27359: Deibert: reply to critic (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From:  Michael Deibert <michaeldeibert@gmail.com>

(Bob, Though not an "official" list member, I thought the below might
be of
interest to Corbetters, given what I gather is the recent posting of my
dialogue with Mark Weisbrot in the pages of The Nation. MD)
**
*Michael Deibert's response to Mark Weisbrot's letter to The Nation magazine
*

While Center for Economic and Policy Research co-director Mark Weisbrot's
inaccuracies might pass without notice in Washington, (see Mr.
Weisbrot's article
"Undermining Haiti" in The Nation, Dec. 12), to those of us who have
been on
the ground in Haiti, it is clear that Weisbrot might benefit in his analysis
by a quick review of Haiti's recent history. For journalists who have been
privileged with the trust of Haiti's poor majority to tell their stories, it
is our duty to reiterate the facts that individuals such as
Weisbrot, perhaps unwittingly, do their best to muddy, first in his article,
and now in his letter to The Nation responding to my critique of said
article (that full exchange follows this email).

In his letter responding to my critique of his article, Weisbrot writes:
"Most of the Fanmi Lavalas leadership and activists are in jail, hiding or
exile. Nothing approaching this magnitude of state-sponsored violence or
repression existed under Aristide."
*False*, in several aspects. Despite the continuation of brutality and
impunity under the interim government that was one of the hallmarks of the
Aristide years,  many Lavalas leaders, such as cabinet minister Leslie
Voltaire, former Senate president Yvon Feuillé, former Chamber of Deputies
presidents Rudy Herivaux and Yves Christallin, former Milot mayor Moise
Jean-Charles, Aristide's first prime minister during his second term
Jean-Marie Cherestal and others still operate with freedom throughout Haiti
and, indeed, are still actively involved in politics. As someone who was in
Haiti from December 2003 until June 2004 (one of many periods spent living
in the country), I can truly say I have rarely seen greater state-sponsored
violence or terror than those of us in Haiti witnessed during the final
months of the Aristide government. Please refer to my book, "Notes from the
Last Testament" (Seven Stories Press) or reports filed by National Public
Radio's Gerry Hadden (
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1622853
 and
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1623727
, to cite but
two examples) , the Haitian organization AlterPresse, or a myriad of other
sources, for elaboration.

Weisbrot writes: "There is little evidence that the Aristide government
"actively thwarted" the investigation of the murder of journalist Jean
Léopold Dominique."

*False.* On March 3rd, 2002, on her daily broadcast on Radio Haiti-Inter,
Michele Montas, Mr. Dominique's widow and 2002 winner of the Maria Moors
Cabot Prize for excellence in journalism from Columbia University, said the
following, referring explicitly to the Aristide government's undermining of
the investigation, and investigating judge, Claudy Gassant:
*

"On this same date last year, March 3, 2001, President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide came to Radio Haiti to express his support publicly for the
judicial inquiry and pledge that the executive branch of government would
make available to justice the resources needed to investigate the April 3,
2000 assassinations at Radio Haiti. Today, twenty-three months later, facts
are speaking louder than words: Fact: The Chief of State, who has the direct
and exclusive authority to renew Judge Gassant's mandate, has still not done
so although that judge diligently and systematically conducted the
investigation for sixteen months with courage and competence. . . . Facts:
All the resources, i.e., logistical, technical and financial made available
in this judicial case by the preceding government have been cancelled. The
special and relatively modest funds which had helped in the success of the
trials of Raboteau and Carrefour Feuilles, as well as the funds allocated,
among other resources, to the work of the first two investigating judges
assigned to the murder cases of Jean Dominique and Jean-Claude Louissaint,
allowing them to follow the leads of a difficult investigation in several
areas of the countries, were cancelled."
* The fact that the Aristide government directly stonewalled the Dominique
murder investigation has since been re-confirmed to me, both by Ms. Montas
herself and by numerous other sources in Haiti. At a press conference held
by the Radio Haiti-Inter staff on April 3, 2002 (which I attended), Radio
Haiti Inter reporter Sony Esteus said that:

*"Manoeuvre after manoeuvre has been made by the justice minister, by  the
dean of the civil court, by the 21 May Senate and by the police in order to
block the investigation. The person who believes he can deliver the coup de
grace is President Aristide. We say the coup de grace because President
Aristide, as head of state, has blocked the investigations for four
months...President Aristide is chief of a political party that controls the
executive, legislative and judicial branches of government and he has
blocked this investigation at every turn. We demand the president renew the
mandate and ensure the security of Judge Gassant." *

Weisbrot writes: "(Deibert) claims that thugs acted in December with
"visible collusion with police," but that is simply an
allegation."

