|
The
Tsunami: When Aid's no help | Grief
counselling racket | China
|
Haiti
June 27, 2005
Exiled Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide tells Naomi
Klein: " People in the Canadian government have Haitian
blood on their hands"; Minister Pettigrew denies reports
of killings carried out by Canadian-trained Haitian police
1. Aristide transcript On June 20, Canadian journalist Naomi
Klein conducted an extensive interview with ousted Haitian President
Jean Bertrand Aristide for a forthcoming book. The interview
took place in Pretoria, South Africa, where President Aristide
is living in exile. For the first time, President Aristide spoke
on record about the role played by Canada in his February 2004
ouster and the tumultuous period since.
The interview comes following last week's Montreal International
Conference on Haiti, where a protester splashed the hands of
Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew with red paint on June 17.
While Aristide was clear that he did not condone such an action,
he did tell Ms. Klein that due to its support for the February
2004 coup that overthrew him and subsequent training of the Haitian
National Police, "some people in the Canadian government
and the Canadian army have Haitian blood on their hands."
For his part, Minister Pettigrew continues to deny the widespread
reports of killings of innocent demonstrators carried out by
Canadian-trained Haitian police.
Naomi Klein is currently traveling; members of the media with
questions about the interview can contact Jackie Joiner at Klein
Lewis Productions, 416-504-1664. To contact Haiti Action Montreal,
e-mail haitiaction@sympatico.ca or call Yves Engler at (514)
807-9037.
Haiti Action Montreal obtained a copy of the interview from
Naomi Klein. The following is an edited excerpt:
Naomi Klein: Pierre Pettigrew just hosted a summit on the
"transition" and some Haitian solidarity activists
did an action where they put some red paint on [Foreign Minister
Pierre] Pettigrew's hands to symbolize that Canada has blood
on its hands in Haiti. Does Canada have blood on its hands in
Haiti?
President Jean Bertrand Aristide: Some people in the Canadian
government yes, they have Haitian blood on their hands. But not
Canada as all the people of Canada or as one country. I try to
make a clear distinction between the Canadian people who didn't
decide to have their government going to Haiti. seeing Pettigrew
and the others with the Haitian blood on their hands.
Klein: Whose blood is on the hands of the Canadian government?
Aristide: I met with Prime Minister Martin in Mexico [at the
Special Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, January 2004]. I
have to say that the conversation with Prime Minister Martin
at that time was a good one.
I did not realize that he was so ready to follow the Americans'
agenda but the fact is he did exactly the opposite of what I
observed him saying in Mexico at that time. The coup, or the
kidnapping, was lead by the United States, France and Canada.
These three countries were on the front lines by sending their
soldiers to Haiti before February 29 [2004, when Aristide was
overthrown], by having their soldiers either at the airport or
at my residence or around the palace or in the capital to make
sure that they succeeded in kidnapping me, leading [to the] the
coup. [Aristide then discussed the actions of the Canada-trained
Haitian National Police:]
.Up to today, they continue to open fire on the Haitian people
demonstrating asking for my return -- like last May 18, more
than 500,000 people were in the streets of Port-au-Prince asking
for my return. They didn't open fire on them at that time and
they saw what the Haitian people could do - that's why they keep
opening fire on them, to prevent them from having millions of
people demonstrating all over the country to ask for my return.
So they still kill the Haitian people through those thugs.
When members of the United Nations don't open fire on the people,
they have their thugs doing the job for them -- through the police,
former military, convicted drug dealers. That's why, unfortunately,
we have to say yes, some people in the Canadian government and
the Canadian army have Haitian blood on their hands.
Klein: What was your reaction when you heard about the protest
against Pettigrew?
Aristide: I don't encourage people to go against any government
in Canada or to go against the de facto government in Haiti.
I encourage them to resist in a peaceful way while they are asking
for my return.
2. Pettigrew transcript
Since July 2004, Canada has provided training for the Haitian
National Police (HNP). At the same June 17 press conference where
he was splashed with red paint, Minister Pettigrew was asked
about the accusations that the HNP have been shooting unarmed
demonstrators in Haiti. This was his response, according to the
transcript of video footage obtained by Haiti Action Montreal:
Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew: Well you're talking about
allegations that we do not accept. We have here the very chief
of MINUSTAH [the UN mission in Haiti], we have here the minister
from the transitional government. And you can pretend all kinds
of things but what I can tell you is that I'm very proud, very
proud of the Canadian police contribution in the MINUSTAH led
by Mr. [Juan Gabriel] Valdez. I think the Haitian police is doing
its very best in extremely difficult circumstances, and obviously,
obviously, Canada would never condone any activity by which [unclear]
would not respect the rule of law. Of anyone.
Q: So just to follow up, do you deny the reports in the international
press - Pettigrew: Well if you are referring to the study -
Q: In the Associated Press, in Reuters - do you deny those
reports, where journalists have had eyewitness accounts that
they have witnessed Haitian police killing unarmed protesters.*
I just want to clarify. Pettigrew: If they did, I have not heard
of that. If you are talking about the Miami University study**
that is pretending all kinds of things that might have been taken
by some of the members of the press, I absolutely think that
it is propaganda which is absolutely not interesting. What interests
me is the future of Haiti, it is the future of Haitians, it is
the progress of democracy, and the progress of the rule of law.
