8608: The Aristide presidency: The Terror Challenge (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Jraphaelg@aol.com

Those who think that Free Trade only implies the transfer of goods from one 
country to another ought to think twice.  It also means the exchange of Heads 
of State who do not play by the rules as set forth by the International 
Consciousness ... We have seen an Alberto Fujimori ousted for  Incapacité 
morale permanente, a Joseph Estrada, impeached and incarcerated for abuse of 
power and corruption.  Closer to us, my friends, we have Le Maître de Belgrade
 behind bars in the Netherlands.   This is what George Bush Sr. would call a 
QUID PRO QUO.  Milo’s head is very beneficial to the poor Yogoslavic 
republic: one billion and two hundred fifty million US dollars.  Is Haiti far 
from benefiting from such a deal? You be the judge!!! 

LIHADH

Human rights/ The Aristide presidency


THE TERROR CHALLENGE : WHAT DID THE CLINTON-GORE ADMINISTRATION ACHIEVE, IN 
HAITI, IN OCTOBER 1994 ?

By the Haitian-American League for Human Rights

While Colin Powell, the first African-American to become secretary of 
state“is doing everything he can to keep the peace process moving forward” 
in the Middle East, Haiti is gasping for its last breath.  Last month, Mr. 
Arrested stunned nation.  He went to the national police headquarters and 
said(on t.v) to the policemen” from now on when you arrest a thief kill him.  
Since then across the country Aristide’s supporters keep burning people 
alive.  The Haitian-American League for Human Rights denounces this kind of 
his behavior as a subversion of the basics of democracy

In his ON WAR, Written more than one hundred years ago, the wise Prussian 
Karl Von Clausewitz wrote “no one starts a war or rather no one in his senses 
should do so without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve 
by that war and how he intends to achieve it”.  Mistake number one in Haiti 
which led to Clausewitz’s rule number two.  “ political leaders must set a 
war’s objectives while armies achieve them’”.

In October 1994, when former president Bill Clinton and his people used 
taxpayer fund- $ 4 billion- and twenty thousand troops to “RESTORE 
DEMOCRACY” IN Haiti what was in fact their purpose? What was the state of 
their minds?  What do they intend to achieve?

History will respond!

However as a human rights organization we have to take issue with them on the 
sorry state of the US foreign policy toward Haiti.  The people of Haiti are 
not better off than  twenty years ago- no electricity, no clean water, no 
adequate sanitation facilities- Mr. Clinton and his friends have only 
created a permanent under-class of pauper people see king hands out at the 
beginning of the twenty first century.

THE ILLEGAL ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT OF EX-PRESIDENT PROSPER AVRIL

The country belongs to 4 percent of Haitians.  Those in power in the name of 
restoring democracy are an Island of new millionaires in a vast sea of 
despair, despotism, and cynical opposition.  What the hell kind of leaders 
does Haiti have?  

How can they talk about peace and democracy when the country had become a 
save heaven for drug traffickers who have the power to name their own judges, 
whereas political leaders are still in exile?

The recent arrest and imprisonment of ex-president Prosper Avril- although a 
ruling of the Appeal court, Mr. Avril is still in jail!- member of the 
Democratic Convergence signifies a major defeat for the rule of law

A BIN LADEN COMPLEX

It makes our blood boil to think that the LAVALAS REGIME has a BIN LADEN COM 
PLEX.  Its leaders cannot operate out of their TERROR NETWORK Is there an 
“homme serieux” in both the literal and broader senses among those in power 
who pretend to want peace, to “ negotiate”? Had it has not been the reading 
of Nelson Mandela’s LONG WALK TO FREEDOM we would have lost faith in the 
STRUGGLE.

When we look into the facts nothing in his past seemed to show that Mister de 
KLERK would change South Africa one day in “one sweeping action”.  Remember 
as education minister he had tried to keep black students out of white 
universities.  Astonishingly on August 1989, two days after he sworn in as 
acting president in his inaugural address de Klerk said his government was 
committed to peace and that it would negotiate with any other group committed 
to peace.

>From jail, Nelson Mandela wrote him a letter and asked a meeting.  Mandela 
started meeting with a secret negotiating committee- only in Haiti 
negotiation is not secret headed by Gerrit Viljoen, a brilliant mind with a 
doctorate in classics.  His role? bring the discussion into a constitutional 
framework.

What did Nelson Mandela do? he pressed the government to show evidence of its 
good faith by releasing political prisoners at Pools Moor and Robben Island 
While he promised the committee that the government could expect discipline 
behavior from them, they had to be released unconditionally.

The prisoners were released five days later . “ It was, wrote Nelson Mandela, 
an action that rightly evoked praise here and abroad and I conveyed my 
appreciation to mister de Klerk.  Then- after his ten thousand days of 
imprisonment- Mandela added “to make peace with an enemy one must work with 
that enemy and that enemy becomes one’s partner”

Neither mister Aristide’s Lavalas party nor his network terror can have such 
greatness  If you think Prosper Avril can write Jean Bertrand Aristide 
requesting a meeting... then meet with him in his palace urging him to 
release political prisoners to display evidence of his good intention you are 
a fool !!!

TWO FUNDAMENTAL CHALLENGES
 
Aristide himself is a prisoner.  We have learned from Mandela “ A man who 
takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind 
the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness.  I am not truly free if I am 
taking away someone else’s freedom just as surely I am not free when my 
freedom is taken from me.  The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed 
of their humanity”

America is a nation dedicated to the rule of law; as a practical matter, this 
means that it is a nation ruled, effectively, by lawyers.  It is becoming a 
country obsessed with due process, virtually, to the exclusion of 
expeditiously applied  justice  Two fundamental challenges remain in the 
fight against the LAVALAS REGIME’s TERROR NETWORK.  one is to ascertain, what 
its links might be with sophisticated international sponsors of violence such 
as the dangerous Colombian drug Lords.  The other is to prevail on the 
protectors of The Aristide’s Lavalas Party on THE HILL in order to remind 
Americans and the rest of the world that terrorists like any other criminals, 
may be caught, tried, and punished for their crimes.

 The United States of America won’t win the war on drug if they don’t help 
to bring integrity to the Haitian criminal-justice system.  THE WALL STREET 
JOURNAL may 29,2001-had it right.  “ For people connected with the 
Clinton-presidency-cum political machine to attach themselves like pilot fish 
 to the bleeding ruin of Haiti under Jean Bertrand Aristide, in the wake of 
an enormous commitment of American prestige and money on behalf of Haiti’s 
people, doesn’t survive any conceivable smell test”

How could this happen here at this place- right in the back yard of America - 
one man only one man, set up his own parliament and uses the judicial system 
to intimidate and arrest his political and economic opponents?

LI.H.A.D.H
  
 
”