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28989: Sontaine (discuss) Reply to Randall White on gangs (fwd)
From Georges Sontaine:
Randall,
You fail in accepting the thesis that the gangs formed for "the survival of
their neighborhood." As you can see from those articles, there were already
gangs - heavily armed - in 2002, then operating under and in coordination with
the Aristide regime, who you say that they had nothing to fear from. So your
attempt to say they congealed after February 2004 doesn't pass the test when
held up to the actual printed record of their existence.
You want examples of pro-Lavalas gang activity after March 2004?
In Jane Regan's February 2005 article for NACLA "Haiti: In Bondage to History?"
(http://www.haitipolicy.org/content/2850.htm) we read the following:
"November 18, 2004, anniversary of the slave army's decisive victory over
Napoleon's soldiers 201 years ago--another semi-decapitated body laid in the
streets, its charred flesh smoldering and crackling under the noonday sun. This
time the killers brazenly ignited their prey, a man named Weber Adrien, just a
few blocks from the UN peacekeepers' command post in Bel-Aire. Beheadings, a
new form of violence in this perpetually violent country, were almost as common
as nighttime automatic weapons fire as Haiti's bicentennial year ended. The
trend started after a September 30 clash between Haitian police and protestors
turned deadly. The demonstrators--some of them armed--were marching to demand
the return of ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Shots were fired and in the
end three policemen and perhaps six demonstrators were dead. The confrontation
unleashed a wave of violence by pro-Aristide militants nicknamed "Operation
Baghdad," replete with ambushes, decapitations, snipers, and police
counter-actions with harsh house-to-house searches and arrests without
warrants. There appear to have been brutal summary executions on both sides."
In Joe Mozingo November 29, 2004 article "Anarchy reigns in streets of Haiti"
in The Miami Herald
(http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/haiti/2755.html), Mozingo
writes:
"In the last two months, warring gangs -- and what many slum residents claim
are government death squads -- have trapped tens of thousands of Haiti's
poorest citizens in a deadly state of anarchy where rule is determined by which
groups of young men have the biggest guns. "
In here report “Peacekeepers Battle Gangs in a Ravaged Haiti,”
(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4075205) NPR’s Lourdes
Garcia-Navarro convincingly maps the role of pro-Aristide gangs in the gruesome
violence that ravaged out capital in the fall 2004.
When you, on the other hand, write "Not that I would have taken offense if
resistance movements decided that they needed to destabilize Latortue by direct
action that - might have - employed the use of arms outside of their
neighborhoods," all I can say is that is very easy, and quite cowardly, to say
from the United States where you are at no risk, quite a different kettle of
fish in Haiti itself. It shows little respect you have for the lives of people
in Cite Soleil, or anywhere else in Haiti, for that matter. We've had more than
enough killing already.
Georges
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