[News] Haiti - Update on Father Jean Juste

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2005 18:42:06 -0800
From: Sasha B. Kramer <mailto:sash at stanford.edu><sash at stanford.edu>




This article about Father Jean Juste came out last week in the Miami New 
Times.  He is still in prison though his spirit remains strong.  Several 
congressional and religious delegations have visited him over the past 
weeks and news of the international struggle to free him gives him 
hope.  Keep up the pressure and thank you for your love and support!

Also, below is an article on the use of USAID programs to placate 
resistance and protest in Father Jean Juste's neighborhood.

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Free This Priest
Father Gerard Jean-Juste is no outlaw. He's a Magic City hero.
By Chuck Strouse

Published: Thursday, October 27, 2005
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/2005-10-27/news/strouse.html
Miaminewtimes.com

First a rock smashed the front window. Then, after a metal shutter was
slammed shut, a bottle exploded against it. Then another. And another.

A thousand Haitians burst through a police barricade one steamy summer
Saturday in 1990 and swarmed a storefront off Biscayne Boulevard.
Inside, as muscular Cuban-American shopkeeper Luis Reyes snapped on a
bulletproof vest, one Miami cop loaded his shotgun while another pulled
his pistol. I sat on a box in the rear, terrified. "They've moved the
Dumpster against the back door," Reyes said. "They're starting a fire."

Early in the day, after a store clerk had pummeled a Haitian-American
shopper, Kreyol-language radio announcers egged on the attack at the
Rapid Transit Factory Outlet on 79th Street. A mob gathered. I was
there. Then a young news reporter, I had heard the broadcasts and
wandered inside just before the violence began.

After several hours, when there was a lull and the fire had been
extinguished, one of the cops decided I should leave. "It might get
ugly," he said. "You'll be safer outside." So I tucked my notebook in
my pocket, cracked the door, and exited. I was the target for a fuming
crowd. "Journaliste," I shouted, hands aloft. "Reporter."

Several men crouched. One moved toward me. I distinctly recall his
angry expression and bloodshot eyes.

Then there was a hand on my shoulder, the word friend was spoken in
Kreyol, and in an instant the mood changed. The crowd embraced me.

The hand and the word belonged to Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste, whose actions
saved me and the others in the store that day. Speaking through a
megaphone, he eventually, peacefully, helped end the attack.

Now Jean-Juste a puckish, pudgy-faced, twelve-year South Florida
resident who left Miami soon after the riot and has ministered to
Haiti's poor children ever since is stuck in a prison cell in
Port-au-Prince. Falsely accused of participating in the killing of his
cousin, journalist Jacques Roche, he has become a martyr. Amnesty
International has declared him a prisoner of conscience. Thirty-four
members of Congress have called for his release. And 400 clergy of all
stripes signed a petition demanding his freedom.

The man ultimately responsible for jailing Jean-Juste on the trumped-up
charges he was in Miami at the time Roche was kidnapped is
long-time Boca Raton radio commentator Gerard Latortue, who's now the
country's interim prime minister.

The dispute is a distinctly South Florida affair.

"Jean-Juste is still a hero here," comments Dufirstson Neree, a
thrice-minted Ivy League grad and Haitian American who's running for
Congress from an area that includes Little Haiti. "No one can defend
the position that he is a terrorist or a menace to society."

Three decades ago, Jean-Juste became the first Haitian ordained as a
Roman Catholic priest in the United States. In 1978, just two years
before a huge wave of his countrymen transformed Miami in a boatlift,
he helped establish the Haitian Refugee Center, a group that has fought
all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for the rights of people from the
world's first independent black republic.

Jack Lieberman, another HRC cofounder, remembers that Jean-Juste manned
the center in Liberty City and helped keep the peace during the many
Eighties riots that shook the Magic City. "When he first came to the
Haitian Refugee Center, most of the church agencies wanted to treat the
Haitian refugee issue as one of charity," Lieberman says. "Jean-Juste
pointed out that there was an injustice. Cubans were treated better
than Haitians."

In the years that followed, Jean-Juste organized marches against
Haiti's Duvalier regime, bad U.S. immigration law, and discriminatory
policies in everything from housing to blood donation. For the Miami
Herald I covered a half-dozen protests he led with megaphone in hand. I
studied Kreyol and sat with him in the empty office of Veye Yo, a
political meeting house on 54th Street he helped create.

