a1357: Mr. Pina replies to Madame Medard (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: kevin pina <kpinbox@hotmail.com>
PLEASE HIT DELETE NOW IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO READ MESSAGES IN THIS THREAD.


Dear Madame Medard,

I respectfully suggest you go to google.com and put in the name Olivier
Nadal within quotation marks. Pay special attention to the OAS and UN
documents related to Piatre. I am not making this stuff up Madame, I am
merely bringing it to the list's attention, which by the way, is a member’s
only private list wherein the views expressed by the participants are
clearly their own. Further, I don't recall you making such a fuss when Mr.
Nadal accused Lavalas of directing violent campaigns, replete with
mysterious jeeps from the palace, without a shred of evidence.

Now, I agree with you that the statement of Mr. Otto Reich was far too
inclusive and unfair in lumping together « violators » in his criteria for
withdrawing visas of Lavalas officials .  Certainly many of them feel the
same way you do with respect to blanket accusations made for purely
political purposes. With respect to Mr. Nadal, however, the families of the
victims of the massacre he is accused of organizing in Piatre, ceratinly
differ from your opinion. They are making a strong case that this was a
direct result of his family’s complicity in the Duvalierist corrupt
land-lease system involving state owned lands in Piatre.

Mr. Nadal is also a public figure who, as you can clearly see in your web
search, is very vocal in his unfounded accusations and extremely nasty
indictments of Haiti’s poor majority. The fact that he has been given «
asylum » in my country, for no other reason than to add emphasis to his
claims, embarrases me as a born and bred son of the red, white and blue. I
love my country and my people but sometimes the actions of my government, as
in the case of harboring putschists and criminals, is a bitter pill to
swallow. Now I would never consider doing anything as silly as claiming a
parallel government in protest to this and electoral "discrepensies." I
prefer to channel my energies into educating and advocating for the rights
of the poor rather than bickering. To quote the immortal Billy S., "The lady
doth protest too much me thinks."

Oh, here are MY results of a cursory web search :



http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/99q2cari/This_Week_in_Haiti_17:11_6-2-99_

The elite's demonstration against insecurity -- as Haiti's
climate of violence and terror is called -- was spearheaded by
Olivier Nadal, president of the HCCI, whose prominent bourgeois
family helped finance the coup, according to a list widely
circulated and published in early 1992. Antoine Izmery, a rare
Lavalas-aligned businessman, also denounced the Nadals as coup
supporters, along with other bourgeois families, in the epic 1997
documentary Rezistans, which was rerun on National Television the
evening after the demonstration. Izmery was martyred by a
putschist death-squad on Sept. 11, 1993.

http://www.hri.ca/fortherecord2000/documentation/genassembly/a-55-335.htm

39. The Piatre case is of capital importance in that it is the tragic
outcome of a dispute concerning 100 carreaux of land occupied by Olivier
Nadal (President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Haiti), who
already "owned" a 900-carreaux estate in the same area. The peasants of the
village of Piatre sued Mr. Nadal unsuccessfully in the court in St-Marc.
Thus it was that when the fall of the de facto president Prosper Avril was
announced, on 11 March 1990, they returned to this land. The section chief
and his deputy organized a crackdown against them, resulting in the death of
a peasant by the name of Samuel Saintfacile. In retaliation at the failure
of the judicial authorities and the police to act, the people lynched the
section chief and his deputy. The following day, on 12 March 1990, a
detachment of 30 soldiers backed by armed civilians from St-Marc perpetrated
the Piatre massacre. (See Haïti-Progrès, vol. 17, No. 52.)



251.During the on-site visit, the Special Commission went to Piatre, where
it was informed of the following occurences:  In February 1986, after
Jean-Claude Duvalier left Haiti, the peasants of Piatre decided to initiate
legal action to recover territory form which they had been expelled by
landowner Olivier Nadal, beginning the appropriate judicial process with the
presentation of their titles to the land.  According to information released
to the Commission, the lands occupied by Nadal are worked by peasants from
the community of Delugé, generating conflicts between them and the peasants
from Piatre.



252. As was demonstrated to the Special Commission during its visit to
Piatre, the lack of efficiency within the judicial system to resolve these
problems lies at the base of the grave problems that have arisen in the
area.  It was also mentioned to the Commission that this judicial
inefficiency is present in the entire Artibonita region and is manifested in
difference forms through serious conflict.  In Sondé the Commission
delegation heard similar claims of how the peasants lack effective judicial
remedies to defend their territorial rights, which constitutes a violation
of their human rights, and specifically, of article 25 of the American
Convention on Human Rights, to which Haiti is a party.  It should be noted
that these conflicts have provoked bumerous deaths and the arrest of Jean
Milius Jean Baptiste, who after nine months remains in the Saint Marc prison
without trial or process of any kind.


http://www.cidh.oas.org/countryrep/Haiti90eng/chap.3a.htm

251.During the on-site visit, the Special Commission went to Piatre, where
it was informed of the following occurences:  In February 1986, after
Jean-Claude Duvalier left Haiti, the peasants of Piatre decided to initiate
legal action to recover territory form which they had been expelled by
landowner Olivier Nadal, beginning the appropriate judicial process with the
presentation of their titles to the land.  According to information released
to the Commission, the lands occupied by Nadal are worked by peasants from
the community of Delugé, generating conflicts between them and the peasants
from Piatre.


252. As was demonstrated to the Special Commission during its visit to
Piatre, the lack of efficiency within the judicial system to resolve these
problems lies at the base of the grave problems that have arisen in the
area.  It was also mentioned to the Commission that this judicial
inefficiency is present in the entire Artibonita region and is manifested in
difference forms through serious conflict.  In Sondé the Commission
delegation heard similar claims of how the peasants lack effective judicial
remedies to defend their territorial rights, which constitutes a violation
of their human rights, and specifically, of article 25 of the American
Convention on Human Rights, to which Haiti is a party.  It should be noted
that these conflicts have provoked bumerous deaths and the arrest of Jean
Milius Jean Baptiste, who after nine months remains in the Saint Marc prison
without trial or process of any kind.


253. The inefficiency of the judicial system was explained to the Commission
to be the result of the great influence over the judiciary excersise by the
landowners, who have been evicting peasants from their lands.  To accomplish
the action described, the landowners resort to the military and the section
chiefs to repress any form of resistance.  The Commission was able to
observe how the peasants in Piatre have been forced to move to the high area
of the mountains, where the means of subsistence are extremely scarce.




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