23474: Lemieux: Flashpoints Radio, samedi: Death squads rampage in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

Death Squads rampage under RCMP's watch in Haiti;
600 dead in last 2 weeks
Flashpoints Radio, samedi, 16/10/2004 - 15:09

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.
http://www.flashpoints.net




Soumis par Anonyme
[Pour pouvoir commenter, veuillez login (ou vous
register). ]







_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
http://vote.yahoo.com