-- * The press reports in question include the following: . Miami
Herald, March 1 2005: "Haitian police opened fire on peaceful
protesters Monday, killing two, wounding others and scattering
an estimated 2,000 people marching through the capital to mark
the first anniversary of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's ouster.
The late-morning disturbance, witnessed by U.N. peacekeepers
and foreign journalists alike, lends critics of the new government
a powerful piece of evidence to back their allegations that police
are persecuting Aristide supporters. 'I'm not aware of any shots
[fired] at the police,' said Brazilian Navy Cmdr. Carlos Chagas
Braga, second in command of the peacekeepers. 'Everything was
going peacefully. . . . We don't know why they came to disband
the demonstration.'"
"Peacekeepers, whose orders are to support the police,
stood by as the attack occurred. The police quickly disappeared,
leaving the bodies on the street. 'When things like this happen
we are in a bad situation,' Chagas added. 'We are supposed to
support the Haitian National Police. We cannot fire at them.'"
. Associated Press, March 24 2005: "Police opened fire
Thursday during a street march in Haiti's capital to demand the
return of ousted resident Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Witnesses said
at least one person was killed.. Several gunshots rang out as
the demonstrators approached the local police station, sending
demonstrators fleeing. Protesters said the shots were fired by
an anti-Aristide street gang. The gunfire apoparently didn't
injure shooting [sic]. But a short while later, police began
shooting as a group of protesters reached a main avenue leading
to the international airport, killing one man, witnesses said.
Associated Press reporters saw police firing into the air and
toward protesters."
. Associated Press, April 27 2005: "Police fired on protesters
demanding the release of detainees loyal to Haiti's ousted president
Wednesday, killing at least five demonstrators, U.N. officials
and witnesses said. Witnesses said Haitian police arrived as
the demonstrators neared the headquarters of the U.N. peacekeeping
mission in the capital of Port-au-Prince and fired shots to disperse
the crowd. U.N. mission spokesman Damian Onses-Cardona confirmed
that police opened fire on demonstrators but had no further information.
U.N. civilian police spokesman Dan Moskaluk said peacekeepers
found five bodies.. The incident marked the third time in three
months that Haitian police have fatally opened fire on demonstrators
in Port-au-Prince." . Reuters, June 5 2005:
"As many as 25 people were killed in police raids on
Friday and Saturday in the slums of Haiti's capital after the
government said it would get tougher on gangs, morgue workers
and witnesses said. Clerks at the morgue in the General Hospital
said they had taken in 17 bodies on Saturday and three bodies
on Friday after the raids in Bel-Air and other Port-au-Prince
slums, centers of support for ousted President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. A Reuters journalist also saw five other bodies in
two different areas of Bel-Air. Residents said the dead were
shot by police and accused police of setting slum homes on fire."
".
'The police arrived, they started shooting. There were other
people shooting too, but they managed to flee,' said Ronald Macillon,
a Bel-Air resident. 'The police killed a lot of people and set
several homes on fire,' Macillon said. Several other witnesses
gave similar accounts. A spokesman for U.N. troops in Bel-Air,
Col. Carlos Barcelos, told Reuters the Brazilian contingent based
in that slum did not take part directly in the raids, but put
up checkpoints and secured the outside perimeter. The Central
Director for the Administrative Police, Renan Etienne, told Reuters
he could not say how many people were killed or comment on allegations
police set homes on fire, as he had not yet received police reports."
Aristide praises UN for
Haiti
March 10, 2005 (SA)
Johannesburg - The United Nations'
commitment to Haiti had enabled its people to stage the first
peaceful protest in a year, said ousted president Jean-Bertrand
Aristide on Wednesday.
Aristide said: "It was
a beautiful piece of history yesterday when people were able
to demonstrate peacefully and there were no thugs,"
He was talking to reporters
after giving a speech at University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
Aristide attributed this to
the UN's guarantee of the security of demonstrators.
He said: "After one year
at least the UN is doing something different to protect the rights
of the people."
Around 100 000 people reportedly
took to the streets on Tuesday in support of Aristide, who was
ousted in a coup d'etat in February last year.
'Haitians want Aristide back'
He referred to this as a "kidnapping"
and said it was the 34th coup d'etat in Haiti's history.
"They were demonstrating
because they wanted their elected president back home."
He said UN head Kofi Annan
criticised last week's "massacre" where police, flanked
by UN troops, fired at demonstrators marking the anniversary
of Aristide's flight to South Africa.
At least two people were killed.
Aristide said more than 10
000 Haitians had been killed in the last year in political violence.
He said: "What South Africa
had prior to 1994 is what Haiti has today."
Dealing with non-racial society
He said his time in South Africa
had shown him this is where the future of Africa is - not just
South Africa.
"South Africa is an example
for every country willing to deal with a non-racial society."
But, Aristide said he would
return to Haiti - one day.
He said: "I will return.
I don't know when, but I will return.
"My dream is to continue
to serve the people. My constitution prevents me from serving
as president again.
