26058: Komite Chalo: (discuss) International Tribunal on Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Komite Chalo <cjaklen@yahoo.com>

Dear Supporter of Justice and Peace,

Haiti today is a killing field. Thousands of Haitians
have been murdered and over 1,000 jailed without trial
since the US-sponsored coup on February 29, 2004. The
slaughter is taking place hidden from view by a
complacent international press and complicit
governments.

Each morning residents of Cité Soleil and other poor
neighborhoods, the neighborhoods which twice elected
President Jean Bertrand Aristide by huge margins,
awake to find bodies in the streets; victims of the
previous night?s terror by US-trained police and
increasingly by UN occupation troops. Former Prime
Minister Yvon Neptune remains in solitary confinement
over a year since he was arrested, and Fr. Gérard
Jean-Juste, who recently returned to Haiti, was beaten
and arrested while helping to officiate at a funeral.
Jean-Juste is charged with involvement in the murder
of a journalist, a murder that took place while he was
still in the United States.

The killings and jailing of political prisoners,
abetted by the Brazilian-led UN occupation force, will
continue unless you and I respond to the cries of the
Haitian majority and come to their aid.

I am writing you today on behalf of a coalition of
Haiti solidarity groups, supported by the Latin
America Solidarity Coalition, that have banded
together to bring international attention to the
Haitian killing fields.

We need your generous financial support for an
International Tribunal on Haiti that will hold its
first session on the evening of September 23, 2005 at
George Washington University in Washington, DC, the
evening before the huge anti-war march organized by
the September 24 March on Washington Coalition.  I
urge you to come to Washington to participate in both
events.

What Will the International Tribunal on Haiti Do?

At the Tribunal?s opening session, prosecutors will
present a detailed background of the coup and
preliminary indictments, similar to a grand jury
proceeding.

The background to the indictment will cover the
pre-coup period when the National Endowment for
Democracy and the International Republican Institute
were training the Tonton Macoute and paramilitary
thugs whose violence gave a pretext for the removal of
popularly elected President Aristide and created the
conditions for Haiti?s present misery. The actions of
the governments of the United States, France, and
Canada to destabilize the Aristide government will be
exposed.  The Tribunal will urge, at such time as the
legitimate government is returned to Haiti, that Haiti
take those countries before the International Court of
Justice (World Court) at the Hague.

But, most importantly, the International Tribunal on
Haiti will expose, through eye-witness and expert
testimony, the truth about the daily slaughter being
carried out by masked policemen with the criminal
complicity, and increasingly participation, of the UN
occupation force. And, in the end, the Tribunal will
forward individual indictments for those on the ground
directly responsible for the massacres and crimes
against humanity to the new International Criminal
Court in The Hague.

The first session of the International Tribunal on
Haiti will begin a seven month campaign to expose to
the world the human rights violations by the
Brazilian-led ?peacekeeping force? and the de facto
government put in place by the Bush administration.

Other sessions of the Tribunal will be held in other
cities. Public education forums drawing on the work of
the International Tribunal on Haiti will be organized
in yet more cities and university campuses.

A blue-ribbon Commission of Inquiry, led by former
Attorney General Ramsey Clark, will be announced at
the Sept. 23 session of the Tribunal. A delegation of
the Commission of Inquiry will travel to Haiti to take
eye-witness testimony and to determine what commanders
and officials were responsible for which massacres and
other crimes. It will be impossible for the
international press to continue ignoring the crimes
against humanity being committed with the knowledge of
US and UN officials.

We Need Your Help Immediately

But, you can imagine how costly an ambitious campaign
in the face of the media conspiracy of silence will
be. We do not have the resources to do it alone and
that is why I am writing to you today to ask for your
help. Travel expenses for the Commission of Inquiry
alone will run over $5,000. Renting auditoriums for
the public sessions of the Tribunal and travel costs
for Haitian witnesses will cost at least that much. We
must also subsidize buses to bring the Haitian
community from New York to attend the opening session.
We simply cannot do it without you.

All of the organizers and lawyers are contributing
countless hours of their time to save the lives of
innocent Haitians, but still, the unavoidable costs of
this campaign to stop the slaughter and expose the
crimes will not be cheap.

Please give generously.  Make your tax-deductible
check out as soon as you read this letter because time
is running out and the situation is dire.  This
Tribunal is a way that we outside of Haiti can help
stay the hand of those carrying out massacres in
Haiti. Your contribution can concretely help to save
the lives of mothers, fathers and children who are
daily being killed.

Make your tax-deductible check out to: International
Tribunal on Haiti/CISPES Education Fund and send it to
P.O. Box 8560, NY, NY 10116.

Contribute Now Online

The best and fastest way for us to receive funds is
when you give a tax-deductible contribution over the
Internet with any major credit card by going to the
secure server of the Nicaragua Network at
www.nicanet.org.  Just click on the ?Make a Donation?
button in the lower left-hand side of the screen, and
proceed to the Alliance for Global Justice donations
page. Put a dot in the Box marked Other and type in:
International Tribunal on Haiti then the amount you?d
like to give. Follow the prompts to finalize your
tax-deductible donation.

In solidarity,

Jan Estefèn
Konbit Ayisyen pou Kore Lit la an Ayiti, Haitian
Coalition to Support the Struggle in Haiti (KAKOLA)




____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs