23675: (pub) Esser: Police terror sweeps across Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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

The Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/

Police terror sweeps across Haiti

UN looks on as slum-dwelling Aristide supporters are killed or thrown
into jail without charge

Reed Lindsay in Port-au-Prince
Sunday October 31, 2004
The Observer

The bodies had been whisked away but the dried pool of blood covering
the dirt-floor dead end of a twisting alley was a chilling sign of
what happened here last week.

Residents in the National Fort district, which like most of
Port-au-Prince's slums is a bastion of support for former President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, gathered around the darkening blood the
following day. Some, who were afraid to give their names, said
policemen wearing black masks had shot and killed 12 people, then
dragged their bodies away. At least three families have identified
the bodies of relatives at the mortuary; others who have loved ones
missing fear the worst.

'The police officers will say that this was an operation against
gangs. But we are all innocent,' said Eliphete Joseph, a young man in
a blue basketball jersey who claimed to be a friend of several of
those killed, his eyes red with grief as he stood in the shadow of a
crumbling concrete staircase. 'The worst thing is that Aristide is
now in exile far from here in South Africa, but we are in Haiti, and
they are persecuting us only because we live in a poor neighbourhood.'

A police spokesperson confirmed there had been a police raid at
National Fort looking for gang leaders and that at least eight people
were killed.

The killings appear to be the latest example of what human rights
groups describe as a campaign of repression against suspected
supporters of Aristide, who was escorted out of the country on 29
February by US Marines. The US government said he resigned. Aristide
says he was forced out in a US-backed coup.

The current repression has led Haitian and international human rights
observers to draw comparisons with the darkest days of the 1991-1994
military regime, and with the 1957-1986 dictatorship of François
'Papa Doc' Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc'. The
difference, they say, is that the current government has had the
blessing of the international community.

Neither the US nor the UN, which has a peacekeeping force here of
more than 3,000 troops, has censured the abuses committed under the
government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, who took power in
March. 'When 20 to 30 people were getting killed a year there was a
cas cade of condemnation pouring down on the Aristide government,'
said Brian Concannon Jr, director of the Institute for Justice and
Democracy in Haiti. 'Now that as many as 20 to 30 are getting killed
in a day, there is silence... It is an obvious double standard.'

UN and government officials deny that security forces are murdering
opponents. Observers concede it is difficult to record how many have
been killed and by whom. There are many armed groups in Haiti,
including gangs that support Aristide and others with shifting
political allegiances. Meanwhile, heavily armed ex-members of the
defunct military, a corrupt force disbanded by Aristide in 1995,
swagger through the capital and control swaths of the countryside
with tacit UN and government approval.

What is clear is that in recent weeks the government has gone on the
offensive against members of Aristide's Lavalas party, searching
homes and arresting people without warrants. Jails are full of
suspected dissidents who have never seen a judge or been charged. The
most publicised case is that of Gerard Jean-Juste, a Catholic priest
arrested on 13 October at a soup kitchen he runs for children.
Justice Minister Bernard Gousse said on Thursday that Jean-Juste is
suspected of hiding 'organisers of violence', and no warrant was
required for his arrest. A long-time rights activist who set up an
organisation in Florida to assist Haitian refugees, Jean-Juste was an
Aristide supporter. He remains in the national penitentiary, where he
has not seen a judge, say his lawyers.

Less than two weeks earlier, police burst into a Port-au-Prince radio
station and arrested three former Lavalas party legislators who had
appeared on a programme criticising the government. Human rights
groups say hundreds more lower-profile Aristide supporters have also
been jailed. 'We fought to bring democracy to Haiti, but since this
government took over, it's been a dictatorship,' said Mario Joseph, a
lawyer who worked to bring past human rights abusers to justice under
Aristide and is now representing 54 people he says are political
prisoners.

Gousse refused to grant The Observer permission to visit prisoners at
the penitentiary, where only 21 of the nearly 1,000 inmates have been
convicted of anything. The prison was emptied by armed groups led by
former military officers after Aristide's departure, and Joseph
believes the majority of the new prisoners are Lavalas members.

Government and UN officials defend the crackdown as an attempt to end
the violence that has left dozens dead in the past three weeks. They
accuse Aristide supporters of killing police and trying to
destabilise the Latortue administration.

'What we have seen in this country during the last month or two has
been a resurgence of brutal violence organised probably to provoke a
process of political destabilisation,' said Juan Gabriel Valdes, who
heads the UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (Minustah). 'Any state
has the right to defend itself. We were sent by the United Nations to
help and assist a government, and this task was given to us by the
security council of the United Nations.'

Evidence of such 'destabilisation' is scant. Shootings and robberies
have become common in central Port-au-Prince, but it is not always
clear whether they are politically motivated or the result of crime
sparked by desperate economic conditions and an ineffectual police
force. Gousse said he knew of only two lootings, and that police
officers had only been killed while carrying out raids in slums.

In recent weeks, media attention has focused on the killing and
decapitation of two policemen, described as part of 'Operation
Baghdad'. But the government has presented no evidence that the
decapitations were carried out by Aristide supporters, nor that any
such operation exists. According to Guyler C. Delva, head of the
Haitian Journalists Association, the term 'Operation Baghdad' was
coined by Latortue.

Aristide's backers have suffered the brunt of human rights violations
since the change in government, said Gerardo Ducos, who is leading an
observation mission for Amnesty International. 'They are persecuting
the Aristide people because they are afraid of them,' said lawyer
Reynold Georges, leader of a party opposed to Aristide, who is
representing Jean-Juste and several other jailed Lavalas party
members. 'A lot of people have stayed loyal to Lavalas. Believe it or
not, it's true. The poor people, the masses, still believe in
Aristide.'
.