That leaves me to do what I
always wanted to do - to serve as a priest."
Aristide had served two terms
as president: from 1990 to 1991, which was interrupted by time
in exile and resumed from 1994 to 1996, and from 2000 until forced
into exile again in 2004.
Prior to 1990, he was a Catholic
priest and an academic.
'Drug dealers and convicts'
Although he hoped to go home,
Aristide denied reports that he was stirring up trouble in Haiti
from his base in Pretoria.
"That is false... They
are looking for a scapegoat to find a way to justify what they
cannot justify,"
He referred to his accusers
as "drug dealers and convicts".
"How can I have such power
from South Africa? All I can do is to pray that they will not
kill the people while they are demonstrating."
He said the drug dealers and
convicts were financed through the US state department to the
tune of $51bn.
"One percent of the population
owns 51% of the wealth and they use it to move from coup d'etat
to coup d'etat."
He said he was also not actively
involved in lobbying support for his cause.
"I try to observe, to
share the experiences of my people, to pay attention to what's
going on there."
Edited by Andiswa Mesatywa
In Haiti, 'hunger in
dark places' is real ... and ignored U.S. media, rights groups
silent on country's torment
By Mark Weisbrot, Houston
Chronicle, March 4, 2005.
President Bush's State of the
Union speech was long on "the force of human freedom,"
which he called "the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger
in dark places, the longing of the soul." Yet just 600 miles
from Florida, that hunger and longing is being met every day
with bullets, beatings, arrests and rape by the unelected, unconstitutional
government in Haiti. That government's biggest supporter is the
administration of George W. Bush.
One year ago, Washington helped
depose the elected government of Haiti. The populist ex-priest
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's president, became the first elected
leader to be overthrown twice by armed thugs supported by the
United States.
The first time was in 1991,
after he had served only seven months as the country's first
democratically elected president. At the time, the evidence of
Washington's culpability was circumstantial: The leaders of the
coup were on the CIA payroll. A death squad organization that
killed thousands of Aristide's supporters during the 1991-1994
dictatorship was headed by Emanuel Constant, who told the world
on CBS' 60 Minutes that the CIA hired him for the job.
This time, our government's
role in the coup was more overt. "This is a case where the
United States turned off the tap," said economist Jeffrey
Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Colombia University.
"I believe they did that deliberately to bring down Aristide."
Sachs was referring to the cut off of funding from the Inter-American
Development Bank and World Bank from 2001-2003. It was an unusually
cruel thing to do: Haiti is desperately poor, with the worst
incidence of malnutrition and disease in the hemisphere.
But it worked, in that it made
people's lives more miserable in Haiti. The economy shrank, and
Washington poured in tens of millions of dollars through USAID,
the International Republican Institute and other organizations
to forge a political opposition. It was a movement that could
never win an election, but it controlled the media and had some
heavily armed former military personnel - including convicted
murderers - who wanted to get back in power.
On Feb. 29 of last year they
got their wish. As their insurrection closed in on Port-au-Prince,
U.S. officials told Aristide they could not guarantee his safety
- despite the fact that they managed to secure the airport with
just a handful of U.S. Marines. According to U.S. press reports,
they told Aristide he was going to a news conference. They took
him instead to the airport where he boarded a plane to an unknown
location, which turned out to be the Central African Republic.
The Bush administration's major
allegation against Aristide was that he allowed armed gangs,
called "Chimeres," to attack his political opponents.
Whatever the truth to these charges, they cannot match the hell
on Earth that is now Haiti's existence.
The Center for the Study of
Human Rights at the University of Miami Law School conducted
an investigation in Haiti last November. Among the findings:
"summary executions are a police tactic," and the jails
are filled with political prisoners "including the ousted
constitutional government's Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and Interior
Minister Jocelerme Privert." Many of these prisoners are
held without charge, beaten and denied medical help.
Cite Soleil, a horribly poor
slum of 250,000 people, is under virtual lockdown, cut off from
commercial traffic. Young men cannot leave for fear of arrest,
since the neighborhood is known to support Aristide. People who
are shot by police, army or pro-government thugs treat their
injuries at home because anyone who shows up at a hospital with
a bullet wound can be arrested. Bodies of victims can be seen
in the streets, being devoured by dogs and pigs.
The goal of the present government
seems to be to use violence and fear to intimidate the pro-Aristide
population, which appears still to be the majority and who continue
to demand the return of their elected president. It is eerily
similar to the 1991-1994 dictatorship in both its objectives
and methods.
But they are making sure that,
unlike last time, Haitians do not escape the island to embarrass
the U.S. government by washing up - alive or dead - on the shores
of Florida. The silence here regarding Haiti's torment, in the
media and among major U.S. human rights organizations, is deafening
and shameful.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director
of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Center for Economic and Policy
Research, 1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC
20009 Phone: (202) 293-5380, Fax: (202) 588-1356, Home: www.cepr.net
Colin Powell's Crime
in Progress
from Black
Commentary, January 2005 (Published with permission)
History will record that the
first Black U.S. Secretary of State personally engineered the
theft of the national sovereignty of Haiti, the world's first
Black republic and the second nation in the western hemisphere
to free itself from European rule. Such is Colin Powell's horrific
legacy an historic shame and blight on the collective honor
of Black America.
