a1973: AHP on Lawyer's Strike (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

FROM: Kevin Pina        <kpinbox@hotmail.com>


Port-au-Prince, May 7th, 2002 (AHP)- Lawyers from the Port-au-Prince Bar
went on strike on Tuesday to protest against what they call violations of
human rights and the Republic's laws.

All activities stopped in the Law Courts and Peace Courts in Port-au-Prince.

The President of the Bar Council in Port-au-Prince, Me Rigaud Duplan,
declared that it is impossible for lawyers to function in the present
situation, giving the deterioration of human rights in the country and the
arbitrary arrests.

Me Duplan believes that lawyers receive death threats and they cannot live
safely. This keeps them from doing their jobs. Rigaud Duplan said that over
ten lawyers have been killed in the last 15 years and nothing has been done
to give them justice. Most of these lawyers, like Me Lafontant Joseph,
Minister Guy Malary, Me Charles Jean-Baptiste, have been killed during the
Duvalier government, during the National Council of Government or during the
time of the military Coup.

For his part, Me Mario Joseph, a human rights activist lawyer, does not
approve the strike from the lawyers of the Port-au-Prince Bar Association.
He thinks that the lawyers did not explain their precise objectives, which
he believes are obscure and partisan, and have nothing to do with the
improvement of the human rights situation in the country.

Me Joseph said that the strikers should instead take the time to take a
close look at their professional moral code in order to give back to the
profession its complete dignity. He also declared it was sad that this
strike was happening at the exact time when judicial authorities are finally
making great efforts to start working again on some files that had been
abandoned for many years, such as the Jean Rabel file (1987) and the Piatre
file (1990).

For his part, the lawyer and human rights activist, Jean-Claude Nord,
believes that the strike from the lawyers of the Port-au-Prince Bar is a
political action that has nothing to do with human rights.
Me Nord denounces the unilateral nature of this decision. According to him,
the Bar Council should have had a meeting with all its members before
deciding the date of this strike. Jean-Claude Nord accuses the president if
the Bar, Me Rigaud Duplan, of wanting to settle his personal affairs through
this movement. Rigaud Duplan is one of General Prosper Avril's lawyers. The
General was arrested under the accusation of involvement in the Piatre
massacre in 1990.

The coordinator for the September 30th Foundation, Lovenski Pierre Antoine,
asked all lawyers working with the Foundation to not associate with the
movement by the jurists association. M. Pierre Antoine called this strike a
hypocritical one. According to him, the lawyers working in the jurists
association who denounce corruption within the judicial machine have no
morals. He explained that the foreign Institution that is financing this
association is the same one that had financed the boycott of the judicial
reform in Haiti, through Checci and an American known criminal named James
Smith.


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