23472: Ives: Demonstrate on Monday Oct. 18 at Haitian Consulate in NYC (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: K. M. Ives <kives@toast.net>


PROTEST THE ESCALATING REPRESSION IN HAITI

On Monday, Oct. 18, 2004 from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., there will be a
picket-line in front of the Haitian Consulate in Manhattan at 271 Madison
Avenue to protest last week's warrantless arrest and imprisonment of Father
Gerard Jean-Juste, the brutal and bloody repression of popular protest in
Port-au-Prince, and the continuing foreign military occupation of Haiti.

Since police attacked and killed two demonstrators during a peaceful protest
over two weeks ago on Sep. 30, there has been a popular uprising in poor
neighborhoods around the Haitian capital, including Bel Air, Cite Soleil,
and Martissant. The police, occupation troops, and paramilitary bands of
former soldiers have responded with merciless and lethal repression. On Oct.
13, masked policemen arrested Father Jean-Juste, a well-known activist
priest, as he was distributing food to poor children, charging him as a
"threat to public order." U.N. troops from Brazil, Jordan, Argentina, Chile
and other countries have participated in deadly police raids on popular
neighborhoods, suffering and inflicting casualties. Estimates of those
killed over the past two and a half weeks range as high as 600.

Monday's action is called by the Committee Against Repression in Haiti,
which was active during the Duvalierist and neo-Duvalierist regimes prior to
1991, and is endorsed by the Haiti Support Network, Komite Chalo Jaklen, the
National Popular Party (PPN) and the Fanmi Lavalas in New York.

For more information, call the Committee Against Repression in Haiti at
718-434-8100.