22097: This Week in Haiti 22:11 05/26/2004 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
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                           HAITI PROGRES
              "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

                      * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                        May 26 - June 1, 2004
                           Vol. 22, No. 11

RULING CLASS FACTIONS ELBOWING FOR POWER

Rivalries for posts and power have begun to rend the ruling class
alliance that came together three years ago to successfully
overturn Haiti's constitutional government.

On one side is Haiti's traditional bourgeoisie, the owners of
retail stores, car dealerships, gas stations and assembly plants.
On the other are the grandons, Haiti's arch-reactionary big
landowning class, whose power has been waning since their glory
days during the Duvalier dictatorships (1957-1986). The
Duvaliers' dreaded Tonton Macoutes, an armed corps of spies,
extortionists, enforcers and executioners, were the armed
expression of grandon power.

These two sectors of Haiti's ruling class have struggled between
each other for state power throughout most of Haiti's 200 year
history, which largely explains the frequency of coups and
foreign interventions. But when the Haitian people elected
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1990 and again in 2000, these
two ruling groups set aside their differences and came together
to oust him. The National Popular Party (PPN) called it a
"Macouto-bourgeois alliance."

Following President Aristide's Feb. 29 kidnapping by U.S.
Marines, Washington parachuted in a crew of Haitian
"technocrats," most of whom had been living abroad, to take the
reins of government.

Now, recriminations are filling Haiti's airwaves as neo-
Duvalierist politicians gripe that the lead "technocrat," de
facto Prime Minister Gérard Latortue, and his mentors in
Washington favor the bourgeoisie ( they do) and have largely iced
the Macoutes out of power (they have).

But the Macoute sector played a key role in Aristide's ouster.
Neo-Duvalierist soldiers like Guy Philippe and FRAPH death-squad
leader Jodel Chamblain led a small number of U.S. and Dominican-
backed "rebels" to occupy the northern cities of Gonaïves and Cap
Haïtien and create the semblance that the capital was "encircled"
(it wasn't) and that civil war loomed (it didn't). This gave
Washington the pretext to kidnap Aristide.

The "rebels" assumed they would quickly resurrect the Armed
Forces of Haiti (FAdH), to which most of them had belonged and
which Aristide disbanded in 1995. A new Army would provide the
Macoute sector a decisive counter-weight to the bourgeoisie's
economic clout.

However, times have changed since the U.S. relied on the
Duvalierist military and Macoutes to keep the Haitian people in
line. Now Washington and Paris prefer to use economic blackmail,
debt leverage, diplomatic bluster, media demonization, and, in a
worst case scenario, foreign "peace-keeping" troops to make sure
that neo-colonies follow their dictates.

The neo-Duvalierist "rebels" now grouse that Washington and Paris
double-crossed them and are starting to posture as
super-nationalists. For example, in Gonaïves on May 18, Haiti's
flag day, the Resistance Front of Gonaïves, a pressure group
headed by FRAPH leader Jean "Tatoune" Pierre, transformed itself
into a political party called the National Reconstruction Front
(FRN), with Guy Philippe as secretary-general. Resistance Front
leaders Butter Métayer and Winter Etienne are president and
coordinator respectively.

Butteur Métayer called the French Foreign Legion's occupation of
Gonaïves, where Haitian independence from France was declared 200
years ago, "humiliating" and ended his speech with: "Down with
the French occupation! Down with France! The foreigners must go!"

Guy Philippe was more nuanced in his protest. "We do not have a
problem with the French themselves or the Americans," he said.
"It's a question of principle. Two hundred years after
Independence, it is not right that there are foreign soldiers
based here on Haitian soil... Three months after Aristide's
departure, I would hope to see things changing. When we fought
and risked our life, we thought that the situation would get
better. Unfortunately, we saw people who have controlled the
country for 200 years call the foreigners to come defend their
interests." Philippe was talking to the bourgeoisie.

Nonetheless, Washington is doing its best to not alienate the
"rebels." U.S. helicopters flew Latortue to Gonaïves last March
where he called Philippe's neo-Duvalierist corps "freedom
fighters." Indeed, the U.S. would like to keep Philippe and his
men as a terror army in reserve should indigenous troops ever be
needed. Washington is now offering to integrate former soldiers
into a "reformed" National Police force after "reviewing their
records." But the former soldiers shun this arrangement and
continue to clamor for the army's return.

Now tensions are growing, as illustrated by an episode on May 18
in downtown Port-au-Prince. Tens of thousands marched through the
capital that day to call for the return of President Aristide. A
group of eight heavily-armed and camouflage-uniformed former
Haitian soldiers, including the self-appointed army chief of
Hinche, Joseph Jean-Baptiste, arrived in the capital to confront
the demonstrators. But a patrol of U.S. Marines stopped and
arrested them. They were then turned over to the Haitian Police
and jailed.

The following day they were ordered released, but the ex-soldiers
demanded their guns back before leaving jail. "They cannot
release us without our weapons," Jean-Baptiste said.

