23011: This Week in Haiti 22:23 08/18/2004 (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 *

                        August 18 - 24, 2004
                          Vol. 22, No. 23

KANGAROO COURT OVERTURNS DEATH SQUAD LEADER'S CONVICTION

In a lightening trial during the dead of night, a Haitian court
on Aug. 17 overturned the murder convictions of two men who
headed military and paramilitary death-squads during the 1991-
1994 coup d'état.

In September 1995, Jodel Chamblain, the number two of the
paramilitary militia known as the Revolutionary Front for Haitian
Advancement and Progress (FRAPH), and Jackson Joanis, the former
Haitian Army captain who headed the Port-au-Prince police's
feared Anti-Gang Unit, were both convicted in absentia for the
murder of democracy activist Antoine Izméry on Sep. 11, 1993. On
that date, Anti-Gang attachés and FRAPH goons dragged Izméry from
the Sacred Heart church where he was leading a mass commemorating
a massacre and shot him in the head in the middle of a street.

But both men were found not guilty at dawn after a non-stop all-
night 14-hour trial at which only one prosecution witness dared
show up, and he was not an eyewitness. The trial was announced
only three business days earlier.

Human rights groups immediately howled with outrage. Amnesty
International called the re-trial a "mockery" and an "insult to
justice" marking "a very sad record in the history of Haiti."
The retrial "was set up without proper instruction and
investigation from the Prosecutor, most of the evidence used in
the first trial has been destroyed or is missing since the last
armed rebellion, false witnesses have been called to testify and
no serious efforts have been made to find the genuine witnesses
and ensure their security," Amnesty said.

The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) also
issued a scathing four-page dissection of the "sham trial,"
saying that the de facto government of U.S.-installed Prime
Minister Gérard Latortue "staged the trial to deflect criticism
of its human rights record without alienating its military and
paramilitary allies."

The IJDH report catalogued the numerous irregularities and
illegalities in the trial and pre-trial procedures, highlighting
the government prosecution's transparent maneuvers to exclude
witnesses and evidence that might have harmed the defendants
case.

The prosecutors "did not add any additional documentary evidence
to the case file," the IJDH report says, "not even the section on
the Izméry killing from Haiti's Truth and Justice Commission
report," a voluminous and intensely researched book issued after
the 1991-1994 coup. "Haitian and international human rights
groups that are known to possess information relevant to the case
or to have access to witnesses were never contacted for the
investigation," the IJDH continued.

"Today's trial of Chamblain and Joanis indicates a full return to
Haiti's historical injustice, and the elimination of the
foundations erected with so much sweat and blood," the IJDH
concluded. "While political prisoners with no evidence or
accusations in their case files continue to fill the National
Penitentiary, convicted murderers are acquitted in a charade
trial, their files chock full of evidence not even opened."

With the return of Haiti's constitutional government in 1994,
Chamblain had fled into exile in the neighboring Dominican
Republic to escape prosecution. There, he lived in Santo Domingo
and trained with other former Haitian Army soldiers before
leading a column of them back into Haiti in January 2004 on a
mission to overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Chamblain's "rebels" were, pathetically, too few and unpopular to
do so, but, magnified by lavish and extensive media exposure,
they succeeded in providing the excuse for U.S. Marines to kidnap
Aristide on Feb. 29.

After himself acting as a judge in impromptu "rebel" tribunals of
Lavalas sympathizers after the coup, Chamblain became something
of an embarrassment to the de facto regime and its U.S. sponsors.
So he struck a deal for a re-trial with de facto Justice Minister
Bernard Gousse and on April 22 took up residence in the
Pétionville jail, which he freely roams and regularly leaves for
dinner and parties.

Gousse has declared presciently that Chamblain "has nothing to
fear" from the Haitian justice system (under the coup government)
and has raised the possibility that he could be pardoned by the
de facto president for "his great service to the nation" in
helping to overthrow Haiti's constitutional government.

Joanis fled to the U.S. in 1994 but was deported back to Haiti in
2001, because of his record of political persecution. He was
identified as a major human rights abuser in reports by Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, the
Organization of American States and even the U.S. Government.

Both Chamblain and Joanis face more trials, but those too are
likely to be bad jokes. Chamblain will be re-tried for his
leading role in organizing the 1994 Raboteau massacre, for which
he was sentenced to a life term in absentia in 2000. Joanis will
stand trial for the 1994 assassination of Father Jean-Marie
Vincent, a progressive priest.

PPN REPROACHES ARGENTINA'S KIRSCHNER FOR AIDING CUBA ENCROACHMENT

The following is a statement by Haiti's National Popular Party
(PPN) read at the Forum of Argentine-Cuban Friendship held in
Santa Fe, Argentina on Aug. 14-15.
-----
Comrades and Friends,

We salute the Forum of Argentine-Cuban Friendship, which is an
important link in the chain of solidarity which restrains U.S.
imperialism in its aggressive moves against revolutionary Cuba.

We in Haiti's Parti Populaire National (PPN) are today faced with
yet another military occupation of our nation, orchestrated by
Washington. We as a party are committed to resisting this
imperialist act in every possible way and by all means necessary.

This military aggression is not just a move against the Haitian
people, but also a step in Washington's relentless encroachment
on our neighbor Cuba. We have no doubt that the ouster of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on February 29 was conceived by
Pentagon strategists and ideologues like Otto Reich and Roger
Noriega as a stepping stone for an assault on Cuba.

But what makes this third military occupation of Haiti even more
shameful is that it is being facilitated by governments which
call themselves socialist and progressive, such as that of
Argentina's President Nestor Kirschner. Argentina is sending some
600 troops as a part of the U.S.-arranged United Nations force
which props up the illegal Latortue regime, made up of Haiti's
most reactionary forces. It unites, in an uneasy peace, Haiti's
assembly-industry bourgeoisie with the feudal landowning class
along with death squad leaders, former Duvalierist military
generals, and drug dealing CIA agents. This was the alliance
assembled to turn back the Haitian people's sovereign act of
democratically electing President Aristide.

How could Kirschner have sunken this low? Has he forgotten the
role of Washington in supporting the "Dirty War" against the
Argentine progressive movement in the 1970s? Has he forgotten
Washington's support for Britain when it punished Argentina for
daring to challenge the colonial theft of the Malvinas?

What crumbs has Washington offered Kirschner to turn Argentine
guns against the Haitian people in order to help crush a
democratically elected government and free up U.S. troops to wage
merciless war in Iraq and Afghanistan?

This same condemnation can of course be leveled at Brazil's Lula
da Silva and Chile's Ricardo Lagos, who are also more and more
acting like Washington's lapdogs in Haiti and elsewhere.

Therefore, we call on the Forum of Argentine-Cuban Friendship to
denounce Kirschner's unprincipled collaboration in the military
occupation of Haiti as an aggression not just against the Haitian
people and their sovereignty, but as a gesture of support to
Washington in its continuing maneuvers against Cuba.

Venceremos!

Ben Dupuy, Secretary General
Parti Populaire National (PPN)

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