*False. *During the attack on the university on December 5, 2003, employees
of the nearby Fondation Connaissance et Liberté (FOKAL)?run by Michèle
Pierre-Louis, the former sister-in-law of a well-known slain priest, Jean
Pierre- Louis ? and a pair of visiting French diplomats watched the violence
from the organization's headquarters on Avenue Christophe and later released
a scathing press release in which they recounted the scene, which read, in
part, as follows:
*

"We saw groups of pro-governmental militia . . . regroup in front of our
building, visibly preparing to attack the student demonstration scheduled
for that day. We saw their arms displayed, ranging from firearms, wooden and
iron sticks, rocks and other objects capable of hurting and killing. We saw
their chiefs, men and women, also armed, equipped with walkie-talkies and
cellular phones, organize and give orders to the commandos that were to
attack the students. We saw the police, not neutral as has been reported,
but acting as accomplices to the militia. On several occasions, during that
day of horror and shame, the police opened the way for the chimere attack
and also covered their backs. We saw children aged between twelve and
fifteen, some in school uniforms, used by the Lavalas militia to throw rocks
and attack the students with fire arms."
*

Those present during the attack, and footage in the filmmaker Arnold
Antonin's documentary about the Aristide government's bloody
denouement, "GNB Kont Attila," have since confirmed this version of
events.


Weisbrot writes: "Aristide made concerted efforts to reform the justice
system and to address the root causes of the country's violence."
*False.* After driving two judges - Jean Sénat Fleury, and Claudy Gassant -
off of the Jean Dominique case, in mid-April 2002, the Aristide government
succeeded in pressing Henry Kesner Noel, magistrate of the city of Saint
Marc, into signing an arrest warrant charging former dictator Prosper Avril
with orchestrating the 1990 massacre of peasant farmers in the village of
Piatre, in central Haiti, even though the massacre occurred after the
dictator had been ousted from power. Following the signing of Avril's arrest
warrant, Justice Noel fled Haiti for Florida, saying that Aristide officials
- Noel mentioned Secretary of State for Public Security Gérard Dubreuil by
name - had forced him to sign the warrant and he feared for his life should
he remain in Haiti. The Aristide government's actions in this event were a
blatant violation of Article 60 of Haiti's constitution, which delegated
firmly the independence of the executive and judicial branches of
government. In January 2003, when Judge Marcel Jean, the investigating judge
in charge of Aristide-loyalist Amiot Metayer's case in the city of Gonaives,
attempted to board a plane to the United States on, he discovered that his
name was on a list of those banned from leaving the country by Interior
Minister Jocelerme Privert. Jean's passport was seized, and he was denied
the right to leave the country. Many viewed the move as an attempt to force
Jean to "legalize" Metayer's jailbreak of August 2 the previous year.
Eventually, Jean slipped out of the country and went into exile. Rosemond
Jean, who helped form and became the spokesman for the Coordination
Nationale des Societaires Victimes (CONASOVIC) on behalf of the victims of
the co-operative scandal, was held from September 2002 until March 2003
without trial. The list goes on and on. Another example of Aristide's
commitment to the rule of law was the speech he gave gave while visiting
Haiti's police headquarters in June 2001, Referring to *zenglendos*?the
Kreyol term for common criminals that had become an all-purpose catch phrase
for referring to people that those in a position of power in Haiti wanted to
eliminate?Aristide said that "If a *zenglendo *stops a car out on the
street, takes the car keys, forces the driver to get out and drives away
with the vehicle, then that person is guilty. You do not need to take him to
court to answer to the judge, because the car does not belong to him. If a
criminal carries out physical violence against somebody out in the street
with intent to kill that person, you do not need to wait for that criminal
to appear before the judge, you can prevent that murderer from taking
action. When it has to do with criminals it is zero tolerance. Period and
full stop." So much for due process. Following the murder of journalist
Brignol Lindor in December 2001, his killers - members of a pro-government
gang called Domi Nan Bwa in the provincial city of Petit Goave who readily
confessed to their crime - announced that they had meted out "zero
tolerance" to Lindor.

