26669: Haiti Progres (news) This Week in Haiti 23:37 11/23/2005 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
newsweekly. For the complete edition with other news in French
and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100,
(fax) 718-434-5551 or e-mail at editor@haitiprogres.com.
Also visit our website at <www.haitiprogres.com>.

                    HAITI PROGROS
          "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

                * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                November 23 - 29, 2005
                   Vol. 23, No. 37

TRIBUNAL'S SECOND SESSION BRINGS TWO MORE CONVICTIONS

On Nov. 19, U.S. Marine Brigadier General Ronald Coleman and Haitian
Police Inspector Yves Gaspard were both convicted of crimes against
humanity during the second session of the International Tribunal on
Haiti.

The session, attended by about 200 people, was held in a court room at
the Suffolk University Law School in Boston.

Coleman was convicted of abetting massacres of innocent Haitian
civilians in the Port-au-Prince hillside neighborhood of Belair during
the three months that he commanded the U.S. armed forces which occupied
Haiti from March through May 2004.

The 15-member jury heard videotaped testimony collected during a
Commission of Inquiry investigation in early October in which witnesses
charged that U.S. forces fomented massacres of peaceful unarmed
protestors on March 12 and May 18, 2004.

Gaspard was convicted of leading policemen and machete-wielding gang
members on a murderous rampage at a soccer match in the capital's
Martissant neighborhood on Aug. 20, 2005. The police and armed civilians
killed at least 12 people and wounded dozens more.

Those convicted by the Tribunal will be referred to the International
Criminal Court in The Hague for prosecution.


The jury in the opening session of the Tribunal on Sep. 23 in
Washington, DC convicted former Haitian National Police Chief Léon
Charles, former UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH) military
commander Brazilian Lt. General Augusto Heleno Ribiero Pereira, and the
Chilean MINUSTAH chief Juan Valdes (see HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 23, No. 29,
9/28/2005).

The judges presiding over the Tribunal's second session were former
Haitian Ambassador Benjamin Dupuy and Chicago-based lawyer and alderman
Lionel Jean-Baptiste. Suffolk Law professor and National Lawyers Guild
president Michael Avery acted as investigating judge.

"We are here in Boston because we can't be in Haiti," said chief
prosecutor Desiree Wayne in her opening statement. "The justice system
has failed the people there, and so it has failed us. We will not stand
for it. By our will to act here and now against those who would
perpetrate these crimes, those people are one step closer toward being
held accountable for their actions."

As the head of the Tribunal's Commission of Inquiry, former U.S.
Attorney General Ramsey Clark also addressed the court. "It is
imperative that the truth of these matters come out and be known," he
said. "We have the power of the mind and the spirit to seek the truth,
to find the truth, where it is among those who have suffered directly
and saw it and know it... To define it in the most credible way
possible, to reinforce it in every way we can, to show that this is what
happened, that these are the facts: that's the challenge of this
Tribunal and that's what it's trying to do."

The fifteen member jury included several prominent citizens of Boston
including Steve Gillis, President of USW L. 8751, Boston School Bus
Drivers Union, Tony Van Der Meer, a professor at UMASS Boston, Bishop
Filipe Teixeira of the Diocese of Saint Francis of Assisi, Ed Childs,
chief Shop Steward Unite/HERE Local 26, and Dorothea Peacock of the
Women's Fightback Network.

The jury foreman was Boston City Councilman Chuck Turner who read the
unanimous verdicts of guilty for both defendants.

The Tribunal's second session was organized by a coalition of Haiti
solidarity groups, supported by the Latin America Solidarity Coalition,
the New England Human Rights Organization for Haiti, the Boston
International Action Center, and the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition. It was also
sponsored by Suffolk University Law School and the Suffolk Law School
Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

Members of the Commission of Inquiry - lawyer Tom Griffin, unionist Dave
Welsh, community activist John Parker and former U.S. Army Capt.
Lawrence Rockwood - all took the stand to buttress the testimony of
Haitians videotaped when the delegation visited Haiti from Oct. 6 to 11.