Powell returned to the scene
of his crime last week to assure Gerard Latortue, the evilly
buffoonish U.S.-installed interim Prime Minister, "We are
with you all the way" words of encouragement to a
man who is said to have estimated it will be necessary to kill
25,000 people in the capital alone to stop calls for the return
of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide (see , "A
Clandestine Interview from Haiti: Resistance in the Slums of
Port-au-Prince," October 14, 2004).
As if to honor the Secretary,
Haitian police killed four men from Aristide's Lavalas party
who they claimed started a gun battle while Powell visited the
National Palace. But who knows the real circumstances? Haiti
is drenched in blood. "The background is that they're
massacring Lavalas supporters on a daily basis now in most of
the Port-au-Prince port areas. People are afraid to come out
of their homes," said Ira Kurzban, an Aristide attorney.
"What's happening in Haiti is what's happening in Iraq:
It's just total chaos, except there are no U.S. troops on the
ground."
Brazilian-led United Nations
troops provide a veneer of legitimacy to Latortue's gangster
regime, operating joint patrols with ski mask-wearing "policemen"
who carry out summary executions in the capital's sprawling slums.
Mass murder is official policy in Haiti. "Shoot them and
ask questions later," Jean Philippe Sassine, the assistant
mayor of Port-au-Prince told the San Francisco Chronicle. "Right
now, our country needs security. Unless you clean up the bad
people, the gangs, there will be no progress. Let us do it, or
it will be worse."
Perhaps thousands have been
killed or "disappeared" no one can provide even
a ballpark figure since February 28, when U.S. troops sent
President Aristide on an odyssey to the Central African Republic,
Jamaica and, now, South Africa, a crime against nationhood endorsed
after the fact by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Yet even the
timid international civil servant recoils at the sheer lawlessness
into which Haiti has descended. "I should like to remind
the transitional government that the arbitrary detention of people
solely for their political affiliation is in contravention of
fundamental human rights principles," said Annan, last month,
calling on Latortue to release Lavalas and former Aristide government
officials, or put them on trial. "Armed groups have made
arbitrary arrests and run illegal detention centers in some localities.
The justice system remained dysfunctional and the National Police
continued to operate outside the purview of the rule of law."
Then, true to form, Annan duly
requested that the Security Council extend the UN's "peacekeeping"
mandate for another 18 months.
For some political prisoners,
jail is a way-station to a secret grave, according to Marguerite
Laurent, chairperson of Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network. "Haitian
'police' simply assassinated at least 10 of the helpless and
unarmed prisoners they are holding as hostages in the National
Penitentiary," said the New York-based attorney. "Reports
also indicate bodies are taken from the jail and dumped in mass
graves at night so that the world would not know how many are
being murdered."
Godfather to Thugs
In a December 3 letter soaked
in sarcasm and timed to coincide with Powell's trip to Haiti,
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) urged the lame duck Secretary, "as
your last official acts of mercy and compassion for the Haitian
people, to call for the immediate release of all remaining political
prisoners and other Haitians who are being illegally detained
in Haitian prisons, and to do whatever is required to expedite
desperately needed humanitarian assistance."
Waters was among the Congressional
Black Caucus members who virtually stormed the White House last
February 26 demanding the administration defend constitutional
democracy in Haiti, two days before the U.S. kidnapped President
Aristide. Knowing full well that Aristide would be either deposed
or dead that weekend, Powell, Condoleezza Rice and George Bush
assured the alarmed lawmakers that the U.S. would respect Haiti's
sovereignty and the rule of law. As it turned out, less than
48 hours later Powell committed the predicate criminal act in
the abduction and ouster of a foreign head of state, as reported
in our March 4, 2004 Cover Story, "Godfather Colin Powell,
the Gangster of Haiti":
"Ron Dellums, the distinguished
former Congressman from the San Francisco Bay area who worked
as a lobbyist for Aristide's government, got a call from the
Head-Negro-In-Charge [Powell] on Saturday, warning in no uncertain
terms that gunmen were coming to kill Aristide on Sunday morning.
The U.S., said Powell, would not lift a finger to stop them.
When the Americans come to call, Aristide must leave with them.
"It is a mind-boggling
measure of the Bush Pirates' ferocious lawlessness that Powell
would personally initiate the overt, criminally culpable act
in the kidnapping of a head of state. This aspect of the crime
alone should send him to The Hague."
Rep. Waters remembers well
those events. Her December 3 letter lays the current chaos in
Haiti directly on the U.S. and Powell's doorstep:
"History will record that
this crisis is a direct result of the failed policies of the
United States, France and Canada, which worked with the Group
of 184, the former members of the Haitian Army and known thugs
to carry out last February's coup d'etat. While
I am certain that you would be the last to agree, I believe that
the only way to stabilize Haiti is to do so with the return of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the democratically-elected
President of Haiti, until the end of his term in office, with
a restoration of assistance for the rebuilding of Haiti's infrastructure
and, at the end of his term, assistance for free and fair elections.
