27044: Ives (news): This Week in Haiti 23:42 12/28/2005 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

"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 PROGRES
     "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

            * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

       December 28, 2005 - January 3, 2006
                Vol. 23, No. 42



AS OCCUPATION ELECTIONS FOUNDER:
UN CASUALTIES MOUNT

In three separate attacks in the past two weeks, two United Nations
"peacekeepers" have been killed and four wounded.

The first attack occurred in the northern town of Plaisance on Dec. 16
when a UN patrol vehicle with Chilean troops was ambushed. Four soldiers
were wounded, two in the leg, one in the arm, one in the ear.

The Chilean soldiers rapidly retreated to their base in Cap HaVtien, 30
kilometers to the north, where they were flown for medical treatment to
the Argentinian-run UN hospital at the Port-au-Prince airport. One
officer, seriously wounded, was flown to Chile for intensive care.

The Chilean head of the U.N. Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH), Juan
Gabriel ValdPs, speculated that the attack was the work of either
"demobilized soldiers, the ultra-left or bandits." He blustered that the
UN force in Haiti was "unchallengeable" and that "there is no group in
Haiti which can defy the UN's capacity for action."

On Dec. 23, the Dessalinien Army of National Liberation (ADLN) issued a
communique taking responsibility for the ambush and dismissing ValdPs'
characterizations. "We are neither former soldiers, an ultra-left group
or thieves," the communique said. "The ADLN is the armed wing of the
suffering masses, of the landless peasants whom the big landowners have
robbed, and of the masses of slum-dwellers whom the MINUSTAH is
murdering in Cité Soleil, Belair, Martissant and Solino."

The ADLN, which has carried out several attacks on police stations in
northern cities over the past year, called for the "MINUSTAH occupation
force to leave Haiti immediately if they don't want to leave their skins
in [founding father Jean-Jacques] Dessalines' nation. What happened to
the Chilean soldiers is just the beginning. The battle for Haiti's
liberation will continue and the first step is the return to
constitutional order."

On Dec. 20, two unidentified gunmen shot and killed a Canadian UN
policeman, Mark Bourque, on Route National 1 near Cité Soleil as he was
driving in a car with another man, who was not hurt. Bourque died from
his wounds at the UN hospital hours later.

Bourque, 57, was a 35-year veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
who had volunteered as member of a Canadian police contingent to
establish security for the Jan. 8 elections. The CANPOL contingent is a
part of CANADEM, an arm of the Canadian government's foreign ministry.

Ironically, Bourque was killed in a sector supposedly controlled by the
MINUSTAH as he was approaching a MINUSTAH outpost.

On Dec. 24, unidentified gunmen also killed a Jordanian soldier, Yousef
Moubarak, who was fatally shot in the head as he patrolled near Cité
Soleil. The 1,500-member Jordanian contingent has been tasked with
pacifying Cité Soleil. They have had little success and are engaged in
gun-battles everyday there. Cité Soleil residents tell HaVti ProgrPs
that many young men and innocent bystanders have been killed by UN
gunfire in recent days.

The Jordanian's death brings the total number of MINUSTAH soldiers
killed to seven - four of them in accidents - since the mission began in
June 2004. Over 30 UN troops have been wounded.

On Dec. 22, ValdPs held a press conference where he called the situation
in Cité Soleil "fragile and extremely complex."

"It requires adopting a two-prong policy of legitimately using force to
defend citizens and of improving the living conditions of the local
population," ValdPs said. "I can assure you that we will do everything
so that the crimes committed by gangs, including assassinations and
kidnappings, will not remain unpunished."

The following day, Dec. 23, the MINUSTAH's feared Brazilian contingent
carried out a crackdown in the Pelé quarter of Port-au-Prince's Cité
Militaire, arresting dozens of people. The round-up was accompanied by a
"medical outreach" campaign, where Brazilian military doctors offered
Pelé residents blood pressure testing and the like.

