[News] Randall Robinson: Aristide Says 'Tell the World It Is a Coup'

[News at freedomarchives.org]

Randall Robinson: Aristide Says 'Tell the World It Is a Coup'

Monday, March 1st, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/01/1929215

TransAfrica founder and close Aristide family friend Randall Robinson also 
received a call from the Haitian president early this morning and confirmed 
Rep. Maxine Waters account. Robinson said that Aristide "emphatically" 
denied that he had resigned. Click on this link to read a full transcript 
of the Democracy Now! interview with Randall Robinson.


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RANDALL ROBINSON: The president called me on a cell phone that was slipped 
to him by someone - he has no land line out to the world and no number at 
which he can be reached. He is being held in a room with his wife and his 
sister's husband, who happened to be at the house at the time that the 
abduction occurred. The soldiers came in to the house and ordered them to 
use no phones and to come immediately. They were taken at gunpoint to the 
airport and put on a plane. His own security detachment was taken as well 
and they were put in a separate compartment of the plane. The president was 
kept with his wife with the soldiers with the shades of the plane down and 
when he asked where he was being taken, the soldiers told him they were 
under orders not to tell him that. He was flown first to Antigua, which he 
recognized, but then he was told to put the shades down again. They were on 
the ground like this for two hours before they took off again and landed 
six hours later at another location again told to keep the shades down. At 
no time before they left the house and on the plane were they allowed to 
use a phone. Only when they landed the last time were they told that they 
were in the central African republic. Then taken to a room with a balcony. 
They do not know what the room is. Outside they say they are surrounded by 
soldiers. So that they have no freedom. The president asked me to tell the 
world that it is a coup, that they have been kidnapped. That they have been 
abducted. I have put in calls to members of congress asking that they 
demand that the president be given an opportunity to speak, that he be 
given a press conference opportunity and that people be given an 
opportunity to reach him by phone so that they can hear directly from him 
how he is being treated. But the essential point is clear. He did not 
resign. He was taken by force from his residence in the middle of the 
night, forced on to a plane, and taken away without being told where he was 
going. He was kidnapped. There's no question about it.

AMY GOODMAN: How does he actually know, Randall Robinson, how does 
president Aristide know that he is in the Central African Republic?

RANDALL ROBINSON: He was told that when he arrived. That there was some 
official reception of officials of that government at the airport when he 
arrived. But, you see, he still had and continues to have surrounding him 
American military.

AMY GOODMAN: You spoke with him and Mildred Aristide up to 10 times a day 
in the last days before they were removed from Haiti. How did president 
Aristide sound when you spoke with him today?

RANDALL ROBINSON: They sounded tired and very concerned that the departure 
has been mistold to the world. They wanted to make certain that I did all 
that I could to disabuse any misled public that he had not resigned, that 
he had been abducted. That was very, very important to him and Mrs. 
Aristide explained to me the strange response to my calls on Saturday 
night. I had talked to her on Saturday morning and him on Friday. But when 
I called the house on Saturday night, the phone was answered by an 
unfamiliar voice who told me that the president was busy, a response that 
was strange and then when I asked for Mrs. Aristide, I was told that she 
was busy, too. As she told me then, even that early on, before they were 
taken away and before the soldiers came, they had been instructed they were 
not allowed to talk to anyone. So, that is - she said that was the reason 
she explained this today, a few minutes ago - why she was not able to talk 
to me and he was not able to talk to me when I called the house object 
Saturday evening.

AMY GOODMAN: Who did they say was the person that you had actually spoken to?

RANDALL ROBINSON: No, but that it was not someone who worked at the house 
because they know my voice when they hear it and they respond to it because 
I call so many times. This was something new, a new person, a new voice, 
with a new kind of tone. That is when we began to be concerned that 
something was amiss.

AMY GOODMAN: I will ask you the same question I asked Congressmember Waters 
who also spoke with president Aristide. The issue of whether president 
Aristide resigned. Did he say he did or he didn't?

RANDALL ROBINSON: Emphatically not.

AMY GOODMAN He said he did not resign?

RANDALL ROBINSON: He did not resign. He did not resign. He was kidnapped 
and all of the circumstances seem to support his assertion. Had he 
resigned, we wouldn't need blacked out windows and blocked communications 
and military taking him away at gunpoint. Had he resigned, he would have 
been happy to leave the country. He was not. He resisted. Emphatically not. 
He did not resign. He was abducted by the United States, a democratic, a 
democratically elected president, abducted by the United States in the 
commission of an American induced coup. This is a frightening thing to 
contemplate.

AMY GOODMAN: And again, Randall Robinson, you said you spoke to president 
Aristide by a cell phone that was smuggled to him?

RANDALL ROBINSON: Yes and I cannot call back because I have no number and 
the only way they can call out is by cell phone because they have not been 
provided with any land lines.

AMY GOODMAN: Did they say how long they will be staying in this place that 
they are, the palace of the Renaissance, they say they believe in the 
Central African Republic?

RANDALL ROBINSON: I haven't been told anything. I told her that last night 
I spoke to senator Dodd's foreign policy person Janice O'Connell called me 
to say that she had learned from the State Department that he was being 
taken to the Central African Republic and she had also been told by the 
State Department that they had refused, that the south Africans had refused 
asylum. I told her that I didn't believe that that was true because the 
South African foreign minister - [Noise] Hello?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, Randall, Robinson, we hear you.

RANDALL ROBINSON: Because the South African foreign minister had called me 
from India Mid-afternoon on Sunday and she asked how I was doing and I 
thought I was going to be doing much better, and I told her so. And I said 
because I'm sure that president Aristide has arrived in South Africa. She 
said no, he hasn't arrived here. We haven't heard anything from him. We 
don't know where he is and then we became really alarmed. She said there's 
been no request for asylum. So, you see, the State Department is telling an 
interested public, including members of the congress, that South Africa 
refused asylum. The State Department knows better. They know that President 
Aristide was not allowed to request asylum from South Africa or anybody 
else because he was not allowed to make any phone calls before they left 
Haiti, during the flight, and beyond.

AMY GOODMAN: Anything else you would like to add from your conversation 
with president Aristide on this smuggled phone that he got hold of after 
many hours incommunicado and now saying he believes he is in the central 
African republic with the first lady of Haiti, Mildred Aristide?

RANDALL ROBINSON: The phrase that he used several times and asked of me to 
find a way to tell the Haitian people, he said tell the world it's a coup, 
it's a coup, it's a coup.

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