24571: HaitiFactsCheck (open letter) HAITI : A SOMBER PICTURE

[sak-pase@bimini.ws]

HaitiFactsCheck@aol.com


*HAITI : A SOMBER PICTURE

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE WORLD*

         It has been a full year now since the democratically elected 
President of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was forced to leave the 
country in a most humiliating manner, following a coup concocted by the 
United States, France, Canada, the OAS and the European Union, acting 
jointly with the Haitian Opposition inside the country.  The Haitian 
people have seen their democratic decision decision-making process, 
their own free and legal election results, overturned by anti-democratic 
forces, who successfully installed a puppet regime under current Prime 
Minister Gerard Latortue, violating the Haitian Constitution, which 
clearly establishes the length of the Presidentâs term. In an incredibly 
tragic irony, the most basic democratic principles have been violated in 
Haiti by those who profess most loudly to honor them. 



           The Bush regime, which announces its intention to spread 
democracy worldwide by fire and sword, if need be, clearly supports only 
those democracies that pass an ideological litmus test applied by the 
most reactionary elements of Americaâs right-wing government. All other 
democratic governments are fair game for covert operations and military 
intervention designed to install undemocratic regimes sympathetic to the 
neoconservative Bush teamâs agenda.

           Numerous human rights organizations with vast experience on 
the ground in Haiti report that UN support for Haitiâs  undemocratic, 
interim government has led to disaster. Reports cite massive human 
rights violations, virtual anarchy throughout the country, degradation 
of the countryâs infrastructure, and the Latortue governmentâs inability 
to cope with the aftermath of deadly hurricanes that wiped out this 
yearâs agricultural production.   The Latortue Government has been 
engaged in a witch hunt against Lavalas supporters, with widespread 
allegations of police murders of peaceful civilian protestors, illegal 
detentions of former government officials from Aristideâs party, and the 
resurgence of death squads operating with impunity in the countryside.
          
            Amnesty International, Lawyers Guild, TransAfrica and other 
organizations have all provided detailed information about gross 
violations of human rights in Haiti by the Latortue Government.  Lawyers 
Mario Joseph and Evel Fanfan, working in Haiti, have been denouncing 
daily the gross violations of human rights, putting their own life at 
risk. The most recent report on the rapidly deteriorating human rights 
emergency in Haiti, prepared by investigative lawyer Tom Griffin, 
provides ample evidence of the complicity of the police and other high 
Haitian officials in violating the human rights of the Haitian people.  
The reports document numerous cases of torture and rape as instruments 
of repression, in violation of the Vienna Convention.

          In addition, we are witnessing the rapid erosion of freedom 
of the press under the joint UN-Latortue regime in Haiti. The few radio 
stations that dare to present the news in an objective manner are being 
increasingly threatened. The President of the Association of Haitian 
Journalists,  Mr. Guyler Delva, has repeatedly denounced the threats 
that reporters in Haiti are subjected to on a daily basis. He himself 
has received death threats. Journalist Abdias Jean was shot in the back 
by Haitian Police after witnessing the police killing of young people in 
Bel Air, a slum in Port au Prince. Reporters have had their equipment 
confiscated by the police, their film ripped out of their cameras. One 
reporter from Radio Mega Star was wounded in the arm as he and a 
colleague were assaulted by officers from the Haitian police.  Police 
have penetrated inside the office of Radio CaraÃbes and destroyed some 
of the stationâs equipment. More recently, Haitiâs transitional 
government has been trying to force Radio Solidarità to change its 
frequency, a veiled attempt to shut it down.


            Is there an international conspiracy to prevent the facts 
from coming out? The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 
Reporters Without Borders, and the UN, have curiously been silent as the 
situation continues to deteriorate. Most worrisome is the apparent 
logistical support being given to the Haitian police when it shoots 
indiscriminately to kill.  Here is one example among many others: On Feb 
28, 2005 during a peaceful march of thousands of Haitians calling for a 
return to constitutional order, under the watchful eyes of  UN forces, 
the police opened fire on the crowds, killing at least five people. 
This is unacceptable.

