23457: Esser: Death squads rampage in Haiti: 600 killed in 2 weeks (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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

Flashpoints Radio
http://www.flashpoints.net/

Death squads rampage in Haiti: 600 killed in 2 weeks

Death squads rampage in Haiti: Flashpoints Radio Interviews Kevin Pina
By Dennis Bernstein and Kevin Pina

October 15, 2004

Bernstein: The situation in Haiti is getting worse, as the U.S.
installed coup government continues to intimidate, round up, arrest,
beat and kill members of Lavalas, Aristide’s major democracy party,
that’s the majority democracy party. We have been reporting now for
several days on the kidnapping of several pro-democracy priests who
work with the poor in Haiti. Among those rounded up and dragged out
in front of the kids they were feeding is Father Gerard Jean-Juste, a
legendary figure within the Haitian pro-democracy movement, and a
close friend of the duly elected President of Haiti, Jean Bertrand
Aristide, who, you remember, was kidnapped by the U.S. government. As
we go to air Jean-Juste is still in custody and the pro-democracy
movement is poised to carry out massive protests despite threats from
the U.S. installed government. Joining us for the latest on the
situation is Flashpoints special correspondent on the ground Kevin
Pina; he’s in Port au Prince, welcome back Kevin.

Pina: Thanks Dennis.

Bernstein: Good to have you. First of all, what do we know about the
kidnapped priests?

Pina: Well, two of them, apparently, were released yesterday, the
only one who is still being held in custody is Father Gerard
Jean-Juste. The U.S. backed Latortue regime is accusing Father
Jean-Juste of harbouring criminals and importation of guns, charges
which he believes are to be ridiculous. Again, I’ll quote him; he
said ‘everyone who knows me knows I’m a man of non-violence.’
Certainly it’s taken the community here and internationally by
surprise. People are shocked and angry throughout the United States.
If this Bush-backed government wanted to do anything to galvanize the
Haitian community to try to vote him out of office, they certainly
did that with the incarceration of Father Gerard Jean-Juste.

The government today changed its story again. Yesterday they were
saying that the reason they had arrested Jean-Juste was they had just
gone there to question him. They surrounded, as we reported, his
rectory with large guns, men with masks, black masks and large guns
who did not identify themselves, who intimidated him as he was
serving children in his presbytery. They then claimed that only after
partisans in his neighbourhood attacked the police did they then
decide to arrest him. They changed their story again today and said
they actually had an arrest warrant in their hands before they went
to the premises. It’s really interesting to watch these guys crawl
and slither as this goes on. Obviously they’re catching a lot of heat.

Bernstein: How did they explain the masks, why did they go there with
black masks over their faces?

Pina: Well, that’s what they’re doing throughout the capital these
days. Whenever the police launch a movement they don’t go and
identify themselves; they come in, you wouldn’t be able to tell them
from terrorists, and a lot of people here are calling them terrorists
now, with the way that they enter with just black masks,
unidentified, civilian clothes and large guns. It’s a very terrifying
thing to watch these guys in action. Today also were protests despite
the fact that the capital was virtually shut down by the business
community. The business community has called Lavalas terrorists, and
they had asked all businesses and schools to shutter their doors
today in protest of Lavalas and in order to stop Lavalas from
demanding the return of Aristide yet one more time today. Remember
today is the 10th anniversary of Aristide’s return in 1994 at the
head of 20,000 U.S. troops, committed by President Bill Clinton in
what was called then ‘operation Restore Democracy.’

The day began very, very wickedly because immediately there were
reports of the former military who the United Nations and the U.S.
backed government have allowed to enter the capital over the past two
days. There were reports early in the morning that they had entered
La Saline, which is a pro-Aristide poor slum down at the base of
Delmas 2, and that they had opened fire indiscriminately at the
population, that they had begun setting up roadblocks on Route Frere,
in another section of the capital. Immediately after hearing this
news the people of Bel Air rose up, thousands and thousands of people
began to protest in the streets demanding Aristide’s return. The
Haitian National Police then attempted to enter the neighbourhood.
They fired shots to try to disperse the crowd. Reportedly, several
gunmen from rooftops and surrounding buildings returned fire and the
Haitian National Police were forced to make a hasty retreat.