"I remain deeply disappointed
by the lack of leadership from the international community, including
the United States, France, Canada and the United Nations peacekeeping
forces. While international officials claim to be committed
to democracy in Haiti, they have made no serious effort to disarm
the thugs and killers who were involved in the coup d'etat
or to demand that the interim government respect the human rights
of the Haitian people."
Of course, Latortue and the
rampaging ex-military thugs, drug dealers and criminals tormenting
Haiti are creatures of the country's tiny elite (formerly arrayed
under the banner of Group 184), the International Republican
Institute which provided finances, legitimacy and political
cover to the "rebels" in their Dominican Republic sanctuaries
and Colin Powell, himself.
Invitation
to Murder
The pace of police raids, executions
and disappearances has increased markedly since September 30,
when police fired on Lavalas supporters calling for President
Aristide's return. Latortue's project to kill 25,000 citizens
of the capital is in motion. "If the government doesn't
take responsibility, we will take it," former Army Sgt.
Remissainthe Ravix declared to an American reporter. "If
they give us the order, in three days we'll clear Bel Air (a
Port-au-Prince slum) and Cite Soleil of bandits."
When it is understood that,
in Latortue's Haiti, "bandits" refers to Aristide supporters
defending their lives from death squads, Colin Powell's words
become invitations to murder: "The UN stabilization mission
ably led by South American soldiers demonstrate that the international
community's strong commitment for restoration of order and democracy
in Haiti. The political violence and corruption cannot be tolerated.
To build a strong vibrant democracy and to advance the rule of
law, we have got to get the other weapons off the street. Without
security, Haiti's democracy will remain at risk."
What double-speak! The Bush
administration, with Colin Powell on point, destroyed Haitian
democracy and sovereignty, employing death squads and criminals
as its favored instruments. Far from exerting pressure to stop
the massacres, the U.S. has leaned heavily on the UN force's
Brazilian commanders to act more aggressively against the population.
"We are under extreme pressure from the international community
to use violence," said General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira,
speaking to a congressional commission in Brazil. "I command
a peacekeeping force, not an occupation force ... we are not
there to carry out violence, this will not happen for as long
as I'm in charge of the force."
The general specifically cited
the U.S., France and Canada as the countries demanding greater
use of violence by the UN force. "To do this would require
a force of 100,000 men prepared to seek and kill in large numbers
and this is not our role, nor do we want it," he said.
Apparently, the Brazilian general
is unwillingly to help meet Latortue's 25,000-body quota
although, in an interview with a Haitian radio station, he sought
to clarify his mission: "We must kill the bandits,
but it will have to be the bandits only, not everybody."
Clearly, somebody with superpower clout is pressuring
UN soldiers to get with the program to kill "everybody"
associated with Lavalas. No one fits that description better
than Colin Powell, the man who threatened President Aristide's
life on the Saturday before his ouster a gangster playing
soldier-diplomat.
Brazil is especially sensitive
to American "diplomacy" as it maneuvers to gain a permanent
seat on a reorganized UN Security Council, an ambition that may
have led South America's largest nation to volunteer so eagerly
to replace American occupation forces in Haiti. An analysis by
the Council On Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) speculates that leftist
President Lula da Silva's "greatest goal is not necessarily
the salvation of Haiti, but the advancement of Brazil."
When speaking to domestic audiences, da Silva attempts to give
the impression that Brazil took on the Haiti mission in order
to get the Americans out. "If we weren't there (in Haiti),
U.S. troops would be doing what we would never do," said
the Brazilian President, presumably meaning, killing "everybody."
Whatever Brazil's motives might
be, Haitian sovereignty is nowhere in the equation, having been
erased, first and foremost, by Colin Powell.
Brazil's own domestic nightmare
death squads that exterminate children is now being
replicated on the streets of Port-au-Prince. An American named
Michael Brewer, who runs a home for "street kids and runaway
'restavek' slave children" says carloads of men
"who are actually members
of the now disbanded military, have began patrolling the streets
of Port-au-Prince and are indiscriminately murdering street children
for no reason other than sport. These men prowl the streets of
the city in groups of 6 to 10 with high-powered military assault
rifles, shotguns and 9mm pistols, wearing all-black uniforms
with black ski masks over their heads to conceal their identities.
They justify the murders of these boys by referring to them as
'vagabonds' and say that they are 'cleaning the streets.'"
In one instance, "a nine-year-old
named Emmanuel was running from a group of these men after he
refused to come to them when they called him," Brewer reports.
"They shot him in the leg with an assault rifle to stop
him. Three of the men casually walked up to where the child was
lying on the ground and crying. They ridiculed him, then shot
him again with pistols and a shotgun, for a total of 4 more times."
There are "dump zones," said Brewer, "where the
decomposing bodies of little boys can be found any day of the
week. I have found many. This is blatant genocide. The merciless
atrocities committed on these defenseless, harmless and innocent
street children go completely unnoticed, unreported, and uninvestigated."
This is also part of Colin
Powell's legacy.
