26156: Haiti Progres: (news) This Week in Haiti 23:25 8/31/2005 (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 *

               August 31 - September 6, 2005
                      Vol. 23, No. 25



THE UN IN HAITI:
PART OF THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SOLUTION
by the Haiti Information Project

Aug. 30, Port-au-Prince, Haiti- When doing a news search of Haiti today,
you will find two very different articles about soccer in Haiti.

An Associated Press dispatch headlined "Soldiers use soccer to win over
Haitians" by Alfred de Montesquiou tells how U.N.-deployed Brazilian
troops are playing soccer with residents in Bel Air to counteract fierce
popular resistance to the Feb. 29, 2004 coup against President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the ensuing foreign military occupation of
Haiti.

Another article entitled "Massacre of football fans raises state terror
fears," written by independent journalist Reed Lindsay, tells how a
machete-wielding paramilitary death-squad and Haitian National Police
(PNH), under the nose of U.N. forces, attacked spectators on Aug. 20 at
a soccer match sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID), killing at least eight. The discrepancy between
these two news accounts goes to the very heart of the question: what is
the U.N.'s role in Haiti?

WHO'S REALLY IN CHARGE?

As reports continue to surface about the human rights hell that Haiti
has become, any independent observer must ask how many massacres the
Haitian police will commit under the tutelage of U.N. forces before the
U.N. is held accountable? Are U.N. forces in charge of the PNH, as their
mandate states, or do we simply accept their excuse of being unable to
stem police violence against Aristide's supporters.

WHY WOULD YOU REWARD THE PERPETRATORS?

As HIP has reported, the Haitian police have gunned down unarmed Lavalas
demonstrators on several occasions over the past year and even planted
weapons on their victims' corpses. The police chief during these
operations was Léon Charles, anointed by the US, accepted by the U.N.
and forced upon the Haitian people. If anyone is responsible, Charles
is.

So where is Charles today? He is the de facto government's Chief of
Security and Arms Procurement at to the Haitian Embassy in Washington
D.C. with an annual salary of $150,000. Charles was given this plum
position despite allegations that he ran a scam to collect the salaries
of phantom PNH employees to line his own pockets. He is also being
rewarded for overseeing the massacre of Lavalas supporters during
peaceful demonstrations.

And who pays Charles' salary in Washington? U.S., Canadian and European
taxpayers, who provide their governments with "international donor
money" collected under U.N. auspices to build "democracy" in Haiti. The
U.N. would rather have Charles parked in a well-paid job in Washington
than hold him accountable for killings, where he might reveal U.N.
complicity.

THE BUSH "FIX" IS IN

Another case of hypocrisy was recently provided by outgoing US
Ambassador James B. Foley. He lamented the recent release of Louis Jodel
Chamblain - convicted murderer and vice-president of the CIA-funded
paramilitary death-squad, the Front for Advancement and Progress in
Haiti (FRAPH). Foley failed to mention that his government continues to
harbor the FRAPH leader Emmanuel "Toto" Constant somewhere in the New
York metropolitan area. Since 1996, Constant has had political asylum in
the U.S. If Foley really wants justice in Haiti, he should start by
demanding that "Toto" Constant be deported to Haiti to be judged and
jailed. Alligator tears are plentiful in Haiti today at the U.S. embassy
and the U.N. mission. Sound bites replace reality as Lavalas supporters
are slaughtered or made political prisoners.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has entered its own candidate in the
U.N.-run Haitian presidential elections scheduled for November.
Texas-based businessman Dumarsais "Dumas" Siméus will have his campaign
run by Rob Allyn, a Republican political consultant and hit-man for
Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. Allyn falsely announced that
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had lost the referendum for his recall
last year and was the architect of President Vicente Fox's 2000 election
victory in Mexico.

THE REAL QUESTIONS

How many massacres, like the one U.N. forces carried out on July 6 in
Cité Soleil, must be committed before we acknowledge that their role in
Haiti is far from altruistic? How many more political prisoners need to
rot away in Haitian jails, as the U.N. continues to support and bolster
the U.S.-installed regime of de facto Prime Minister Gérard Latortue?
How many times has the U.N. called for investigations into human rights
violations by the Haitian police only to have it lead nowhere as the
slaughter of innocent Haitians continues? When will we admit that the
U.N. mission itself is fundamentally corrupt?

The U.N. is responsible for creating the very environment that has given
rise to the police state in Haiti. Some human rights organizations
believe that the U.N. can play a positive role, if pressured to do so.
They think that only the U.N. stands between the naked repression of the
Haitian police and the majority of the population that continues to
demand Aristide's return. But this thinking is naive and dangerous.

It is dangerous because it ultimately views the poor majority as
powerless and serves the interests of those who wish to further take
power and voice away from Haiti's poor. This is precisely the role being
played by the U.N., whose fundamental goal is to legitimize last year's
coup with sham elections this fall. The U.S.-installed Latortue regime
would not stay in power for more than a week without the guns of the
U.N. protecting it in the Presidential Palace. And the sham elections
would not be possible either.

Objectively, the U.N. has proven time and again that it is enforcing
Washington's coup agenda and is ultimately responsible for the human
rights nightmare in Haiti today.

Note

Next week, we will present the continuation of last week's article, The
Haitian Revolution Revisited: Selections from "Avengers of the New
World".

All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Progres.

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