12189: This Week in Haiti 20:11 5/29/2002 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
newsweekly. For the complete edition with other news in French
and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100,
(fax) 718-434-5551 or e-mail at <editor@haitiprogres.com>.
Also visit our website at <www.haitiprogres.com>.

                           HAITI PROGRES
              "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

                      * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                      May 29 - June 4, 2002
                          Vol. 20, No. 11

VIOLENCE FLARES IN ST. RAPHAEL
JOURNALISTS BEATEN AND JAILED

On May 27, police arrested five people, including two
journalists, after goons in the pay of big landowners violently
attacked people gathering to demonstrate against the policies of
Haitian Guacimal S.A., an orange-extract company based in the
northern town of St. Raphaël.

In the ensuing melee, two local officials -- a CASEC and an ASEC
(communal section administrators) -- were wounded by gunfire and
transported to the Justinien Hospital in Cap Haïtien, where one
is rumored to have died. It appears that the shots emanated from
the armed band which attacked the would-be demonstrators.

Meanwhile, the Haitian workers group Batay Ouvriyè (Workers
Struggle) reports that two people were killed by the landowners'
thugs, and that another, Urbenn Garçon, is in critical condition
in the St. Raphael jail. Haïti Progrès was unable to confirm
these reports at press time.

Three of those arrested were members of Batay Ouvriyè, which had
sent a solidarity delegation of about a dozen people in a pick-up
truck from Cap Haïtien to the demonstration.

The two journalists, Darwin St. Julien of Haïti Progrès newspaper
and Allan Deshommes of Radio Atlantik, were both beaten by the
hooligans and then arrested by police.

"On Tuesday, May 28, the journalists were in such bad shape that
the police had to take them to the hospital," Maude Leblanc, co-
director of Haïti Progrès, explained in a May 28 press release.
"The doctor who cared for them found their condition to be so
serious that he recommended they be seen by specialists, above
all the Haïti Progrès journalist who had received a blow to his
eye."

"Even more seriously," the note continues, "the authorities have
not charged the journalists with anything and yet refuse to
release them. Why? Because the mayor of St. Raphael, Adonija
Sévère, has declared to the press that the journalists are
'terrorists'!"

Back in the days of the Duvalier dictatorships, the government
tried to justify its crackdowns by branding its victims
"communists." Today, the brand is "terrorist." The mayor is a
member of the Lavalas Family party (FL) of President Jean-
Bertrand Aristide.

In 1987 near the northwestern town of Jean-Rabel, landowners paid
goons to attack a similar peasant demonstration. Some 300
peasants were killed. One landowner at the time boasted and
exaggerated on television: "Today we killed 1042 communists."

For the past year, Batay Ouvriyè has been working closely with
Guacimal workers and peasants to form a union and press demands
for higher wages, better conditions, and off-season land use (see
Haïti Progrès, Vol. 19, No. 9, 5/16/2001 and Vol. 20, No. 7,
5/1/2002). In an Apr. 24 statement, the organization warned "that
the situation [in St. Raphael] is now so dire that there may be a
repeat of the massacres seen in earlier times, such as those at
Piatre and Gervais."

Since beginning to organize, Guacimal workers, who are largely
peasants, have been prevented from farming the land between the
orange tree groves as they used to do in the summer off-season.
With rains now falling in the region, the workers were anxious to
begin planting and had planned in their May 27 demonstration to
march to the land in question and stake their claim to plots.
Guacimal management, local big landowners, and local authorities
organized the large band of armed thugs to break up this march.

"When the delegations from Cap Haïtien and St. Michel arrived,
they met with the Guacimal workers to discuss in detail how the
land would be divvied up for the off-season planting," Batay
Ouvriyè explained in a May 28 press release. "There, they found a
band of CASEC, ASEC, and a big crowd of armed men under orders of
a local big landowner (Lavaud) along with his caretakers. When
the workers approached them to explain to them what they planned
to do, the armed gang attacked them with rocks, clubs, machetes,
and guns. Here was the confrontation, but, rapidly the workers
and the Batay Ouvriyè delegation had to run for their lives,
since that had virtually nothing with which to defend themselves.
Although they were fleeing, some were nonetheless fatally
wounded, others very gravely wounded, and others arrested (on
what charge?). They are in very serious condition in the St.
Raphael prison."

The St. Raphael mayor is a fierce opponent of the Guacimal
workers movement. He inherited the post from his brother, Fernand
Sévère, who was shot dead in an inter-FL power struggle last
December and who was also hostile to the Guacimal workers. The
mayor said that the Batay Ouvriyè delegation from Cap Haïtien was
part of a "terrorist movement," including the journalists.

Townspeople protected the journalists after they were attacked.
The police arrested the Haïti Progrès journalist as he sat in the
home of someone who was treating his wounds. The police said they
were arresting him "for his own protection."

After the arrests, the police told Haïti Progrès that they were
continuing to hold the journalists, again, "for their own
protection." It is illegal for the authorities to hold a person
more than 48 hours without charging them with a crime.

During the day May 28, a rumor circulated around St. Raphael and
Cap Haïtien that a high-level delegation from Port-au-Prince was
being dispatched "in a helicopter" to take the detained back to
Port-au-Prince, but the delegation never materialized.

"The authorities cannot send the people they arrested before a
judge," said Evariste Wilson, the representative of Haïti Progrès
in Cap Haïtien, in an interview on May 28 "above all the
journalists, who have no charges against them. They have no proof
to charge anybody with anything. That is why they are hiding from
our inquiries, giving double-talk, and beating around the bush.
Tomorrow is the deadline to release them, after 48 hours. If
there is a maneuver to remove them from the jurisdiction of St.
Raphael and Grande Rivière, where the case is supposed to be
heard, and send them to Port-au-Prince, that will once again show
that this repression is purely political."

All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Progres.

                               -30-