"As embedded reporters were treated to photo opportunities of happy
smiling residents receiving aid buckets in Pelé last Friday, heavy
gunfire broke out from Brazilian forces on Route Nationale 1, a main
highway that separates Pelé from Cité Soleil," the Haitian Information
Project reported in a Dec. 25 dispatch. " 'No one fired at them. They
just started shooting for no reason and several people were injured,'
stated a bystander who witnessed the incident. Twenty-seven year-old
Fritzner Montinard was later interviewed in St. Catherine's hospital in
Cité Soleil were he lay immobilized by automatic gunfire that strafed
both of his legs. 'I was walking down the street. It was quiet and I saw
the blue helmets but everything seemed calm. Suddenly they opened fire
and I was shot in both legs. I didn't hear any gunfire before that and
still don't know what caused them to shot at us like that,' stated Mr.
Montinard from his hospital bed."

In his press conference, ValdPs also declared that the "holding of good
elections is an inevitable step for the consolidation of democracy to
advance in Haiti. However," he warned, "elections cannot be seen as a
magic solution to solve all of Haiti's problems."

Nonetheless, it is clear to almost all now that the first round of the
elections being organized by the UN and the de facto Haitian government
will not to be held on Jan. 8 as scheduled. Less than 200,000 of the 3.5
million voter photo identification cards have been distributed. The de
facto electoral council blames the Organization of American States,
which was supposed to guarantee card distribution. But the OAS this week
denied any blame, saying it had given cards to Haitian authorities.
Others have reported that Haitian voters simply are not turning up to
collect their cards.

The situation is dire enough to spur Deputy Secretary of State for
Political Affairs, Nicolas Burns, to visit Port-au-Prince Dec. 20. He
said he was satisfied with electoral preparations after talking to
illegal Prime Minister Gérard Latortue. But he realized there was a
problem with voters getting their cards.

"They should have a big media campaign to make people know on the radio,
in newspapers, on television, and every way possible where they can get
their voter cards, and that if they don't have a card, they can use
their [paper] receipts [from applying for the card] to cast their
ballots," Burns said.

Burns also held out a carrot. He said that over the past 18 months the
U.S. has given $400 million in assistance to Haiti's illegal government,
and that the Bush administration is ready to give another $116 million
when elections are held.

Meanwhile, from Pretoria, exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide issued
a long end of the year message to the Haitian people, condemning the
coup and illegal elections. "Intelligent people do not remove intestines
to put straw," he wrote. "Open-eyed people do not remove intestines to
put straw. Knowledgeable people do not mistake 'selections' for
elections."

He called on the Haitian people to continue a "long-term mobilization."
"The dew of the coup d'état will continue to linger as long as the sun
of the return has not risen," Aristide concluded.



FARMER SAYS JEAN-JUSTE HAS LEUKEMIA

On Christmas eve, world-renowned physician Paul Farmer examined ailing
political prisoner Father Gérard Jean-Juste in his cell at the National
Penitentiary's annex in Pacot.

"In my examination, I determined that he has leukemia," Farmer told
HaVti ProgrPs. "Preliminary laboratory results seem to confirm this but
it is essential that he be transferred to the U.S. without delay for a
more extensive work-up. This disease can be treated if we get him out of
jail and into qualified medical care."



HAITI/DR CONFLICT:
IMPERIALISM'S NEW CONFIGURATION FOR INTERVENTION AND OCCUPATION
(The second of two installments)

Last week, we presented the National Popular Party's warning that
Washington is fanning the flames of the conflict between Haiti and the
Dominican Republic to create a pretext for reinforcing and expanding
their military presence on the island. We also reviewed how the U.S. and
Europe have recently established the "Peace Building Commission" at the
United Nations to facilitate long-term U.N. occupations of rebellious
neo-colonies.

In order to deploy the United Nations or Organization of American States
in a given country, the U.S. and Europe seek to label the targeted
nation a "failed state."

Just three days before his Dec. 12 visit to Haiti, Dominican President
Leonel Fernandez called Haiti a "failed state" whose instability is a
"danger to the world." He even described Haiti's de facto leaders as
"corrupt" and "completely indifferent to [Haiti's] national interest"
(see HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 23, No. 40, 12/14/2005).