Haiti to the
Dustbin of History
Canada proved that it remains
"The Great White North" by joining the U.S. and France
in their Coalition of the Racists to overthrow Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. In response to a request from the Foreign Affairs Committee
of the Canadian House of Commons, the Canadian Foundation
for the Americas prepared a plan to establish a UN-sanctioned
protectorate in Haiti, thus formally stripping the nation of
sovereignty for the foreseeable future. Like Brazil, Canada hopes
to promote its own interests at the expense of Haitian independence.
"This is an opportunity for Canada to assert the leadership,
which the Prime Minister is seeking, complement multilateral
measures that Canada already has supported and raise Canada's
hemispheric profile," says the report.
In typical "White Man's
Burden" language, the report blames Haitians for the current
"failed state" the Latortue state that George
Bush and Colin Powell created to replace Aristide's popularly
elected, besieged government! and all but concludes that
Haitians do not have the capacity for self-rule: "Without
question, governance has been incompetent, corrupt and frequently
brutal over the 200 years of independence and these adjectives
can all be applied to the government of Jean Bertrand Aristide."
For their own good, Haitians'
independence will be revoked. However, if they are good little
children, sovereignty may be dribbled back over the course of
time. Under the Great White Plan, "graduation of the Haitian
State to independence and a return to the international communityshould
be sequenced on a ministry-by-ministry basis in other words
return to full Haitian authority would depend not on a fixed
date for all ministries, but on case-by-case basis of the institutional
maturity of each ministry." Peacekeepers "should remain
for one to three years while [foreign] police would remain for
up to 10 years."
U.S.-appointed interim Haitian
Prime Minister Latortue this week promised there will be elections
in November of 2005 but the Great White Plan will be working
its way from Ottawa to the United Nations headquarters in New
York, where a gaggle of prospective new Permanent Members of
the Security Council will join an eager UN bureaucracy in turning
Haiti into a semi-nation more like pre-liberation Namibia
under white-ruled South Africa than the current Kosovo, in the
Balkans. At least, that's the plan.
Haitians will write their own
plan in blood, as they did 200 years ago. We can all thank Colin
Powell for his contribution to Black history, which must now
repeat itself at great cost in lives.
Gruesome Role
Models
As Powell passes the baton
of shame to Condoleezza Rice, African Americans especially
those who are acutely concerned with the Black "image"
must contemplate how that image has been mangled and debased
by two individuals from the very bottom of our moral barrel.
Secretary of State-in-Waiting Rice thought the United States
had succeeded in destroying Venezuela's leftist democracy in
April, 2002, when it appeared that a military/rich white elite
coup had toppled the elected government of Hugo Chavez. After
a popular uprising restored the proud mestizo-mulatto Chavez
to power, a surly Condoleezza Rice greeted the news in the most
undiplomatic way imaginable "I hope that Hugo Chavez takes
the message that his people sent him, that his own policies are
not working for the Venezuelan people, that he's dealt with them
in a high-handed fashion."
Like Aristide, President Chavez
had been marked for either execution or a flight into exile.
Rice's churlish remarks may pass for statesmanship in Bush's
America, but should have caused great revulsion in Black America,
as they did throughout Latin America. This should have been particularly
true among members of the NAACP, which had only months before
honored Rice with its "Image Award." Had Chavez been
eliminated, the mostly non-white, poor Venezuelan majority might
today be subjected to the same horrors that Colin Powell has
inflicted on Haiti: death squads indistinguishable from the "police"
roaming the slums, nightly "disappearances," constant
replenishments of bodies in the "dump zones," and jails
full of political prisoners, some scheduled for secret execution.
Condoleezza Rice will soon
have the opportunity to build on her own foul legacy. However,
on an historical scale, it will be difficult to trump Colin Powell's
abominations against Haiti. More than any other individual, Powell
has defiled the honor of African-descended people everywhere.
Through prodigious acts of treachery, trickery, kidnap and mass
murder, Powell has attempted to reverse Haiti's glorious revolution
in the year of its 200th anniversary. He spits on the graves
of the hundreds of thousands of Africans who died defeating the
armies of France, Spain and Britain, and whose victory in 1804
inspired the Diaspora to believe that slavery could one day be
defeated and Black dignity, reclaimed.
As TransAfrica founder Randall
Robinson said on learning that Powell had stabbed Jean-Bertrand
Aristide and the Haitian nation in the back: "Colin Powell
is the most powerful and damaging black to rise to influence
in the world in my lifetime."
Any Black person who calls
Powell a role model is a scoundrel or a fool. Most likely, both.
HAITI: Massacre
in the Titanic Jail
December 27, 2004
Below, an article summarizing
a terrible massacre in a Haitian jail. As with most issues
of injustice, inequality and racism in Haiti, the prison massacres
must be understood in the context of the France-, Canadian- and
U.S.-instigated and backed coup in February 2004, ousting Haiti's
democratic government, empowering the current repressive, racist
and elitist regime.
There is no short-term end
in sight to Haiti's abysmal situation, in large part because
the regime is propped up and legitimized by the United Nations,
France, Canada and the U.S.
