21023: radtimes: Washington Armed Commandos to Overthrow Aristide (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Washington Armed Commandos to Overthrow Aristide

-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 8, 2004
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC USED AS TRAINING, STAGING AREA:
WASHINGTON ARMED COMMANDOS TO OVERTHROW ARISTIDE

APRIL 7 PUBLIC MEETING TO EXPOSE U.S. ROLE IN COUP

By Leslie Feinberg

An independent Haiti Commission of Inquiry, at a media conference in the
Dominican Republic, has charged that Washington armed and trained
commando forces inside that country which were then used to overthrow
Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The commission delivered its preliminary conclusion to a packed room of
close to 100 journalists in Santo Domingo on March 30. It had
investigated what commission member Father Luis Barrios said were
"countless reports."

Some members of the commission had also interviewed Aristide in the
Central African Republic, where they confirmed that Haiti's president
had not resigned, but had been kidnapped by the U.S. government.

The commission will deliver these and other findings at an April 7
public meeting in New York on the coup in Haiti and details of
Washington's hand in the violent "regime change." Tickets for the event
at Whitman Hall, Brooklyn College, are available from the International
Action Center at 39 W. 14th St., Room 206, (212) 633-6646, and from the
Haiti Support Network, 1398 Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn, (718) 434-8100.
More information is available at iacenter.org and haiti-progres.com.

President Aristide will address the April 7 meeting via a recorded
message. Congress members Maxine Waters and Major Owens, former
Attorney
General Ramsey Clark, Haitian labor organizer Ray LaForest and others
will address the meeting in person.

Johnnie Stevens, a leading organizer of the event, stresses, "We're
holding this meeting on April 7 because it's the 201st anniversary of
the death of Haitian liberator Tous saint L'Ouverture. He died in a
French jail after being kidnapped in a ruse by Napoleon's agents. Just
as Napoleon sought to restore slavery in Haiti by starving to death
Toussaint L'Ouverture, so does George Bush want to re-impose colonial
rule in the world's oldest Black republic by kidnapping and exiling
Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide."

U.S. ROLE EXPOSED

The Haiti Commission of Inquiry was created in 1991 by former U.S.
Attorney General Ramsey Clark after the first U.S.-backed coup against
Aristide. Clark helped found the International Action Center.

At the March 30 media conference, which took place at the Renaissance
Jaragua Hotel in the Dominican capital, IAC co-director Teresa Gutierrez
told the gathered journalists, "The purpose of this particular
delegation has been to investigate when, where, why and how the leaders
of the so-called rebel forces were able to train and arm themselves in
the Dominican Republic." She added that the inquiry also pursued how the
mercenary forces "were shielded from arrest, despite being convicted in
Haiti and other countries."

The commission report states, "Two hundred U.S. Special Forces soldiers
came to the Dominican Republic as part of 'Operation Jaded Task,' with
special authorization from [Dominican] President Hipólito Mejia. We have
received many reports that this operation was used to train Haitian
rebels. We have received many consistent reports of Haitian rebel
training centers at or near Dominican military facilities. We have
received many consistent reports of guns transported from the Dominican
Republic to Haiti, some across the land border, and others shipped by
sea."

Kim Ives from Haïti Progrès told the media, "In the course of our
investigation here, we met with many Haitians who were forced to flee
Haiti following the coup d'état of Feb. 29. Their testimony gave very
concrete names and faces to the stories of violence which we have heard
that the so-called rebels, trained and assembled in the Dominican
Republic, have carried out in Haiti over the past month. We were also
touched by the tears of refugees who told us of how they are
apprehensive over the fate of their loved ones left behind in Haiti."

Retired Special Forces Master Sgt. Stan Goff emphasized, "The latest
coup d'état in Haiti was a particularly shameless exercise of U.S.
imperial impunity. It is important to remember that this was also an
attack on the sovereignty of every nation in the region, and especially
that of the Dominican Republic."

Goff concluded that the U.S. exerts "control of the direction of Domin
ican political and economic development." As evidence, he cited the
recent restructuring foisted on the Domini can Republic by the U.S.-
dominated International Monetary Fund.

U.S. domination of the Dominican Republic has a long history. Washington
installed Rafael Trujillo as ruler in 1930. Trujillo became so hated as
a bloody dictator that he was assassinated in 1961 in what was widely
perceived as a CIA coup intended to head off a popular uprising. In
1962, Professor Juan Bosch, a progressive, was elected president but was
ousted within seven months by the military.

When a revolution to restore Bosch erupted in 1965, U.S. Marines invaded
Santo Domingo--the second time in the 20th century that the U.S.
military had occupied the Dominican Republic.

U.S. imperialism feared another Cuba in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Then-President Lyndon Johnson actually postponed the buildup of U.S.
forces in Vietnam so the Pentagon could channel tens of thousands of
troops to the Dominican Republic.

Part of the inspiration for Che Guevara's famous anti-imperialist call
for "two, three, many Vietnams" was the struggle in the Dominican
Republic.

.