Ironically, Washington also dubs the DR a "failed state." In its
July/August 2005 edition, the U.S. establishment review, Foreign Policy,
in conjunction with the so-called Fund for Peace, published a "Failed
States Index," where Haiti was ranked tenth and the Dominican Republic
nineteenth.

"The list goes by the countries in which they will intervene first and
the Dominican Republic is number 19," explained Fermín Toro Jiménez,
Venezuela's Ambassador to the United Nations. "Venezuela is number 21 on
this list, which is published by the State Department, even though they
say that they had nothing to do with it and that this is the work of a
private foundation."

To deal with these so-called failed states, "the United States State
Department on July 1, 2004, implemented a new department called
'Reconstruction and Stabilization,'" Ambassador Jiménez explained. "The
director of this department is a Cuban named Carlos Pascual. He was the
man who engineered the fall of the Soviet Union. At that time, he was an
ambassador to the Ukraine and using his power as ambassador to the
Ukraine, he mounted a campaign of destabilization of the Soviet Union
until the Soviet Union began to fall apart. The reward for his helping
to dismantle the Soviet Union was being named the head of this
department."

For the 60 nations on the "failed states" list, which are overwhelmingly
from Africa and Latin America, Washington has "a program of
destabilization and covert operations," said Jiménez. Then Pascual and
the UN's "Peace Building Commission" are to take over to bring
"reconstruction and stabilization."



HISPANIOLA A TARGET?

So is Washington trying to stir up animosities between Haiti and the DR
to justify establishing a protectorate over both nations, as the PPN
warned last week? (See HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 23, No. 41, 12/21/2005).

For years, the Pentagon has had its eye on the strategic mountainous
border region between the two nations. Even during Aristide's second
administration, Haiti was presented with a contract, apparently never
signed, which sought to create a giant, autonomous, tax-free "Border
Zone" administered by the Inter-American Development Bank (see HaVti
ProgrPs, Vol. 20, No. 17, 7/10/2002). The zone would have comprised five
kilometers on either side of the 375-mile border.

Last summer, Admiral Sigfrido Pared Perez, the Dominican Armed Forces
Secretary, said that the US Southern Command might open a training
school at the Caldera Naval Base in Bani, in the country's south, for
the training of Central American and Caribbean military.

Most recently, this month the US Southern Command was again in the DR to
recommend to President Fernandez the creation of a specialized military
force to guard the Dominican/Haitian frontier. General John Craddock,
head of the US Army Southern Command, hand-delivered to President
Fernandez a report drawn up by a group of U.S. military experts who
spent several weeks on the border between Haiti and the Dominican
Republic.

Among other things, the Pentagon experts recommended the creation of a
special air cavalry unit, equipped with helicopters and planes, and an
upgrade of the many Dominican forts along the border.



SOLIDARITY THE SOLUTION

President Fernandez, like all Dominican presidents since the 1965 U.S.
Marine occupation of the Dominican Republic, is practically a hostage of
the Dominican Army, which is itself closely linked to and under the
direction of the Pentagon. U.S. Special Forces maintain an almost
permanent presence in the DR, training Dominican troops, which were
among the few nations that agreed to participate in Washington's Iraq
war. The DR has also signed a bilateral agreement with Washington not to
prosecute U.S. soldiers in the newly formed International Criminal Court
in the Hague.

Despite such close relations, the U.S. is clearly working to establish
more control over both the DR and Haiti.

"This is an unfolding story, and this matter will effect all nations,
but especially Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela," warned
Ambassador Jiménez. "Not only do they have a plan to intervene in these
nations, but they also are planning the reconstruction after the
destruction of these nations. The contracts will go to the
transnationals."

But Ambassador Jiménez was not fatalistic. On the contrary, he called
for resistance. "The only way for us to counteract this new threat is
for us to unite, to organize, to integrate our struggles, because we
cannot unilaterally fight this new threat," he said to the gathering of
Haitians, Dominicans and Venezuelans in New York on Sep. 30, 2005, the
anniversary of the first coup against Aristide in 1991. "The only way we
can fight this is by putting all our forces together."

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

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