21022: radtimes: Caricom Rejects New Haitian Regime (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Caricom Rejects New Haitian Regime

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

U.S. EFFORT TO BULLY CARIBBEAN COUNTRIES FAILS: CARICOM
REJECTS NEW HAITIAN REGIME

By Pat Chin

A recent meeting of the leaders of CARICOM--a 15-member trade bloc of
Caribbean countries--didn't go the way the Bush White House wanted it.
Despite intense pressure, they concluded their meeting on March 27 by
refusing to recognize the regime installed recently in Haiti. President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide had been forced from power after a U.S.-backed
destabilization campaign that included the use of armed terror gangs.

The CARICOM leaders also demanded that the UN General Assembly
investigate Aristide's forced ouster and exile. The 53-member African
Union had already made the same demand, and the Congressional Black
Caucus in the U.S. has called for a congressional inquiry.

Meanwhile, according to a Haiti Sup port Group Web report, many
officials and supporters of Aristide's Lavalas Family Party who were
forced into hiding now seem to be regrouping. Lavalas Sena tor Yvon
Feuille has openly charged that, "Lavalas members are being hounded
across the country and even killed." He denounced the "white American
and French colonists' plan" to marginalize the movement that brought
Aristide to power in 1990 in Haiti's first democratic elections and
warned that, "Without Lavalas there is no solution."

According to the Associated Press, "Carib bean leaders are angry that
the Security Council refused their urgent plea to send international
troops to save Aristide ... but speedily sanctioned a U.S.-led
intervention" after he was gone.

Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, outgoing CARICOM head, has faced
intense imperialist pressure for granting Aristide temporary asylum.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was the latest official
trying to bully the Jamaican government into submission by calling
Patterson to demand that Jamaica expel Aristide immediately or face dire
consequences.

The threat came only a few days after reports that the State Department
had suspended arms sales to Jamaica, claiming, in its usual two-faced
style, that the ban had nothing to do with Aristide's presence in
Jamaica and that it did not apply to the country's army and police force
but only to private arms merchants.

Patterson reportedly received tumultuous applause when he told the
gathering, "We may be small in size and we make no claim to military
power but our influence in the hemisphere [should not] be
underestimated.... And I believe that there cannot be a lasting and
permanent solution to the crisis in Haiti without CARICOM being
involved." (Trinidad Express, March 26)

Aristide has rejected refuge in Nigeria. And doubt has been cast on
reports that he'll go to South Africa for permanent asylum; the South
African government has denied receiving a request.

As Haitians joined the huge March 20 antiwar demonstrations in New York
City and across the country, a spectacle unfolded in the northern
Haitian city of Gonaives that exposes the Bush administration's
connivance with both the political and armed wings of the "opposition"
it mobilized against Haiti's popularly elected president.

U.S.-installed Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue was flown to
Gonaives, the first city taken over by armed gangs, where he hailed the
paid mercenaries gathered there as "freedom fighters" and thanked them
for getting rid of the "dictator Aristide."

Latortue has set up an interim government that excludes Aristide's
Lavalas Family Party, Haiti's largest political grouping. He was flown
to Gonaives in a U.S. Army "Black Hawk" helicopter escorted by a second
"Black Hawk" and a "Chinook." He was greeted by a delegation of killers,
including former Haitian Army and police officer Guy Phillipe, in a bid
to bestow legitimacy on the new regime and its armed wing. Special
Representative David Lee from the Organization of American States looked
on approvingly.

Over the past month, since Aristide's forced removal, 3,200 U.S.,
French, Cana dian and Chilean troops have been deployed in Haiti. But
the bulk of them remain outside of Cap-Haitien, Les Cayes and Gonaives,
where the terror squads have been given the green light to mount a reign
of terror against Aristide's supporters.

So-called "international stabilization" troops continue to look the
other way while a convicted killer like Louis-Jodel Chamblain presides
over an ad hoc "court" in Cap-Haitien that tries people accused of
everything from theft to being pro Aristide and metes out summary
sentences, including public execution.

Corpses continue to be found in the bay at Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-
largest city, according to the Associated Press. In addition, "dozens of
bullet-ridden bodies have been brought to the morgue in the last month."

Puppet Prime Minister Latortue has criticized Jamaica's decision to
grant Aristide asylum. He also broke off relations with Jamaica and
froze Haiti's CARICOM membership. Latortue was not invited to the recent
summit, and any informal contact with him was quashed after he praised
the U.S.- and French-backed terrorists in Haiti as "freedom fighters."

CARIBBEAN VOICES HIT U.S.

Rickey Singh, noted journalist for the Barbados-based Nation newspaper,
responded: "It would have been laughable, tragic really, had no CARICOM
country, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, or anyone else, agreed
to grant a temporary stay to Aristide and his family, while the United
States continues to refuse asylum to fleeing Haitian refugees while
still 'sheltering' former Haitian political thugs and killers."

The Trinidad Express also weighed in: "The arrogance of the United
States knows no boundaries," declared a March 24 article entitled
"Playing games with Aristide."

"On the subject of Haiti and its deposed President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide," it continued, "we are being lectured by Dubya and his minions
as though we are first-grade school children. The Americans do not rule
us. ... So if we wish to grant Aristide asylum that's our business, not
theirs. And should they wish that we deport our Cuban doctors and nurses
and cool our relations with Chavez in Caracas because they believe he is
another Castro, that's their concern, not ours."

A column entitled "Mercy, politics and history dunces" by Michael Burke
for the Jamaica Observer, reprinted in the Trini dad Express and posted
on a Venezuelan website, recalled that at least nine former Haitian
presidents were allowed to stay in Jamaica for a time, in addition to
Venezuela's Simon Bolivar and a former president of Mexico, General
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Cuba's Jose Marti was also there, and a
statue of Bolivar was erected in Jamaica's Heroes Circle in 1967.

Burke recalled that Patterson had "differed publicly with the USA on the
matter of invading Iraq. He further demonstrated to the world that he
could stand up to the USA by calling for a UN investigation into the
circumstances under which Aristide was ousted from power in Haiti, and
despite the USA frowning on Aristide being allowed here, he has not
changed his mind."

Haitians and their supporters demonstrated in Washington, D.C., on March
20 for human rights in that centuries-long oppressed Caribbean country.
Several human rights groups have also questioned Latortue's lauding of
the death squad terrorists and have called for their arrest.

Even some Democratic Party legislators, including presidential hopeful
John Kerry, have criticized the Bush-backed coup in Haiti--but not to
demand Aris tide's return as a matter of principle, based on the Haitian
people's right to self-determination. The critique is merely to gain
political mileage against the Republi cans in the upcoming capitalist
elections.

.