23088: radtimes: Haitian masses reject election ploy (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Haitian masses reject election ploy

http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/haiti0902.php

Reprinted from the Sept. 2, 2004, issue of Workers World newspaper
By G. Dunkel

U.S. Ambassador to Haiti James Foley, in an Aug. 20 news conference, called
on the Haitian government to "hold free and fair elections" to put together
a new, stable government by Feb. 7, 2005.

However, only days earlier, thousands of people from the poorest
neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince had been in the streets to say that they
had already held their national election. And they wanted their president,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide--who was constitutionally elected and then deposed
in a U.S.-implemented coup Feb. 29--returned to power.

The Aug. 14 street actions were to celebrate the 214th anniversary of the
voodoo ceremony at the Bois-Caiman at which Boukman Dutty kicked off a
revolution that eventually swept Haiti's French slave masters from their
massively profitable class position.

Before the demonstration started in Bel Air, one of the poorest
neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, the demonstrators held a voodoo ceremony
in front of the Church of Perpetual Help to symbolically link their march
to the struggle begun by Boukman.

At a news conference on Aug. 13, one of the organizers explained, "Our
national independence was not a gift from foreigners. Our ancestors shed
much blood to obtain it. ... We heard with astonishment the news that the
de facto government is planning a new celebration of the bicentennial of
Haiti's independence, despite the fact that our country is currently
occupied. ... However, this plan shouldn't astonish us since the de facto
government is a concoction of the imperialist system." (Haïti-Progrès)

Thousands of demonstrators left Bel Air, marched through downtown
Port-au-Prince and passed the U.S. Embassy. There they denounced a game
between Haiti's national soccer teams and Brazil's world champions
organized by the U.S.-imposed government at the urging of the U.S. ambassador.

Brazil is heading up the United Nations forces that replaced the U.S. and
French armies, which began their occupation of Haiti at the end of February.

In front of the National Palace, the marchers criticized the current
"government" as collaborators, and demanded freedom for the leaders and
militants of Aristide's party, Fanmi Lavalas, now held in a number of prisons.

Another march started from Cité Soleil, an extremely poor neighborhood of
Port-au-Prince. There was also a march in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti's
second-largest city, which emphasized the exorbitant rise in the cost of
living.

Repression continues

While the people are still in the streets, repression continues. The
exoneration of two bloody-handed mass murderers in a hasty, all-night trial
on Aug. 17 was a menacing development.

In September 1995, Louis Jodel Chamblain, second-in-command of the
right-wing group FRAPH, and Jackson Joanis, a former army captain who led
the Port-au-Prince Anti-Gang Unit, had both been convicted in absentia for
the murder of Antoine Izméry. Izméry, a Haitian businessman of Lebanese
descent, the main financial backer of Aristide and a well-known rights
activist, had been killed on Sept. 11, 1993.

Both Chamblain and Joanis were found "not guilty" at dawn after a nonstop,
all-night, 14-hour trial at which only one prosecution witness dared show
up. The trial date had been set only three business days earlier.

Every single human rights organization that concerns itself with
Haiti--from Amnesty International to the Institute for Justice and
Democracy in Haiti--along with the New York Times and the Washington Post
had to denounce the trial, using terms like "sham"and "mockery of justice."
The Times went so far as to editorialize that the Latortue government
"shields its political gangster allies from justice."

But they should have also been condemning the U.S., which pulls the strings
of the Latortue government. Washington wants to keep the mass murderers and
vicious criminals used to drive Aristide from power happy--and available to
repress the mass resistance that is simmering in Haiti.

.