21530: Esser: A Tribute for Thugs in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

The Black World Today
http://www.tbwt.org

April 24, 2004

A Tribute for Thugs in Haiti   	 
By Norman (Otis) Richmond

Mumia Abu-Jamal has been in a Pennsylvania prison since 1982. Abu
-Jamal will celebrate his 50th birthday in prison on Saturday, April
24. Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown) languishes in a prison
in Georgia. Assata Shakur and Nehanda Abiodun are exiled in Cuba.
Yet, Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, the leader of the Revolutionary Front
for Haitian Advancement and Progress (FRAPH), has been allowed to
live freely in New York, despite a 1995 deportation order and a 2000
murder conviction in Haiti. He remains at liberty in Queens, New
York, and was recently granted a permit to work.

FRAPH, a violent paramilitary organization founded with U.S.
encouragement during the second half of the 1991-1994 coup d'etat,
played a major role in the overthrow of Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide on February 29.

Who are the other key players in the Haitian situation? They are an
assortment of alleged drug dealers and convicted assassins like Guy
Philippe, Louis Jodel Chamblain [Editor: who turned himself in the
other day believing he will get a fair shake from the current
government] and Jean Tatoune (whose real name is Jean Pierre
Baptiste). The most notorious of the insurgent leaders is Chamblain,
the apparent second in command to rebel commander and FRAPH
co-founder Philippe Chamblain. Philippe Chamblain was convicted in
absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1993 murder of
Antoine Izméry, a well-known pro-democracy activist, and for
involvement in the April 1994 Raboteau massacre in which some 20
people are believed to have been killed.

Philippe was a soldier in the Haitian army (FADH) during the brutal
1991-1994 de facto dictatorships. He received specialized U.S.
training in Ecuador, and at U.S. insistence was integrated into the
top police leadership. He fled in October 2000 after revelations that
he was planning a coup with other top police officials. He planned
two subsequent coup attempts in 2001. After the second attempt he was
arrested, but later released, by Dominican authorities.

Phillipe and Chamblain both received U.S. help. They were based in
the Dominican Republic and protected by that country's army, despite
several requests for their return to face charges in Haiti. The
Dominican Republic's army received extensive U.S. assistance,
including U.S. advisors near the Haitian border and, a year ago, a
shipment of 20,000 M-16 rifles. Many of these weapons were used in
the overthrow of President Aristide.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell recently visited the beleaguered
Haitian state. It was the first visit to Haiti by a U.S. Secretary of
State since Madeleine Albright went there in 1998. While the current
Haitian leadership has shown its venom against Aristide they have
demonstrated little interest in prosecuting the abusive leaders of
the rebel forces like Constant, Philippe, Chamblain and Tatoune.
Secretary Powell has condemned the violent record of many of these
leaders. In mid-February, Powell called these leaders "murderers and
thugs".

However, this has not stopped the U.S.- and French-installed puppet,
Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, from heaping praise on the
rebel eaders. On March 20, during a visit to Gonaives, he referred
implicitly to Secretary Powell's comments, stating that in the United
States they thought the people in Gonaives were thugs and bandits."

"They are freedom fighters," he said.

Latortue's history is less than stellar. Until he was called back to
Haiti he was living large in Boca Raton, Florida. The Miami Herald
reported on his "triumphant" return to Haiti, "Latortue was sworn in
before a crowd of 200 people, with heavy security, saying he was
happy to serve his country. Mumia Abu-Jamal clarified Latortue's
character in one of his Dispatches from Death Row. Abu-Jamal pointed
out Latortue is the same man who once served as ambassador in the
short-lived military-backed government of Leslie Manigat, back in
1988.

Writes Abu-Jamal: "Now, a face from that government is installed, as
PM -and what are his first words? 'Bring back the Army!' He called
Aristide's disbanding of the Army, 'unconstitutional'."

The U.S. elite have never forgiven the rebellious Haitians for
carrying out the only successful uprising of enslaved Africans. While
the government of George Washington, (who himself once sent his
personal slaves to Barbados) talked about "liberty of all men", it
didn't apply to Africans or even Euro women. It was under
Washington's watch that $400,000 - a huge amount of money in that
period - was granted to the French planter-class in Haiti as
compensation following the revolution that liberated Black Haitians.
The man who had Colin Powell's job at the time, Secretary of State
Thomas Jefferson (who also had a taste of "jungle fever"), did the
actual paperwork.

When confronted with the contradiction of choosing between slavery
and freedom, as the great Paul Robeson once talked about, the U.S.
elite came down clearly on the side of slavery, suffering and death.


Toronto-based journalist and radio producer Norman (Otis) Richmond
can be heard on Diasporic Music, Thursdays 8 p.m. to 10 p. m.,
Saturday Morning Live, Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and From A
Different Perspective, Sundays, 6 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on CKLN-FM 88.1
and on the internet at http://www.ckln.fm. He can be reached by phone
at 416-595-5068 or by e-mail at norman@ckln.fm.
.