MASSACRE IN THE `TITANIC' JAIL,
by Reed Lindsay, Toronto Star,
www.star.com, Dec. 20, 2004
PORT-AU-PRINCE-As U.N. peacekeepers
struggled to deal with heavy gunfire erupting around Haiti's
national palace, the smoke billowing from the penitentiary a
few blocks away barely registered. On Dec. 1, U.S. Secretary
of State Colin Powell was visiting Haitian President Boniface
Alexandre and U.N. peacekeepers were preoccupied with securing
the palace where the two were meeting. But at the nearby national
penitentiary, a tragedy was taking place. Prisoners in a three-storey
cellblock called "Titanic" rioted, breaking free from
their cells, setting fire to mattresses and brandishing water
pipes as weapons. Prison guards called in a special police unit
that helped put down the riot. Police officials said seven prisoners
had been killed and more than 40 wounded.
But prisoners and other witnesses
say the government is concealing a savage bloodbath in which
police and guards killed dozens of detainees. Whether or
not these allegations prove true, the killings at the penitentiary
represent another black mark for Haiti's interim government,
which has come under fire for allegedly perpetrating and tolerating
a gamut of rights abuses sincet aking over last March from ousted
president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Amnesty International has denounced
arbitrary arrests, illegal detentions and summary executions
that witnesses claim were carried out by the national police.
"I saw everything,"
said Ted Nazaire, 24, a prisoner on the first floor of the Titanic
who was released two days after the riot and is now in hiding.
"It was a massacre. More than 60 were killed." Nazaire
said police opened fire on the detainees and then went from cell
to cell methodically executing others. He claimed to have witnessed
the executions while hiding under astaircase. When he was later
found, he said, he was badly beaten by prison guards. Nazaire
said the warden and another prison official warned him not to
talk about what he had witnessed, reminding him that they knew
where helived. His family members complain that police harass
them in their homenearly every day in search of Nazaire, who
walks with a limp, is coveredwith lesions inflicted by a baton,
and has a swollen left eye and a hugebump on his forehead.
While penitentiary officials
refused to grant permission to enter theprison, chief prosecutor
Jean Pierre Audain gave this reporter specialauthorization to
visit last Wednesday. During the visit, which lasted aboutan
hour before guards cut it short, estimates given by prisoners
on thenumber of killed ranged from 40 to 110. All of them refuted
the much lowerofficial figures. "It's not true," said
Frantz Rubin, a detainee whose cellhas a view into the passageway
where prisoners allege many of the killingstook place. "I
saw more than 30 dead people with my own eyes. We all wantjustice."
Prisoners eagerly swarmed the
visiting journalist, whom they said was thefirst to be allowed
in, pointing with excitement at bullet holes and whatappeared
to be the remains of dried blood on concrete walls. Some hurriedlyhanded
over shells and the smashed remains of bullets.
In the Titanic, where upwards
of 30 prisoners are packed in dank bare cells reeking of urine,
prisoners offered scraps of paper through the bars with descriptions
of what had taken place, lists of the dead and of guards accused
of brutality, pleas for help and an elegy with drawings of coffins.
More than a dozen took off their shirts and pulled down their
shorts to reveal wounds from beatings and gunfire, many with
the bullets still lodged inside their bodies. Richard Similien,
a 33-year-old detainee, said he was forced to cart bodies from
the Titanic to another part of the prison in wheelbarrows normally
used to transport cauldrons of food.
Penitentiary warden Sony Marcellus
dismissed the prisoners' accusations as lies and exaggerations.
"The prisoners will never tell the truth," said Marcellus.
The guards "are trained to shoot in the air, not at prisoners.
They would never fire on prisoners in this way." Marcellus
pointed to an affidavit signed by a justice of the peace who
had seen only seven bodies at the penitentiary the night of Dec.
1.
But Nazaire and the other prisoners
are not alone in their allegations. Rights groups say prison
guards asking for anonymity have confirmed that the official
death tally is an underestimate. An ambulance driver who asked
that his name not be published said he transported more than
30 bodies in a Toyota Land Cruiser in three trips from the penitentiary
to a dumpsite outside the city. He said two other vehicles also
transported bodies. He said he would not show this reporter the
site because he feared for his life.
People who live and work in
the streets that surround the penitentiary said they heard heavy
continuous gunfire, which lasted between two and three hours.
A neighbour and a reporter at a nearby radio station, both with
views of a catwalk that runs along the outer walls, said they
saw black-clad police officers with machine guns firing down
into the penitentiary and at prisoners' cells.
Still, evidence that more than
seven people were killed at the penitentiary has gone no further
than the testimony of prisoners and anonymous sources. Audain
said he has ordered an investigation of the riot and its aftermath.
Meanwhile, the penitentiary and its prisoners remain shrouded
in secrecy.
Since Dec. 1, prison authorities
have refused visits from journalists, human rights observers,
prisoners' lawyers and family members, all of whom were ordinarily
allowed to enter.
ONLY
17 OF 1,100 DETAINEES AT THE PENITENTIARY HAVE BEEN CONVICTED
OF A CRIME
At the hospital, three prison
guards stand over a wounded prisoner whose leg is handcuffed
to a cot. They prevent anyone from speaking to him. "It's
a total blackout," said Renan Hedouville, head of the Lawyers'
Committee for the Respect of Individual Liberties, a group that
was a loud critic of Aristide's government for rights abuses.
