21635: Lemieux: Journal News: Pastor laments U.S. impact on Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>



Pastor laments U.S. impact on Haiti
By KHURRAM SAEED
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: April 30, 2004)

SPRING VALLEY — Two months ago, Americans saw
Haiti descend into mayhem. Angry citizens
denounced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide for
corruption and abuses of power, and armed rebels
closed in on the capital.

Aristide soon fled the country, international
troops moved in and a coalition of opposition
parties took over power in the interim.

To some, Haiti has taken a pivotal step toward
modernization and prosperity. To others, the
recent events are another example of outsiders
interfering in the political affairs of a
democracy.

The Rev. Angela Boatright, pastor of St. Paul's
Episcopal Church in Spring Valley since 2002,
decided to find out for herself.

Boatright, a former reporter and editor, recently
returned from a six-day trip to Port-au-Prince to
investigate what role the United States and other
foreign powers played in Aristide's Feb. 29
resignation. Many Aristide supporters have blamed
the United States and France for pressuring the
democratically elected Aristide to step down.

Boatright represented the Fellowship of
Reconciliation, a Nyack-based international peace
group, on the fact-finding delegation. The trip
was organized by the Ecumenical Program on
Central America and the Caribbean, which
supported Aristide's administration and has
called for the Haitian president's return.

Boatright said she made the trip without
preconceptions.

The delegation, she said, met with 50 people,
including members of Aristide's Lavalas party,
members of the opposition, business owners and
poor people. She left feeling that Haiti, despite
having its own constitution and government, was
not given the chance to determine its future.

"I came back with the sense that we have
participated in a sin against the Holy Spirit,
whether wittingly or not," Boatright said.

"Our presence has helped create an environment in
which people have to go into hiding, where
teenagers are shot in the back fleeing from
soldiers who don't speak their language," she
said.

Jennifer Hyman, a spokesman for the Fellowship of
Reconciliation, said the group was troubled by
reports that the rebels who had taken control had
been trained and armed by the United States.

"The footprint of the United States was very
present before, during and after the ouster" of
Aristide, Hyman said. "We asked ourselves, why
was the U.S. not willing to let democracy take
its course in Haiti?"

Haiti achieved its independence from France 200
years ago. In 1994, President Clinton sent 20,000
troops to Haiti to end a brutal military
dictatorship and restore Aristide to power.
Aristide, a former priest who ministered to
Haiti's poor, became its first freely elected
leader on a wave of hope in 1991 that he would
finally lift Haitians from grinding poverty.

Not everyone condemned the recent events. Members
of a loosely knit platform of 184 opposition
parties told Boatright that Aristide had failed
to deliver promised reforms, lined his own
pockets and fixed the last election.

They welcomed the presence of 3,800 international
troops from the United States, Canada, France and
Chile. United Nations troops are expected to
replace them in June. Elections are scheduled for
late 2005.

Gray Orphee, a Rockland Community College
economics professor and the author of the
recently published "Economic Implications of
CARICOM for Haiti," said this might be the
opportunity for the new government to take stock
of the nation and transform itself. CARICOM is
the Caribbean Community, an organization of
states.

"People may have a bone of contention with the
way it was done, but I would say that most people
are thinking about how Haiti can become a modern
country, a modern economy," said Orphee, who came
to the United States from Haiti as a teenager and
now lives in New City. "Some people are hopeful,
and I'm one of them, that Haitians should get rid
of these archaic ways of doing things.

"You have to create an environment where people
feel they have a stake in the system and they can
have the basic necessities," Orphee added. "A
good chunk of the population has a sense of hope
that things might finally change."

On Tuesday, James B. Foley, the U.S. ambassador
to Haiti, said the country must overcome massive
challenges that include drug trafficking and a
deep divide between the rich and the poor.

"The current situation in Haiti is disastrous,"
Foley told more than 200 Haitian business
leaders.

"Everything must change: the government, the
society, the private sector, the political
parties," he said. "Especially, mentalities in
general must evolve profoundly so that Haiti can
become a modern nation."

Despite the "enormous number of reasons to be
pessimistic," Foley said, the United States was
optimistic, committed to help transform the
country in the long term, and would announce
"considerable aid" at a June donors' conference
where he would appeal for others also to be
generous, specifically naming the European Union.


After he was ousted, Aristide was given temporary
asylum in Jamaica. Foley has denied that the
United States engineered a coup against him.

The political divide is being played out in
Rockland, which officially has about 11,000
residents of Haitian origin, although community
activists believe the actual number is closer to
30,000.

Bobbie Compas, a Garnerville resident who has
been back to Haiti once since moving to the
United States in 1980, said the recent crisis had
left people guarded about what they say and where
they say it. Compas, for example, won't discuss
what's happening in Haiti with people she doesn't
know.

"If it's not a friend, I don't talk," Compas
said. "I still have family there. You don't
jeopardize them. I have been more reserved."

In fact, several county residents from Haiti
declined to be interviewed for this article,
fearing possible repercussions against them or
their families in Haiti.

Olivia Burlingame Goumbri, co-coordinator of the
Ecumenical Program on Central America and the
Caribbean and who also made the trip to Haiti,
said there were accounts that Aristide supporters
and unionists have been imprisoned or gone into
hiding, fearing beatings or execution. At night,
the names of Aristide supporters are read on
national radio stations, she said.

"We realized there is a serious untold story
going on right now, that even folks who have ties
to Haiti don't know about," said Goumbri of
Washington. The seven-member delegation, which
included a journalist, an economist, a foreign
policy lobbyist and a student organizer, met with
a 16-year-old boy who was shot in the back by
foreign troops while on his way to buy bread at
the store, Goumbri said. The incident, along with
others like it, has left Haitians feeling
betrayed by the international community, she
said.

The Ecumenical Program on Central America and the
Caribbean is expected to release a report on its
findings next week.

While Haitians welcomed the international
military assistance a decade ago, Boatright said,
many whom she talked with didn't understand the
troops' role this time around.

"They want to govern themselves," Boatright said.
"They are a sovereign state. They want to be
respected as that and be given a chance to have
the process work."





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