23851 Hermantin (News) Little Haiti welcomes freed activist priest (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Wed, Dec. 08, 2004


Little Haiti welcomes freed activist priest

BY JACQUELINE CHARLES

Miami Herald


Hundreds crowded the sidewalks and clamored to caress his face -- his status
as a former prisoner of the post-Aristide government elevating him to an
almost saintly level. As they reached for him, they cheered and sang a hymn,
``Don't touch Jean-Juste. Don't touch Jean-Juste. Otherwise hell will come
to you.''

The Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste, remembered as the champion of Little Haiti,
returned to Miami on Tuesday eight days after being released from a Haitian
jail cell. He has been accused by Haiti's interim government of inciting
violence among loyalists of ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Jean-Juste, a Roman Catholic priest and former Miami community activist who
demonstrated for the rights of Haitian refugees when he lived here, used the
moment Tuesday to call for a truce and peace in his homeland, where his
legal case is still pending.

''Put the guns on the ground to see if we can celebrate the holiday in
peace,'' he begged of those back in Haiti, a country ravaged with political
violence and still recovering from recent floods that killed thousands. ``We
must try and bring peace and understand that so many Haitians are
suffering.''

Since pro-Aristide groups began stepping up demands on Sept. 30 for the
former president's return to power, more than 100 Haitians have been killed
and countless others have been wounded in political violence.

700 IN CELLS

Equally alarming, Jean-Juste and his supporters said, are the more than 700
Aristide supporters who are being held as political prisoners in deplorable
conditions in Haiti's jail cells.

''I am one set free,'' Jean-Juste said. ''There are more than 700 more to
go. We in Haiti and abroad, we want freedom for all the political
prisoners.'' Jean-Juste, who elicited cheers from a crowded room when he
declared that Aristide is still the president of Haiti until the end of his
term on Feb. 7, 2006, blamed Haiti's current woes on what he called the
country's ``illegal de facto government.''

U.N. TROOPS

He accused Prime Minister Gerard Latortue's interim government of using
United Nations peacekeeping troops ''to kill, oppress and destroy the
masses,'' and said they should declare they have made a mistake and go away.

''The best way to solve the issue in Haiti is to let President Aristide back
in,'' Jean-Juste said.

The Latortue administration blames Aristide supporters for the violence, and
says the Aristide administration was corrupt.

The 58-year-old Jean-Juste remains the same fiery and controversial figure
who organized street demonstrations in Little Haiti during the 1980s and
1990s to fight for legal U.S. residency for Haitians and who once publicly
called a Miami archbishop a racist.

The former director of the now defunct Haitian Refugee Center, he is also
the founder of Veye Yo, the grass-roots political watchdog group that helped
Aristide become Haiti's first democratically elected president.

AWAITING JEAN-JUSTE

It was inside Veye Yo's storefront headquarters at Northwest 54th Street and
North Miami Avenue that Haitians like Miami pastor Clarvoes Francois
anxiously awaited Jean-Juste's 11 a.m. arrival.

''Jean-Juste is the father of this community. If you see we Haitians are
here today, it is because of him,'' said Francois. ``His arrest was
arbitrary, and they don't have anything to hold him on. They arrested him
because Jean-Juste was in communication with Jean-Bertrand Aristide.''

Jean-Juste hinted as much during his news conference, saying that he was
arrested three hours after he got off the phone with Aristide, who is in
exile in South Africa following his Feb. 29 ouster from office.

ARRESTED AFTER CALL

He believes his telephone was tapped, and that phone call sped up his
arrest. ''It was the last drop that made the water flow,'' he said.

As he prepares to head back to Haiti today, Jean-Juste said he is not
afraid.

''Nobody can scare me. Nobody can take me away,'' he said.