23065: Esser: Haiti factions try to rebuild army (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser <torx@joimail.com>

People's Weekly World Newspaper
http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/5682/1/229

Haiti factions try to rebuild army

August 28, 2004
Author: World Combined Sources
 

In a statement Aug. 20, the Haiti Support Group (HSG) said it
continues to be seriously concerned by the power wielded by armed
irregular forces in Haiti and by their increasingly bold demands for
reestablishment of the Haitian Army.

The London-based Haiti Support Group is a solidarity organization
working alongside Haiti’s popular democratic movement since 1992.

“These concerns are heightened in the context of the farcical ‘trial’
and acquittals of former paramilitary group FRAPH leader Louis-Jodel
Chamblain and former anti-gang head, Jackson Joanis, and the recent
mobilization of former soldiers in Port-au-Prince, Les Cayes, and in
the Central Plateau and other parts of the country,” the Haiti
Support Group said.

The statement said the interim government headed by Gerard Latortue
appears to be increasingly interacting with the illegal armed groups
that participated in the U.S.-led coup that deposed President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February, and in some cases has actively
engaged former leaders of the Armed Forces of Haiti, disbanded by
Aristide.

The Haitian Times newspaper reported Aug. 18 that the interim
government appointed Winter Etienne to direct the National Port
Authority in Gonaives. Etienne, along with fugitive from justice and
former FRAPH member, Jean Tatoune, led the armed uprising that
started late last year in Gonaives, HSG said.

Etienne is now coordinator of the new National Reconstruction Front
party, headed by former army officer, police commissioner and coup
plotter, Guy Philippe. The solidarity group pointed out that at the
Ministry of Interior, former Army chief Herard Abraham continues to
integrate former high level officers from the Haitian Army into his
staff.

A new appointee is former Colonel Williams Regala, once the
right-hand man of dictator Henri Namphy and allegedly the main
instigator of the Nov. 29, 1987 massacre of voters.

Regala joins a host of other former high command officers at the
Ministry of the Interior, HSG said. One of the most notorious is
former Colonel Henri-Robert Marc-Charles, who in September 1991
joined General Raoul Cedras in forming a military junta to overthrow
Aristide’s elected government. He is now a top advisor to Abraham,
although a judicial order requires his imprisonment pending trial for
involvement in the March 1990 Piatre peasant massacre

Under Herard Abraham, the Ministry of Interior is busying itself with
the tasks of recruiting former soldiers into the National Police
Force and preparing to pay 10 years’ back pay and pensions to all
members of the Army that was disbanded in 1995, the statement said.
Meanwhile, HSG said, in the Central Plateau region, former Army
Colonel Remissainthe Ravix claims to lead some 1,800 re-armed
soldiers, and has ridiculed the interim’s government’s proposal that
they disarm.
.