#4056: Olivier Nadal's Big Lie : Grey comments

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From:Racine125@aol.com

Like the apologist in the Apostles' Creed, Nadal has done those things he 
ought not to have done, and left undone those things which he ought to have 
done - and there is no health in him!  The Lord has mercy on such miserable 
offenders, but I do NOT!  I keep reading his editorial in fascinated horror, 
and it seems to me that the central lie of the piece is as follows:

"Aristide was removed from office, and the military stepped in to maintain 
order."

Aristide was removed from office... how?  He floated away?  Piano movers came 
and got him?  President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was driven from his rightful 
role by murderous armed men in the pay of murderous wealthy men.  Very 
simple.  And quite a few of both groups were members of the Haitian Army, 
which far from "maintaining order", enthusiastically led the campaign of 
death and terror.  This was a big change from the period during which 
Aristide was in office.  

I lived in Haiti during that time, and I saw that people walked the streets 
late in the evening, said what they wanted, and did what they thought best.  
Following the coup, "when the chickens went up in the trees, we had to go up 
on our beds".  Gunfire nightly reminded us who was in charge, and what they 
were willing to do to stay there.  

Pointing to a sham Parliament and a puppet president does no good when those 
shammers and puppets go to Governer's Island, sign an agreement, and a little 
while later the United Nations Security Council is obliged to declare that 
"the mandate entrusted to UNMIH by resolution 867 (1993) could not be 
implemented because of various developments in Haiti which constituted 
non-compliance by the Armed Forces of Haiti with the relevant provisions of 
the Governors Island Agreement."  (15 July 1994,  Report of the 
Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission in Haiti)

Ironically Nadal never objected to this form of so-called government, but he 
is sensitive to "fraudulent, Clinton-validated elections"?  Is he seriously 
calling the President of the United States complicit in electoral fraud in 
favor of the Lavalas Party?  It's a pity that the same freedom of speech he 
enjoys here in the USA is the same freedom of speech his commensals struggle 
to repress in Haiti!

Nadal bewails the embargo and the "frozen assets of Haiti" because he is a 
businessman, he is interested in making money.  That's no sin - but if he 
were to tell the truth he would admit that Aristide's enemies made far more 
money under the embargo than they ever did before, simply by importing 
contraband!  It's no secret, why pretend?

No one is going to be fooled by a lot of hollering about an 
"Aristide-controlled police force that now coordinates much of the cocaine 
traffic", either.  These are not new drug dealers, these are the same old 
drug dealers.  Those of us who were around during the formation of the 
Haitian National Police remember how the inclusion of former members of the 
Haitian Army was rammed down the throats of the Haitian activists clamoring 
against them!  In one satellite burg of Port-au-Prince, the chief of police 
during the military regime remained the chief of police after the United 
Nations intervention.  The number of pro-Aristide Haitian National Police 
officers killed by other HNP officers early in the formation of that 
organization from it's disparate elements indicate what were the results of 
that particular power stuggle. 

It's boggling that Nadal can see the cocaine trade as a crime against "his 
people", yet never bat an eye at the deaths of thousands of "his people" 
under the military regime!  One would think, to hear Nadal tell it, that the 
Cedras regime was a period of unparalleled tranquility and bliss.  Yet in the 
document cited above, the Security Council found that "The senior leadership 
of the Armed Forces of Haiti continue to defy the will of the international 
community and to inflict murder, rape and torture on the unfortunate people 
of Haiti..."

In the September 1995 document "Three Years Defending Human Rights", the 
United Nations / Organization of American States Civilian mission (MICIVIH) 
records that "In January 1994 the UN and OAS returned a first group of about 
30 observers to Haiti. The observers found the situation to be worse than at 
any time during the Mission's presence in 1993. Extrajudicial execution, 
enforced disappearance, torture and arbitrary arrest had increased, and a new 
phenomenon - that of rape as an instrument of political repression - had 
emerged. Many cases of such violations were documented by MICIVIH between 
January and July 1994. The perpetrators included members of the Haitian Armed 
Forces (FADH), the police, their civilian auxiliaries and members of FRAPH."

Even that most conservative of organizations, the United States State 
Department, stated "It is estimated that between 300 and 500 Haitians were 
killed in the days following the September coup, and 3000 in the following 
three years. The coup created a large-scale exodus from the country; in fact, 
the Coast Guard rescued a total of 41,342 Haitians from 1991 to 1992, more 
than the number of rescued refugees from the previous ten years combined."  
(Background Notes: Haiti, September 1996)

And yet, what is it which remains Nadal's program for Aristide?  "Remove him 
from power."  How boring, how predictable!  Is the President of Haiti once 
again to float away?  Will he be spirited out of the Palais National by piano 
movers?  Or will the cowardly supporters of tyranny attempt by force of arms 
once again to settle the yoke of terror, ignorance, and economic misery on 
the shoulders of majority class Haitians?

If so, terrible days lie ahead.  No one has forgotten the family members they 
lost during the coup, the loved husbands and sons and fathers, yes, and 
sisters and mothers and wives and daughters too, whose bodies they had to 
leave lying in the gutters to bloat and to be slowly devoured by pigs!  No 
one has forgotten the screams that used to issue from the neighborhood 
"postes" and "Commissariats", those filthy, reeking cells and those horribly 
mutilated corpses.  And no one is going to put up with it again.  Any person 
or party or death squad organization which attempts to block Aristide's 
return is going to be remembered as the proximate cause of the biggest 
uprising since the Haitian Revolution.

I thank the reader for his or her time.

Sincerely,

Kathy S. Grey