24966: (response) Chamberlain: Neptune in jail (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

Neptune's detention without trial or charges is deplorable, but let's
remember, amid all the self-righteous din whipped up by the non-Haitian
rent-a-revo people and one-person outfits like the "Haitian Lawyers'
Leadership," that none of these people cared a damn about the murder of the
courageous Jean Dominique, the country's leading journalist, under de facto
Lavalas rule in April 2000, and still don't. Perhaps a hasty and mumbled
expression of vague regret, nothing more.

Neither did they care about Aristide's persistent blocking of the
investigation into that murder (while of course pretending he wasn't
blocking it...), resulting in the flight abroad of the major investigating
judge, in fear of his life.  One of these "democracy militants," now
masquerading as a journalist in the US, even suggested that Dominique
somehow deserved it.

There was also no indignant campaign by this foreign left to arrest the
self-confessed killers of journalist Brignol Lindor (December 2001),
undoubtedly because they were pro-Lavalas.  Aristide didn't bring them to
book, so his foreign supporters slavishly toed the line and stayed silent.
This was while Neptune was a top Lavalas official and then prime minister.

What was Jean Dominique's sin?  Once a strong Lavalas supporter, he began
criticising the party, and by implication Aristide, for corruption,
incompetence and gangsterism.  We are bidden to support Neptune but to
forget Dominique and Lindor, whose murders Neptune was knowingly complicit
in covering up.


        Greg Chamberlain