23551: Jon Holmtead -Oct 20 (OneWorld) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: John Holmstead <cyberkismet5@yahoo.com>



U.S. Lifts Arms Embargo on Haiti as Tensions Mount
Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct 20 (OneWorld) The administration
of U.S. President George W. Bush has lifted a 13-year
arms embargo on Haiti, amid sporadic violence that
threatens to plunge the western hemisphere’s poorest
nation back into chaos.

The decision, which was confirmed by the State
Department Tuesday, appears designed to begin
supplying weapons to the 2,500-man police force which
has carried out gun battles with militants loyal to
ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was flown
into exile aboard a U.S. Air Force jet earlier this
year.
The police, however, have also been accused of firing
on peaceful pro-Aristide demonstrators and rounding up
well-known leaders of Aristide’s political movement,
Lavalas.

Amnesty International Tuesday denounced last week’s
arrest of the Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste while the priest
was distributing food to hundreds of children and poor
people at a church in a Port-au-Prince suburb last
Wednesday.

According to testimony gathered by the London-based
group, Jean-Juste was punched while being dragged out
of the presbytery by police officers, some of whom
were wearing masks.

The police later said the arrest was a pre-emptive
action based on intelligence that Jean-Juste was
linked to pro-Aristide gangs, although no evidence to
support that charge has yet been forthcoming.

“Amnesty International considers that if the arrest is
politically motivated on account of Rev. Jean-Juste
being a vocal supporter of former president
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the organization would
consider him a prisoner of conscience.”

The rise in tensions in the Caribbean nation began
last month after Hurricane Jeanne devastated the port
town of Gonaives, Haiti’s third largest city, killing
as many as 2,000 people and destroying hundreds of
homes and businesses.

The interim government of Prime Minister Gerard
Latortue, which took power with the help of U.S.
marines and French troops after Aristide’s departure,
failed to coordinate or provide much help to the
stranded population, fueling popular discontent with
the regime, particularly among the poorest sectors
that have long supported of Aristide.

Pro-Aristide demonstrations broke out on September 30,
the 13th anniversary of the military coup d’etat that
exiled Aristide the first time in 1991. Aristide, the
first democratically elected president in Haiti’s
history, is currently living in South Africa.

At least two protestors were killed by police on that
day. The following day, the remains of three policemen
who had been beheaded were found on the street,
bringing tensions in the capital to a boil. Some 50
people have since been killed in sporadic violence.

Since the anniversary, the situation in the capital
has been unsettled, while former soldiers and military
officers who led an insurrection against Aristide last
winter and who still control much of the countryside,
announced that they intended to come to the capital to
back the police against the pro-Aristide gangs and
militants. The former soldiers have pressed the
government to restore the army, which was abolished by
Aristide after his return from exile in 1994.

The result is a growing sense of chaos in Haiti,
according to Professor Robert Fatton, a Haiti expert
at the University of Virginia, who described the
situation as “very explosive.”

“What’s going on now is that the Latortue government
is losing control of the situation,” he told OneWorld.
“The armed insurgents who opposed Aristide are
increasingly taking center stage in the political
situation, which will probably spell significant
trouble for the country. They literally want to go
into Cite Soleil (the capital’s poorest neighborhood)
and try to repress that segment of the population that
continues to support Aristide.”

Last week, Washington accused Aristide supporters of
promoting violence against the regime, and over the
weekend Latortue himself accused South African
President Minister Thabo Mbeki of “not respecting
international Law” by permitting Aristide to rally his
supporters from South African territory. Mbeki’s
spokesman rejected the charge with “contempt,” noting
that he “cannot be used as a scapegoat for failure by
the interim Haitian authorities to bring about peace
and stability.”

Jim Morrell, the director of the Haiti Democracy
Project (HDP), a lobby group closely tied to the
Latortue government, also charged that Aristide was
inciting his supporters.

“We know Lavalas leaders are in touch with Aristide
over the phone, but we don’t claim to know the
contents of those conversations,” he said.

He called for the 3,000-man UN peacekeeping force now
in Haiti to be reinforced and “get pro-active, because
if it doesn’t a growing part of the Haitian people
will look on the damned army as their salvation. As
bad as the memory of the army years is,” he added,
“it’s even worse now with Lavalas gangs in the
streets.”

The UN force, which took over from U.S. and French
forces in July, is currently only at less than half
strength.

But Fatton said neither more troops nor renewed U.S.
aid to the police is likely to resolve the situation,
particularly given the failure of the government to
take a more conciliatory attitude toward Lavalas which
most observers believe remains the most popular
political movement in the country.

“The UN could send more troops, but that’s not really
the problem,” he said. “There has to be some sort of
real, meaningful dialogue between the different
sectors in Haiti, particularly Lavalas. The growing
and very explosive polarization, with the former army
entering the scene and the government lacking the
means or the will to curb it, spells big trouble.”

Fatton also accused the government of using Aristide
as a scapegoat for its own failures. “They want to
portray him as completely unpopular and yet blame him
for paralyzing Port-au-Prince; they’re trying to find
a way to explain that the country is falling apart and
they are not responsible, so they arrest Lavalas
leaders some of whom could not possibly be involved
with violence.”

The U.S. imposed an arms embargo against Haiti after
the coup against Aristide in 1991, although it helped
equip and train the police force created after
Washington restored Aristide to power in 1994. The
State Department that it would consider requests for
arms from the Latortue government on a case-by-case
basis.

Fatton said the situation, particularly the
increasingly desperate plight of the tens of thousands
of people in Gonaives, could result soon in a new
exodus of Haitian “boat people,” something that
Morrell also said was quite possible.

Both analysts stressed that the Bush administration
was hoping “to keep the lid on” both the violence and
any chance that thousands of Haitians would take to
the sea and was unlikely to do much more pending the
November election.


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