He often spoke of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi. He was a true
leader.

Of course, he was a rabble-rouser. Archbishop Edward McCarthy was
suspicious of Jean-Juste's Liberation Theology leaning and denied him a
pulpit. In response, Jean-Juste termed McCarthy a racist. After several
drowned Haitian boat people washed up on a South Florida beach,
Jean-Juste sued, claimed the bodies, and turned the burial into a
protest.

In 1991, after Jean-Bertrand Aristide took power in a rare democratic
election in Haiti, he returned home. "After all the years in exile, he
needed to go back to minister to his people," comments Lavarice Gaudin,
director of Veye Yo today. "He's always been a nonviolent man, but one
who will nevertheless push for what is right."

He also gained political power as Aristide appointed him
minister/liaison for Haitians living abroad. Then, only seven months
after Jean-Juste had arrived on the island, Aristide was ousted by a
bloody military coup. Jean-Juste went into hiding for three years.

He turned up on the island again in 1994, after U.N. forces returned
Aristide to power. For the next ten years, he traveled often between
the United States and Haiti, paying particular attention to South
Florida, where more than 250,000 Haitians live. He visited his sister
Francine, who lives in Broward County, and sometimes led protests. At a
demonstration in Washington, D.C., in 1997, the year the Florida
Marlins won the World Series, he told the assembled thousands: "The
same way all of us came together in Miami to celebrate the Marlins
black, white, and brown let us all come together for justice, peace,
and fairness."

In 1998, on his radio show from Port-au-Prince, Ginen, he helped
authorities find the parents of a twelve-year-old girl who was gunned
down in an Allapattah flea market.

In Haiti he ministered to a parish of 80,000 Haitian families in a
church on a dirt road outside Port-au-Prince. He organized a program to
feed 600 youngsters twice a week. And, of course, he politicked,
pushing relentlessly for Aristide, even after the president was
overthrown in a bloody coup in February 2004.

Jean-Juste's serious problems began in October of last year. Armed
security officers dressed in black and wearing black ski masks arrived
at his church, broke through iron bars and windows, and then dragged
him away on suspicion of inciting violence and hiding pro-Aristide
gunmen.

Back then, only 20 of 1000 inmates in the prison where Jean-Juste was
housed had even seen a judge, according to Bill Quigley, a Loyola
University law professor who has represented Jean-Juste in Haitian
courts. "In jail," Quigley says, there were "no beds, no blankets, and
no water to bathe."

The priest was released after seven weeks for lack of evidence. "It is
a big mistake of trying to lock up this guy who is speaking truth,"
Quigley adds. "He has never said anything about violence; he has never
raised a gun."

This past July, Jean-Juste visited South Florida and led a
demonstration at the Brazilian Consulate in Miami. The protestors urged
that nation which is led by a former union organizer named Luiz
Inácio da Silva to speak out against the United Nations' role in 23
killings in Cité Soleil on the island. "He came to town, said we had
this massacre occur, conditions are horrible, please do something,"
Lieberman says. "So we went to the consulate and basically pleaded our
case."

A couple of days later, Jean-Juste headed back to Haiti. Three Veye Yo
members I spoke with said a pro-government Kreyol-language radio host
in Miami called for violence toward Jean-Juste back on the island.
"Before Father Jean-Juste left, everybody knew something would happen
to him," Veye Yo's Gaudin comments. "But he said he had a mission."

In Haiti, Jean-Juste along with Quigley, who was visiting decided
to attend the funeral of the murdered journalist Roche, a supporter of
the interim government whose family is related to Jean-Juste's. There
the crowd beat them and chased them into a toilet stall before
Jean-Juste was arrested and thrown into a jail, where he has remained
ever since.

Amnesty International termed him a political prisoner a few days later.
This past August, Jean-Juste fell ill and nearly died in the prison.
Recently recovered, he now sleeps on a rubber mat on a concrete floor
beneath a picture of murdered Salvadoran priest Oscar Romero.

