[News] Haiti's Troika of Terror

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http://www.blackcommentator.com/83/83_cover_haiti_pf.html

Haiti's Troika of Terror
Thugs
a Buffoon
the Pirates

The United States has delivered George Bush's ghoulish brand of democracy 
to Haiti. The nightmarish components of Haiti's ruling troika gathered last 
Saturday, in Gonaives, the country's fourth-largest city - a macabre 
assemblage that seemed designed to assault the sensibilities of civilized 
humans.

The Buffoon

As if to erase Januarys bicentennial celebrations from Haitian and world 
memory, the fat man from Boca Raton superimposed himself on history. From 
today on we will be celebrating our 200th anniversary of independence,said 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/international/americas/21HAIT.html?pagewanted=print&position>Gerard 
Latortue, until only a few weeks ago a talk show host in Florida, before 
that, an international business consultant, now the U.S.-picked Prime 
Minister of Haiti. I ask you for a moment of silence for all the people who 
fell fighting against the dictatorship, and especially for Amiot Metayer," 
said Latortue, referring to the slain commander of the drug-dealing 
Cannibal Army. "(In the United States) they thought the people in Gonaives 
were thugs and bandits," said the 
<http://news1.iwon.com/world/article/id/97064|world|03-20-2004::14:44|reuters.html>puppet, 
pretending to be a Haitian Ronald Reagan. "But they are freedom fighters."

The Thugs

Amiot's brother, Butteur, wore a suit to signify his newfound 
respectability and to dispel the memory of his 
followers<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/10/world/main599197.shtml>mutilations 
of policemen's bodies after the seizure of Gonaives in early February. 
Lending further dignity to the occasion was Jean Tatun, the mass murderer 
who escaped from a life term in prison to join his fellow U.S.-financed 
rebelsat their Dominican Republic bases, last August. Guy Philippe, the 
Green Beret-trained, former police chief who fled to the Dominican Republic 
<http://indybay.org/news/2004/02/1671447.php>in 2000 to avoid drug and coup 
charges, met the visiting dignitaries at the helicopter landing zone. 
Philippe is a hit with the New York Times, which called him "personable and 
media-smart," and reported that the rebel leader promised to put his forces 
under the prime minister's orders.

Tatun, Mateyar and Philippe rubbed elbows with Bernard Gousse, Latortues 
new Justice Minister. Literally surrounded by criminals, Gousse is 
nevertheless intent on building a 
<http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/haiti/2004/0320criminal.htm>criminal 
case against Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Defense Minister and retired General 
<http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20040317-2054-haiti.html>Herard 
Abraham represented the rapidly reconstituting Haitian Army, whose sole 
purpose in modern times has been to repress the Haitian people. After a 
<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/mar2004/hait-m20_prn.shtml>meeting with 
Abraham last week, Guy Philippe boasted that Abraham had made no mention of 
the need for the rebels to disarm, let alone quizzed him about the 
modalities of any rebel disarmament.

The Pirates

Diplomat David Lee hobnobbed with the criminals on behalf of the 
Organization of American States. Lee attempted to justify his presence, 
saying, "We're trying to encourage reconciliation, but succeeded only in 
further confirming that the OAS is an instrument of U.S. policy. The actual 
meaning of reconciliation is that French troops, who are nominally 
responsible for northern Haiti, follow a laissez faire policy regarding the 
gunmen of Guy Philippe, Butteur Metayer, Jean Tatun and their ilk.

The Gonaives ceremony signals that the gangsters are the good guys,not to 
be interfered with. That puts them off-limits to the 450-man 
<http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040318/HAITI18/International/Idx>Canadian 
contingent. "Any weapons that could potentially pose a threat to the 
multinational force will be confiscated," said Lieutenant-Colonel Jim 
Davis. "We will disarm the bad guys, but those people entitled to have 
weapons for any number of reasons yet to be defined will have an 
opportunity to carry them."

The American commander on the ground has no intention of disarming 
Latortue's freedom fighters.

The commander of a multinational force in Haiti insisted on Sunday it was 
not his mission to disarm militants, differing with earlier U.S. assertions 
that the force would confiscate weapons.
"This is a country with a lot of weapons and disarmament is not our 
mission. Our mission is to stabilize the country," U.S. Marine Corp. Brig. 
Gen. Ronald Coleman, head of the 3,000-strong U.N.-sanctioned force, told 
<http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/FlashNewsStory.aspx?FlashOID=15872>Reuters.