            Haitian prisons are packed with political prisoners, 
arrested without warrant or charges. The most notorious of these 
political prisoners are former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, the former 
Minister of the Interior, Jocelerme Privert and activist Annette Auguste 
known as âSÃ Annâ.  (Both former government officials have gone into a 
hunger strike since February 20, 2005 and  were recently transferred to 
a UN run hospital in Haiti and Canapà Vert Hospital, respectively, as 
their healthâs conditions  have considerably worsened.)   Hundreds more 
are in the same situation. This police state style incarceration is 
performed in complete disregard of the Haitian constitution whose 
articles 24-2 and 26, respectively, state:
/â Except where the perpetrator of a crime is caught in the act, no one 
may be arrested or detained other than by written order of a legally 
competent officialâ/.

â/No one may be kept under arrest more than forty-eight (48) hours 
unless he has appeared before a judge asked to rule on the legality of 
the arrest and the judge has confirmed the arrest by a well-founded 
decision/â.

             We sign this letter in solidarity with the Haitian people, 
in order to show our profound concern about the well-being of the 
Haitian people, and our profound disagreement with the policies of the 
Bush administration, the EU, and the UN , which have resulted in the 
gross violation of Haitian sovereignty, and the installation of an 
authoritarian puppet regime whose primary purpose is the repression of 
the largest political party in the country, Lavalas, through violent, 
illegal means, precisely on the year of Haitiâs Bicentennial.

           These forces have installed an illegal regime in Haiti, 
stripped its citizens of their fundamental constitutional and human 
rights, and reduced what was once a democratically governed country to a 
state of increasing impoverishment, anarchy and despair.  We, the 
undersigned, reject the current interim government and the policies of  
those international actors who support that government. *We demand the 
prompt release of all political prisoners and all those apprehended in 
violation of the above cited articles of the Haitian constitution.* *We 
call for international human rights monitors to prepare for an 
immediate, free and fair election in **Haiti** to return that bleeding 
country to the hands of its long-suffering people. 

*





March 15, 2005









Signatories:



Bill Fletcher  (President, TransAfrica Forum)

Michael Ratner (President, Center for Constitutional Rights)

Jean Jean-Pierre (Producer/Composer/Journalist)

Tom Hayden  (Author)

Danny Glover (Actor/Director/Activist)

Brian Concannon (Director, Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti)

Jocelyne Mayas  (Community Activist)

C. Richard Gillespie (Professor, author of PAPA TOUSSAINT)

Amy Wilentz (Writer)
Irwin Stotzky (Law Professor, University of Miami)

Tom Driver  (Professor, Theology)

Kathy Engel  (Poet)

Curtis Lang  (Writer/Satyacenter.com)

Agnes Abraham  (City University of New York)

Paul Uhry Newman  (Playwright/Director)
Anestazie Austrie

Joslyn Barnes (Louverture Films, screenwriter/producer)

Veronica Beckford
Medea Benjamin (Co-founder GlobalExchange.org)

Florence Bonhomme Comeau (Community Activist)

Marcel Denis (Attorney)

Kathy Dorce

Mona Dozier

Monique Fanfan  (Community Activist)

William Farrington  (Photographer)

Suzanne Fiol  (Poet)

Pierre Geneve

Noree Guibert

Jane Hirschmann

Frederick Howard

Farah Jean-Baptiste

Maud Jean-Michel  (Community Activist)

Erick Jean
Kesler Jean

Marie Jose Joseph

Rita Joseph  (Publicist)

Hany Khalil (United for Peace and Justice)

John Lavin

Jean Belliard Lucien (Radio PD/GM)

Lionel Mackenzie  (Chemical Engineer)

Martine M. Mayas

FranÃois Marie-Michel (Radio Host/Producer)

Jean C. Michel  (Exe. Director, Chay Pa Lou, Inc)
Mary Grace Mullen

Roudy Noisette  (Radio Producer)

Micheline Paret   (Accountant)

Gladys Phillpotts

Catherine Unsino (Psychotherapist/Advocate Greening of Haiti)

Cassandra Vernon

Eon Waldron

Steve White (Musician)

Antoinette Yousef