Weisbrot writes: "Since all governments commit mistakes and abuses, this
argument can always be constructed; it is perhaps easier to do so for a very
poor country where the rule of law is not well established. Deibert's
efforts fall squarely within that dishonorable tradition."

As Mao's defenders in the West such as the journalists Felix Greene, Anna
Louise Strong, Edgar Snow and the economist Gilbert Etienne, attempted to
deny the terrible reality of the suffering inflicted on the Chinese people
during The Great Leap Forward, when tens of millions of people died
needlessly, most of starvation, on the alter of Mao's vanity, so Mr.
Weisbrot would appear to be dancing perilously close to his own
"dishonorable tradition," that of the Western observer who believes
that the
lives of the world's poor are some how more expendable to bring about a
desired political reality than their own sheltered, pampered existence.

As the noted Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck has written about Haiti and the
serial defenders of the Aristide government's excesses: "It became a habit
among the tyrant's "friends," in particular among his American friends
in
the pseudo-left sector, to downplay these trends, or to hold his entourage
responsible. Is this to say that there are crimes condemnable in a western
country but acceptable in Haiti? Are journalists' assassinations, threats,
the dismissal of judges who are honest or not "flexible" enough, the
forced
exile of bothersome adversaries?are these "acceptable"? Do we only
deserve a
dime store version of democracy? A patronizing conceit that "low-end"
democracy is good enough for "poor" Haitians?"
Whether Mr. Weisbrot is deliberately spreading misinformation, or is simply
ill-informed in opining about things he has little first-hand knowledge of,
is a matter for him to explain. But I think, given the evidence of his
deception, he owes Haiti's poor majority greater intellectual and historical
rigor when commenting on their struggle than he has thus far displayed.


Michael
Deibert

New York City


**************************************


*HAITI THRU ROSE-COLORED GLASSES?*

*New York City*

Having spent the better part of a decade living and working as a journalist
in Haiti, I would be remiss if I did not respond to Mark Weisbrot's "
Undermining
Haiti <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051212/weisbrot>"
[Dec. 12]. Articles
like this, hatched in a cocoon of ideology where rude reality never
intrudes, do little to help that long-suffering country.

While Weisbrot is content to blame the ouster of the Aristide government on
the suspension of international aid to Haiti and a dark cabal of "mass
murderers and former death squad leaders" and to bemoan that democracy is
being destroyed "openly and in broad daylight," the political
landscape in
Haiti is far different from the one he paints, just as the popular movement
against the brutality and criminality that came to typify the Aristide
government in fact has roots that go far beyond recent armed insurrection.

> From the summer of 2002, when the Aristide government attempted to seize
control of Haiti's state university system and a cooperative pyramid
investment scheme that was closely linked to regime loyalists collapsed, the
cracks in the government's house began to widen, long before members of the
Cannibal Army street gang (which served as a progovernment group until the
murder of its leader, Amiot Metayer, in September 2003) rose up to seize the
northern city of Gonaives in February 2004.

Nowhere does Weisbrot mention the myriad events that eventually caused tens
of thousands of Haitians to take to the streets in protest at the end of
2003 and beginning of 2004: the brutal March 2002 eviction of peasant
farmers from the Maribaroux Plain by Aristide's security forces to make way
for a sweatshop; the Aristide government's thwarting of the investigation
into the murder of Haiti's most prominent journalist, Jean Léopold
Dominique; the December 2003 attack on a group of university students by
gangs acting in visible collusion with police that saw at least six shot, a
dozen more stabbed and beaten, and the university's rector pummeled with
iron bars until he could no longer walk.

This past summer's declaration by four of Haiti's most politically
progressive organizations--the Plateforme Haïtienne de Plaidoyer pour un
Développement Alternatif (PAPDA), Groupe d'Appui aux Rapatriés et Réfugiés
(GARR), Solidarité des Femmes Haïtiennes (SOFA) and Centre National et
International de Documentation et d'Information de la Femme en Haïti
(EnfoFanm)--calling for Aristide to be judged for his crimes against the
Haitian people is likewise nowhere referred to.

