[News] Haiti: Blood-soaked bureaucrats

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Blood-soaked bureaucrats
John Maxwell COMMON SENSE

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20040425T000000-0500_58952_OBS_BLOOD_SOAKED_BUREAUCRATS.asp
Sunday, April 25, 2004


Petionville, Haiti - Escorted by police, rebel commander Louis-Jodel 
Chamblain waves as he walks to a jail to surrender to justice officials in 
suburban Petionville, outside Port-au-Prince last Thursday. At right is 
Chamblain's lawyer, Stamblei Gouse. (Photo: AP)

Nowhere is it more true that the pen is mightier than the sword than in an 
efficient bureaucracy. Millions more were killed by Adolf Eichmann, the 
dispatcher, than by the armies of Rommel or Timoshenko.

But the machete wielders and the pistoleros are not to be despised as they 
do the work of the often faceless placemen who sign the orders, or like 
Henry II, simply express the wish to be rid of turbulent priests, 
journalists or human rights agitators.
The Guatemalan government has just admitted its responsibility for the 1991 
slaughter of an American anthropologist. She had angered the then 
government by reporting that the government was massacring civilians, 
indigenous Mayas, in what it called a counter-insurgency campaign backed 
and financed by the United States.

In Haiti, on January 24, 1991, the family of 24 year-old youth leader, Yvon 
Desanges, found his body just outside their gate. They knew him by the 
clothes he was wearing, his face too badly mutilated to be recognised. 
There was a rope around his neck. His hands were tied. His eyes had been 
gouged out. His tongue had been cut out. He had been stabbed so many times 
it was impossible to count the wounds. He had been shot several times. His 
abdomen had been slit so that his guts spilled out onto the street.
Ten years later, youths like Yvon Desanges are still being slaughtered for 
the same reason, sometimes by the same people. Their mothers, sisters and 
girlfriends are being raped, their houses burnt.

On Thursday, one of Haiti's most notorious terrorists, Louis Jodel 
Chamblain was escorted to the Justice Ministry in Port-au-Prince by the 
justice minister himself, one Bernard Gousse, so Chamblain could surrender 
on camera, to officials of the Ministry of Justice.
Chamblain's stately surrender came against the glittering background of an 
international donors' conference from which Haiti expects lots of aid from 
such as the United States, France, the IMF and the World Bank, all of whom 
refused to help the lawfully and overwhelmingly elected President Aristide 
when he was in office.

The assassin's surrender was heralded as a "noble gesture" by Mr Gousse. Mr 
Gousse is not to be confused with Mr Latortue (Turtle), the prime minister, 
who a few weeks ago saluted Chamblain's gangsters as "Freedom Fighters".
In the weeks since, Mr Chamblain has been holding court (literally) in the 
rural areas of Haiti, where, according to reports, people accused of 
various offences against the new "Freedom" are summarily shot or beaten or 
otherwise abused.

"I am ready to give myself up as a prisoner - to give Haiti a chance so we 
can build this democracy I have been fighting for," Chamblain announced. 
The former army sergeant ran death squads for dictator Jean-Claude "Baby 
Doc" Duvalier and was a leader of the Front for the Advancement of Progress 
of the Haitian People - a paramilitary terrorist group which killed some 
3,000 civilians in the 1990s. He fled to the Dominican Republic in 1994, 
was tried in absentia for several murders and found guilty as charged. 
Under Haitian law, people tried in absentia are entitled to a new trial if 
they return to the country. They can also be pardoned.
An American lawyer who visited Haiti earlier this month said he'd been 
told: "Right now .anyone can get on the radio stations and accuse anyone 
else of a crime or with being associated with violent Lavalas gangs. It 
means that without proof they can say this about you and immediately you 
have to go into hiding, and immediately you have to be concerned with your 
own welfare; and immediately the death threats begin.."

Neither principle nor honour

The assistant secretary-general of the OAS, one Luigi Einaudi, made a 
revealing comment to a number of people gathered at the Hotel Oloffson on 
New Year's Eve last, as Haiti was about to begin the celebration of its 
bicentennial years as an independent republic.

"The real problem with Haiti is that the international community is so 
screwed up that they're actually letting Haitians run the place," Einaudi 
said, as reported by Margaret Laurent, a leading Haitian lawyer who was one 
of those within earshot. Laurent was here last week to give thanks on 
behalf of the Haitian people to the Government and people of Jamaica for 
hosting President Aristide and the refugees who have fled Haiti to avoid 
the tender mercies of Mr Chamblain's Freedom Fighters.
It may be less unpleasant to deal with the ruthless Freedom Fighters than 
with a diplomatic Canadian named David Lee, special representative of the 
OAS secretary-general and head of the OAS Special Mission to Haiti. He was 
on the platform at Gonaives when Mr Latortue hailed the gangsters as 
"Freedom Fighters".

Mr Lee, in an address to the OAS, said: "Events on the day were confused. 
It was clear that the crowds were large and enthusiastic. But from our 
location within the security bubble it was not evident who was present. Nor 
could we hear what was being said on the podium at the large public meeting 
in the main square. The various speakers did not have prepared texts and 
were in the presence of an exuberant crowd. The OAS, and I personally, 
certainly did not "approve" (as a press article claimed yesterday) of what 
was reported in the press to have been said and done on that occasion. I 
left immediately thereafter for meetings here in Washington." Or, as the 
News of the World used to say when investigating prostitutes: "We made our 
excuses and left."
According to The Associated Press, the crowd was between 2,000 and 3,000 - 
small by any standards.