General Coleman's helicopters provided limo service for the Gonaives 
ghoul-fest a macabre exercise in nation-building that could only have been 
hatched by minds utterly consumed by racism. This is what Black government 
looks like to George Bush.

The gangster life

The rogues gallery summit in Gonaives horrified even some members of the 
anti-Aristide Haitian elite. "We strongly condemn this unholy alliance 
which the interim government has struck with the Gonaives rebels,said the 
National Coalition for Haitian Rights 
(<http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_opinion?id=21785862>NCHR), 
which is closely tied to anti-Aristide politicians and their American 
allies. We note that such unholy alliances, in place since 1994 when 
President Aristide returned from exile, have weakened rather than 
strengthened law enforcement and governmental authority..." Latortue is 
"fanning the flames of lawlessness," said the New York-based group.

The NCHR told 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3899023,00.html>The 
Guardian that five police officers have been detained on suspicion of 
killing five young men believed to be supporters of Aristide's Lavalas 
Family partyin Port-au-Prince.
Relatives of the victims, ages 17-24, said the officers rounded up and 
executed the men over the weekend and then dumped their bodies throughout 
the capital, Aliazar said Wednesday. The officers were detained Monday and 
were being held pending an investigation. No charges have been filed.

Vast stretches of the country are either wholly without law, or worse, 
under the control of the most dangerous elements of society. Fort Liberte, 
in the north, is in the hands of escaped convicts,according to United 
Nations spokeswoman 
<http://news1.iwon.com/world/article/id/393043|world|03-23-2004::16:45|reuters.html>Elisabeth 
Byrs. "The town is virtually deserted. There is no market. Many houses have 
been burned. Prisoners control most parts of the city," said Byrs.

Convict-rule may be preferable to the tender mercies of Latortue's friends. 
"In the seaside town of Les Cayes, armed rebels who helped oust Haiti's 
first democratically elected leader carry out public executions, 
unchallenged by police or foreign troops," said news reports.

Throughout Haiti, mere suspicion of Aristide association may mark citizens 
for death reconciliation,gangster style. The 
<http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2004/03/24/2003107558>Associated 
Press reports that Senator Yvon Feuille has charged Lavalas members were 
being hounded across the country and even being killed.

"Everywhere Lavalas is a victim. Besides those physical massacres, we see 
there is a political massacre being prepared behind Lavalas' back," he 
said. "Without Lavalas, there is no solution. Without Lavalas, there won't 
be the peace we need so much."
He denounced what he said was a "white American and French colonists' plan" 
to marginalize the movement that helped bring Haiti's first democratic 
elections in 1990, which Aristide won in a landslide.

The repression is general in scope, yet sometimes maddening in its 
pettiness, as in the case of the 12-year-old Cap Haitian girl targeted for 
political retaliation because a death squad found a photograph of her 
giving flowers to President Aristide (see San Francisco Bay View, 
<http://www.sfbayview.com/031004/onhitlist031004.shtml>March 17). Death 
brings a shallow grave in places like the field of bones near Titanyen on 
the coast road north of the capital. There, a 
<http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/8222762.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp>Miami 
Herald reporter found scattered on the ground two skulls, three pelvic 
bones, dozens of femurs and tibias, fragments of a jaw with good teeth. 
Hundreds in allthe overflow from Port-au-Prince's morgues. No one knows who 
they are, or how they died.

Haiti Information Project

Journalists associated with the deposed Aristide government or the mass 
organizations of Lavalas enjoy none of the immunities accorded the 
corporate media in Haiti. They are fair game for the death squads who since 
last Saturday are acknowledged partners in the U.S.-installed government. 
There is, literally, no safe place for real journalism in Haiti, thanks to 
the Bush regime.

But Truth, crushed to earth shall rise, again.The Haitian Information 
Project (HIP), begun in the months before the coup in cooperation with the 
<http://www.mitfcentralamerica.org>Marin Interfaith Taskforce, in northern 
California, has fielded teams of young journalists from the ranks of the 
oppressed. The Project's reporters must operate in what one of them calls 
"a witch-hunt environment, where the term chimere" is used as a code word 
to justify slaughter.