De facto Justice Minister Bernard Gousse agreed to give some
handguns back, but even this did not satisfy the ex-soldiers.
"Police director Léon Charles gave the order to have me arrested
for having illegal weapons," Jean-Baptiste said. "If he is saying
that the six weapons I have are illegal, then the government is
illegal because it is these weapons that put the government in
power."

Neo-Duvalierist politician Osner Févry, head of the Haitian
Christian Democratic Party (PDCH), was the ex-soldiers' lawyer.
"With the complicity of the technocrats who work for them and who
were set in place beforehand to be a front for their authority,
the American soldiers violated all the provisions of our
procedural laws protecting and guaranteeing the basic rights and
the personal freedoms of these eight FAdH soldiers and of the
military institution itself which they have tried to dismantle,"
Févry said. "Haiti and the FAdH soldiers should have the monopoly
on using weapons of war, but the American soldiers of the
occupation forces circulate, creating disorder and insecurity
throughout the country, with their weapons of war, their armored
tanks, going this time as far as arresting and disarming Haitian
soldiers."

Last week, Févry, who has already had bitter public disputes with
bourgeois leader André Apaid, Jr., came out warned that the
bourgeoisie would dominate and control the Provisional Electoral
Council (CEP) and any future elections. Earlier this month,
Latortue decreed that the CEP be formed, even though Aristide's
Lavalas Family party refused to name their representative to the
9-member body. The Protestant church sector has been tapped to
name the fill-in.

In another example of its dismay, the Macoute sector organized
violent demonstrations May 5 to thwart the seating of technocrat-
appointed Pierre Sully as the new director of the revenue-and-
bribe-rich National Port Authority in Cap Haïtien, also a "rebel"
stronghold.

NEW YORK:
DEMONSTRATORS DENOUNCE "HUMAN RIGHTS" GROUP

About 30 Haitians and their supporters gathered outside the
headquarters of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR)
in Manhattan for three hours on May 21 chanting: "National
Coalition: U.S. puppet!"

The demonstrators were denouncing the fact that the NCHR issued
no protest over the May 10 midnight raid by U.S. Marines on the
home of folksinger Annette "So Ann" Auguste (see Haïti Progrès,
Vol. 22, No. 9, 5/12/04). On the contrary, the organization
approved of the illegal arrest and accused So Ann of being the
mastermind of a violent clash between anti-Aristide university
students and pro-Aristide popular organizations on Dec. 5, 2003
(see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 21, No. 40, 12/17/03). She now is being
held in the National Penitentiary by Haiti's de facto authorities
on the charge of fomenting violence that day and of planning an
attack on U.S. occupation forces.

"NCHR is supposed to be an organization to defend human rights,
but, on the contrary, it opposes peoples' rights in Haiti," said
Gina Guerrier, a member of the Coalition to Resist the Feb. 29th
Coup d'état in Haiti (CRF29) , which organized the picket. "We
are here today to accuse Johnny McCalla [NCHR's executive
director] as a little brown-noser who denounces people so the
coup and occupation authorities arrest them, people like So Ann."
Demonstrators also denounced the NCHR's silence about the May 20
police harassment and intimidation of Lavalas Family senator Yvon
Feuillé, who was repeatedly stopped and searched by police and
accused of drug dealing.

The demonstration took place in front of 275 7th Avenue, which is
owned by and houses the union Unite. Many Unite employees stopped
to speak to the demonstrators and learn more about the Haitian
community's grievances against the NCHR.

There is deep resentment among the pro-Lavalas masses in Haiti
and its diaspora against the NCHR, founded by a North American
lawyer, Mike Hooper, in 1982 as the National Coalition for
Haitian Refugees. For years it has taken positions hostile to
Haiti's popularly elected governments, particularly those of
Jean-Bertrand Aristide. "The NCHR has worked for and been paid by
the U.S. State Department," said Serge Lilavois, a CRF29 leader,
referring to the $250,000 which NCHR received from USAID last
year. "They are always on the side of Washington against the
Haitian people, using human rights violations as the excuse."

"It's as if they are a branch of the U.S. Marines, a branch of
the French Foreign Legion," said another demonstrator, Fito
Antoine. "They never in reality defend people. They always have
the same position as other lackeys and flatterers. They have a
laboratory for creating lies."

Haitians are particularly vexed about the charges the NCHR has
made against the Aristide government over the years. After the
1991 coup in Haiti, the organization put out a report, used by
the Bush I administration, that branded Aristide as a human
rights violator. More recently, back in February, the group's
director in Haiti, Pierre Lespérance, said on a radio show that
Lavalas militants and police killed 50 people in the town of St.
Marc, a far-fetched charge which has never been substantiated.

But NCHR's support for the brutal arrest and flimsy charges
against So Ann have pushed community outrage to new levels. "It
is a conspirator in the [Feb. 29] coup d'état, it participated in
the coup d'état," said Benito Charlemagne, another CRF29 member.
"It has its hand in the kidnapping [of President Aristide]. Their
position has always been to be tools of the empire. That's why we
chant 'NCHR: Puppets.' They are U.S. tools. They work for
Washington. It is a phony human rights group which has nothing to
do with the Haitian people."

All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Progres.

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