23175: This Week in Haiti 22:27 9/15/2004 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES newsweekly. For
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HAITI PROGRES
"Le journal qui offre une alternative"

* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

September 15 - 21, 2004
Vol. 22, No. 27


SEPTEMBER 11, 2004:
DEFYING INTIMIDATION, TENS OF THOUSANDS MARCH AGAINST THE COUP AND
OCCUPATION

Despite a murderous crackdown by hundreds of Haitian policemen and foreign
occupation troops only two days earlier, tens of thousands of demonstrators,
overwhelmingly from Haiti's sprawling shanty towns, marched through
Port-au-Prince on September 11 to protest the Feb. 29th kidnaping and exile
of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the continuing foreign military
occupation of Haiti.

Called by the National Cell for Reflection of Popular Organizations of the
Lavalas Family Base, the peaceful march flowed like a giant river for hours
through various neighborhoods of the capital, including Delmas, Nazon,
Lalue, Bourdon, Canapé Vert, and Turgeau. The demonstrators then rallied in
front of the National Palace, where they demanded the resignation of Haiti's
de facto authorities, the withdrawal of foreign military forces, and
Aristide's return.

The march commemorated Sept. 11, 1988 when Tonton Macoutes attacked some
1200 worshipers during a mass by then Father Aristide at St. Jean Bosco
church. Thirteen were killed and 77 wounded, and Aristide barely escaped
with his life. A mass remembering that massacre was held prior to the march
in the ruins of St. Jean Bosco, which was never rebuilt after the Macoutes
burned it that fateful day.

On September 11, 1993, during the first coup against President Aristide,
political activist and prominent businessman Antoine Izméry held a mass at
the Sacred Heart church to commemorate the St. Jean Bosco massacre. Haitian
soldiers and paramilitaries dragged him from the church and executed him in
the middle of a street. The marchers also observed this killing.

"September 11 is a date which symbolizes terror," said one demonstrator. "On
September 11, 1973, terrorists assassinated Chilean president Salvador
Allende to establish a dictatorship in that country. Today, on September 11,
2004, we are shocked to see that a Chilean, Juan Gabriel Valdès [head of the
United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti or MINUSTAH], with the blood
of Salvador Allende on his boots, sanctions the terrorist acts perpetrated
against President Aristide on Feb. 29."

As in previous Lavalas demonstrations since Feb. 29, the march stepped off
from the Church of Perpetual Help in Bel-Air. Wearing T-Shirts and carrying
posters emblazoned with photos of President Aristide, the demonstrators also
denounced the current offensive by former Haitian soldiers to re-establish
the Armed Forces of Haiti (Fad'H), dissolved by Aristide in 1995. Today
former soldiers are taking over police stations around Haiti.

The demonstration was not marred by violence except for an incident on the
Delmas road near the National Office of Old Age Insurance (ONA) where some
shots were fired from that building. The police responded at the scene but
apprehended nobody.

Although there were no clashes with the hundreds of Haitian riot police who
accompanied the march, protestors pointed to police intimidation in the days
leading up to the demonstration. On September 9, at least four people were
killed and fifteen wounded when police swept through the capital's Cité
Soleil shanty town and arrested close to 300 people.

Backed up by French and Jordanian MINUSTAH troops, the police fired
indiscriminately, arrested innocent people, and terrorized residents on the
pretext that they were "disarming" gangs leading up to September 15, after
which date the de facto government says it will no longer tolerate illegal
weapons.

Some 425 policemen participated in the operation which lasted for 12 hours
in this shanty town which is home to about 400,000 mostly Lavalas residents.



"This was a political action aimed at intimidating the residents of Cité
Soleil," said René Momplaisier, a spokesperson for the local Little Church
Community (TKL). "After having tried in vain to organize a massacre with
several heads of armed groups in certain Cité Soleil neighborhoods, a well
known political sector is using the police to silence the population of the
country's largest shanty town."

Between September 4 to 7, at least 16 people were killed in the
neighborhoods of Soleil 4, 13 and 17. But area residents say that it wasn't
gang warfare.

"They were summary executions carried out against Lavalas Family partisans
by heavily armed men from the Boston neighborhood who are manipulated," one
resident commented. Many in Cité Soleil accuse bourgeois leaders, like
sweatshop magnate Andy Apaid who led the "civil society" demonstrations to
overthrow Aristide, of paying gangs to sow violence.

The National Cell for Reflection compared the police raid to the terrorist
attack of Sept. 11, 2001 in the U.S. but said the Haitian people would not
be intimidated. "The de facto government is starving and exterminating the
residents of popular neighborhoods because of their political convictions,"
the group said in a press release.

Despite the crackdown, the National Cell for Reflection deemed its September
11th mobilization a success and announced another march for September 30,
the 13th anniversary of the 1991 coup d'état.

All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED. Please
credit Haiti Progres.

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