24490: Wayne: news) A witness to horrors in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Desiree Wayne <desiree_wayne@msn.com>

>From the Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday, Mar. 13, 2005
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                                                A witness to horrors in Haiti

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Taking a camera on a church mission, lawyer Tom Griffin documented abuses and "reawakened indignation."
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By Kate Campbell
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In a last-minute act, Tom Griffin packed a digital camera.

A Philadelphia immigration lawyer, Griffin had visited Haiti many times on humanitarian missions with his church. But
on a trip in November, increasingly aware of Haiti's political chaos, he thought the camera might be useful.

Ten days later, he returned with a collection of horrific photographs. Soon to follow was a report documenting the
violence and despair churning in the slums of one of the world's poorest countries.

His report, complete with photos of brutalized and abandoned bodies, is grabbing wide attention. Earlier this month,
Griffin addressed diplomats at the Canadian Parliament, officials at the Organization of American States, and the
Congressional Black Caucus in Washington.

"I want to awaken all of us complacent people who seek to avoid the gruesome inhumanity of the world and how it always
victimizes the most innocent and weakest," Griffin said.

"People have forgotten the whole issue of Haiti," said Larry Birns, head of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, which
monitors U.S.-Latin American relations. "The Griffin report has reawakened indignation."

Griffin said his Roman Catholic faith is the engine behind his work.

"If Jesus is the center of your life and you listen to his words, he's asking you to love so much that, to society, it
becomes radical," said Griffin, who attends St. Helena's parish in Philadelphia.

"How we treat the least among us, that is how we treat God."

It is mistreatment that Griffin has chronicled.

Toward the end of his visit to Haiti, a gun battle erupted. When it ended, he went into Port-au-Prince's Bel Air
neighborhood and found Inep Henri. The 35-year-old Haitian man had been shot through the eye.

Griffin said Henri's family tended to his wounds at home rather than take him to the city hospital because police
often take shooting victims from hospitals and execute them. Griffin persuaded the family that Henri needed to be
hospitalized, and, because ambulances would not go to Bel Air, arranged safe passage.

When Griffin later found Henri at the city hospital, he lay untreated in a crowded emergency room.

Doctors often refuse to treat patients they know cannot afford to pay for care, he said. Many men and boys lay wounded
in pools of their own blood, Griffin said.

Inep Henri got no care despite Griffin's pleas, and later died at the hospital, Griffin said.

Griffin, 42, a founding partner of the law firm Morely Surin & Griffin, paid his own way to Haiti with the goal of
writing a report the world would read. After his return, he completed one for the University of Miami Law School's
Center for the Study of Human Rights (www.law.miami.edu/cshr).

Graphic photographs of Henri and others are included in the document, which alleges rampant human-rights abuses and
implicates the interim Haitian government.

Raymond Joseph, charge d'affairs for the Haiti embassy in Washington, called the report "one-sided," saying Griffin
was a supporter of deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and "failed to document acts of violence first committed
by pro-Aristide gangs against the police."

Griffin said he tries "to stay out of the politics," though fighting for the disenfranchised is nothing new for him.
He was part of a delegation that brought attention to the unsolved 2001 killing of human-rights lawyer Digna Ochoa in
Mexico.

Griffin grew up one of five children in Dorchester, a working-class neighborhood of Boston. His parents divorced when
he was a teenager, and his mother raised the children alone. He spent 10 years as a federal probation and parole
officer in New York and Boston before becoming a lawyer.

Volunteer work began a passionate connection with Haiti and a respect for the resilience of the families he came to
know in its poor neighborhoods.

He first visited Haiti in 2000 with the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation, a Boston-based nonprofit that works with U.S.
Catholic parishes to provide health care for Haiti's poor. He is now on the foundation's advisory board.

Griffin is "totally dedicated not only to the Haitian cause, but to wherever he sees injustice and a lack of human
rights," said Francois LaTour, director of Philadelphia's Haitian Community Center, who has worked on immigration
cases with him for several years.

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the sudden departure of Aristide, now living in exile in South Africa.
Whether he was forced out or chose to resign remains in dispute.

In addition, "the security and human-rights situations in Haiti have seriously deteriorated since the massive prison
escape of Feb. 19," said Ettore Di Benedetto, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, an independent
nonprofit. "Allegations of excessive use of force by police and police killings, including summary executions, must be
investigated."

"The stuff we worry about here is so wimpy compared to what's happening in Haiti," said Griffin. "Everything is
stripped bare in Haiti."

Although he felt called to pursue justice for poor Haitians, Griffin admits he hopes the pace will slow. He wants to
return more of his focus to his immigration work and to his wife and young son, who worry about his dangerous and
time-consuming passion.

"I'd rather not be an activist on this issue," said Griffin, sitting near the stairs in his living room. "But I guess
people are listening, and that's all I ever wanted."

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Kate Campbell is a freelance writer in Glenside.




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