The prosecution team told the court that it is preparing at least three
more indictments to add to the list of 17 remaining indictees to be
tried at the Tribunal's third session, whose time and place has yet to
be announced. They include two police attaches who witnesses say
murdered a young man in Belair last March and a Brazilian captain of the
UN based in Belair accused of killing a fired Haitian police officer in
Belair in September, among other crimes.

Journalists in the court relayed the Tribunal's proceedings to radio
stations in Boston as well as in Cap HaVtien and Port-au-Prince in
Haiti. A bus-load of Haitians also came from New York and a van-load
from Montreal to attend the session.

SUPPORTING A LEFTIST OPPOSITION TO LAVALAS:
THE AFL-CIO'S SOLIDARITY CENTER AND BATAY OUVRIYE
by Jeb Sprague

On September 23, 2005 at the opening session of the International
Tribunal on Haiti in Washington, DC, researcher Jeb Sprague presented
evidence of how the U.S. State Department has funneled support to
leftist organizations, in particular Batay Ouvriye, that lent tacit and
often explicit support to the Washington-orchestrated coup against
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Feb. 29, 2004. Stung by Sprague's
revelations, Batay Ouvriye responded with virulent and slanderous
attacks against organizations and individuals supporting the Tribunal,
including HaVti ProgrPs. Although neither HaVti ProgrPs nor other
Tribunal supporters orchestrated Sprague's testimony, as Batay Ouvriye
wildly charged, we were not surprised to learn of the empire's support
for an organization which, like other ultra-left formations, regularly
and objectively serves the interests of reaction. We are therefore
pleased to present this week the following article written for HaVti
ProgrPs (although an earlier draft has already been posted on several
Internet sites), which delves deeper into the history and mechanics of
Washington's support for Batay Ouvriye and similar ultra-left currents.

                     _________________________________

For many activists, academics, and labor historians in the 1980s, the
AFL-CIO became referred to as the AFL-CIA. Founded in 1961, the American
Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) was the AFL-CIO's foreign
organizing wing for Latin America and the Caribbean. Along with its
counterparts in Africa, Asia, and Europe, AIFLD was used to undermine
leftist trade movements, support dictators, such as the Duvaliers, and
back military coups in Chile and Brazil.

Throughout the Cold War, the CIA heavily infiltrated AIFLD, as discussed
in Phillip Agee's 1984 whistle-blower Inside the Company: CIA Diary.
Agee fingered Serafino Romauldi as a known CIA asset involved in AIFLD
throughout the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, who even headed up AIFLD at one
point. In 1984, with Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier's consent, the
Federation des Ouvriers Syndiqués (FOS) was founded as a conservative
pro-business union with the assistance of AIFLD. (At the time, U.S.
assembly industries were flocking to Haiti.)

Following Baby Doc's departure, the State Department feared radical
labor unrest in Haiti, so it increased funding for the FOS. In June
1986, the State Department, at a White House briefing for the chief
executive officers of major corporations, requested AIFLD's involvement
in Haiti because "of the presence of radical labor unions and the high
risk that other unions may become radicalized"[1]. Members of Duvalier's
secret police, the Tonton Macoutes, heavily infiltrated the FOS.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the State Department's
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) provided
funding, often funneled through AIFLD, to Haitian unions, such as the
Conféderation Autonome des Travailleurs HaVtiens (CATH) and the FOS.
According to Thomas Carothers in his 1994 article, "The NED at 10", the
NED "believed that democracy promotion was a necessary means of fighting
communism and that, given sensitivities about U.S. government
intervention abroad, such work could best be done by an organization
that was not part of the government."

