23974: This Week in Haiti 22:41 12/22/2004 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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                    HAITI PROGRES
        "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

              * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

              December 22 - 28, 2004
                 Vol. 22, No. 41



AFTER ARISTIDE HOME TAKE-OVER:
COUP PARTNERS AT EACH OTHER'S THROATS

Nine months ago, de facto Justice Minister Bernard Gousse was
congratulating Rémicinthe Ravix, the self-appointed leader of Haiti's
former soldiers, for "a job well done" in overthrowing President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide. This week, Gousse put out a warrant for his
arrest.

Ravix has called on his troops to shoot de facto Prime Minister Gérard
Latortue and his police chief Léon Charles and to take to the mountains
to launch a guerrilla war, not against foreign occupation troops, but
against the U.S.-installed government they protect.

"The U.N. needs our help," Ravix told journalists, in taming the growing
rebellion against the Feb. 29 coup in which U.S. Marines kidnapped
Aristide from his home and flew him into exile.

Ravix and his followers want to reestablish the Haitian Army, which
Aristide disbanded in 1994, and collect 10 years of back pay. The de
facto authorities have held on-and-off negotiations with the former
soldiers in recent months, aimed at giving them some compensation for
their abrupt dismissal and integrating them into the police force (see
HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 22, No. 29, 9/29/2004). Some have taken up the offer
to join the beleaguered police, which already has many ex-soldiers in
its ranks.

But Ravix and his hard-liners will accept nothing short of their demands
and, to make their point, took over Aristide's home in Tabarre on Dec.
15, the day before the anniversary of the Haitian president's first
election on Dec. 16, 1990. About 50 ex-soldiers invaded the modest
estate (with the permission of Tabarre's de facto mayor, who was later
fired), painted the gates mustard yellow (the color of the old Army
barracks), and declared it their headquarters and training ground.

The troops of the U.N. Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH)
surrounded the building, cutting off food and water. After brief
negotiations, the former soldiers surrendered on Friday, Dec. 18,
agreeing to be stationed temporarily at the former Police Academy in
FrPres, an area of the capital they already infest. On the road near the
Academy in recent months, they often stop passing cars to question and
intimidate drivers.

Ravix managed to slip away before the surrender and later made his
provocative declarations.

After the surrender, confrontations with former soldiers flared over the
weekend in other parts of the country. In the southern town of
Miragoâne, Haitian police killed two ex-soldiers under mysterious
circumstances while they were apparently in custody. In the nearby town
of Petit Goâve the same day, the former soldiers fought off an attempt
by a Sri Lankan MINUSTAH contingent to take back control of the town's
police headquarters, which they have occupied since Aug. 31 (see HaVti
ProgrPs, Vol. 22, No. 29, 9/29/2004). Meanwhile the same day in Hinche,
on the Central Plateau, ex-soldiers and their supporters pelted a
Nepalese MINUSTAH detail with rocks and bottles, wounding five of them.
A gas station there was also looted.

On Monday, Dec. 20, Gousse publicly announced the manhunt for Ravix,
which only underlined the police force's impotence since the supposed
fugitive keeps popping up on radio shows.

Gousse said that Ravix was never a sergeant, as the ex-soldier claims,
but a mere corporal. "He was fired [from the Army] in 1993, when he was
stationed at the airport," Gousse said. "They dismissed him for
corruption." If true, Ravix would not even be eligible for the deals the
de facto government is offering ex-soldiers terminated by the Army's
dissolution.

Gousse also said that Ravix and his group had "stolen nine cars from the
Agriculture Ministry, have said that they will shoot the Prime Minister
and the police chief, and you all know that this is something we cannot
tolerate."

In response, Ravix called Gousse a "free-loader," who owed his
government job to the bravery and sacrifice of himself and other
ex-soldiers that trained, plotted and launched guerrilla attacks from
the Dominican Republic from 2001 to 2003 - with the support of
Washington and Santo Domingo - to destabilize Haiti's constitutional
government.

Although some ex-soldiers have adopted a pseudo-nationalist posture in
the months after Washington and Paris used them to help push Aristide
from power, Ravix makes clear that he is still at the service of Haiti's
occupiers. "We are not at war with the foreigners," he said in a Dec. 20
interview on Radio Solidarité. "It's Léon Charles personally and the
Prime Minister that we hold responsible."

Ravix and other ex-soldiers are surely worried as they see uprisings and
protests against their coup growing across Haiti. Despite numerous and
deadly forays by the police, MINUSTAH, and former soldiers, popular
neighborhoods like Belair, Cité Soleil and Carrefour remain defiant and
armed. On Dec. 16, several thousand pro-Aristide demonstrators
peacefully marched through the streets of Cap HaVtien, calling for an
end to the coup and foreign occupation.

"It's clear that the government is losing control of the country," said
Himmler Rébu, an ex-soldier and frequent radio guest. "It doesn't even
control Port-au-Prince. So this is something very serious."

PRISON MASSACRE REVEALED

The truth about a terrible massacre on Dec. 1 at the National
Penitentiary is beginning to seep out after several witnesses have come
forward.

Early press reports based on de facto government statements said that 10
prisoners were killed that day by guards following a prison riot. A
pro-coup human rights group, the National Coalition for Haitian Rights
(NCHR), even attributed some of the deaths to other prisoners.

But last week, HaVti ProgrPs and The Observer of London published
articles based on interviews with eye-witness Ted Nazaire, a former
prisoner released Dec. 3, who observed "over 60 prisoners killed," many
of them shot in cold blood in their cells by policemen.

"The police put them on their knees, lifted their t-shirts and executed
them," Nazaire told HaVti ProgrPs. "Then they used wheel-barrows to
remove the bodies five at a time."

The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) issued an
in-depth report on Dec. 20, noting "a widespread official effort to
obscure the truth about the massacre by issuing untrue statements,
intimidating witnesses and refusing to disclose information."

Juxtaposing interviews with prisoners, de facto government officials,
and witnesses outside the prison, the IJDH report "reveals serious
inadequacies and inaccuracies in the official Interim Haitian
Government's account of the violence." It notes that only 22 men, 2% of
the 1041 prisoners in the National Penitentiary on Dec. 1, were
convicted of a crime. Most of the remaining 98% had never even seen a
judge.

"The tragedy of the National Penitentiary massacre is compounded by the
fact that most of the prisoners should not even have been in the
National Penitentiary in the first place," the report says. "Statistics
predict that for most of the dead, their assassination was the last of a
long string of human rights violations."

All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED. Please
credit Haiti Progres.

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