did they refer to the people you
just described as Jodel Chamblain, Guy Philippe?

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: The meeting we had with members of my
government and diplomats and heads of international delegations in my
office, Mr. Noriega referring to those thugs terrorists said "I will
call them killers", that's what he said. I'm shocked when today I
still see members of the international community acting with those
killers. More than that accompanying Guy Philippe, a killer, to
distribute food to people, so trying to project another image of him
when as a well-known drug dealer and a killer he should be put in
jail. So, it is scandalous. The world needs to know that. The more
they listen to what is going on in Haiti today, the more they may
join the Haitian people to prevent the killers to continue to do the
same, killing people.

AMY GOODMAN: Jean-Bertrand Aristide on board the chartered jet as we
headed over the Atlantic. The U.S. Delegation headed by congress
member Maxine Waters and the Jamaican Member of Parliament Sharon
Hay-Webster. Bringing the Aristides to Jamaica, this as members of
the Bush administration from Condoleezza Rice to Donald Rumsfeld
warned that Jean-Bertrand Aristide should not return to this
hemisphere. I asked Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide if he
could talk about the killing of the justice minister in Haiti in
1993; Louis Jodel Chamblain, one of the current so-called rebels, was
convicted of murdering Guy Mallory. This was Jean-Bertrand Aristide's
response.

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: From 1991 to 1994, the Minister of Justice,
Guy Mallory, Father Mallory's son, Antoine Izmery, the people they
killed [inaudible] lost their lives because they were calling for
democracy, the restoration of the constitutional order for my return
to Haiti. After I returned, we had a trial. And Chamblain was
convicted by a court of us. Twice. In spite of that, nothing happened
only impunity and assistance and heavy machine guns were provided to
him and the orders to have them appearing as rebels, as if they were
not anymore killers, people already convicted. This is the cynical
picture.

AMY GOODMAN: We have our September 11, 2001. Chile has their
September 11, 1973, the day the Salvador Allende died in the palace
as the Pinochet forces rose to power. You have two separate September
11ths, 1988 and 1993. Can you describe what happened to you and your
parish, your congregation on September 11, 1988 at San Jean Bosco?

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: We were praying, we were celebrating our
faith in god, and for us god means love, peace, justice, freedom,
solidarity. Getting together to pray means empowering all those who
share the same faith. If you stand up for justice, then you cannot
close the eyes to not see poor people willing to have jobs, to eat
with dignity. Once you stand up for that, then you may have people
not only rejecting you but also putting fire in a church, burning
people. This is what happened that day, September 11, 1988. When we
had it elsewhere, not in a church but in a country like Chile and
President Allende willing to stand up for human beings, for the
rights to eat, the rights to go to school, the rights to have health
care, and so and so, people who don't care about human beings
rejected that coup d'etat. When on September 11th 2001, something
tragical happened in the United States called terrorism, we saw the
world rejecting terrorism. Asked if when, for instance, we have Guy
Philippe, Chamblain, well known as terrorists, drug dealer, convicted
people, armed by those who pretend helping Haiti to kill Haitians,
it's like if...it's not anymore terrorism. So, racism, somehow is
linked to that cynical game.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! "The War and Peace Report" I'm
Amy Goodman. As we continue with the interview with President
Aristide, I had asked the Haitian president on board this flight
where he and his wife traveled for 17 hours to get back to Jamaica,
you can go to our website at democracynow.org to see the chronicle of
this trip: brought to the Central African Republic by the United
States with dozens of U.S. military, and security taken there, the
early hours of February 29, taken out of Haiti, not knowing where
they were going. They said told by the -- one of top men in the U.S.
Embassy, Louis Moreno who had come to the President's residence, that
he would be going to address the press. Instead, he was rushed on to
a -- he was rushed on to a U.S. plane. I asked Jean-Bertrand Aristide
if he could go back in time, as we look at the current rebel leaders
like Chamblain, convicted of the murders of not only the justice
minister in 1993, Guy Mallory, but the Haitian businessman Antoine
Izmery in 1993 about this significance of Haiti's September 11 in
1988, the massacre at the church, Jean-Bertrand Aristide's church. He
had been a priest. And that happened September 11, 1988. Five years
later, September 11, 1993, the Haitian multimillionaire businessman
Antoine Izmery join add procession to remember the victims of the
massacre and he, too, was executed. I asked Jean-Bertrand Aristide
about this.

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: On September 11, 1988, they burned the
church, they burned people, killed people as I explained. While I was
in exile, Antoine Izmery went to the church of Sacre Coeur on the
same day, on September 11, to remember what happened in 1988, to
bring his solidarity to the parents, relatives, friends of the
victims and also to empower those who are peacefully fighting for our
return, which was clearly the restoration of democracy to Haiti. And
the same people who made it happen in Saint-Jean Bosco made it happen
again in Sacre Coeur. The worst was already bad, but it's shameful
when we see today, the same hands, killing people, burning houses
almost the same way.