"Something shady seems to be going on here. It's as if they
don't want people to know what happened." Hedouville said
while prison riots had taken place under Aristide, visits to
the penitentiary had not been prohibited for such a long time.
Marcellus said visits were restricted for safety reasons, and
that the penitentiary began to permit twice-weekly family visits
last Monday.
But dozens of women waiting
outside the penitentiary last week said they had still not seen
their husbands and sons. Some have received written messagesor
assurances from guards that their relatives are safe, but many
are left to guess. "I have my son inside - Yonel Pierre,"
said a frail white-haired woman as she waited to drop off a portion
of rice and beans. "Since Dec. 1, I've brought food for
my son but I haven't received any news from him. Before, I used
to receive the dirty dishes, but now I don't get anything."
Her visits may be in vain.
Among the seven dead confirmed by the justice of the peace is
a prisoner named Yanel Pierre, a difference in spelling thatmeans
little in a country with a 50 per cent adult literacy rate. Accordingto
police spokesperson Gessy Coicou, the official death toll is
now 10, asthree prisoners wounded in the riot have since died.
The list has not beenmade public and the guards have not told
Pierre's mother whether her son,who was in a cell on the second
floor of the Titanic, is alive or dead.
While controversy swirls around
the number of dead, the riot itself hasdrawn fresh attention
to the appalling conditions at the penitentiary. Bothprisoners
and guards agree the immediate motive behind the riot was adecision
to transfer some detainees, but human rights observers have citeddismal
living conditions combined with mounting frustration at the sluggishlegal
system as underlying factors behind discontent at the penitentiary.
Like most of Haiti's prisons,
the penitentiary is once again overflowingafter being emptied
by former soldiers who helped overthrow Aristide inFebruary.
Floor space in some cells is so tight that prisoners must taketurns
sleeping in shifts. "It was worse than I have ever seen,"
said JacquesDyotte, a former warden who worked for more than
three decades in Canadianprisons before taking over as head of
a U.N. program to reform Haiti'spenitentiary system in July 2000.
Dyotte quit his job in November infrustration after prison authorities
refused to accept offers from the U. N.and Canada to improve
conditions at the national penitentiary.
Last February, former soldiers
swept across the country, setting fire to police stations and
freeing 3,500 prisoners from the penitentiaries in thearmed revolt
that toppled Aristide. Since then, the prison population hasquickly
shot back up to nearly 2,000, but with a much reduced capacity
asmany cells were destroyed.
According to Dyotte, the Titanic
and other cells at the national penitentiary were well above
maximum capacity. Dyotte said the U.N. offered$50,000 (U.S.)
to repair broken cells and the Canadian government promisedto
chip in with materials from its own penitentiary system and furniturefrom
the Port-au-Prince embassy. Dyotte said the U.N. also offered
$15,000to buy beds, mattresses and furniture for the women's
penitentiary inPort-au-Prince. All these offers of help were
turned down by Claude Theodat,director of Haiti's penitentiary
system. Theodat refused to be interviewed.
With conditions deteriorating
as the prison population continued to rise,the United Nations
Development Program (UNDP) warned Haitian officials of apending
riot at the national penitentiary in a Nov. 15 report. According
tothe author of the report and Dyotte's successor, Regis Charron,
nothing wasdone. "Pressure was going up. I told them that
at one point the system willbreak down, you will have disruption,
riots, problems," said Charron."Inmates are human beings
too and if you keep them in such bad conditionsthey will let
you know it." Charron cited insufficient food, overcrowdedcells,
too few mattresses, and the lack of productive activities andrecreation
time as examples of how conditions had worsened.
Meanwhile, only 17 of the 1,100
prisoners at the national penitentiary -about 1.5 per cent -
have been convicted of a crime, and many detainees havenot seen
a judge. According to Charron, a year ago, 10 per cent of theprisoners
had been convicted. Charron said he has recently receivedencouraging
signals from penitentiary officials that they might be willingto
accept offers by the UNDP to help improve the prison system.
The motivesbehind their refusal to do so until now remain unclear.
[POLITICAL PRISONERS]
The detainees at the national
penitentiary include some high-profile members of Aristide's
Lavalas party and many others whom rights groups say were jailed
because of their support for the ousted president, or simply
because they happened to live in one of the Port-au-Prince slums
that support Aristide. Detainees with money or political weight
can get themselves into less crowded cells where they are allowed
more freedom to walk around outside. But most prisoners, poor
and young, end up in the Titanic. Likewise, the victims of the
violence that has racked Port-au-Prince in recent months have
been mostly poor people from the slums. Some are armed supporters
of Aristide and perpetrators of violence themselves, but many
are simply people caught in the crossfire or young males singled
out by police because they fit the description of an Aristide
supporter. "Everybody in the Titanic is Lavalas," said
Nazaire, who was arrested on Aug. 2 after fighting with his brother.
"I'm not for one or the other. I'm not Lavalas, I'm not
anything. But I was arrested just like them. When the police
arrest somebody, it's for a bogus charge like illicit association
or armed robbery. If the police see a poor guy, they see him
as Lavalas."
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
