25328: Brianhaiti: (nes) Half Hour For Haiti: Read "Spoiling Security for Haiti" (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Brianhaiti@aol.com


June 7, 2005

Half Hour For Haiti: Read the International Crisis Group Report, Spoiling
Security in Haiti

Thank you for everyone who responded to last week's appeal to support
political prisoner Yvon Neptune.  Our pressure is having an effect--on June 6
the 14
countries of CARICOM called Neptune's prolonged unjustified detention
"symptomatic of wider due process problems."  On June 3 Prime Minister Latortue
said
the court would reach a decision over the weekend, and the head of the MINUSTAH

military forces, Brazilian General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro said Neptune's case
"is a very serious political problem, and there is great pressure...for him
to be either released or tried."

But PM Latortue was wrong: Neptune is still in prison, no decision has been
announced.  So if you are not yet part of the "great pressure" for his release,

please follow last week's action alert at
http://www.ijdh.org/articles/article_halfhourforhaiti_may-31-05.htm.

This week's alert is educational: reading a report titled Spoiling Security
in Haiti by the International Crisis Group (May 31, 2005), available at
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=3485.  The report is far from
perfect--it underplays the historical context essential to understanding Haiti
today, and declines to examine the International Community's contributions to
Haiti's downward spiral.

But Spoiling Security in Haiti does provide a balanced analysis of the
current security problem in Haiti, and, like few other reports, acknowledges
the

complexity of the violence, especially the roles of the traditional
monopoly-based business sector and the relatively new narcotraffickers.  Like
even fewer
reports, especially from such an establishment source (ICG's Trustees are
almost

all current and former top government and corporate officials), Spoiling
Security links today's violence to "the acute social and economic inequalities
which have historically marked the country."

The report is 20 pages long, so it may take more than half an hour to
download and read it all.  But after thirty minutes you'll get the gist of it,
and
know whether you want to keep going for extra credit.

For more information about the Half Hour For Haiti program or human rights in
Haiti, see www.ijdh.org.

Brian Concannon Jr.
Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti
www.ijdh.org

----- End forwarded message -----