23348: Esser: The 'Flood' of Repression Continues in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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

Centre des médias alternatifs du Québec
http://www.cmaq.net/

 
The 'Flood' of Repression in Haiti Continues: Flashpoints Radio
interviews Kevin Pina, September 29, 2004.

By Solange Echeverria and Kevin Pina

S.E.: The devastation of Hurricane Jeanne and a corrupt government
has already reached biblical proportions in Haiti. With over 2000
reported dead and scores more missing, the Haitian people have much
to do to reclaim their Republic. The Bush administration has been
oddly silent on the destruction and [there is much] irony given the
campaign speeches and promises of a ‘compassionate conservatism’ and
‘peace-loving military missions.’ John Kerry has also been strangely
silent, given the outrageous cost of human life. With us once again
is journalist, filmmaker, and special correspondent in Port au
Prince, Kevin Pina. Thank you Kevin for being with us here on
Flashpoints.

K.P.: Thank-you Solange.

S.E.: Well, let’s get a quick update on what the aftermath there is
in Haiti. What’s the voice of the street?

K.P.: Well, the biggest problem right now continues to be the armed
gangs in Gonaives, the same armed gangs that [interim Prime Minister]
Latortue had previously embraced as ‘freedom fighters’ in early March
[March 20th], following the ouster of the constitutional President
Jean Bertrand Aristide. Aid workers have been held up at gunpoint,
people have been reporting that, after they receive aid, gunmen will
come into their homes and steal the aid from them. The United Nations
and I think the world is beginning to see that Gonaives basically is
one big city full of gangs; there’s no other way to describe it. But
of course matters are made worse when Gerard Latortue, the
U.S.-installed Prime Minister, appoints people like Winter Etienne to
be the head of the national port authority in Gonaives. Winter
Etienne also is part of a large gang in Gonaives and he now controls
the ports there. The United Nations had said they wanted to use that
very same port to bring in aid but were discouraged from doing so
when they saw that the port was completely controlled by heavily
armed men.

S.E.: Kevin, do you get a sense that the current regime, the Latortue
regime, whether or not they’re using all of this, Hurricane Jeanne
and all of the destruction in the aftermath, as a way to really
entrench their power?

K.P.: Well, certainly, a lot of aid is flowing into Haiti now, so
much so that the foreign minister of Canada [Pierre Pettigrew] met
with Gerard Latortue and the interim President ... Boniface
Alexandre, and they said ‘please don’t send any more aid, the two
planeloads that you sent was plenty, was enough,’ plus the money
that’s been sent to the government directly to aid the victims. So,
apparently there’s plenty of aid, enough so that the Latortue
government is beginning to turn down offers of aid at this point. So,
really it’s a question of what are they going to do on the ground as
far as politically. Of course, this whole story in Gonaives, which is
a very tragic story, has been covering an even more tragic story,
which is the continuing repression of Lavalas.

Certainly, last weekend even the Mayor of Delmas, an area within the
capital of Port au Prince, had to admit that last weekend there were
fourteen bodies that were found, the majority with bullets in them;
they were not identified, the bodies actually seemed as though they
had been held in another locale for quite some time and then were
dumped in various neighbourhoods throughout the area of Delmas. The
information coming in on that is sketchy ... we don’t know. But then
there are also stories from Gonaives related to that. For example I
think I had mentioned that people who were Lavalas political
prisoners, who were in jail in Gonaives, the Haitian police in
Gonaives said that the prisoners had escaped. Well, family members
are still claiming that that is not true, and they believe that the
Haitian police abandoned their posts and allowed those people to
drown in their jail cells. So, still there is a lot of repression
related, political repression related to the political climate, in
the wake of Jean Bertrand Aristide’s ouster, that’s going unreported.