The Haiti Information Project filed this report from somewhere in 
Port-au-Prince:

The local media contribute to the hysteria of repression. For example, 
Radio Metropole recently broadcast claims of a Lavalas plot to assassinate 
Latortue, with no evidence and no rebuttal.  People pay with their lives in 
the wake of rumors like that.
The Boca Raton governmentcontributes to this climate of terror. Anyone who 
ever organized any kind function for Lavalas is now the target of death 
threats. There is absolutely no political space open to Lavalas. At least 
2000 people are still hiding from the death squads. There are nightly raids 
by the death squads into the neighborhoods of Bel Air and Cite Soleil. 
These guys somehow manage to slip past the peacekeepers.
Prisoners are held in the local police stations throughout the capital and 
the countryside. None are being transferred to the National Penitentiary. 
It is extremely difficult for families to discover if their loved ones are 
in custody, or have been made to disappear.
The National Police look more and more like an army. Before the coup, maybe 
ten percent of the National Police were from the disbanded military. Now, 
they are totally military. This is being referred to as the militarization 
of the police. Although the U.S claims that they are against the former 
military taking power, they are militarizing the police to the teeth.
Bodies found on the streets are not an accurate measure of the victims of 
the death squads. When Lavalas militants fall, other militants take the 
bodies away to give them a proper burial, so that they won't be taken away 
and burned, and so the families will have a chance to grieve.
All of this terror is supported by, created by the Bush Administration. 
People are very clear about that, and refer to the foreign presence as an 
occupation force. People do not consider what is going on in Gonaives to be 
a real disarmament. The killers only turn in old, inferior weapons. Where 
are the brand new M-16s? The question is: Do they still have arms 
stockpiled in the Dominican Republic?

The Haiti Information Project correspondent pointed to the harsh police 
measures against the last large Lavalas demonstration, March 11, as proof 
that this Boca Raton governmentis very afraid because they have no base of 
support. The last thing they want is Lavalas supporters throwing up five 
fingers in front of the Marines. [The gesture signifies the five full years 
of Aristides elected term in office.] The last thing they want is for the 
movement of the poor to reassert itself. If they had elections today, 
Aristide would win.

Retaliation by rape

The last time Aristide was overthrown, in 1991, an estimated 5,000 of his 
supporters were murdered and an untold number of women subjected to 
political rape.Many women fear the curtain is descending again, reports 
DeNeen L. Brown of the 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11357-2004Mar20?language=printer>Washington 
Post:

In the three years until the United States restored Aristide to office in 
1994, survivors' groups and human rights activists said, thousands of women 
became rape victims as military and paramilitary groups terrorized people 
they considered Aristide supporters&.
As a new government is formed following the latest political violence and 
instability, the women in the group say it is unclear whether those who 
were raped after the 1991 coup will find justice&. In the darkened law 
office in Port-au-Prince, several women sat alongside Deluce. They want to 
serve as witnesses in the political rape cases, but identified themselves 
by using only their initials, fearing reprisals if they speak out.
"It was for the return of democracy that we were raped," said M.V., 44, a 
tiny woman wearing a black print dress and pearls. "We want the minister of 
justice to give us justice. We don't want this to happen again for women of 
Haiti."

The cell connection

One thing is clear: during this period of repression, Haitians will not be 
so isolated as a decade ago. The cell phone is their link to the outside 
world, and to news organizations like Pacifica Radio KPFA-FM's 
<http://www.flashpoints.net/>Flashpoints. Program executive producer Dennis 
Bernstein spoke with 
<http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=93bcd779529113d0645d02bc92ccf5ce>Andralese 
Lafortune, a 49-year-old high school teacher from Gonaives who is in hiding.
During the last coup, we didn't have any way to reach the outside world," 
Lafortune recalls. "For three years we suffered under a repressive regime, 
while many were killed and tortured. But we had no voice then. We were muzzled.

Digital technology means the killers cannot operate in total darkness, even 
under the cloak of the superpower. Haiti activists in the U.S. have been 
able to respond to the crisis in real time,eroding the corporate media's 
information monopoly and thus undercutting their ability to act as a 
megaphone for the Bush men.

