22472: This Week in Haiti 22:15 6/23/2004 (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 *

          June 23 - 29, 2004
            Vol. 22, No. 15

GIANT DEMONSTRATION ROCKS CAPITAL

Some 15,000 opponents of the Feb. 29th coup d'état in Haiti marched
through the streets of Port-au-Prince on Friday, June 18 to demand the
removal of Haiti's de facto authorities and foreign military forces, and
the return to power of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

It was one of the largest demonstrations since the February coup but was
not marred by any serious violence, like that of May 18 (see HaVti
ProgrPs, Vol. 22, No. 10, 5/19/2004). Demonstrators denounced the
campaign of arbitrary arrests, harassment and persecution against
members of Aristide's Lavalas Family party by the de facto government in
concert with occupation forces.

Stepping off at about 10:30 a.m. from the Church of Perpetual Help in
Bélair, the demonstration flooded through much of the capital including
Delmas 2, Solino, Sans Fil, Fort National, and Montalais, Capois and
Lalue streets. It ended up passing near the National Palace on its
return to Bélair. "We demand that the North American president George W.
Bush roll back the coup d'état he carried out against our president
Aristide," demonstrators said. "Whether they like it or not, Aristide
will return to the country to serve out the mandate we gave him on Nov.
26, 2000."

Demonstrators denounced de facto Prime Minister Gérard Latortue as
illegitimate and said it was absurd that certain Lavalas Family leaders
were negotiating with him to take part in the Provisional Electoral
Council while there continues foreign military occupation, illegal
arrests, political witch hunts, and mass firings of Lavalas partisans
from state posts. On May 31, about 1000 people were fired from Teleco -
the state phone company - and the National Palace.

The masses of the Lavalas base who marched on June 18 taxed the Lavalas
Family leaders wheeling and dealing with the coup government as
opportunists. They emphasized their refusal to participate in any
illegal and fraudulent elections organized by a coup government.

The demonstrators also denounced the brutal and illegal May 10 arrest of
Annette "Sb Ann" Auguste, who remains imprisoned (see HaVti ProgrPs,
Vol. 22, No. 9, 5/12/2004).

MARX ARISTIDE, HAITIAN ACTIVIST, KILLED IN D.C. CAR CRASH
by Kim Ives

Dynamic Haitian organizer, activist and intellectual Marx Vilaire
Aristide died June 20 at Howard University Hospital from injuries
sustained in a car accident in Northwest Washington, D.C. the evening
before.

News of Aristide's death sent a wave of shock and sadness through the
Haitian solidarity community in the U.S., already buffeted by the Feb.
29th overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who is no relation.

Marx Aristide, 37, had been a co-director of the Hyattsville, MD-based
Quixote Center's Haiti Reborn office in the early nineties and then
director of the Washington Office on Haiti in the late nineties, during
which time he emerged as an articulate and passionate opponent of
neoliberal development and U.S. political meddling in Haiti.

"Marx epitomized a freedom fighter in the Haitian sense," said close
friend Serge Hyacinthe, who had worked with Aristide at the Quixote
Center. "He was able to put aside all of his personal ambitions and
desires to push for the Haitian cause and for true participatory
democracy and sustainable economic development."

Returning from a trip to scout locales for their wedding reception later
this summer, Aristide was driving in his Toyota Camry with his
30-year-old fiancée Geraldine Duval when a speeding SUV ran a red light
and slammed into them on the driver's side at 6:25 p.m. on Saturday at
the intersection of Florida Avenue and 14th Street. A 14-year-old boy
was driving the stolen vehicle with another 12-year-old boy as a
passenger. They ran from the scene but were collared by neighborhood
witnesses who turned them over to the police. The driver is charged with
reckless driving, leaving the scene of an accident and second-degree
murder.

At the hospital, Marx Aristide underwent an emergency operation to
remove damaged internal organs before succumbing to his severe injuries
shortly before noon on Sunday. His fiancée was released from the
hospital the same day.

Born in GonaVves on March 26, 1967, Aristide had immigrated to the U.S.
with his family as a teenager. He attended junior high school and high
school in Brooklyn, and then the State University of New York at Stony
Brook in the late eighties, before going on to do graduate work in
economics at Howard University.

He spent two years in Haiti from 1999 to 2001 working with grassroots
organizations to obtain technical assistance and micro loans. "A number
of us talk about going back to Haiti and giving back, but more than just
talk the talk, he actually did it," said Hyacinthe. "In so many ways,
Marx was a role model of what Haitians can do and need to do if Haiti is
ever going to be free."

At the time of his death, as always, Aristide was working on multiple
fronts. He had started the Haitian-American Skill Share Foundation
(HASSF) in 2003 to encourage U.S.-based Haitian professionals to return
with their skills to Haiti and, in his words, "reverse the brain drain."
He was working with the New York-based Haiti Support Project of Ron
Daniels to promote an August cruise celebrating Haiti's 2004
bicentennial. He was also writing reports on a recent fact-finding
delegation he led to investigate the recent coup in Haiti with the
Washington-based Ecumenical Program in Central America and the Caribbean
(EPICA).

