25013: Haiti Progres (news) This week in Haiti 23 : 8 5/4/2005 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Haïti Progrès <editor@haiti-progres.com>

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
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                 HAITI PROGRES
       "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

             * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

              May 4 - 10, 2005
               Vol. 23, No. 8



STILL JAILED, NEPTUNE'S HEALTH WORSENS

Haiti's constitutional Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, 58, the country's
most prominent political prisoner, is gravely ill after 17 days of a
hunger strike. Despite Haitian and international press reports that he
had been transferred to the Dominican Republic or the U.S., he remains
jailed in an "annex" of Haiti's National Penitentiary in the Pacot
neighborhood of the capital.

Over the weekend of April 30, several media outlets, including the
Associated Press, ABC News and Radio Kiskeya in Haiti reported that
Neptune had been transferred or was about to be transferred out of the
country. Those reports, which were based on sources within the de facto
Haitian government and a foreign embassy, were untrue.

Neptune was arrested last June 27 (see HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 22, No. 16,
6/30/2004) but has never appeared before a judge, as Haiti's
constitution requires within 48 hours. De facto authorities charge him
with responsibility for an alleged massacre in St. Marc in February
2004.

He was taken to the examining magistrate in St. Marc on Apr. 22. But,
unaware that he was coming, she was not in her chambers (see HaVti
ProgrPs, Vol. 23, No. 7, 4/27/2005).

"It is the judge who was supposed to summon Neptune," commented lawyer
Brian Concannon, Jr. of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti
(IJDH). "The irony is that the de facto government always claims that
the case is not in their hands but the judiciary's. Neptune's
unrequested transfer disproves that claim."

Neptune's current hunger strike is his second to demand that he either
be tried or released. His first three-week hunger strike ended when he
was hospitalized for dehydration in a UN military hospital on March 10.

"The interim government is seeking to defuse criticism of its political
prisoner policies by forcing Mr. Neptune to leave the country without
going to court," explained a May 2 IJDH update. "The Group for the
Defense of the Rights of Political Prisoners (GDP), a Haitian human
rights organization, reports that the government plans to wait until Mr.
Neptune loses consciousness, then transport him out of the country."

"Human rights groups, including the GDP and Amnesty International, world
leaders like UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and religious leaders like
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton and Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste have called for Mr.
Neptune's release or trial," the IJDH continues. "On Apr. 19, a team of
lawyers from the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, the Institute for
Justice & Democracy in Haiti and the Hastings Human Rights Project for
Haiti filed a complaint before the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights on Neptune's behalf."

The IJDH also reports that Neptune refused to be flown to the Dominican
Republic for treatment, despite de facto government pressure.

Groups like the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) and the Haiti
Action Committee launched fax, email, and letter writing campaigns to
the UN and US government. "Tell MINUSTAH, the Bush Administration,
France and Canada that the blood, loss and suffering of Prime Minister
Neptune and all of Haiti political prisoners are on their hands," the
HLLN appeal said.

"The de factos tried to take the offensive by accusing Neptune of a
far-fetched crime," said Berthony Dupont of the Haiti Support Network
(HSN). "But, in the process, they revealed their own scheming, cruelty
and disdain for law and due process."

The IJDH has issued a sample letter to be sent to the ambassadors of the
three principal coup-backing nations: the US, France and Canada. The
text of that letter is as follows:

Dear Mr. Ambassador:

I am writing to urge you to act immediately to effect the release of
political prisoner Yvon Neptune. As you know, Mr. Neptune has been held
illegally without a hearing for over ten months, when Haiti's
Constitution prohibits such detention for more than 48 hours. The
Interim Government of Haiti's (IGH) claim that it is leaving the case up
to a justice system that has so far done nothing but persecute him is
meritless.

If Mr. Neptune dies, responsibility for his death will extend beyond the
IGH to the international patrons that enabled this persecution,
including your government. Your government helped install the IGH and
has continued to provide financial and diplomatic support, despite the
fact that human rights groups, the UN and many governments admit that
Neptune's detention is illegal and/or constitutes political persecution.

