29632: (comment) Chamberlain: 29576: Distortions in Pelzer article (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

> An unsavory effort to discredit Haiti report
> By Tim Pelzer
> A London-based Haiti solidarity group with ties to shadowy
U.S./Canadian-backed non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that
participated in the campaign to destabilize the former center-left Haitian
government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is behind efforts to
discredit a new report from the prestigious British medical journal The
Lancet ... Charles Arthur of the London-based Haiti Support Group ...
Arthur's criticisms of the Lancet report, as well as his motivations, must
be viewed with suspicion. All other major human rights studies on the
period on Haiti, from Harvard and the University of Miami to the U.S.
National Lawyers Guild, support the Lancet study's findings.

All these supposedly "major human rights studies" are by firmly pro-Lavalas
people, masquerading as "independent," as is the author of the Lancet study
who deliberately concealed her position as a Lavalas employee under another
name.



> Instead he sent me extracts of Amnesty International (AI) reports
(October 8, 2004; July 28, 2005) that make unsupported claims

More supported than the "major studies" approvingly cited by Pelzer.



> According to Marguerite Laurent of the New York-based Haitian Lawyers
Leadership Network, the organizations that Arthur promotes, such as the
Organization of People in Struggle (OPL), Platform to Advocate for
Alternative Development (PAPDA), Haitian Women's Solidarity Organization
(SOFA) and Kayfanm "stood silent...

All bona fide left-wing organisations that don' t happen to agree with the
grand-sounding but miniscule "Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network."



> "Arthur was losing his credibility," she said. "This attack [against
Kolbe] puts his name back in the circle." The groups that Arthur supports
played a role in the U.S./Canadian/French-led effort to destabilize and
undermine the elected Aristide government. OPL, PAPDA, SOFA and Kayfanm
receive funding from either the U.S. government-backed National Endowment
for Democracy, International Republican Institute, U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) or the Canadian government-backed
Canadian International Development Agency.

And author Tim Pelzer chooses to live in Canada and to pay taxes to a
government he accuses of complicity in imperialist crimes in Haiti...



> the anti-Aristide opposition movement. This included groups that Arthur
supports. For instance, PAPDA leader Yves Andre Wainwright became
environment minister.

But Wainwright was a respected environment minister under both er...
Aristide (11 Aug 95 - March 96) and Préval (March 96 - March 99)...



> Furthermore, the British-based organization Christian Aid provides
funding to Arthur's Haiti Support Group. Christian Aid receives money from
the U.S. government through grants from USAID.

And (once more) author Tim Pelzer chooses to live in Canada, where he pays
taxes and knowingly benefits from the services of a government he calls
criminal...



> Witnesses in London have also accused Arthur of distributing the
telephone numbers and home address of Kolbe, which resulted in numerous
death threats and two bomb scares that are under investigation by US and
British authorities.

Where's the evidence for this fanciful claim that he is being
"investigated"?



        Greg Chamberlain