In addition, despite the contention that the Fanmi Lavalas Party "has not
registered any candidates for president," two distinct candidates have in
fact picked up the Lavalas banner. One, former World Bank official and
Aristide Cabinet minister Marc Bazin, has the public support of former
Cabinet minister Leslie Voltaire, former Senate president Yvon Feuillé and
former Chamber of Deputies president Rudy Herivaux. The other, former
president René Préval, whose support among Haiti's peasant majority has
always been far greater than anything Aristide was able to drum up, is
running under the banner of the former Lespwa (Hope) coalition, and will be
the contest's likely victor.

Haiti's problems did not begin and do not end with Aristide, but
whitewashing the past ten years of Haiti's history does no one any favors.

Someday, maybe, my compatriots on the left will have the courage and moral
energy to examine Jean-Bertrand Aristide's real legacy in Haiti, but neither
*The Nation* nor Weisbrot seems able to muster those virtues with regard to
Haiti at present. That saddens me; I feel that all those who lost their
lives there over the years deserve better.

MICHAEL DEIBERT
*author, *Notes From the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti

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

*WEISBROT REPLIES*

*Washington, DC*

Michael Deibert does not challenge that a democratically elected president
of Haiti (Aristide) was twice (1991 and 2004) overthrown and replaced with a
brutal, violent dictatorship. Nor does he deny that the current dictatorship
keeps opposition leaders as political prisoners and intends to hold an
election to replace the constitutional government with them in jail. Nor
does he dispute that the United States waged a multiyear destabilization
campaign supporting the 2004 coup, which included cutting off almost all
international (not just US) aid to a government that could not function
without these funds, as well as providing massive funding for opposition
groups.

What then is his point? If Deibert could show that Aristide's government was
a monstrosity, like Saddam Hussein's, he could argue that the illegal and
violent overthrow was justified, as George W. Bush does regarding Iraq. But
Aristide's government compares favorably with previous governments, other
countries of similar per-capita income levels (mostly in Africa) and, most
glaringly, with the current dictatorship that Washington has installed.
These are the relevant comparisons, not some ideal invoked in order to
justify this terrible crime. With regard to the current dictatorship, there
is no comparison--an uncounted number, probably in the thousands, have been
murdered since the coup. Most of the Fanmi Lavalas leadership and activists
are in jail, hiding or exile. Nothing approaching this magnitude of
state-sponsored violence or repression existed under Aristide. The current
violence is primarily a result of trying to deny Haitians the right to a
free election, which Lavalas (and even Aristide today) could win
overwhelmingly.

Deibert's excuses for this forced exclusion are weak. Marc Bazin seems to
have very little support within the Lavalas Party. Préval does have support,
and may even win, but so might others who are not allowed to run. And the
repression of Lavalas will make it more difficult for Préval to end up with
a working majority in the legislature if he wins. Haitians should have the
right to vote for whomever they want, as they did before this occupation.

The anecdotal evidence Deibert offers is mostly unsubstantiated or
misleading. There is little evidence that the Aristide government "actively
thwarted" the investigation of the murder of journalist Jean Léopold
Dominique. As for the other violence that he mentions, it has not been shown
that Aristide or anyone under his control was responsible for it. He claims
that thugs acted in December with "visible collusion with police," but
that
is simply an allegation.

Aristide made concerted efforts to reform the justice system and to address
the root causes of the country's violence. He was trying to reform a
judiciary inherited from past dictatorships. But he was also facing a
massive, well-funded and ultimately successful effort to rip apart all
democratic institutions so as to topple his government.

But even if all of Deibert's allegations were true, which they clearly are
not, it would never justify the coup or the current dictatorship. After
every US intervention that used violence, economic sabotage and
destabilization to topple a democratically elected government--e.g.,
Allende's Chile in 1973, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua (democratically
elected in 1984) or even the brief 2002 coup against Venezuela's Hugo
Chávez--there has been no shortage of academics and journalists seeking to
blame the victims for their own demise. Since all governments commit
mistakes and abuses, this argument can always be constructed; it is perhaps
easier to do so for a very poor country where the rule of law is not well
established. Deibert's efforts fall squarely within that dishonorable
tradition.

MARK WEISBROT