24352: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti's jailed ex-prime minister on hunger strike (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Haiti's imprisoned former
prime minister, Yvon Neptune, said on Friday he has started a hunger strike
to protest his detention.
     Neptune, who was arrested eight months ago, said in a letter to
several foreign ambassadors that he began the hunger strike on Sunday and
would continue it until he is freed by Haiti's interim government, which he
said jailed him for political reasons.
     Neptune was appointed by ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who
fled Haiti a year ago during a bloody rebellion by armed gangs and former
soldiers and under pressure from the United States and France.
     "I am convinced that the spectacle of my slow and certain death would
be more pleasant to the power and its accomplices. So I propose to satisfy
them by continuing the hunger strike," Neptune said in the letter, which
was seen by Reuters.
     He wrote to the ambassadors of the United States, France and Canada
and to the United Nations envoy in Haiti, Juan Gabriel Valdes.
     Neptune went into hiding following Aristide's ouster last February and
was arrested on June 27. Haitian authorities accused him of involvement in
what Aristide opponents called a massacre on Feb. 11, 2004, in La Syrie, a
village near Saint Marc, 60 miles (95 km) north of Port-au-Prince.
     The National Coalition for Haitian Rights, a human rights group
perceived as anti-Aristide, accused Neptune of masterminding the incident
at La Syrie. Clashes between supporters and opponents of Aristide were
common during the rebellion.
     The group said 50 people were killed there. But journalists who
visited Saint Marc at the time found no more than five bodies after
Aristide supporters and police briefly retook the town from rebels.
     In his letter, Neptune accused the group of complicity in a plot by
his opponents to portray him as murderer. A member of the group, Viles
Alizar, declined to comment.
     Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest who was a hero to Haiti's
poor masses, left his impoverished Caribbean nation last Feb. 29 and was
granted asylum in South Africa.
     He became Haiti's first freely elected leader in 1991 and was elected
to a second term in 2000. Critics accused him of despotism and corruption.
     The interim government appointed when Aristide left has been troubled
by street gangs loyal to the former president and increasingly finds itself
at odds with former soldiers who led the rebellion against Aristide.
     Neptune called on the international community to protect him. He has
said he believes his life is threatened by the former soldiers.
     Neptune was briefly freed last weekend when gunmen stormed the
national penitentiary in Port-au-Prince and allowed nearly 500 inmates to
escape. He was returned to his cell a short time after the attack.