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<font size=3>Blood-soaked bureaucrats<br>
John Maxwell COMMON SENSE<br><br>
<a href="http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20040425T000000-0500_58952_OBS_BLOOD_SOAKED_BUREAUCRATS.asp" eudora="autourl">http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20040425T000000-0500_58952_OBS_BLOOD_SOAKED_BUREAUCRATS.</a><a href="http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20040425T000000-0500_58952_OBS_BLOOD_SOAKED_BUREAUCRATS.asp" eudora="autourl">asp<br>
</a>Sunday, April 25, 2004<br><br>
<br>
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) <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br>
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.<br><br>
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".<br>
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.<br><br>
"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. <br>
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.."<br><br>
Neither principle nor honour<br><br>
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.<br><br>
"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.<br>
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".<br><br>
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."<br>
According to The Associated Press, the crowd was between 2,000 and 3,000
- small by any standards.<br><br>
"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."<br>
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.<br><br>
Security in Port-au-Prince<br><br>
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.<br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br>
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."<br><br>
'Popular organisations', of course, means Aristide's Lavalas
Family.<br>
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".<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Nor Grace nor Shame<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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;.<br><br>
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?<br>
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.<br><br>
Copyright©2004 John Maxwell<br>
maxinf@cwjamaica.com<br><br>
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