In 1991, during newly elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's first
eight months in office (before General Raoul Cédras' Sep. 30, 1991
coup), CATH, under the sway of Auguste Mesyeux, led a campaign of
demonstrations against the government known as the "Vent de TempLte"
(Wind of the Storm), borrowed from the Pentagon's "Desert Storm"
campaign then underway in Iraq. This was the first attempt to put
pressure from below on the Aristide government, mounted by a U.S. funded
union. In March 1992, after the coup against Aristide and a brief
suspension of funding, AIFLD reactivated its $900,000 program supporting
conservative unions in Haiti. Beth Sims in her 1992 policy report
"Populism, Conservatism, and Civil Society in Haiti," writes that "CATH
was once a militant, anti-Duvalierist federation," but in 1990, a
conservative wing took over with backing from AIFLD.

Following growing criticism over its international organizing
activities, the AFL-CIO disbanded AIFLD and its counterparts in 1997 and
created in their place the American Center for International Labor
Solidarity, more commonly known as the Solidarity Center. This was meant
to give a new face to its international organizing campaigns. The
Solidarity Center, a 501c(3) non-profit organization, was launched with
the goal of "work[ing] with unions and community groups worldwide to
achieve equitable, sustainable, democratic development and to help men
and women everywhere stand up for their rights and improve their living
and working standards."[2] Attempting to wipe away its dirty Cold War
history, the AFL-CIO had grouped together its former four regional
institutes, including AIFLD, under one roof.

The murky tradition of subverting democratically elected governments and
supporting military regimes would continue with the Solidarity Center.
As pointed out in Harry Kelber's six-part series, the "AFL-CIO's Dark
Past," the Solidarity Center employed many past AIFLD members such as
Harry Kamberis, a former State Department employee who had been involved
in fighting leftist unions in South Korea and the Philippines.[3] The
Solidarity Center also funneled over $154,000 to the Confederation of
Venezuelan Workers (CTV), a right wing union, which led a strike in 2002
against the democratically elected government of President Hugo Chavez.

In Haiti, the Solidarity Center approached labor organizing from a
different angle than its predecessor, AIFLD. During much of 2000 and
2001, the Solidarity Center stopped operating in Haiti. "I tried to
involve the Solidarity Center, but they refused to work in Haiti at this
time," said Yonnas Kefle, the labor attaché at the U.S. embassy in
Port-au-Prince from February 2000 to October 2001

With USAID funding as its primary income source for its projects in
Haiti, the Solidarity Center, by 2004, had restarted operations in
Haiti, cooperating with a union that had apparently leftist credentials,
the Batay Ouvriye (Workers Struggle).

In 2003, the Solidarity Center engaged in a NED-funded study of labor
conditions in Haiti, analyzing the history of the domestic labor
movement, women in the work force, rural labor codes, and the debate
over reforming the aging labor codes.[4] The study utilized Solidarity
Center interviews with the Batay Ouvriye that dated back to 1999. The
study failed to critically analyze the role of USAID and Washington's
sanctions against the Haitian government in 2001, which was a prime
factor for the shortfall in payments to the public workforce and which
was used as leverage to sell a Free Trade Zone initiative. The study,
entitled "Unequal Equation: The Labor Code and Worker Rights in Haiti,"
while putting forward many important points, relied heavily on
interviews with the Batay Ouvriye, the formerly Duvalier-sponsored FOS,
and the formerly AIFLD-supported CATH.

Since 1994, Batay Ouvriye has been associated with organizing sweatshop
workers and others in Haiti, where some of the most exploitative and low
wage garment industry jobs exist in the entire Western Hemisphere. Not a
formal union, the Batay Ouvriye calls itself a "workers organization."
Initiated as an office space in Port-au-Prince for organizing workers,
the Batay Ouvriye Federation was founded in May 2002.

Organized upon anarcho-syndicalist principles, the Batay Ouvriye has had
a clear ideological line of advocating for the control of industry and
government by federations of labor unions through the use of direct
action, such as sabotage and general strikes. Ideologically opposed to
working with or under any form of government, the Batay Ouvriye has
focused its attention primarily on organizing workers in the garment
industry.

