22380: This Week in Haiti 22:13 6/9/04 (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 *

                June 9 - 15, 2004
                Vol. 22, No. 13

HAITI & IRAQ:
THE ABU GHRAIB AND HAITI PRISON CONNECTION
by Dominique Esser and Kim Ives

A U.S. prison consultant sent last year to "reform" Iraq's Abu Ghraib
prison, now world infamous for the torture U.S. soldiers there inflicted
on Iraqis, is doing the same job now in Haiti.

Terry Stewart is the former director of Arizona's prison system. Under
his watch (1995-2002), the U.S. Justice Department repeatedly
scrutinized and sued the state's Department of Corrections, alleging
abuse, particularly of women. A 1997 DOJ suit charged that male prison
guards raped, sodomized and assaulted 14 women. Female inmates were made
to shower while male guards stood by. The suit was settled out of court
with no guilt admitted, but Arizona agreed to make major changes in
prison policies.

Last week, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) called attention to Stewart's
"checkered past" and "shocking record of tolerating prisoner abuse." In
a Jun. 2 letter to the DOJ's Inspector General, Schumer asked how
Stewart "with a troubling history in the United States' corrections
system" was selected to oversee the reconstitution of Iraq's prison
system, along with three other controversial appointees. Stewart worked
in Iraq in May and June 2003.

"Stewart was charged with knowingly turning a blind eye to repeated
incidents of sexual abuse by guards against female prisoners ranging
from sexual assault and rape to watching female prisoners undress and
use the restroom," Schumer said in his letter. "Under Stewart's watch,
prisoners at Arizona facilities were also made to stand outside for up
to four days in the summer and for up to 17 hours in the winter without
sanitation, adequate drinking water, changes of clothing, proper food or
protection from the elements."

Now Terry Stewart is a partner in the private consulting firm Advanced
Correctional Management. The U.S. State Department hired him to oversee
reform of Haiti's prisons after U.S. troops militarily occupied the
country in March.

Stewart is supervising a prison system from which most of the convicts
were set free by Haiti's "rebels" around the time of the Feb. 29th coup
against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Today, the jails are refilled
with hundreds of political detainees affiliated to Aristide's Family
Lavalas party. The most prominent of them is Annette "So Ann" Auguste,
whom U.S. Marines violently arrested at her Port-au-Prince home May 10
on vague conspiracy charges (see HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 22, No. 9,
5/12/2004).

A recent incident well illustrates how Haiti's prisons are running under
Stewart's guidance. Last week, independent journalist Kevin Pina went to
visit So Ann at the Pétionville jail where she is held. While she is
kept in a cell where friends and journalists can visit her only under
tough restrictions, Pina found one of her fellow inmates wandering
freely around the jail: convicted murderer Jodel Chamblain.

The former FRAPH death-squad leader turned himself in on April 22 to be
retried by the more sympathetic authorities of the new coup regime (see
HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 22, No. 7, 4/28/04).

When Pina returned to the jail's reception room, he found Chamblain
thumbing through the identity cards of So Ann's visitors. Chamblain had
set aside the cards of Pina and two other journalists. When Pina
complained to the prison guard on duty, the guard just smiled.

Sen. Schumer questioned how and why Stewart "could have been chosen for
such a sensitive and important role" as overhauling Iraq's prisons
"despite credible allegations of serious misconduct" when he was a U.S.
corrections official. One must also ask, in light of the Abu Ghraib
revelations, how the U.S. government could continue to employ Mr.
Stewart, at U.S. taxpayer expense, to bring his "expertise" to bear on
Haiti's prisons.

MIAMI:
REFUGEE CHAMPIONS KEYNOTE DEMOCRACY RALLY

Father Gérard Jean-Juste and lawyer Ira Kurzban, who rose to prominence
in the 1980s as defenders of Haitian refugees in Miami, spoke at a
lively forum entitled "Haiti, Human Rights and the Coup" on Jun. 3 at
Florida International University's Biscayne Bay campus in North Miami.

Father Jean-Juste, who flew in from Port-au-Prince for the event,
described the fierce repression and lawlessness now gripping Haiti. "The
more they kill Lavalas partisans, the more people who are not Lavalas
become Lavalas," he said. "We must get back on the road to democracy."

Jean-Juste said his weekly show on Radio Ginen, like Radio and Tele
Timoun, had been silenced and condemned how the putschists had destroyed
public institutions, spreading insecurity.

Kurzban gave a rigorous and incisive analysis of the coup and U.S.
support for it. He explained, for example, that "Leonce Charles, [Haiti'
s] police chief who was appointed by the U.S. government, was in
training in the U.S. for six months prior to the coup in Haiti" and
during the pro-democracy march of 30,000 in the capital on May 18 "gave
the order to directly shoot into the crowd and kill people." Kurzban
also asked why, 48 hours before President Aristide was kidnapped,
Charles was meeting with Luis Moreno, the No. 2 in the U.S. Embassy,
while U.S. Special Forces were being secretly deployed in Haiti.

Kurzban noted how the corporate press has hushed up such evidence of
U.S. orchestration of the coup. "Why didn't you hear about Gérard
Latortue being in Washington almost weekly for the three months prior to
the time he was appointed as [de facto] Prime Minister of Haiti?"
Kurzban asked. "Not one reporter in the U.S. has asked what are his
links to the CIA, DIA or State Department."

Kurzban lashed out at the financial embargo which the U.S. used to
destabilize the Aristide government and recalled working as a lawyer 25
years ago for the Haitian Refugee Center in Little Haiti, when
Jean-Juste was its director.

Other speakers spoke about U.S. and Dominican government support to the
Haitian "rebels," the findings of recent fact-finding delegations to
Haiti, and relief to flood victims in Haiti's southeast. The audience of
about 150 took part in an extended question and answer period following
the presentations.

The event was organized by the Broward Antiwar Coalition, Veye Yo, the
National Lawyers Guild, and a new organization called Support Democracy
in Haiti.

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