In September a group of U.S. Representatives including Kendrick Meek,
Robert Wexler, and Alcee Hastings all Democrats sent a letter to
Prime Minister Latortue calling for Jean-Juste's freedom. Referring to
the release of a convicted murderer, Louis Jodel Chamblain, Meek said,
"It is a sad day when a respected community leader, committed to
helping the poor, is locked away in a prison cell while a convicted
human rights abuser walks free."

In Little Haiti, Jean-Juste's supporters have hung pictures emblazoned
with "Free Jean-Juste" in many restaurants and businesses. "Jean-Juste
is my best friend," says Merus Benoit, who owns Ben Photo studio on NE
54th Street. "He suggested I go to Miami Dade College to learn English.
Any time he needed a picture taken, I took it. I'd do anything for him"

At the urging of the Bush administration, elections in Haiti were
scheduled for November (though they were recently postponed until
December) and more than a half-dozen Haitian presidential candidates
have raised money in South Florida. Jean-Juste has even pondered a try;
on August 25, he told the Associated Press he would run for president
"if Aristide approves my candidacy." But then, after the Archdiocese in
Haiti disciplined him, he withdrew.

The problem in Haiti is not quick elections (just as that is not the
answer in George W. Bush's more distant morass, Iraq). The answer is
more U.S. aid to Haiti, more help to beleaguered U.N. troops there, and
a concerted campaign to free Jean-Juste and jailed former Prime
Minister Yvon Neptune. Miami, more than any other U.S. city, has a
strong tie to the island nation. And to many of the Haitians here,
Jean-Juste's imprisonment is the top issue.

"Jean-Juste is a black eye on the government of Haiti," Neree says. "As
long as he is in jail, there can be no free and fair elections."

************************************


http://www.counterpunch.org/kramer10142005.html

October 14, 2005

The Friendly Face of US Imperialism

USAID and Haiti

By SASHA KRAMER

On the ground United States foreign assistance projects often mean 
desperately needed food and employment for the poor, impossible to resist, 
difficult to critique. But from the vantage point of US foreign policy 
objectives a very different picture emerges and long-term and global 
outcomes often differ dramatically from the immediate consequences of 
relief efforts.

The United States International Development Agency (USAID) emerged as an 
arm of US foreign policy following the Second World War. The Agency was 
developed to provide foreign relief and development assistance in 
accordance with US policy objectives. According to the USAID website 
(www.usaid.gov) the organization operates under the following mandate.


"U.S. foreign assistance has always had the twofold purpose of furthering 
America's foreign policy interests in expanding democracy and free markets 
while improving the lives of the citizens of the developing world."

This dual mandate raises the important question of whether US policy 
interests generally result in improved living conditions for the majority 
of the world's poor? While it may occasionally be the case that the 
interests of the US government and the poverty stricken citizens around the 
world are aligned, more often than not, US economic and political interests 
are dependent on the exploitation and manipulation of workers and consumers 
in the developing world. It is this inherent contradiction within the USAID 
mandate that should cause skepticism among US taxpayers concerned with 
issues of social justice and self determination.

The fundamental problem with USAID's stated objectives is that it is not in 
the national interests of the US government to promote self sufficiency in 
developing countries. US economic interests are fed by foreign dependency 
on US imports and loans. Political interests are served by maintaining an 
economic stranglehold on foreign governments, and many a strategic alliance 
has been forged out of economic necessity. Among USAID's operating tenets 
are sustainability and local capacity building, noble goals but highly 
dependent on how these tenets are defined and the manner in which they are 
implemented. Sustainability of what, and which local capacities are being 
supported? Implementation is primarily shaped by another of USAID's 
governing tenets, selectivity, the allocation of resources based on foreign 
policy interests.

The recently released USAID Haiti Field Report provides an excellent case 
study for investigating the role of USAID in promoting US foreign policy 
objectives under the friendly guise of aid. Much of USAID's current work in 
Haiti is carried out under the umbrella of the Haiti Transition Initiative 
(HTI), a program developed by USAID's Office for Transition Initiatives 
(OTI) in May 2004 to "emphasize stability-building measures in key crisis 
spots."

The OTI was created within USAID in 1994 "to provide fast, flexible, 
short-term assistance to take advantage of windows of opportunity to build 
democracy and peace" in countries experiencing political turmoil. According 
to the OTI website the organization accomplishes its objectives by 
specifically encouraging "a culture of risk-taking, political orientation, 
and swift response among its staff and partners." The Haiti Field Report 
explores how short term assistance programs provided within a culture of 
political orientation can be used to distort international perceptions of 
Haiti's complicated political terrain, as the elections approach.