Historically, syndicalism has called for placing government into the
hands of federated worker councils. Syndicalism is most well-known for
Nestor Makhno's partisans in the Ukraine during the Russian Revolution
and the anarcho-syndicalist communes during the Spanish Civil War, in
which large swaths of Spain were controlled by the Confederación
Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). Syndicalism, at its peak in the early 20th
century, had millions of adherents throughout Europe and the Americas.
Showing a historical parallel, both France and Spain, the two former
colonizers of Hispaniola, have had large syndicalist movements. By the
end of the nineteenth century, a large anarcho-syndicalist movement of
workers was present in Cuba and had roots in the Caribbean, as Frank
Fernandez explains in his 2001 book "Cuban Anarchism." Syndicalism has
long existed as a revolutionary political strain in the Caribbean and
Latin America. Ideologically opposed to working with any popularly
elected government, the Batay Ouvriye somehow internally justified
accepting monetary aid funneled from a foreign government, the United
States.

So what would the Solidarity Center want with a radical syndicalist
union in Haiti? How could the Solidarity Center justify to its State
Department and USAID oversight the funding of Haitian anarchists? The
Solidarity Center's support for a syndicalist union in Haiti seemed a
far cry from AIFLD's approach and past work with conservative unions
such as the CATH and the FOS.

The Batay Ouvriye had numerous victories in organizing against
multinationals, which were exploiting Haiti's cheap labor. In the weeks
before the February 2004 coup, the Solidarity Center and Batay Ouvriye's
sub-grantee Sokowa were deeply involved in a campaign against Grupo M, a
company that sold to U.S.-based companies Levi Strauss and Sara Lee. In
December 2004, 300 workers at the CODEVI Free Trade Zone in northeastern
Haiti had been out of work for six months as a result of their attempts
to form a union. Batay said in an October 1st statement that, "amongst
others.$3,500" was channeled to Sokowa by the Solidarity Center to help
the fired workers.

Throughout 2004, the Sokowa union undertook a labor struggle in the
Grupo M factories in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. While Sokowa
sought much-needed wage increases for its workers, Groupo M threatened
to close down its CODEVI free trade zone. Work stoppages were held in
response, and the Workers Rights Consortium, a sweatshop watchdog group,
and the Solidarity Center contributed to a campaign which successfully
pressured Grupo M into negotiations. On February 5, 2005, Sokowa and
Grupo M agreed on a contract. In a March 2005 report, Charles Arthur of
the Haiti Support Group stated: "The US Solidarity Center is
co-coordinating some low-key pressure on Michael Kobori, Levi's Global
Code of Conduct director, to let him know of concerns relating to Levi's
non-action on increasing orders."[5]

But for all its good work in organizing in the garment industry, one
important theme separated Batay Ouvriye from the majority of popular
organizations in Haiti. Batay Ouvriye was adamantly and ideologically
opposed to any cooperation with the Aristide government, or for that
matter any government, even a progressive and democratically elected
one. With its backing for the Batay Ouvriye, the Solidarity Center was
able to kill two birds with one stone: (1) The Solidarity Center was
able to take credit for supporting a legitimate labor struggle to
organize workers in Haiti's miserable garment industry while (2)
simultaneously supporting a group that fiercely opposed and organized
against Haiti's democratically elected government and the largest party
of the poor, Fanmi Lavalas, a pariah for Haiti overseers at the U.S.
Department of State.

The U.S. State Department has oversight on all "democratic enhancement"
funding, which is funneled through USAID's Office of Transition
Initiatives into groups such as the Solidarity Center. Gerry Bart, head
of the Haiti desk at USAID's main office in Washington, D.C., explains
that "it's kind of a negotiation between USAID and the State Department.
The democratic assistance money comes from the State Department."

Following the 2000 elections and 2001 inauguration of President
Aristide, the Convergence Démocratique (a Washington and Paris financed
and trained coalition of opposition political parties) pressured the
Organization of American States (OAS) and the international donor
community into engaging in sanctions against the elected government of
Haiti. While the Aristide administration continually complied with OAS
requests, the sanctions held, having a harsh and lasting effect upon the
national economy. The capability of the government to meet public
payrolls and come through on many of its goals fell through.

