22095: erzilidanto: Haitian lawyers respond to Marine spokesman (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Erzilidanto@aol.com

http://www.sfbayview.com/052604/haitianlawyersrespond052604.shtml

Haitian lawyers respond to Marine spokesman

You are there to win - but the Haitian masses will not let you

by Lionel Jean-Baptiste

Dear Lt. Col. Lapan:

On May 18, 2004, I heard a direct report over internet radio on the
demonstration organized by the Haitian people to celebrate Haitian Flag day. The
demonstrators on the scene were constantly dispersed, harassed and terrorized with
the expressed purpose of defeating their will so that they would not provide an
example of resistance to the illegal occupation and the illegal coup led by
the U.S. The report put together by attorney Marguerite Laurent reflected the
report I heard, a direct feed of live coverage from a reporter on the scene in
Haiti to the radio station. I now have a copy of the tape of that broadcast.

Your characterization of attorney Laurent's report as inflammatory and
fictitious is quite consistent with your very purpose as the spokesman for the
Multinational Interim Force in Haiti. You and the other troops currently illegally
occupying Haiti are carrying out the policy of the Franco-American-Haitian
Comprador Bourgeoisie of uprooting the Lavalas movement.

Your bosses first fomented, funded and armed an opposition to a legitimate,
democratically elected government. But not only that, you invaded the country,
kidnapped President Aristide and expelled him from this hemisphere.

Not only that, you gathered the remaining leadership of the Lavalas movement
and imprisoned them. Not only that, you further engaged in a campaign to
terrorize the mass base of the Lavalas movement through killings, believing that if
you did this, then the Haitian people would not dare resist en masse.

So when the masses of people did dare to take to the streets on May 18, 2004,
it must have appeared an illusion to you because you and those you serve
never imagined that this could still happen in the face of all your terror. Why do
you now apologize for breaking up the demonstration and preventing people
from exercising this "democracy" that you allegedly went to Haiti to protect?

Why did your people seek to break up the demonstration in the first place?
Who do you expect to believe that your soldiers did not forcibly break up the
demonstration up to and including killing nine people in the process?

You talk about press accounts of the demonstration in Haiti, and that is
exactly what I heard: unfiltered accounts from the demonstrators direct from
Haiti. "Your press," though - and I say yours because the rebels, former soldiers
and opposition groups to the constitutional government you protect and
legitimize have terrorized the dissenting press in Haiti - is and has been filtered
since the invasion.

I am not even going to engage you around the arrest of Annette August. You
have painted her arrest as legitimate because it was executed pursuant to an
arrest warrant issued by the illegitimate LaTortue government. Come on. Her
arrest was part and parcel of the Uprooting Policy. You know it and I know it. Do
you think she was born yesterday?

Your purpose as spokesman is to control and mediate all forms of information
that leave Haiti and to best fit the "truth" to the aims of your mission. You
are performing the function for which you were appointed.

But your insistence that we believe your word over eyewitness accounts,
photographic evidence, the sentiments of innumerable Haitians, and the lessons of
world history is more than comical - it presumes a basic naivete and
unfamiliarity with U.S. notions of truth on our part and is a sign of your obvious
disrespect for the intelligence of the Haitian community.

You are there to win. But the Haitian masses will not let you.

Attorney Lionel Jean-Baptiste is the founding partner of the law firm
Jean-Baptiste & Associates, a founding member of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership
Network and a well-known reparations activist in Chicago. Email him at
lioneljb@aol.com.

How can you pretend that, being criminal in essence, the occupation is doing
a fine job in Haiti?

by François-Marie Michel

To Lt. Col. Lapan, spokesperson for the occupying forces in Haiti:

In reference to your correspondences to SF Bay View, I am trying to figure
out whether or not you understand that this occupation of Haiti has been in the
making for a whole decade by U.S. policy. I concede that the United States are
not the only one to blame. I certainly blame also Haitians, whether from the
Lavalas Party or its opposition, for that.