However, fascist-minded Haitian Americans are cyber-wise, too. Emboldened 
by the gangster's return to power, U.S.-based thugsters have issued threats 
to Aristide supporters on American soil. According to 
<http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/haitianlawyers.html>Marguerite 
Laurent, Chairperson of Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, pro-gangster 
e-mailers are circulating detailed information on potential targets.
In light of the current bloodbath in Haiti against the ousted President's 
supporters, this is extreme. Threats are being made against pro-democracy 
Haitian-Americans living in the U.S. Their names, sometimes U.S. addresses 
and passports are included in the list of "marked persons" who must be shut 
down!

Combined with the last "addresses" e-mail Mr. Johndannies sent to us&it 
seems a very strategic plan to gut whatever is left of the pro-democracy 
advocates not now in Latortue's jails in Haiti. Nothing should be taken for 
granted here.

Well said, since the Boca Raton government is a wholly Bush-owned property.

Solid African American support

The Bush-Powell-Rice deceit and assault on Haiti was received as a slap in 
the face of Black America. Seldom in modern history has a foreign policy 
issue so galvanized African American opinion, from the grassroots to 
Capitol Hill. Although corporate media attempts to declare the Haiti issue 
settled, the American Urban Radio Networks has joined with Black World 
Today On-Line Newspapers and other Black media to publicize a 30-day 
<http://www.blackpressusa.com/News/Article.asp?SID=13&Title=Press%2BReleases&NewsID=3261>Lend 
a Helping Hand to Haiticampaign.

The campaigns reach is deep and wide. We come seeking ways to restore 
stability and wholesomeness to the people affected by the political 
unrest,said Rev. Justus Reeves, Minister of Missions for the Progressive 
National Baptist Convention (PNBC). Our dedication is to serve as a bridge 
of hope to those whose lives have been destroyed.

The PNBC has set up a 
<http://www.cruisingintohistory.org/helpinghands.htm>Haiti Relief Fund to 
collect monies during the campaign, in cooperation with 
<http://www.tbwt.org/home/content/view/157/41/>Ron Daniels, of the Haitian 
Support Project, and a host of civic and religious groups.

Kerry: Another ugly American

Florida Governor Jeb Bush this week gave backhanded credit to the 
Congressional Black Caucus for standing up to brother Georges Haiti 
atrocity. In the process, the Governor displayed 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16406-2004Mar22?language=printer>naked 
contempt for democracy in Black hands.
We have watched the painful struggle in Haiti over the past 10 years, as 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide squandered his opportunity to build a foundation for 
progress. Democracy means more than elections. It means respecting the rule 
of law and supporting a vibrant, robust civil society. Aristide destroyed 
these principles in Haiti and replaced them with corruption and violence. 
Groups such as the Congressional Black Caucus, who claim to support 
democracy yet focus on Aristide's election, exacerbate his betrayal of the 
Haitian people.

George Bush didn't invent U.S. aggression against Haiti; thats been U.S. 
policy toward the Black republic since 1804. As we wrote in our 
<../81/81_cover_haiti.htm>March 11 Cover Story, "American foreign policy 
structures are designed to undermine popular movements and governments at 
every point of contact & These U.S. foreign policy structures of 
subversion" are institutionally connected to the Democratic Party and 
organized labor, and must be dismantled, root and branch.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a principal American tool of 
subversion, the Trojan Horsethat guided and financed the coup-makers in 
Haiti and the 2002 attempted overthrow of Hugo Chavez's popularly elected 
government in Venezuela. Unless the Democratic Party and organized labor 
sever their ties to the NED "and thereby delegitimize it." U.S. subversion 
will continue under the guise of spreading democratic values.

John Kerry this week signaled that he's a coup-maker, too. His bald bid for 
the Cuban Florida vote while simultaneously chastising Bush for the Haiti 
coup and the attempted coup against Chavez! puts Kerry in a doublespeak 
class of his own. We submit the 
<http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/8255944.htm>full text of 
Kerry's statement as a sordid example of unprincipled and incompetently 
executed deception:

