23586: Esser: Masked Haitian Police Shoot Children While Arresting Priest (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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

COUNTERPUNCH
http://www.counterpunch.org/

Weekend Edition
October 22 / 24, 2004

I Held the Bullet in My Palm
Masked Haitian Police Shoot Children While Arresting Priest
By BILL QUIGLEY

Jeanine (not her real name for reasons you will shortly understand)
is a quiet 14 year old girl who lives with her family of 18 off a
rutted dirt road near the international airport in Port au Prince.
Twice a week she walked the mile or so to eat a meal at St. Claire's
church.

Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste is the pastor of St. Claire's. He has been in
jail for more than a week after his church was surrounded by heavily
armed masked men while feeding 600 children at his parish His arrest
was violent. The police ripped metal bars out of their concrete
surroundings and smashed the windows of the church house to enter.
After beating and handcuffing Fr. Jean-Juste, they dragged him out
though the smashed window, threw him into a car and raced off to jail.

After the arrest, the people of the parish publicly complained and
said the masked police had even shot children. Haitian authorities
flatly denied any children were shot and no police inquiry into the
arrest has been made.

Government-friendly media and US Embassy personnel also scoffed at
the reports of children being shot by police. They said the stories
of the children were products of the Haiti rumor mill and propaganda
from the opponents of Haiti's unelected government.

Now the wounded children have appeared in public. They have real
bandages and real medical reports.

And then there is the bullet.

When I visit Jeanine, she sits on a wooden bench leaning far to her
left. Her mother tenderly turns her around and modestly lifts her
daughter's dark blue skirt to reveal a 4 inch jagged blue-stitched
suture at the bottom of her right buttock.

Jeanine's older brother holds out a blood-stained gauze packet.
Unfolding it, I find the brassy bullet the doctors removed from
Jeanine's backside last week.

Jeanine was shot in the backside while running away from the Haitian
police during the arrest of Fr. Jean-Juste after the feeding of the
children at St. Claire's.

I held the bullet removed from Jeanine in my palm. It is a little
less than an inch long, brass colored, and very hard. Jeanine is
still in pain. Her family cannot afford to bring her back to the
doctor.

Two other children, two young boys, were also shot by the police
during the arrest of Fr. Jean-Juste One was shot in the head, one in
the shoulder. I met them as well. They were also seen by medical
authorities.

Fr. Jean-Juste sits in the national penitentiary along with numerous
other political prisoners. He is officially charged with disturbing
the peace, a crime punishable by a fine of 40 cents. Amnesty
International condemned his arrest and also warns that his courageous
Haitian lawyer Mario Joseph may be in danger because of his human
rights work.

Meanwhile, the unelected authorities in Haiti are supported by the US
government. Both condemn the opposition, saying they are only
interested in violence.

Why would masked Haitian police shoot a little girl in the backside?
Why would the police shoot the other two boys? Why deny they were
shot? Why beat and indefinitely imprison a priest? Why threaten his
lawyer?

Makes you ask the question, which side in Haiti is really interested
in ruling by violence? Don't bother to ask Jeanine and the other
children, they know the answer.


Mario Joseph and Reynolds Georges are the Haitian lawyers
representing Fr. Jean-Juste. They can be reached at www.ijdh.org.

Bill Quigley is a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans
School of Law. He writes from Port au Prince where he is one of the
lawyers representing Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste. He can be reached at
duprestars@msn.com.
.