The United States is primarily concerned with Haiti's upcoming elections 
occurring on schedule, so that a new government can be in place by February 
2006. In Haiti, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, the timeliness and appearance 
of legitimacy of the electoral process are of paramount importance for the 
Bush Administration's PR machine, which tends to equate elections with 
democracy, boasting that the United States is benevolently promoting 
"democracies" around the world. USAID describes their objectives as 
follows: "Haiti's future depends on elections that are considered free and 
fair to ensure the legitimacy of the new government and enhance their 
ability to govern effectively. The stabilization of the political and 
security environment in Haiti is central to U.S. foreign policy and USAID 
objectives."

What sort of democracy is the United States promoting in Haiti, where the 
duly elected president was spirited away on a US military jet against his 
will, as the country once again fell into the hands of the powerful elite 
and brutal former military? Haiti is now governed by a cadre of unelected 
officials overseen by Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, a Haitian businessman 
and former radio show host that lived in Boca Raton Florida for the 15 
years preceding his unconstitutional rise to office. In direct 
contradiction to actual events and the laws of the Haitian Constitution, 
USAID describes Haiti's unelected Interim Government as "benefiting from 
the support of democratic institutions." They further state that the 
"political transition" of February 29, 2004 "created a new environment for 
collaboration with the Interim Government of Haiti," indicating their 
willingness to work closely with an illegitimate government accused of 
numerous human rights abuses over the past year in order to promote US 
interests.

USAID's Haiti Field Report, which can be found on the USAID website, 
presents a glowing image of US development efforts in this "troubled" 
country, through a carefully-crafted compilation of selective facts. In 
August alone, USAID invested over 4 million dollars towards projects in 
Haiti. These projects include road and canal clean-up projects, terracing 
of hillsides to prevent erosion and electricity projects. On the surface it 
is difficult to criticize the provision of badly needed clean-up efforts 
and employment opportunities and certainly these programs have had benefits 
within the community. The questions are: what is the long term viability of 
these projects, and who are the primary beneficiaries? A far more detailed 
on-the-ground investigation would be required to determine how these 
programs will differentially benefit various local and international 
interests in the short and long term.

Other USAID projects that have more obvious political implications are 
short term nutrition and recreational initiatives in "key crisis areas." 
The report outlines USAID's strategy for pacifying Haiti's largest 
political party, Lavalas through selective distribution of aid resources. 
In August the Haiti Transition Initiative set up 26 "Play for Peace" camps 
in Port au Prince, Cap Haitien, St. Marc and several other "target" cities. 
These camps are designed to provide food and activities to desperately poor 
communities; essential services, the importance of which is not in question.

What is questionable is the way in which these camps are used to undermine 
existing community programs in an attempt to de-legitimize the demands of 
the Lavalas movement in the eyes of the international community. This 
strategy is exemplified by USAID's description of their activities in Petit 
Place Cazeau, the community that is home to Father Gerard Jean Juste's 
parish of St. Claire. Father Jean Juste, illegally imprisoned since July 
21, 2005, is a popular priest and outspoken opponent of the unelected 
interim government. USAID's Haiti Field Report describes their activity in 
Father Jean Juste's neighborhood as follows:


"OTI initiated a Play for Peace summer camp in Petit Place Cazeau, the Port 
au Prince stronghold of Lavalas party presidential candidate Father Gerard 
Jean Juste. [] The fruits of these efforts were seen during a recent 
demonstration attended by 200 people. At the same time that the 
demonstration was taking place, 300 people were enjoying the summer camp. 
It is believed that the camp prevented the demonstration from being larger 
and giving greater legitimacy to the protesters. The coming weeks will see 
a deepening of OTI activities in Petit Place Cazeau, where events like the 
summer camp will become increasingly important now that Father Jean Juste 
has been arrested. His imprisonment has inflamed pro-Lavalas fires in the 
area and made him a martyr to some Haitians."

