21294: Esser: Hundreds of Corpses Fill Haiti Morgues (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

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

April 12th, 2004

Hundreds of Corpses Fill Haiti Morgues

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We speak with an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild which
recently sent a delegation to Haiti. He says he saw hundreds of
corpses being dumped by morgues in Haiti and describes bodies coming
in with plastic bags over their heads and hands tied behind their
backs, piles of corpses burning in fields and pigs eating their flesh.
It has been a little over a month since Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted and a new U.S.-backed government
was installed in what Aristide has called a "modern-day kidnapping in
service of a coup."

U.S. troops were ordered to Haiti within one hour of President
Aristide's departure even though both President Bush and Secretary of
State Colin Powell had said they would not deploy more forces there
until there was a political solution. Despite the 3,500 U.S.-led
troops in the country, the battle for control is still being waged in
numerous Haitian towns.

The Jamaica Observer is reporting that gang leaders and
paramilitaries still control large swaths of northern Haiti,
sometimes jailing suspected criminals, sometimes persecuting Aristide
supporters. They patrol the streets, dispensing their own brand of
justice, arresting and jailing alleged criminals while hoping to
eventually become paid police officers or soldiers in a new Haitian
army.

Louis Jodel Chamblain, convicted in absentia for the 1994 Raboteau
massacre, spends much of his time in Cap Haitien. Most of his men, 20
to 35 years old, have a new long-term objective: to serve in a new
version of the Haitian army. Aristide abolished the army in 1995 as a
coup-prone machine responsible for human rights violations.

The National Lawyers Guild and several organizations denounced the
U.S. government for its role in the forced removal of President
Aristide. They demanded a Congressional investigation into the role
of the U.S. government in the deliberate destabilization of the
Haitian government and the implementation of the coup; an immediate
end to the repression and daily attacks on those demanding the return
of President Aristide; and support for Haitian refugees.

The National Lawyers Guild recently sent a delegation to Haiti to
meet with victims and their families, witnesses and grassroots
leaders. Attorney Tom Griffin was part of that delegation. He joins
us on the phone from Philadelphia.


• Tom Griffin, part of a delegation sent by the National Lawyers
Guild to Haiti to meet with victims and their families, witnesses and
grassroots leaders.

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