By April 2002, doctors from the main Port-au-Prince hospital went on
strike, and by May teachers went on a one-day strike for more than 13
months back pay. These 13 months corresponded closely with the cut off
of international aid in 2001 to the government. The Bush Administration,
using its veto power on the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) board
of directors, blocked the release of already-approved loans for health
care, education, and water. $500 million in development assistance and
$146 million in loans for water, health, and education were cut off.

While the Haitian government's ability to function properly declined
because of these cuts, social unrest increased and international groups
such as the Solidarity Center and others began to criticize the Haitian
government on a number of issues. Many of the accusations that
Solidarity Center made against the Haitian government were problems that
had been intensified by the actions of their own funding source, United
States government agency USAID. Through collecting on out-dated debts to
past dictators, pressuring the Haitian government towards the
maintenance of low wages, privatization, the firing of half of Haiti's
civil servants, and then pushing for the cut-off of nearly all
international aid to the Haitian government, the United States and
institutions such as the World Bank subjugated the poorest country in
the Western Hemisphere to what it called "financial responsibility" and
"fiscal austerity" measures.

The Aristide administration, inheriting a poverty-stricken country
burdened with international debt, was forced to take the blame for the
effects of the austerity measures that had been pressured, and some
would say imposed, on it. Emerging economies, such as Argentina's,
suffered tremendously from the institution of economic reforms backed by
the international financial community. This was a common theme in
neoliberal economic reforms carried out during the 90s, with
long-lasting effects on much of the developing world. While Haiti was
able to resist many of the "reforms" which were being forced on it, this
became increasingly difficult in 2001 with the discontinuation of
foreign aid to the government, which had for decades depended on that
aid for much of its budget.

While it was not uncommon for leftists to criticize President Aristide
or President René Préval for cooperating with international reforms,
Batay was different in that they refused to coalesce behind the elected
government when it faced an openly coordinated and heavily financed
campaign of political destabilization led by the U.S., France and
Canada. The "international donor community," also led by the United
States, heavily financed the opposition to Aristide's government, most
notably organizations within the Convergence Démocratique and the Group
of 184.

At "training sessions," funded and organized by the International
Republican Institute (IRI) in the Dominican Republic throughout 2002,
2003, and early 2004, an opposition to Aristide's government was
coordinated and made plans to organize, protest, and campaign against
the government. Meanwhile a small group of "rebels," with connections to
the Group of 184, CIA, and the death-squad Front pour l'Avancement et le
ProgrPs HaVtien (FRAPH), came out of the Dominican Republic to invade
Haiti in January 2004. These "rebels" had launched guerilla raids from
across the Dominican border since July 2001. With the sovereignty of
Haiti under attack, soon after the 2004 coup, the Batay Ouvriye was
itself on the U.S. bank roll.

In September 2005, Mario Pierre, a representative of the Batay Ouvriye
in New York City, explained that he knew nothing about U.S. funding for
his organization. He stated: "The Batay Ouvriye does not receive any
funding from the U.S. government." When asked if the Batay Ouvriye might
have a leadership or a group of organizers that made these decisions and
could be questioned about them, he stated: "The Batay Ouvriye has
nothing like that. We have no leaders."

Batay Ouvriye presents itself as a utopian workers alternative to
Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party. Utilizing the example of the Free Trade
Zone constructed along Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic, Batay
Ouvriye argues, as have others, that the Aristide administration sold
out, betraying the popular movements that had voted it into power. As
HaVti-ProgrPs stated in July 2003, the first of seventeen free trade
zones was being constructed near Haiti's northeastern border town of
Ouanaminthe on "what was once the most precious farmland in this barren,
hungry corner of the country."

Few observers realized the immense constraints the international
community had placed on Haiti in the Debt-For-Development Initiative
that was being pushed hard by the U.S. State Department. The only
alternative the Haitian government had was to continue on, with an
unadjusted sky rocketing debt. World Bank officials have explained that
the government's inability to pay was compounded by the withdrawal of
international aid to the government. While the "international community"
ripped apart Haiti like a wild pack of cheetahs, the Aristide government
came under increasing domestic criticism.