With the future of the democratic process at a critical juncture in 
Venezuela, we should work to bring all possible international pressure to 
bear on President Chavez to allow the referendum to proceed. The 
Administration should demonstrate its true commitment to democracy in Latin 
America by showing determined leadership now, while a peaceful resolution 
can still be achieved.
Throughout his time in office, President Chavez has repeatedly undermined 
democratic institutions by using extra-legal means, including politically 
motivated incarcerations, to consolidate power. In fact, his close 
relationship with Fidel Castro has raised serious questions about his 
commitment to leading a truly democratic government.
Moreover, President Chavez's policies have been detrimental to our 
interests and those of his neighbors. He has compromised efforts to 
eradicate drug cultivation by allowing Venezuela to become a haven for 
narco-terrorists, and sowed instability in the region by supporting 
anti-government insurgents in Colombia.
The referendum has given the people of Venezuela the opportunity to express 
their views on his presidency through constitutionally legitimate means. 
The international community cannot allow President Chavez to subvert this 
process, as he has attempted to do thus far. He must be pressured to comply 
with the agreements he made with the OAS and the Carter Center to allow the 
referendum to proceed, respect the exercise of free expression, and release 
political prisoners.

Here's the switch-up, the point at which Kerry tries to scramble back to 
the sane side of the table.
Too often in the past, this Administration has sent mixed signals by 
supporting undemocratic processes in our own hemisphere including in 
Venezuela, where they acquiesced to a failed coup attempt against President 
Chavez. Having just allowed the democratically elected leader to be cast 
aside in Haiti, they should make a strong statement now by leading the 
effort to preserve the fragile democracy in Venezuela.

Thus, Kerry methodically lays out the rationale for a U.S. overthrow of 
Chavez, then blames Bush for actually trying to do it. This man is 
dangerous. If elected, he will fight tooth and nail to preserve the NED and 
the entire apparatus of U.S. subversion around the globe. He is no friend 
to the people of Haiti, Venezuela, or anywhere else in the developing world.

Aristide's travels

Hugo Chavez has offered President Aristide an unqualified welcome, once his 
sojourn in Jamaica is over. As we went to press, the Caribbean Community 
(Caricom) was under unimaginable pressures from the United States to give 
the Boca Raton government of Gerard Latortue an audience at Caricom's 
Intercessional Meeting in St. Kitts despite the puppet's previous, 
pretentious threat to sever Caricom ties over Aristide's visit to Jamaica.

The Bush men pressured Nigeria to offer asylum to Aristide, not only 
because it is an ocean away but also, no doubt, because Nigeria is home to 
Liberia's Charles Taylor and other fallen despotsgreat propaganda value for 
Administration spin-makers.

In an interview with 
<http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/23/1546250>Democracy Now! 
on Tuesday, TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson, a close confidant of 
Aristide and resident of St. Kitts, ventured that Bush's campaign to drive 
Aristide out of the Western Hemisphere will collapse of its own weight, and 
it should, upon the idiots in the State Department and the White House who 
tried to implement such a fool hearty, callous plan.Robinson praised 
Jamaican Prime Minister and current Caricom leader P.J. Patterson for 
distinguishing himself in making a place for President Aristide in Jamaica, 
and he has met for that with threats by this administration directly from 
the White House.

For all their bombast, said Robinson, it is fear that motivates Gerard 
Latortue the new president from Boca Raton & something of a buffoonand the 
thugs in Washington and Haiti who support him:

They fear that Mr. Aristide has enormous public support in Haiti. Were they 
not so afraid of that, they would have no great interest, no sense of 
urgency about making sure that he was well outside the Caribbean. This we 
have done to a democratically elected leader, and it certainly shows that 
no democracy can be given birth in Haiti until we all reckon with what 
happened there, that we have removed a democratically elected leader who 
still enjoys enormous support and were a new election held today, Mr. 
Aristide would be overwhelmingly elected again&.
The only person we've tried to banish from the region is the democratically 
elected president of the country who was toppled by people bearing American 
arms and doing America's bidding. And that's what you saw in Gonaives, the 
public meeting of the three forces here, the United States, the thugs, and 
the new unelected, American-installed president of Haiti.
The issue is democracy. You cannot sustain or look towards a democratic 
future erected from the ashes of a democracy that an external power has 
destroyed. You simply can't forget the context story and move on. 
[Aristide] has a year and a half left in his term. The election that 
brought him to this term, he won by 94% and by all accounts, fairly. Both 
occasions. And as evidence of how popular he is, the United States has gone 
to such great and foolish lengths to banish him from the region. You simply 
cannot start again without reckoning with that, the Lavalas people still 
overwhelmingly support President Aristide and they comprise the 
overwhelming majority of the Haitian people. We have to come to terms with 
that. That is democracy and the Bush Administration apparently doesn't like 
it in Haiti any more than they liked it in Florida.



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