Bernstein: Pina is talking to us on the ground in Port au Prince,
Haiti where the pro-democracy movement is in fact poised to have a
protest to call for the restoration of democracy with the
duly-elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide. The U.S. installed
government there is threatening repression, threatening locking down
the city; they opened, they gave the key to the cities to the death
squads, to the former paramilitaries; some of these guys were
convicted of terrible crimes. Kevin, I want to come back to Father
Jean-Juste for a moment. I want to talk a little bit more about him
and the way in which they are labelling him and then attacking him.
And I want you to come at this two ways: first of all, I want you to
say a little bit more about Father Jean-Juste and what he was doing
in terms of what’s called ‘the Tenth Department’ in Haiti, his exile,
and then remind people how they did the same thing and continue to do
the same thing to President Aristide, in terms of unbelievable
charges; they just throw them out and throw them out…and either what
the mainstream press does and NPR does is they repeat the charges
without explanation or they just don’t cover the slaughter at all.

Pina: Well after the brutal military coup of 1991, Father Gerard
Jean-Juste was courageous in terms of confronting the military, of
encouraging people to use non-violent resistance to confront the
military. While a lot of people were fleeing into exile, Father
Jean-Juste urged people to stay and confront the military and that’s
where his reputation as a courageous soul was built. He himself
suffered terribly during that time, many of his dear friends killed,
constantly having to be on the move while the military was actively
trying to track him down, hunt him down. He was betrayed several
times by people but managed to be saved and encouraged and helped by
others who harboured, protected him.

After Aristide’s return in 1994, he became the Minister of the Tenth
Department. The Tenth Department is the Diaspora basically, Haitians
who are living abroad. In that role he had helped to build networks
of Haitians within the United States who would work actively to
rebuild Haiti, who would work actively to encourage literacy
programs. He was certainly one of the loudest voices advocating
literacy, universal literacy for the peasantry in Haiti. Just a man
who has done tremendous work in proving himself time and time again
as far as his commitment to the poor and his commitment to
development and progress in this country. Of course the attacks
continue against him, the character assassination continues against
him, even today.

The man who is the publisher of a right-wing Haitian rag, that was
the voice of the Haitian military…in 1991 called the Haiti
Observateur, his name is Raymond Joseph, he then became a journalist
with the New York Sun, and then being rewarded for the scurrilous
lies that he committed to help to destabilize this government before
Aristide’s ouster, he then became the charge d’affairs in the Haitian
Embassy in Washington and is still in that position today. He just
released another article in the New York Sun today, I know the
information came from him, accusing Jean-Juste of having written an
article where he claimed that President Bill Clinton had been
encouraged by Aristide to use a voodoo priest in order to win the
election, his re-election, and that Clinton had not changed his
underwear for a week at the advice of his voodoo priest that Aristide
had lent him in order to win his electoral campaign in 1992., the
re-election of Bill Clinton.

It’s these sorts of lies that Raymond Joseph and the Haiti
Observateur and other elements of the right-wing reactionary
community in Haiti continue today against Father Jean-Juste and
certainly they are part of what is bolstering this government right
now to have taken this heinous action in terms of incarcerating him
and putting him in prison today. These are scurrilous charges;
Jean-Juste would have nothing to do with touching guns; I’ve known
the man personally since 1991 myself and I can tell you that based on
his commitment to the poor and based on his commitment to
non-violence, that it seems utterly ridiculous to try to pin that
charge on him. I’ve just got to say one other thing about what I said
earlier. Today, the shutdown of the capital that was called by the
business community, the Haitian Chamber of Commerce, I have to also
say that that shutdown was backed by the U.S. Embassy, which also
closed and shuttered its doors today. Several U.S. citizens were
quite angry at the U.S. Embassy closing, in an act of ‘solidarity’
with the Haitian business community today, because they said what if
we have to evacuate because of mounting violence in Haiti and our
government shut down to show its approval of the business community.