However, both the conception and the execution of the plan bear the print of
a dirty trick called "Low Intensity Warfare" that has been put in place by the
United States policy makers. Therefore, I am simply laughing at your
assertion that makes believe the occupation has even some semblance of legality.

Your reference to the United Nations simply does not add up, because you
certainly know that overthrowing an elected government is simply unlawful. If you
have the slightest doubt about it, please turn the situation around and try to
find out who in the world would even think of correcting the selection of
your commander in chief - as you call the tenant of the White House - in their
wildest dreams, let alone in deed.

The colonel you are cannot either plead ignorance of the fact that your
embassy played the role of a pro-consulate in Haiti, tampering with both
international treaties and the very Constitution of the land. How can you, then, being
"paid to be diplomatic" as you confirmed - whatever diplomatic means - pretend
that, being criminal in essence, the occupation is doing a fine job in Haiti?

Who is going to swallow this pill, no matter the sugar coating on it? Can a
criminal act become lawful? In what circumstances other than Machiavellan
theories? Have you ever questioned or at least second-guessed - it's your right and
duty, as a free human being - the passing of Resolution 1529 on Feb. 29, the
same day the elected president of Haiti was kidnapped by your ambassador?

How can you reconcile the timing of such resolution and the filibustering
practice - by the same Security Council the United States can veto or "unveto,"
blackmail or bypass - that has frustrated for so long the elected government's
effort to negotiate a better plan than your attached fact sheet could ever
accomplish in favor of the people of Haiti? Who would want your Marines there,
anyway?

You are not going to pull up on me that the elected president was asking for
help, are you? Help and occupation are two different issues, Colonel, aren't
they? One pursues an indigenous objective, the other one can't care less about
it; in fact, it simply undermines it, starting with a kidnapping, for example?
At any rate, if you sincerely think that your Marines are doing any good to
the people of Haiti, please review all the reports about the embargo against
the government for forged reasons, but no reasons other than being imperialistic.

What a pity, Colonel! How cynical it is that you dare comparing the situation
between the time of the chaos your embassy concocted to destabilize the
elected government and this time of occupation when "plim ne gouy" (your chance to
learn some Kreyòl?). Did you forget that your agents were the ones who wanted
to shut down schools?

Did you know or did you simply forget about the mammoth protests by mothers
and students against the same shutting of the schools you are referring to, as
it was not part of the plan to reverse the will of the majority? Again by the
same people your embassy was manipulating?

Or do you have in mind to confuse intelligent people while shoving the dirt
of obscurantism on the same government that made a point to build more schools
in a decade than have ever been built in two centuries? The blatant truth we
know and want to become the law, even retroactively, is that no school should
be destroyed and replaced with barracks.

Is it the rule in LIW that you don't need proof, or would you intend to make
the citizens of Haiti oblivious to the fact that the elected government your
embassy overthrew made it easier for children to attend school and for adults
to learn how to read and write? Or oblivious that on the other hand your
government had been condoning illiteracy in Haiti for ages (denpi ke denpi)? Again
some Kreyòl!

What can this joke mean, then, of hiding behind the looting of a
well-equipped university hospital to transform it into barracks? No excuse that your man
from Boca Raton gave it to you, Colonel, because it cannot be that all of a
sudden you, his master, are following his order.

I feel ashamed by this double-sworded assertion, Colonel. I am Haitian, after
all, and, volens-nolens, he is also Haitian. Naturalization here is
irrelevant. I cannot let myself dwell on considerations like this.

It remains that since the first U.S. occupation, we Haitians learn at school
that it was a disgrace to be called "collabos," meaning those who agreed to
work with the occupiers. I have to keep on questioning your argument, Colonel.

When did the looting happen, anyway? Who let the University be looted in
comparison to all the protection of the likes of Cedras and Avril's mansions? Who
is in charge of the circus number in Haiti? The puppet or the clown?

