[News] Haiti - Letter to the NY Times and Corrections to the Bicentennial Story

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From: Haiti Action Committee <haitiaction at yahoo.com>
Subject: Fwd: Haiti - Letter to the NY Times and Corrections to the 
Bicentennial Story
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 14:14:09 -0800 (PST)


Just in case you did not see the corrections in the NY Times regarding the 
Haiti Bicentennial story, they are reproduced below the following letter to 
the NY Times from the General Counsel for the government of Haiti, Mr. Ira 
Kurzban, Esq.

To provide truthful information about Haiti to the public and members of 
the media, please help us circulate this message.

Thank you for your assistance.

The Haiti Action Committee
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Kurzban letter to New York Times re: Polgreen article
Ms. Lydia Polgreen
New York Times
New York, New York

Dear Ms. Polgreen:

        I write to you and your editors because of numerous factual errors 
contained in your story on the January 1st celebrations in Haiti marking 
the 200 anniversary of that country's independence. I assume that the 
factual errors arose from your lack of familiarity with the political 
situation in Haiti or because you have been provided a good deal of 
misinformation. The article that I will address below was published on 
Friday, January 2, 2004 in the International section of the New York Times.

        First, your article states that:  "Mr Aristide was re-elected to 
the presidency in voting that many observers said was flawed" and that as 
result "the country had been locked in political crisis." You further 
stated that: "The dispute led international donors to suspend $500 million 
in aid¦" These statements are inaccurate. Such erroneous statements 
regarding Haiti often arise from the common confusion between the May 2000 
parliamentary elections and the November 2000 presidential election. In 
May, 2000, there were 30,000 candidates who ran for 7,500 positions ranging 
from mayors and department representatives to Senators and members of the 
lower chamber. Of the 7,500 elections, the Organization of American States 
challenged the methodology used in counting 8 senate seats. While the 
independent electoral council (called the "CEP" in Haiti) claimed that the 
methodology used in counting the victors in those elections had been used 
in previous elections, the OAS observers disagreed. The OAS report is clear 
that there were no credible allegations of wide spread fraud in the elections.

         In any event, no responsible international organization or 
observers contended that Mr. Aristide's election which occurred in 
November, 2000 was invalid or tainted in any manner as you suggested in 
your article. I invite you to review the OAS reports. It was clear in 
November, 2000 that Mr. Aristide's election was not marred by fraud or 
allegations of impropriety.

         As soon as Mr. Aristide took office in February 2001 he used the 
power of his Presidency and as the head of his party to encourage the 
senators from the 8 contested seats to step down and pave the way for a new 
election. The seven senators from his party, Lavalas, agreed to do so. The 
eighth senator, who came from an opposition party, declined to do so.

          The second error in your article is the claim that the 
international embargo was the result of Mr. Aristide's election. Again, 
this is erroneous. The international embargo began toward the end of Mr. 
Preval's term and had nothing to do with Mr. Aristide's election. Indeed, 
the United States government has repeatedly taken the position that Mr. 
Aristide is the democratically elected president of the nation. The embargo 
was continued under President Aristide's term under the claim that funds 
would not be released until a settlement was reached with the opposition, 
notwithstanding the fact that the seven senators had resigned. The embargo, 
which continues to exist today, and makes it impossible for the government 
to have any success in alleviating the poverty you address in your article, 
is therefore not in response to solving the political impasse. That impasse 
was solved when the senator's stepped down. Nor can the financial embargo 
be seriously linked to progress in making the country more democratic, 
because the World Bank, the United States, France and the European Union, 
who today refuse to provide any direct assistance to the Government of 
Haiti, provided financial assistance to the Duvaliers during their 
dictatorship, as well as the military governments that succeeded Duvalier. 
I leave it to your judgment and good sense as to the true reasons for the 
embargo. In any event, they are completely unrelated to President 
Aristide's election.

The third error in your article is simply baffling. I assume you attended 
the January 1st ceremonies at the National Palace in Port-au-Prince based 
upon the information contained in your story. The Miami Herald stated that 
there were "hundreds of thousands" of Haitians at the National Palace. Even 
the most minimum reasonable estimate of the number of supporters at the 
National Palace on January 1st, had to range conservatively from 50,000 to 
100,000 people. Your description that Aristide spoke to a "small but 
enthusiastic crowd" simply blinks reality. I have taken the liberty to send 
photographs to a professional service that will provide me and your editors 
with a true count as to the number of people who appeared at the National 
Palace. Although the numbers game can be tricky and I am not assuming you 
had any bias in writing your article, one would literally have to be blind 
to say that there was a "small" crowd at the National Palace.

             Your article also states that President Mbeki was the only 
head of state to attend the ceremonies. Your article states: "But it was a 
measure of Mr. Aristide's political isolation and Haiti's persistent 
troubles that only one [head of state] showed up." Your own article 
contradicts this assertion as you state later that the Prime Minister of 
the Bahamas attended the ceremonies. Indeed, as you were at the National 
Palace, I am sure you heard Prime Minister Perry Christie state that this 
was an historic occasion because it was the first time a head of state from 
the Bahamas had visited the Republic of Haiti. I understand that this may 
not detract from your general statement, but it certainly is misleading to 
single out Mr. Mbeki, to ignore Prime Minister Christie, and to ignore the 
scores of delegations from around the world who attended the celebration.

  Finally, there is the question of violence. Your article was remarkably 
silent on the violence perpetrated by the opposition on January 1st and 
before that date. Opposition members burnt a police car on January 1st. 
They blocked all three major roads into the center of Port-au-Prince by 
setting fires in the road and placing boulders throughout the city. I am 
sure you witnessed all of these events if you were in Port-au-Prince. Yet 
your article makes the opposition appear as law abiding 
democratically-motivated individuals who are subjected to tear-gassing by 
the police on one hand and violence by Aristide supporters on the other. 
Had you inquired sufficiently, you would have learned that more supporters 
of Lavalas have been killed since December 5, 2003 than in the opposition. 
I am not condoning violence on either side. However, it is misleading to 
suggest that the violence is simply directed at one side as opposed to the 
other.

              In light of the numerous errors in the article and as the 
counsel for the Government of Haiti in the United States, I kindly request 
that these errors be corrected publicly in a manner the New York Times 
deems appropriate.

              As I am certain there was no intention on your part to be 
biased in the presentation of the facts, I would be honored to have the 
opportunity to discuss with you any of these or other matters that are of 
interest to you concerning the Government of Haiti.


Sincerely,

Ira J. Kurzban, Esq.
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The New York Times corrects two points in its Bicentennial story

The New York Times saw fit to correct two points in their article on the 
Bicentennial which ran on January 2, 2004 entitled 200 Years After 
Napoleon, Haiti Finds Little to Celebrate By LYDIA POLGREEN and has added 
these two paragraphs as an addendum to the original article:

"An article on Friday about the bicentennial of Haiti's independence 
misidentified the election that outside observers called flawed, a finding 
that led to the suspension of $500 million in foreign aid to Haiti and 
contributed to the current political crisis there. It was the May 2000 
legislative election, in which the Organization of American States disputed 
the counting method used in eight Senate races ” not the November 2000 
election of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which the O.A.S. said was not 
fraudulent."

"Because of an editing error, the article also referred imprecisely to the 
size of the crowd that attended the bicentennial celebration outside the 
presidential palace. While the government estimated it in the hundreds of 
thousands, and outside journalists' estimates ranged as low as 15,000, the 
crowd was not small."



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