24922: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti's jailed former PM resumes hunger strike (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, April 29 (Reuters) - Haiti's jailed former
prime minister, Yvon Neptune, is "closer to death than life" after resuming
a hunger strike 10 months after being jailed on accusations of organizing a
massacre, a human rights group said on Friday.
     Neptune, who served under ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and
has called the massacre allegations politically motivated, started a hunger
strike on Feb. 20 but began eating again on March 10 after he was
transferred to a hospital in Port-au-Prince run by a U.N. peacekeeping
force.
     The head of the Committee to Protect the Rights of the Haitian People,
Ronald St-Jean, said Neptune went back on hunger strike on April 17 and was
now in critical condition.
     "Neptune is closer to death than life after 10 days without drinking
or eating anything," St-Jean told Reuters. "We urgently call on the
international community to intervene and save Neptune's life," he said.
     U.N. officials said they would check on Neptune's condition.
     Neptune and detained former interior minister Jocelerme Privert are
accused of masterminding what Aristide's opponents have called a massacre
on Feb. 11, in La Syrie, a small village near St Marc, 60 miles (100 km)
north of the capital.
     The incident occurred during an armed revolt by street gangs and
former soldiers that drove Aristide from power.
     An interim government was appointed to run the country until elections
later this year, and a 7,000-strong U.N. force of troops and police is
trying to keep the peace in the impoverished Caribbean country. But
political violence has continued, and Aristide supporters accuse the
interim authorities of targeting them.
     The massacre accusation was brought by the National Coalition for
Haiti Rights (NCHR-Haiti), and a St Marc group called RAMICOS, which
opposed Aristide and his Lavalas Family party, including through violence.
The two organizations say 50 people were killed by Aristide supporters.
     The U.N. independent expert on human rights in Haiti, Louis Joinet,
has dismissed accounts of a massacre.
     After an investigation this month, Joinet concluded that both
supporters and foes of Aristide were killed in clashes.
     "What I believe, contrarily to those who contest my thesis, is that we
really can talk about a confrontation," he said.
     Privert was taken before a judge in St Marc on April 18, but could not
be interrogated in the absence of his lawyer and was not formally charged,
said his wife, Ginette Privert.
     Neptune, who was treated for over a month at the U.N. hospital, was
also taken last week to St Marc but was not brought before the
investigating judge to be formally charged.
     In addition to continuing political violence, Haiti has also been
wracked by escalating lawlessness.
     A political leader, Dr. Jean Enold Buteau, brother of Education
Minister Pierre Buteau, was kidnapped by armed men on Thursday but released
overnight. Sources close to the family said a ransom was paid.