Your country can avoid Mr. Neptune's death, and complicity in this
death, by announcing that it will withhold all support from the IGH
unless it complies with the Haitian Constitution and international human
rights standards by immediately freeing Yvon Neptune. Please act now.

Sincerely, (name, address)

The letters can be sent to:

U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, James B. Foley

United States Embassy, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Telephones: (509) 223-4711, or 222-0200 or 0354

Fax: (509) 223-1641 or 9038

Email to Dana Banks, Human Rights Officer: BanksD@state.gov

Canadian Ambassador to Haiti, Claude Boucher

Embassy of Canada, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Telephone: (509) 249-9000, Fax: (509) 249-9920

Email: prnce@international.gc.ca

Ambassador of France in Haiti, M. Yves Gaudeul

Embassy of France, 51 place des Héros de l'Indépendance - BP 312

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Telephone: (509) 222-0952, Fax : (509) 223 5675

Letters of protest can also be sent to:

UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH)

PHONE: (509) 244-9650 or 9660, FAX: (509) 244-9366/67

Office of the UN General Secretary (New York)

Fax: 212.963.4879

Mahamane Cisse-Gouro,

Human Rights Adviser, UN in Haiti

Tel: (509) 403-4012 / 527-5274,

cisse-gouro@un.org.





DEMONSTRATIONS GROWING IN HAITI'S COUNTRYSIDE

Parallel to the giant anti-coup and anti-occupation marches which have
rocked Port-au-Prince in recent weeks, demonstrations are growing in
size and frequency in Haiti's provincial cities.

On April 15, over 700 people demonstrated in the town of Limbé, about 22
kilometers southwest of Cap HaVtien. Jointly organized by the Reflection
Cell of the Lavalas Family Base and the National Popular Party (PPN),
the lively demonstration drew hundreds of peasants from nearby areas
like Marmelade, Grand Plaine and Port Margot.

"Lord, you see what George Bush, Jacques Chirac and Paul Martin have
done to Haiti," said Beev Chery of the Reflection Cell to the crowd. "We
ask you Lord for the strength to resist under the boots of these foreign
oppressors, to resist the Macoute police and henchmen." The enforcers of
the 29-year U.S.-backed Duvalier dictatorship (1957-86) were the Tonton
Macoutes.

Demonstrators carried signs with slogans such as "Down with the
occupation by foreign colonialists" and "OAS + UN = American lackeys."
There were also many posters calling for President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide's return and denouncing the "selection elections" planned by
the de facto government for October and November.

"An organized and mobilized people can never lose," declared Michel
Adrien, a local PPN leader. "They said that Haiti would become paradise
48 hours after Aristide was gone. Is it true, my friends? Fourteen
months after the February 29th kidnapping [of Aristide], we have
systematic repression, corruption, inflation, robbery, rapes, summary
executions, arbitrary arrests and incompetence." Adrien called on the
crowd "not to get an electoral card because you will become a marked
card in the foreigners' computers." The de facto government is
encouraging Haitians to obtain computerized electoral cards containing
their photo, fingerprints and other personal information (see HaVti
ProgrPs, Vol. 22, No. 48, 2/9/2005).

In the southern town of Petit Goâve, students and townspeople
demonstrated for three days straight to demand the removal of the de
facto government and the withdrawal of occupation troops. The protests
from April 18 to 20 came after troops of the United Nations Mission to
Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH) shot journalist Robenson Laraque of Radio
Tele-Contact in the head on Mar. 20 as he watched their assault on the
town's police station, then occupied by former Haitian soldiers (see
HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 23, No. 2, 3/23/2005). Laraque died in a Cuban
hospital two weeks later.

The demonstrators, who numbered between dozens and hundreds over the
three days, were angered by rumors that the de facto government only
offered 125,000 gourdes ($7,400) for funeral expenses and compensation
to the family and Tele-Contact. The marchers closed down several
government offices, including the tax collection agency and the electric
authority.

On April 19, Moroccan Colonel Elouafi Boulbars came with a MINUSTAH
delegation to negotiate with the demonstrators and Laraque's family. The
next day, Yolette Mengual, the de facto Prime Minister's spokeswoman,
joined the negotiations.

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