An underlying dichotomy in Batay's message was their claim at being a
democratic organization, representing "small workshops, shanty towns,
and peasants," yet opposing all elected government and all elections. A
mystery has been its leadership. While its members claim to have no
leadership or central structure, from numerous communiqués and
interviews, it is obvious that a central leadership does exist within
Batay Ouvriye, although an unelected and arguably unaccountable one.

In a March 2004 meeting held in Port-au-Prince between Batay Ouvriye and
a group of journalists and NGO representatives, a de facto leadership of
the Batay emerged. Speaking primarily was Didier Dominique, alias Paul
Philomé, a prominent spokesperson, and Yvonne Castera, alias Yannick
Etienne, a frequent traveler to the United States. A third unnamed
spokesperson from Batay Ouvriye stated that he was "close with Evans
Paul."

Evans Paul, a consummate opportunist politician, a leading figure of the
Convergence Démocratique, and a founder of the Konvansyon Inite
Demokratik (KID), was a prime backer of the Aristide's ouster in
February 2004. Batay Ouvriye's "workers," who sat in on the meeting,
according to a member of the Quixote Center delegation, "were not
permitted to speak to us one-on-one nor voice their opinions
independently of Batay's supervision or prompting during the meeting."
Also according to the Quixote Center delegate, overseeing the meeting
was a representative of the Solidarity Center, a U.S. citizen, Jeff
Hermanson.

The Batay Ouvriye, while claiming to be a workers movement, has always
stood against elections and the democratic process. Much like the
Convergence, Batay Ouvriye, instead of waiting for elections, chose to
call for the resignation and downfall of the Lavalas government. While
the Aristide administration won the vote overwhelmingly in the 2000
election, Batay Ouvriye claimed that the Lavalas administration was an
"occupation" government and that the "elections were one step backward."
In explaining their opposition to the Lavalas government, Philomé stated
in the March 2004 meeting that "we had worked to denounce all of the
plans that the Fanmi Lavalas government had, we denounced them and
fought to make sure those plans were not successful, and we also took
positions so the government can leave the country because we felt that
the Aristide government was a government that accepted impunity for the
factory owners, and they also were accepting and signing all sorts of
contracts even though it was bad for the country."

Either by mistake or by design, Batay Ouvriye played a role in
destabilizing the elected government in Haiti and, following the coup,
helped to facilitate the creation of a fractured left. Many of their
low-level organizers, like Mario Pierre, apparently were not aware until
September 2005 of the U.S. funding for their organization.

USAID is the primary funding source for the Solidarity Centers
activities in Haiti. As Sasha Kramer pointed out in her October 2005
article, "The Friendly Face of U.S. Imperialism: USAID and Haiti,"
supporting alternatives to Lavalas is an important first step in further
destabilizing the popular movement's widespread support. Through its
sponsored camps, Kramer documents how USAID has worked to "undermine
existing community programs in an attempt to de-legitimize the demands
of the Lavalas movement in the eyes of the international community. This
strategy is exemplified by USAID's description of their activities in
Petit Place Cazeau."[6]

The assault upon Lavalas and the popular movements in Haiti, movements
now rooted in the history and folk songs of the Haitian poor, was a
long-term encirclement. It holds significant similarities to what
happened prior to the first coup against Aristide in the early 90s and
late 80s. The ubiquitous web of funding, grantees, and sub-grantees,
while often aimed at legitimate problems in Haiti, has obscured the real
goal of reinstating the rule of the elite over the island nation. Aid
funding is ambiguous by nature, having multiple goals and outcomes. By
propping up and supporting small sectarian movements, the USAID's Office
of Transition Initiatives and the U.S State Department, which again
oversees all "democratic enhancement" funding at USAID, aims to
destabilize the larger popular movement as a whole.