"Rebel leaders who still run Haiti's fourth-largest city sat on a platform 
alongside Latortue, Organisation of American States representative David 
Lee, recently installed interim Cabinet ministers Bernard Gousse and 
retired General Herard Abraham, and new Haitian Police Chief Leon Charles."
Mr Lee obviously, had no idea where he was, no idea who was next to him on 
the platform and, in fact, was probably not even aware that President 
Aristide had been overthrown or that Mr Latortue was pretending to be prime 
minister. I wonder what he was smoking? But perhaps, like so many others in 
Haiti, he had simply been kidnapped.

Security in Port-au-Prince

According to the Haitian Press Agency, Port-au-Prince is in a state of 
paralysis at the moment, trembling in insecurity. Well-known businessman 
and leading free-zone operator, Michel Handal (who has Jamaican 
connections), was abducted on Saturday a week ago, in the central business 
district. Several other business people have been abducted but the families 
prefer to deal privately with the kidnappers, with whom, no doubt, they are 
on familiar terms.
Meanwhile, prices for staple foods have almost doubled. A bag of rice which 
cost about J$1,700 less than two months ago, now costs nearly J$2,500. 
Outside of Port-au-Prince the prices are even higher, and the security 
situation worse.

People in the capital told a visiting American lawyers' group two weeks ago 
that they are now afraid not only of the Duvalierist criminals like 
Chamblain's men, but also of the American Marines. According to some 
witnesses, the international forces led by the US Marines undertook 
targeted killings of Aristide supporters in the poorest areas in and around 
Port-au-Prince.
Anthony Fenton reports: ". we were . told that the US Marines had recently 
slaughtered, in one night, 78 people in the Belair neighbourhood of 
Port-au-Prince. Reportedly, the US [and "other foreign occupiers"] had 
brought ambulances with them in anticipation of a bloodbath. All but two of 
the people murdered were carried away in these ambulances. Now no one will 
know the identities of those killed. We were told that the interim 
government, led by the US, has the "intent to destroy popular organisations."

'Popular organisations', of course, means Aristide's Lavalas Family.
Meanwhile, the world's official Samaritan, the UN's Kofi Annan, has 
continued his expert dithering. Having passed by Haiti in January - like 
the Levite on the Jericho Road - he is now speaking grandly of a UN force 
of 6,700 soldiers and 1,600 policemen to "turn Haiti into a functioning 
democracy".

The transfer from the US to the UN force is to take place by June 1 and 
will no doubt proceed with the process of "nation building", as patented by 
George W Bush and employed so effectively in Iraq. I am personally offended 
by the idea of 'nation building" because I believe the term was invented in 
Jamaica by Norman Manley and his people at Jamaica Welfare, and that it 
properly means that the people of the country are the ones who consciously 
mould themselves into a nation. It is not a political brain transplant nor 
a transfer of technology.

Nor Grace nor Shame

A nation was being built in Haiti, but not according to American 
neo-liberal specifications. It encompassed things like literacy and 150 new 
high schools, more built in 10 years than in the previous two centuries; it 
encompassed improved health care, with a little help from Haiti's friends, 
such as Cuba and Dr Paul Farmer, a Harvard professor, who almost 
single-handedly at first, pulled Haiti back from the brink of surrender to 
rampaging HIV/AIDS. Farmer believes treatment for HIV/AIDS is a human 
right, which puts him beyond the pale for the bureaucrats. He deserves to 
be known and recognised across the world as a true poor people's hero.

In an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Professor Farmer 
reports simply and eloquently, the savage disruption the putsch has had on 
the health of poor Haitians. He speaks of the advances made over the past 
10 years, noting inter alia, that Haiti's government had US$300 million for 
all the public services it provided, and contrasted that with the revenues 
of just one of Harvard's 17 hospitals with revenues of US$1.3 billion. 
There was general disregard for the neutrality and immunity of health 
institutions during conflict; several hospitals were the targets of 
violence, including Farmer's own hospital in the Central Plateau where two 
patients were murdered. The university hospital is at a standstill for lack 
of personnel; vehicles belonging to Dr Farmer's clinic were stolen, halting 
the movement of patients and medicines, and, in early March Haiti's newest 
medical school - Tabarre - for the training of poor people's children to be 
doctors, was taken over by the US Army as a military base;.

Dr Farmer asks: "What will become of its faculty, composed in large part of 
Cuban public health specialists, but also including Haitian, US and 
European teachers? More to the point, what will become of its 247 medical 
students? .what will happen to the only medical school in Haiti whose top 
priority is the development of a cadre of physicians to serve the nation's 
poorest and most vulnerable people?
Perhaps we should ask these questions of Kofi Annan, Colin Powell and P J 
Patterson, all of whom come from the same sort of background that most 
Ghanaians, Jamaicans and Haitians share. Part of that background, of 
course, is the struggle for liberty led 200 years ago by Haitian and 
Jamaican slaves dying so their children could be free.

Copyright©2004 John Maxwell
maxinf at cwjamaica.com


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