Tomorrow will be an interesting test, tomorrow of course is September
30th, which is the anniversary of the first coup against Aristide in
1991. Lavalas has announced that they are going to hold a large
demonstration in the capital tomorrow as well as on the first of
October. We’ll see how that goes. This will also be the first time
that the Chinese communist police that have come to Haiti, as part of
the UN police-keeping force, we’ll see their debut, I believe
tomorrow, at the demonstrations.

S.E.: We’re talking about the ongoing struggle of the people of
Haiti. We’re going to go back to that question a little bit, and I
guess what I’m really asking is whether or not the government, the
installed government is using the storm as a cloak, as a cover-up for
these disappearances, these assassinations, this oppression, and
repression of Lavalas supporters?

K.P.: I mean, how can you call it a greater cover-up than it already
was? The only people who have been talking about the deaths, who have
been talking about the political persecution, have been special
delegations that have come in to Haiti such as the National Lawyers
Guild [1], Bishop Thomas Gumbleton was in today with another
delegation: these are the only people who are talking about that. The
mainstream media has never discussed it, has never talked about it;
right now the mainstream media is obsessed with the victims of the
flood in Gonaives, but that’s because that’s their ‘big story’ now on
Haiti, but as far as repression [goes] that was never covered by the
mainstream media and they have pretty much ignored it from the
beginning. So it’s hard to cover up something that’s already been
covered up, even further.

Has this masked the reality even further on the ground? Absolutely.
Will that be able to continue? I don’t think so, because the level of
repression, as I think I said to our listeners last week, had kicked
up again. There’s a new level of repression that’s touching union
leaders now, it’s touching religious organizations and, again, a lot
of this is being done with the collusion of a so-called human rights
organization, the National Council of Haitian Rights [NCHR], which
has pretty much acted as judge, police and jury in Haiti. [T]he way
that their modus operandi works is that a rumour is spread on the
street, NCHR will then take to the airwaves and say that they have
evidence to back up the rumour, then individuals are arrested and
detained by the police. NCHR never presents its so-called evidence
and people rot away in prison. This is a cycle that I have seen
happen over and over and over again the last couple months, and it’s
continuing to happen in Haiti today. [2]

S.E.: In the face of all this political repression and oppression,
and in the face of all this devastation, both candidates President
Bush [and] John Kerry have been oddly silent, even from the
humanitarian aspect of it. Can you speak a little bit to this?

K.P.: Well, I find the silence on the Kerry camp to be really odd,
particularly given that with the hurricane and the fact that what it
exposed was that all of the previous investment that U.S. tax dollars
had made in Haiti, such as an emergency response network to be able
to forecast hurricanes and tropical storms in advance, to put
supplies of water and food and tents, etc. in place in the areas
where the forecasted natural disaster is aimed towards; all of those
apparatuses were put into place with U.S. taxpayer dollars in
building the Civil Protection Bureau. All of those apparatuses, and
all of those systems that were built with U.S. taxpayer dollars, were
destroyed with the ousting of the democratic government. So, Kerry
certainly has a good claim to make against the Bush administration’s
ill-conceived regime change in Haiti, and I still find it quite odd
that either people in his camp aren’t quick enough, or I’m not sure
exactly what is going on with them, but I know that there is interest
out there and when people hear that story they can see clearly that
what the Bush administration did in Haiti was ill-conceived.

S.E.: Thank you Kevin Pina for all your hard work over there in Haiti...

[1] For reports on the political repression, see the National Lawyers
Guild reports at http://www.nlg.org, see the Institute for Justice
and Democracy in Haiti at http://www.ijdh.org, the Quixote Center
delegation report at
http://haitireborn.org/campaigns/lhl/ob-miss-mar04.php, see also
their human rights reports. The International Action Center has a lot
of information available on their site: http://www.iacenter.org; see
also the Ecumenical Program in Central America
http://epica.org/haiti/action_haiti.htm; also see the work of the
Haiti Accompaniment Project,
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/hap6_29_4.html.

[2] See “The Double Standard of NCHR” at the Haiti Action Committee,
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/9_12_4.html.

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