The situation here is just really out of hand and I think the only
words to use right now are that this is a country poised for civil
war. This is not going to go away, this is going to escalate over the
days, weeks and months to come. The U.S. backed government is
claiming that this is merely being done to try to embarrass Bush in
order to defeat Bush and give Kerry an advantage. Well, even if
President Bush wins, based on my knowledge of what’s going on in the
streets today here in Haiti, this is not going to be over even if
President Bush should win those elections again.

Bernstein: … Kevin, you have spent so much time in Haiti and you were
there in Haiti to do a documentary in 1990 about the new burgeoning
democracy after the election of Jean Bertrand Aristide and you ended
up filming him being taken out in handcuffs. I want people to
understand how much time and how you’ve watched this cycle finally,
before we move on to Iraq and Palestine, two other U.S. related, or
U.S. occupations if you will. Tell us the situation in terms of the
food, medical, just very briefly, what is the, sort of, emergency
situation on the ground? What are the grave concerns of people in the
medical profession, in the schools, what’s happening at that street
level?

Pina: I’ll tell you, today the biggest crisis was that as people were
being shot in the streets, as I said earlier, by former military on
Delmas 2 and La Saline, and as there were casualties that began to
mount, as the police had the gun battle in Bel Air there were bodies
that were being taken to the morgue. The morgue was full, there was
no more room in the morgue. The General Hospital had to call the
Ministry of Health today in order to demand emergency vehicles to
remove the more than 600 corpses that have been stockpiled there,
that have been coming in from the killing over the last two weeks
alone. That’s how much killing that has been going on here in the
streets of Haiti that has not been/being reported and has not talked
about. Well, AP has been quoting the police as saying only 140 people
have been arrested. Today, the government admitted that hundreds had
been arrested and are currently filling the prisons and that the
prisons are too full to put more prisoners in. That’s what’s
happening to the infrastructure of Haiti today.

The level of repression, the number of killings, the number of
incarcerations has strained the system to the breaking point. At the
same time there is no life that’s normal here. This situation that‘s
been created by the ouster of the democratic President Aristide was
ill conceived by the Bush administration. What they basically did was
replace what they considered to be a ‘failed state’ with an even more
failed state. Certainly, we cannot say that their backing of the
so-called opposition, and I’ve got to say this too, let me get this
in really quickly: what is happening to Lavalas today, I never, in
the last four years that I was here, including the most voracious,
the most violent demonstrations of the opposition, I never saw the
State under Jean Bertrand Aristide do anything to that so-called
opposition, anything like what is being done to Lavalas today. The
opposition to Aristide back then called Aristide a dictator. Well
today it seems as if that is there own self-fulfilling prophecy.
Today I have never seen a Haiti so bereft of freedom of expression; I
have never seen a Haiti so bereft of civil liberties, as I see today.
I never saw during those years that they claimed Aristide was a
dictatorship a campaign of repression anything like what I am seeing
being mounted today against Lavalas. And I think people who have
followed this can hear it in my voice…it’s indescribable to talk
about this reality in terms of sanity. It’s reality turned on its
head, and it’s a direct result of failed policies of the Bush
administration in Haiti.

Bernstein: All right, we’re going to leave it right there. Kevin Pina
we’re going to urge you to be careful, because we know that you are
on the radar screen there, of the U.S. installed government, and we
know that you have a very young child there, so we urge you to be
careful. We’re looking forward to you coming to visit here; we’ll be
speaking together, I believe, at a local church on the…but Kevin you
please be careful

Pina: I will, and God bless all my friends

Bernstein: Thank-you. Kevin Pina speaking to us from Port au Prince,
Haiti where the situation is,well, another example of Bush policy.
.