23515: Esser: Priest's arrest an injustice that hits home (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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

Miami Herald
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/

October 17, 2004

Priest's arrest an injustice that hits home
by Jim DeFede/In My Opinion

Soon after Haiti's democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, was forced to leave Haiti in February, Kernst Jean-Juste
begged his brother, the Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste, to do the same.

''I tried to convince him to come back to Miami and wait for things
to calm down,'' Kernst recalled. 'But he said, `No, I'm Haitian and
I'm staying. And if I have to die, I'll die in my country.' ''

For nearly three decades, the maverick Roman Catholic priest has
placed the needs of Haiti's poor above his own and has been a
relentless champion for democracy.

''I believe in justice,'' Jean-Juste once told The Herald. ``The
taste of freedom for somebody else is a great victory for me.''

On Wednesday, Jean-Juste was arrested as he was feeding almost 600
children from his church in Port-au-Prince. The government accuses
him of inciting violence and aiding a brutal faction of Lavalas
Family, Aristide's political party.

''My brother is a peaceful person,'' his sister, Francine Jean-Juste
Delica, told me. ``He is a nonviolent person.''

''Anyone who was an Aristide supporter is being persecuted in
Haiti,'' Kernst added.

In recent weeks, numerous Lavalas leaders have been arrested -- many
without any formal charges. Among those jailed: Haiti's former Prime
Minister Yvon Neptune and the former Minister of the Interior
Jocelerme Privert. Two Lavalas senators were arrested this month for
criticizing the government on a radio program.

On Friday, as they have on other occasions, Haitian police, backed by
United Nations troops, stormed through a slum in Port-au-Prince,
conducting mass arrests while killing or wounding an untold number of
innocent civilians.

Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue -- backed by the United States
argues the arrests, including Father Jean-Juste and the other Lavalas
leaders, are needed to maintain order.

Yet Latortue has failed to disarm or curb the activities of the
rebels who control most of the country. Latortue's one-sided assault
on Lavalas will only increase the violence in a country seemingly
headed for a civil war. In addition to Jean-Juste, there are reports
two other priests have also been arrested in recent days. But the
arrest of Jean-Juste -- the first Haitian native ordained as a Roman
Catholic priest in the U.S. -- strikes a chord in Miami because of
his connection here.

After being ordained in Brooklyn in 1971, he returned to Haiti where
he was assigned to a small rural parish. The young priest's sermons
and charismatic style, however, made him a target for Duvalier's
brutal police, forcing him to flee Haiti after just five months.

Back in the United States, he earned a degree in civil engineering
from Northeastern University while serving at a nearby Boston parish
where he also taught English to recent immigrants. In 1977, he
visited Miami for two weeks to preach and celebrate Mass. Jean-Juste
became so enthralled by Miami's burgeoning Haitian community that he
moved here in 1978 to focus on the plight of Haitians escaping that
country's dictatorship.

That same year, he founded the Haitian Refugee Center that challenged
the federal government's policies regarding refugees and won a series
of landmark court cases. In 1981, for instance, Jean-Juste and the
center won the release of nearly 2,000 Haitians who were being
detained at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

Jean-Juste's habit of being outspoken and defiant irritated his
superiors in the Miami Archdiocese, who frowned on his mixture of
politics and theology.

Soon after arriving in Miami, he was stripped of his right to
celebrate Mass here.

''The church must speak to all and it has a duty to preach the gospel
of liberation in its integrity,'' Jean-Juste once said.

In 1991, with the election of Aristide, he returned to Haiti. ''I
come from the peasantry,'' he said, ``and the homeland has a strong
draw for us.''

Now the 57-year-old priest who preaches the gospel of liberation sits
in a jail cell.
.
.