24998: Esser: (news) Yvon Neptune Nears Death - Clearing the Fences in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser <torx@joimail.com>

Counter Punch
http://www.counterpunch.org/concannon05052005.html

May 5, 2005

Yvon Neptune Nears Death
Clearing the Fences in Haiti

By BRIAN CONCANNON, Jr.

Yvon Neptune's last meal may have been on April 17. Haiti's most
recent constitutional Prime Minister, now its most prominent
political prisoner, stopped eating eighteen days ago to protest ten
months of illegal imprisonment. He is weak, emaciated and near
death-his internal organs are failing. He has vowed not to eat until
the Interim Government of Haiti (IGH) drops the charges against him;
charges that it has refused to pursue. The IGH, coming under
increasing pressure and looking for a compromise, offered to fly
Neptune out of the country for medical treatment and exile last
weekend. But the government would not drop the charges, so Neptune
refused to leave.

The IGH has chosen a precarious place to take this stand. Neptune was
arrested pursuant to a valid warrant last June 27 (he turned himself
in when he heard about it on the radio), but since then the
government has not taken even the first step in prosecuting the case
against him. Although Haiti's constitution requires that a judge
confirm any detention within forty-eight hours, 155 forty-eight hour
periods have elapsed without Neptune seeing the judge on his case.

There is scant evidence that the crime of which Mr. Neptune is
accused, the so-called "La Scierie Massacre" even happened. The
accusations arose out of violence in the provincial city of St. Marc
in February, 2004, during a rebellion against Mr. Neptune's
government. On February 7, an armed anti-government group called
RAMICOS took over the St. Marc police station. Two days later, police
reinforcements reclaimed the station, and that afternoon the Prime
Minister flew to the city to give a press conference and try to
reassure the population. Two days after that, on February 11, RAMICOS
clashed again with police and with members of Bale Wouze, a
pro-government group, in the St. Marc neighborhood of La Scierie. By
almost all accounts, a few people on both sides were killed. By many
accounts the majority of deaths were on the RAMICOS side. No one has
presented evidence that Mr. Neptune was involved with the clash in
any way.

Two weeks later, Neptune's boss, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
had been kidnapped to the Central African Republic on a U.S.
government jet, and American Marines controlled Haiti. Mr. Neptune
stayed in office for a few days and cooperated with the transition to
the unelected government, hoping to avoid further bloodshed. In the
meantime, a non-governmental organization called NCHR-Haiti, an IGH
ally and ferocious critic of Neptune's government, announced that
there had been a massacre in La Scierie in which 50 people had been
killed.

Journalists who were in St. Marc on February 11 and 12 reported no
sign of such a massacre. Louis Joinet, the UN Human Rights
Commission's Independent Expert on Haiti, concluded there was not a
massacre, but a fight between two groups. But NCHR-Haiti insisted
that the case be prosecuted. The IGH, which had an agreement with
NCHR-Haiti to prosecute anyone the organization denounced, obliged by
arresting Mr. Neptune along with the former Minister of the Interior,
a former member of Parliament and several others.

NCHR-Haiti received a $100,000 grant from the Canadian government
(one of the IGH's three main supporters, along with the U.S. and
France) to pursue the La Scierie case. The organization hired a
lawyer and former opposition Senator to represent the victims, and
kept up the pressure in the press, even denouncing the government for
allowing Neptune to receive medical treatment at a UN hospital. This
persecution of Neptune went so far that NCHR-Haiti's parent
organization in the U.S. publicly disowned it and requested that it
change its name.

In the meantime, Neptune had an adventurous ten months in prison. He
survived at least two reported assassination attempts, a December
massacre by guards and police in a nearby cellblock, a February
prison break in which he was removed from the prison at gunpoint (he
turned himself in, again, as soon as he could), and his first hunger
strike, which he ended in March after three weeks when he believed he
had been promised freedom. He was not brought to court.

The Interim Government keeps Neptune in jail for a case it declines
to pursue and cannot prove despite an impressive mobilization of
world opinion. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the UN Security
Council, the CARICOM countries, human rights groups like Amnesty
International, religious leaders and ordinary citizens throughout the
world have called on the IGH to let Neptune go to trial or let him go
free. Even U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, one of
the regime's most steadfast foreign supporters, announced as far back
as July that the IGH needed to prove its case or drop it.

If the IGH is taking a stand on precarious ground, so is Mr. Neptune.
His enormous and dangerous sacrifice has not gained much media
attention for him or his cause. If he accepted the offer of exile, he
could fight indefinitely from abroad, if he dies he will complete his
enemies' efforts to silence him. Clearing his name is unnecessary- it
is obvious that there never was a case against him- but starving to
death would not do it.

But Neptune's hunger strike is not really about clearing his name, it
is about clearing everyone off the fences. The Haitian government
straddles one fence by locking up its enemies while avoiding the
legal consequences of that policy. Hundreds of political prisoners
sit in Haiti's jails, many with a judge's release order sitting in
their files. Next to most of them, Yvon Neptune is fortunate- their
detention is just as illegal, probably even more dangerous, and with
their lower profiles, they could hunger strike to the bitter end
without anyone outside of Haiti caring. Even those prisoners are
fortunate, next to the hundreds, if not thousands of others that the
Haitian police have executed on the spot in the last year, for
demonstrating peacefully, organizing for democracy, or for being
young and male in a poor neighborhood. Neptune's hunger strike is
forcing the government to choose, to choose between complying with
the law and setting him free or publicly, illegally and terminally
depriving him of his rights.

The IGH's international patrons, especially the U.S., France, Canada,
straddle the fence by talking about human rights for Neptune and
other Haitians, while avoiding the consequences of their support for
the brutal IGH. Those countries, along with the UN, are the
government's principal butresses- they arm and protect the police,
fund the government payroll and defend the IGH in the international
community. If any of those countries conditioned its continued help
on Mr. Neptune's release (or threatened to bundle the interim
President to the Central African Republic), Neptune would be free
instantly. Neptune's strike is showing that these countries cannot
simultaneously support their avowed human rights principles and a
dictatorial regime, and it is forcing them choose.

The citizens of the U.S., Canada and France are also straddling a
fence- we believe in justice and democracy, and in freedom for
political prisoners, but we avoid the fact that we are part of the
problem. Our governments are supporting the persecution of Yvon
Neptune and so many others in our name with our tax dollars, and we
are, for the most part, doing very little about it. The hunger strike
is forcing us to choose between actively working for Neptune's
liberation or passively paying for his imprisonment.

There are signs of movement along the fence-line. Last weekend's
offer of exile shows that the IGH certainly fears the consequences of
Neptune's death. On Wednesday, the previously silent Human Rights
Division of the UN Mission in Haiti declared that "since the
beginning of the procedure until today, the fundamental rights,
according to national and international standards, have not been
respected in the case of Mr. Neptune." The same day the Organization
of American States, which had previously refrained from criticizing
the IGH, noted the case's "serious moral and political implications
for the Haitian government and for the international community."

Neptune has been getting help with his fence-clearing work. Over the
last week, a flurry of petitions and action alerts circulated over
the internet, and by hand in Haiti, North America and France have
spurred hundreds of people to tug their governments towards the side
of justice for Yvon Neptune. But hundreds have not been enough-
thousands may be needed, and time for Yvon Neptune is running out.


Brian Concannon Jr., Esq. directs the Institute for Justice and
Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), which has filed a Petition on behalf of
Yvon Neptune before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
More information about Neptune's case, including resources for action
are on www.ijdh.org.