And who or what gave you the right to choose against Haitians who think that
250 students soon to become doctors would be useful in a country that can
provide no more than seven physicians per 100,000 citizens? Aren't those some of
the statistics that the so-called mainstream media never failed to pull out to
show how backward Haiti is?

Isn't it the right of Haitians to choose for themselves? How is it then your
business - and, incidentally, that of the man you exhumed from Boca Raton and
faxed (some say emailed) to Haiti - to decide that shutting down a university
is good for Haiti?

Then you pull out on us some numbers to prove your point. I can't stress
enough that it's YOUR point, that of your man, maybe - who knows his real thought?
- and, for sure, that of your ambassador. Should I, then, interpret all the
numbers you are throwing at us as a tactic aimed at confusing us into settling
for less?

You can give up on this, Colonel. The blatant truth we know and want to
become the law, even retroactively, is that no school should be destroyed and
replaced by barracks. Such option of yours begs for an explanation. Let alone the
killing you are supervising as an occupier.

I see you also claiming innocence because "Marines have neither fired into
crowds nor stood by while Haitian police did" the job. "We have not arrested or
tortured anyone."

You should say, then: Neither had President Aristide at the time he was
bombarded by propaganda condoned or inflamed by Ambassador Foley.

Don't you know, Colonel, that your commander-in-chief and his secretary of
state, through the media they embedded, held Aristide responsible for every
wrongdoing imaginable that took place in Haiti? Ask them why? They would serve you
this cliché: that he was the president. Triumph of double standard, isn't it?

It's my turn, Colonel, to throw to you that what is good for the goose is
good for the gander. The occupiers dictating the rules in Haiti today are
responsible under the same logic they applied to President Aristide then. Unless they
agree to the contrary for President Aristide, the occupiers, both French and
Americans, are the ones behind every wrongdoing in Haiti.

Nevertheless, saying this, I feel corrupted by disingenuousness and no better
than those who had been elevating lies and cynicism as a political virtue in
Haiti. By your standard, those in charge must be held accountable for things
they don't even know. As simplistic as that. Let alone when they have been
turning their back to the wrongdoing.

By the way, Colonel, you cannot plead the Marines were not part of the
operation of May 18. In an occupied country, who can decide to do anything with
impunity, without the blessing of the occupier? If your embassy spent its time
twisting the arms of an elected government, why would it be different with your
own puppet?

At any rate, I am glad, Colonel, that you are aware of journalism's
deontology. I read you complaining: "I have not been contacted by any journalists who
claim to be eyewitnesses to what you have reported. Nor was I contacted by your
organization to ask about the allegations before simply printing them." It
remains for you to ask the like of Otto Reich and Noriega to be as rigorous in
their notorious fabrications against elected officials they don't like.

Moreover, Colonel, you proved yourself to be excellent in casting doubt on
"assumptions" or punching holes in them. Reading on: "What pictures do you have,
other than those of bodies? How do you know how those people in the photos
were killed or injured? In Haiti (as in San Francisco and any other population
center) people die but how they died is not always knowable."

You are even defiant and sarcastic: "If you have proof of such, I would be
interested in seeing it, and not simply "eyewitness" reports from those with an
agenda. Talking to selected individuals, especially if all are members of the
same group, may not present an accurate picture of events."

I commend you, Colonel on this way of doing your job.

All the reporter can do is to serve the public with the film of the event.
And let you, Colonel, find another way of defending yourself, after you have
apologized for backing up the police on this tragic day of May 18, 2004.

My regards, Colonel.

Attorney François-Marie Michel is a member of the Haitian bar and a popular
radio host in New York. Email him at sanba@juno.com.

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Forwarded by the Haitian Lawyers Leadership
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"Men anpil chaj pa lou"  is Kreyol for - "Many hands make light a heavy load."

See, The Haitian Leadership Networks'  7 "men anpil chaj pa

lou" campaigns to help restore Haiti's independence, the will of the mass
electorate and the rule of law. See,
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/haitianlawyers.html ; http://www.margueritelaurent.com/campaigns/campaigns.html

and Haitiaction.net

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