Following the February 2004 coup, while the Batay Ouvriye inked a money
arrangement with the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center, unions that backed the
ousted government such as the FAENNE were forced into hiding, being
murdered and assassinated by the death squads of the newly
U.S.-installed de facto government of Gérard Latortue.

In a July 2005 statement, the Batay Ouvriye attempted to justify its
working with the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center, while openly acknowledging
the AFL-CIO's murky past. The authorless statement from the Batay
Ouvriye explained that the AFL-CIO's funding "apparatus is controlled,
in the final analysis, by the ruling classes in the United States...
Since these 'solidarity' practices have reached the point of developing
relations with grassroots workers organizations, we are faced with the
obligation of managing them, while they inevitably attempt to manipulate
these relations variously in order to recuperate them. So, it is up to
us to correctly handle these relations in the working class' interest
and on a permanent basis." Somehow Batay Ouvriye's leadership felt that
only it could best manage Washington-provided labor funding. It is also
a curious and hypocritical argument from an organization which had
routinely castigated Haiti's elected governments for seeking or
accepting U.S. government aid.

Batay Ouvriye has failed to respond to e-mailed questions concerning its
U.S. funding and relationship with the Solidarity Center. In an attempt
to control the damage done by the uncovering of its relationship with a
USAID funded organization, David Wilson, a supporter of Batay Ouvriye's
U.S. support group, "The Grassroots Haiti Solidarity Committee" (headed
by Batay Ouvriye members like Mario Joseph), released an article on
November 11, 2005. [9] Wilson's article continues to ignore the refusal
of the Solidarity Center and Batay Ouvriye to account for all the
funding that has been provided, admitting only to $3,500. The support
group has put up a website and Yannick Etienne will give a public forum
in New York in November. They continue to minimize and cover-up of Batay
Ouvriye's funding relationship with USAID.

Batay Ouvriye leader Didier Dominique also recently signed up to speak
at the 2006 World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela, undoubtedly to
continue Batay Ouvriye's attempts at portraying itself as a
"revolutionary" force in Haiti.

When asked why the Solidarity Center did not work with pro-Lavalas
unions, a member of the Solidarity Center, who wished to go unnamed,
used the term "revolutionary ideologues" to describe the unions which
backed Aristide's democratically-elected government.

Ben Davis, head of the Solidarity Center's operations in the Caribbean
and Latin America during the February 2004 coup, refused to comment.
Currently he is working as an 'in country representative" for the
Solidarity Center in Mexico City.

The Senior Program Officer for the Americas at the Solidarity Center is
now Samantha Tate, a National Security Education fellow and a Fulbright
fellow from 1999-2001, who researched Indonesian child labor and media
organizations following the fall of the Suharto dictatorship. Shunning
transparency, Tate, along with the Solidarity Center's grant management
department, refuses to comment on the amount of funding provided to
Batay Ouvriye.

In September 2005, Tate contacted my academic department chair at
California State University of Long Beach, attempting to isolate and
discredit this research.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Jeb Sprague is a freelance journalist and a graduate student in History
at California State University of Long Beach. An expanded and footnoted
version of this article will appear in his thesis covering the
destabilization and overthrow of democracy in Haiti, 2000-2004. Contact
him at jebsprague@mac.com

[1] http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2004/0403ned-haiti.php

[2] See NED website and American Center for International Labor
Solidarity http://www.ned.org/grants/04programs/web-multi04.html

[3] http://www.laboreducator.org/darkpast.htm

[4] http://www.monthlyreview.org/0505scipes.htm

[5] Unequal Equation: The Labor Code and Worker Rights in Haiti

[6] http://www.labournet.net/world/0503/haiti1.html

[7] http://counterpunch.org/kramer10142005.html

[8] Sur l'AFL-CIO, Son Rôle Nationalement et Internationalement, la
Crise Actuelle par rapport aux IntérLts de la Classe OuvriPre

[9] David Wislon, "Haitian Labor Group Confronts US Lavalas Backers"



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