30028: Deibert (comment) Response to Tom Luce (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

> From michaeldeibert@gmail.com :

I was forwarded an article written about me by Tom Luce. Generally, I don't
respond to these sorts of things. While fringe dwellers and organizations
can be an interesting subject in and of themselves, indicative as they are
of the often smug condescension and paternalism that wealthy white
foreigners feel about poor people the world over, an entire article
examining them, and their habit of haunting the internet day and night,
spoiling for a fight and libeling people, would be an esoteric and tedious
undertaking indeed. However, I felt that it might be worthwhile for readers
of the Corbett list if I took some time to respond to some of Mr. Luce's
egregious misstatements and outright fabrications.

Accusing someone of "contributing to a proxy war" is a serious charge,
Fortunately, judging by Mr. Luce's ponderous and slanderous diatribe against
this member of the press, it evidently does not come from a very serious
individual. When Mr Luce writes that my article is supporting "the
prolongation of this proxy war, poor people killing poor people, as a way
for the more affluent and powerful to keep their hands clean and keep hold
of their power," he exposes both an appalling ignorance of the situation on
the ground of Martissant and of the article he sets out to critique.

Apparently the statement in my article that "all armed groups in the
neighborhood have been implicated in the grossest human rights violations by
residents," followed by "the international community must demand human
rights for all in Haiti, without distinction for political affiliation, as
it is truly the only way forward," suggesting as it does one standard of
human rights for all groups to adhere to (echoing my November 2005 Newsday
editorial, "Ballots instead of bullets"), isn't explicit enough for Mr.
Luce, so I will try and hold his hand a little further.

Visiting Grand Ravine, Ti Bois, and Déscartes with two other journalists in
the summer of 2006, we came upon a scene of desolation of violence as bad as
anything I have ever seen in Haiti. My colleague Thos Robinson shot hundreds
of photos as I interviewed dozens of people (including Esterne Bruner) in
all three areas of the community in Kreyol (the tapes are still in my
possession). I suppose there is some other explanation for what we saw in Ti
Bois - the hundreds of burned homes, the hundreds of people fleeing down the
hillside with their meager belongings on their heads and the people who
grabbed hold of my microphone to tell the story of rape, murder and arson
that Grand Ravine gang leaders such as Wilkens "Chien Chaud" Pierre (whom I
also interviewed, and is now deceased) and Dymsley "Ti Lou" Milien (wanted
for alleged involvement in the slaying of Radio Haiti-Inter's Jean
Dominique) were bringing to their district - so perhaps Mr. Luce should
return to Haiti and lecture those poor people on how they are bringing a bad
image to the "movement" he holds so dear, to stop spreading these vicious
lies and to go back to the ruins of their homes and live quietly so that
they do not complicate the rigid ideological view of the world people like
Mr. Luce cling to from a safe distance. Are these the "affluent and
powerful" people Mr. Luce had in mind? Likewise, when Luce writes that there
was "no proof" of inter-gang warfare in the region in 2006, he ignores (or
perhaps is unable to read?) the extensive listing of Haitian radio reports I
provide in my article, all recorded on the ground, in Kreyol, which attest
to the very war whose existence Luce tries to hide.
Luce's reference to "violence on the part of alleged Lavalas people" is pure
proof of his intellectual dishonesty. If there was violence committed in the
name of the Fanmi Lavalas party, it was by "alleged" affiliates because,
naturally, no affiliate of the party whose supposed purity Luce fetishizes
to such an extent could ever be guilty of violence. To write that "some
Lavalas adherents did take up arms in defense of their lives and property
before and after the 04 coup" is a nice way of sanitizing what I and others
on the ground during the 2001-2004 era saw: A government policy and program
of arming young men, some of them barely into their teens, as a means for
one political party to bully and terrorize its opponents into submission. I
know this because some of those young men were my friends, and, despite
their often violent behavior, I had far greater respect for them and the
honor with which they conducted themselves than the rancid politicians or
their cynical foreign advocates like Mr. Luce who so used them and continue
to do so. As we can see, Mr. Luce continues to use the bodies of those young
boys as currency to score political points even today.

Likewise, I am rather sure the courageous priest Max Dominique, whose
funeral oration for Pere Adrien in May 2003, where Dominique denounced the
repressive system Jean-Bertrand Aristide had put in place and likened the
chimere to the attachés and Macoutes of yore (and which resulted in
political thugs arriving at his door that night screaming for his head) ,
must be rolling over in his grave at Luce's attempt to evoke his name to
bolster his dishonest and highly partisan attempts to excuse the murder of
the residents of Ti Bois because, unlike some of the equally long-suffering
residents of Grand Ravine, they were not members of the "correct" political
movement. It is a shame that Tom Luce wasn't on hand, as I was, one morning
in January 2003 when Dominique delivered the funeral oration for three
brothers from Carrefour murdered with impunity by the police, there coffins
soon to be taken to the front of the National Palace in protest, and where
Dominique thundered "No to impunity! No to insecurity! We demand justice!"

That was a rallying cry worth following.

Michael Deibert