"He did such a good job culturally translating," said Katie Orenstein, a
writer who used to live and work in Haiti in the 1990s and at whose
Manhattan apartment Aristide would often crash. "He really understood
American culture as much as Haitian culture."

She said that, while intrepid, Aristide was also prudent. On a recent
delegation, he had to telephone Haiti's ruthless "rebel" leaders to set
up interviews for some U.S. journalists. "He faked an American accent so
they wouldn't know he was Haitian and gave them a fake American name,"
Orenstein chuckled.

In recent months, Aristide took part in rallies and conferences against
the Feb. 29th coup d'état in Haiti, just as he worked tirelessly against
the 1991 coup in Haiti. "This is not just about democracy in Venezuela
or Haiti. It's about democracy in the U.S.," Aristide said at a March 6,
2004 demonstration in front of the White House, as reported by the
People's Weekly World."Everybody realizes the Bush administration is
determined to uproot democracy all around the world."

Despite his outspoken anti-imperialism, Aristide's eloquence earned him
occasional appearances on the corporate media's flagships, such as ABC's
Night Line. "Marx was a grand and dynamic man who stood for truth,
justice, and integrity," wrote EPICA in an on-line tribute to him. "His
role in our lives and in the world will be hard to fill."

He is survived by his parents, a brother and sister, and a 7-year-old
daughter.

The wake for Marx Aristide will be held on Friday, June 25 from 5:00 to
9:00 p.m. at the Andrew Torregrossa & Sons Funeral Home, 2265 Flatbush
Avenue (corner of Avenue U) in Brooklyn. The funeral will be at the same
location the next day from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m.



ANOTHER FAILED WASHINGTON REGIME CHANGE:
HAITI'S CARICATURE OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE
by Jessica Leight

Second of two parts

We continue this week with large extracts of an analysis by Jessica
Leight, a research fellow with the Washington, DC-based Council on
Hemispheric Affairs, issued June 15.

---

Humanitarian Conditions Deteriorate

Not only is the legitimacy of Haiti's interim administration highly
questionable, it has presided over a significant decline in living
standards in this already desperately poor country - a development that
offers conclusive proof to those critics that had berated Aristide for
his supposed ineffectiveness that Haiti's deep-rooted economic, social
and environmental problems are beyond the capacity of any one five-year
term executive to address. Official unemployment, already at 75%, has
increased still further due to the widespread looting of businesses and
warehouses that provided low-wage, sweat-shop employment. Food prices
have risen nearly 30%, placing essential staples beyond the means of
Haitians already living on the brink of starvation, and shortages are
expected as a result of the looting and destruction that occurred during
the rebellion, a condition that will only worsen the health of a
population where 50% already are malnourished.

Most recently, floods killed more than 1,400 people in Mapou and
surrounding towns and left tens of thousands more destitute in a region
now accessible only by helicopter. In the aftermath of the disaster,
humanitarian organizations publicly considered buying bulldozers and
building roads themselves, given the government's inability to perform
even this most basic of functions. In the face of these developments,
Prime Minister Latortue and his cabinet have appeared utterly helpless
and pathetically ineffective; many observers fear that worsening
economic conditions will engender new rounds of popular unrest if no
appropriate action is taken in the near future, further destabilizing
the country and jeopardizing the current administration.

Meanwhile, the degree of commitment from the international community to
the massive task of rebuilding Haiti remains highly tenuous, and
much-needed and long-promised aid has once again proved slow to arrive.

On June 1, U.S. commanders officially turned over control of Haiti to
the U.N. mission led by Brazil in the person of General Augusto Heleno
Ribeiro Pereira, with actual command authority to be vested in the U.N.
on June 20. However, at least for now, the U.N. presence is more
symbolic than anything else, encompassing only a handful of soldiers who
lack even a headquarters. Nonetheless, U.S. troops have begun to
withdraw - taking with them crucial equipment, such as the helicopters
that had been the only route by which food and other supplies could be
rushed to flood victims in Mapou - though some of the Chilean, French
and Canadian troops now present will remain under the U.N. force, along
with a handful of U.S. soldiers. A larger contingent of American troops
may also rotate through Haiti during this year in military exercises,
according to General James Hill, chief of the United States Southern
Command....

Secretary General Kofi Annan's appeal for $35 million in emergency aid
for Haiti has met with little enthusiasm from international donors
already repeatedly hit by demands for Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan; only
$9 million has been collected to date...

At the same time, the interim administration's toleration of rampant
human rights abuses and the U.N.'s abject failure to identify fully
investigate accusations made regarding the fall of the Aristide
government can be expected to heighten political instability and
increase the chances of renewed violence - though the recent decision by
the Organization of American States to launch an investigation into the
circumstances of Aristide's removal may help in shedding some light on
this enduring and ugly controversy....

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Please credit Haiti Progres.

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