24123: Anonymous (opinion) Defining what it means to be human (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Please post anonymously


"Election is the only way to change government in a
democratic country; therefore, the international
community has a duty to assist Haiti in that regard."

Seems like that is where the problem lies. This last
regime change was anything but a democratic
transition.

Extra-judicial murders and summary executions by the
cops have risen to levels comparable to the period
following the 1991 coup. Numbers of political
prisoners have risen to levels comparable to the days
of Duvalier and Fort Dimanche. Yet, the choir keeps
singing as this list grows more and more like an NGO
forum for ostriches.

Of course, there will be a torrent of equivocation
meant to justify the murders and the political
repression. There will be a river of apologies as
families are asked to simply forget their loved ones
who have been chewed up by the PNH or disappeared.

Still, let's discuss the next elections and what's
wrong with the Haitian mentality. Let's talk about how
we can teach them to be new and improved leaders of
their own destinies with new and improved methodology.
Let's chat about charcoal and picking up garbage,
reforestation and whether voudou is a religion. All of
this makes sense to discuss since it's easier than
Abdias Jean and a heartbroken mother who lost the only
journalist in her family. A journalist who witnessed
the cops and the death squads in action and then had
to be silenced with a bullet to the head. It's easier
to talk about human rights abuses under Aristide than
to discuss the heights of the brutality current under
way because afterall those people don't count because
they are all really just Lavalas supporters. They have
the every right to die and be murdered in silent agony
as we debate recipes for raising Haiti's phoenix from
their ashes. We have each in our right come to define
human rights, especially the human part.