This report presents a picture of US aid that is simultaneously disturbing 
and refreshingly honest. The fact that the "fruits of these efforts" are 
described as the camps' potential to de-legitimize protest as opposed to 
their success in providing basic services to the community, speaks volumes 
to USAID's primary motivations, motivations which will shape long term 
outcomes. USAID is an arm of the US State Department reporting directly to 
Condoleezza Rice and their stated objective is to use aid to pursue 
outcomes desired by the State Department. In this case the State Department 
is eager to for the upcoming elections to appear legitimate as evident in 
Condoleezza Rice's recent visit to Haiti in which she stressed the 
importance of timeliness and legitimacy.

In order for this goal to be achieved it is critical to stifle resistance 
to the elections. Resistance is being tackled on two fronts. In the past 
year, thousands of former elected officials and community organizers have 
been imprisoned, forced into hiding or killed, with many innocent civilians 
caught in the crossfire. This overt stifling of dissent is implemented by 
Haiti's unelected interim government through the Haitian National Police, a 
brutal police forced armed by the United States and under the control of 
the United Nations.

USAID uses a different tactic for pacifying the poor in Haiti who have been 
rightfully outraged by the destruction of their democracy, rise in the cost 
of living and ongoing government-sponsored repression. Understanding the 
level of desperation in these communities, short term provision of services 
is used as a way to draw people away from protesting these conditions with 
a warm meal. As people are fed they can be quietly indoctrinated with the 
notion that these camps provide an alternative to the "violence" of 
Lavalas. The provision of entertainment and meals may provide a temporary 
alleviation of suffering but they do nothing to address the underlying 
causes of that suffering which are deeply entangled in with the disruption 
of Haiti's democracy in 2004. A full stomach will not end the police 
killings, it will not free the political prisoners and it will not result 
in the reestablishment of social programs in Haiti; but it may give a 
hungry person a moment of peace. Full stomachs and soccer are excellent 
tools for temporarily easing suffering to pacify protest and give the 
country the appearance of calm in the run up to the elections but they are 
not a sustainable solution to the many problems that prevent these 
elections from being free and fair, nor will they promote a democracy that 
truly represents that Haitian people. The long term implications of 
installing an illegitimate government could far outweigh the short term 
benefits enjoyed by those attending the camps.

Other questions about these programs include: how long will these programs 
feed the hungry and what is their effect on pre-existing programs in Petit 
Place Cazeau, that were not mentioned in the report? Long before USAID 
initiated the Play for Peace camps in the neighborhood, Father Jean Juste 
and the St. Claire community were providing vocational training classes, 
recreational activities and meals to thousands of children in the 
neighborhood. Now with Father Jean Juste in prison these programs are at 
risk. Unlike Father Jean Juste's commitment to empowering the community, 
USAIDs stated goal of pacifying political protest through aid is decidedly 
a short term strategy, and these camps are not likely to provide a 
sustainable source of aid after political objectives have been met. If 
USAID were truly interested in improving the lives of poor people they 
would support the maintenance of existing programs by joining Amnesty 
International, Human Rights Watch, 29 members of Congress, and over 400 
religious leaders in calling for the release of Father Jean Juste, a 
cornerstone of many community development projects in Petit Place Cazeau.

As stated in the document, the coming weeks will see increased expansion of 
USAID programs in Petit Place Cazeau and in other key areas like Milot, 
where Lavalas remains strong. These developments are of interest not only 
for those concerned with US subversion of democracy in Haiti but also to 
those interested in understanding USAID's operations throughout the world. 
This explicit acknowledgement of the motivations underlying aid in Petit 
Place Cazeau provides and excellent case study and these developments 
deserve ongoing scrutiny. Despite its beneficent name, USAID is doing what 
it was designed to do, play off the hunger of the starving, and the boredom 
of the unemployed, to further US policy interests. In Haiti this means 
propping up and illegitimate foreign government in the face of massive 
resistance, a difficult task best carried out through a combination of 
violent repression and foreign aid, the friendly face of US imperialism.

Father Jean Juste's Response:

When presented with this report and asked for his opinion Father Jean Juste 
said that even though the IOM report speaks badly of him, that doesn't 
bother him. He doesn't care what IOM says, he only cares about what they 
do. What work are they doing?
He explained that the work should be done, for the people to benefit.  It 
is important to understand the strategy behind the projects while still 
taking advantage of the benefits.  If people are starving let them feed them...

"The people know where the truth is."





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