AMY GOODMAN: Jodel Chamblain was convicted of Izmery's murder?

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: Yes. Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Yet when we watch television, where most people get
their news and information, we almost never hear them mentioned.

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: We will not, since last November, they
brought to Haiti a good number of journalists. We fought hard for the
freedom of press. So we will continue to respect the rights of every
single journalist. But unfortunately, what happened from November to
today is a tragic event where it seems money was spend to bribe
journalists, not all of them, but some of them, money was used to
finance radio stations playing the card of so-called opposition,
linked to Chamblain, linked to Guy Philippe, being their voices. When
Jean Tautoune was convicted, put in jail, escaped from jail, and
giving interviews to those radio stations, to TVs, which kind of
impunity are we talking about? Which kind of freedom for the press
are we talking about? Is it freedom for the press as a cover for
impunity? Or as a full place where you use your rights to talk, to
criticize, to say what you want? Yes. We had that in Haiti where
journalists could talk. But all the journalists who were in Haiti
from November to the coup or kidnapping were not there just to tell
the truth. But also some of them were there because they were paid to
relay the lives which strayed this information around the world,
paving the way for the kidnapping.

AMY GOODMAN: Who paid them?

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: Every year, for the past couple of years, $56
million U.S. Dollars went to Haiti to finance political parties, -- ,
radio stations, TV stations, journalists, who got all visa from
embassies, lying to discredit our fragile democracy, our money from
those $56 million U.S. dollars. Recently, for the past year, it
became $70 million U.S. dollars. So, this is well known. It is not a
secret.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you're saying the U.S. government forces poured this
money in.

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: That money came from abroad: U.S., Europe,
through E.U., and organizations like that.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see similarities --

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: And maybe this is the last question for T.V.

AMY GOODMAN: Ok. Do you see similarities with what happened with you
and what is continuing to happen with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela?

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: They say that I was behind a coup which
happened in Venezuela and still behind what is going on in Venezuela.

AMY GOODMAN: The International Republican Institute?

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: Correct. They say they have their hands
through what is happening in Haiti. Often, they organize seminars for
the so-called opposition where they had Guy Philippe, Chamblain and
members of the Haitian opposition, training them to kill, to talk
after killing, to project an image of democratic opposition with
heavy machine guns on your shoulders, blood on their hands, etcetera.
So, this is, from my point of view, the same hands behind the same
things happening in two different countries.

AMY GOODMAN: You have information that people who support you are
people who were part of Lavalas are being threatened or killed in
Haiti right now?

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: A good number of them are in hiding. But
because they are cowards, but because this is a strategy to spend
time where they hay not kill you, to come back in a peaceful way and
continue to support democracy calling for the restoration of the
constitution of order. Others were killed. I'm very sad when they say
about those who were killed. Others left the country by boat to go to
Florida. And, unfortunately, when the house is on fire, those who put
fire in the house are the same who send back the victims fleeing the
fire put in that house. Violation of international law and attraction
to have more people because as long as you continue to kill people in
the country, you invite them to come to your country because they
will continue to flee that occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: When you were ousted in 1991, for the three-year
periods, there was not only a mass movement in Haiti, but a mass
movement in the United States of support and solidarity. Do you have
any message you want to send to the American people?

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: I will say thank you to all the American
people who supported democracy with the Haitian people and who
continue to support the Haitian people supporting democracy in Haiti.
We want elections in Haiti. Free, fair, democratic elections. That
means one human being, one vote, which is a democratic principle. We
want to respect that principle. I know how the American people care
for that democratic principle. They want to see their vote respected.
As we in Haiti want to see the vote of the people respected. By
supporting us, the American people support what they want to be
supported in their own country and because any democratic process,
which is well protected, may be good for any country where they want
democratic systems. I think somehow Haiti and the United States, we
are linked by democracy and democratic principles. As we are linked
to all the countries where they care for that democratic principle,
one human being, one vote, that's why I thank by expressing our
gratitude to our friends living in the U.S. or being U.S. citizens.
We think they find energy to continue to build solidarity with the
Haitian people. Once we have Haitians in Savannah, I having -- having
solidarity with the American people to free the American people. Once
we got our independence in Haiti, at that time Guyana by itself
represented almost half of the territory of the United States at that
time. So, we have in common many things. Historic ties. Principles,
democratic principles, which makes it good for us to continue to work
hard for democracies, which has to flourish not only in one country
or in two countries, but in our region.

AMY GOODMAN: Very last question. You were going to Jamaica now, which
is very close to Haiti. Do you see yourself returning to Haiti?

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: I always paid attention to the voice of the
Haitian people. As I will continue to pay attention to their voice.
Paying attention to their voice respectfully I will know what to do.
Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: President Aristide, thank you very much.

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