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<h1><b>Haitian Government Mounts Illegal Arrests of Priest and
Dissidents</b></h1><font size=3><a href="http://www.americaspolicy.org/commentary/2004/0411haiti.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.americaspolicy.org/commentary/2004/0411haiti.html<br>
</a></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>By Brian Concannon Jr. |
November 17, 2004<br><br>
</font><font size=3>On Wednesday and Friday afternoons, hundreds of poor
children find their only meal of the day at Haiti’s Sainte Claire’s
Catholic Church. On Wednesday October 13, they were joined by masked and
heavily armed police who handcuffed their pastor, Rev. Gérard Jean-Juste,
and dragged him out through a window and off to a police station. The
police did not show the warrant required by Haiti’s constitution, nor was
Fr. Jean-Juste brought before a judge within 48 hours as the law
requires.<br><br>
<br><br>
</font><h3><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4><b>A Priest’s Battle
Against Injustice </b></font></h3><font size=3>Jean-Juste, known in the
United States as “Father Gerry,” has spent a quarter-century preaching
non-violence and fighting against illegal arrests and other injustice in
Haiti and the United States. He was ordained in the U.S., but felt
compelled to return to Haiti to face the injustice of “Baby-Doc”
Jean-Claude Duvalier’s regime. He was soon forced out of Haiti, but he
fought back in the courts. Jean-Juste won a lawsuit against Duvalier in
Miami Federal Court. He also co-founded Florida’s Haitian Refugee Center,
which helped thousands of refugees and challenged unjust immigration
policies all the way to the Supreme Court.<br><br>
Jean-Juste returned to Haiti having learned lessons from the United
States about non-violent political organizing and fighting injustice
through the courts. During Haiti’s nine years of elected government
(1994-2004), he worked with victims of past dictatorships to channel
their anger into lawsuits. From the pulpit and from the microphone of his
popular radio show, he spoke out forcefully and eloquently against all
kinds of violence, whether perpetrated by the constitutional government’s
opponents or by its supporters. In one particularly memorable moment,
when opposition political party offices were attacked after Jean
Dominique’s April 2000 funeral Fr. Gerry talked on the radio for two
hours straight, imploring everyone to go home, calm down, and learn to
fight without violence.<br><br>
Jean-Juste continued to stand up for justice after the unconstitutional
interim regime replaced Haiti's elected government last February.
Although friends and relatives told him to go into hiding, he refused to
leave his parish work. Nor did he let fear prevent him from denouncing
human rights violations in the Haitian and international press. He was
the only summoned witness who dared appear in the August 16 trial for the
killing of pro-democracy activist Antoine Izmery. Everyone knew the trial
was a fraud--Amnesty International called it “an insult to justice”--and
Fr. Gerry knew he risked arrest at the courthouse. But he could not
ignore a judicial order, so he showed up at trial. <br><br>
Haiti’s Minister of Justice, Bernard Gousse, alleges that Fr. Jean-Juste
associates with people engaged in violence. Prime Minister Gérard
Latortue claims there was a warrant. Both have made these statements in
press interviews, not legal proceedings. If the government really
believes Fr. Jean-Juste is arming the hungry as well as feeding them,
they should be willing to test that belief in court.<br><br>
<br><br>
</font><h3><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4><b>Clamping Down on the
Opposition </b></font></h3><font size=3>The police register lists
Jean-Juste’s crime as “disturbing the peace,” which carries a maximum
sentence of four days in prison and a 17 gourdes fine (about 50 cents).
But if past is prologue, Jean-Juste will have a long wait for his day in
court. He joins a long line of political prisoners arrested since March,
including former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, Senator Yvon Feuillé (who
is entitled to parliamentary immunity), former Deputy Rudy Hérivaux, a
teacher, two musicians, nine union leaders, and a host of former
officials.<br><br>
All have been accused of a connection to violence in press conferences,
but only one has been permitted to challenge his detention in court. When
that one, local official Jacques Mathelier, went to court on July 12, the
judge ordered his immediate liberation. Prison officials then gave him an
immediate transfer out of that judge’s jurisdiction and he remains in
jail.<br><br>
The prominent political prisoners may be the lucky ones. Since it took
power following the ouster of Haiti ’s elected government on February 29,
the interim government and its paramilitary allies have systematically
attacked Haiti ’s democracy movement, especially President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide’s <i>Lavalas </i>party. Over 700 political prisoners too poor to
be noticed by the outside world rot anonymously behind bars, according to
the Catholic Church’s Justice and Peace Commission. Well over 1,000 more
democracy supporters have been killed.<br><br>
The interim government’s violence has increased over the past few months.
On September 7, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expressed
its concern “over several key areas in which the basic rights and
freedoms of Haitians remain weak and imperiled.” On September 16, Interim
Prime Minister Gerard Latortue lashed out at his critics during an
interview on Radio Caraibes, complaining that human rights criticism was
making his relations with donor countries difficult. Later that day
police officers raided the offices of the Confederation of Haitian
Workers (CTH) labor union and arrested nine union members, all without a
warrant. The official justification for the arrest was that the
defendants were “close to the Lavalas authorities.” All were still in
custody as of November 8.<br><br>
On September 30, police interrupted a legal demonstration commemorating
the anniversary of Haiti’s September 30, 1991<i>coup d’etat</i>. Human
rights observers accompanying the demonstration reported that police
fired on the march, after trying to disperse it. On the morning of
October 1, interim Prime Minister Latortue conceded in a radio interview
that the police had shot at protesters and individuals had been killed.
He asserted that the authorities would continue to take forceful action
against protests.<br><br>
On October 2, the police raided a radio station and arrested two Senators
and a former Deputy from the Lavalas party who had criticized the interim
government during a radio debate, as well as a lawyer who came to
represent them. Those arrests were also made without a warrant and
“justified” outside of the judicial process with vague statements about
connections to violence. The lawyer and one of the Senators were released
on October 5, but the others remain in jail.<br><br>
The police continue to raid poor neighborhoods, considered bastions of
support for Haiti’s constitutional government, using arms searches as a
pretext. They invariably arrest suspected dissidents but find few, if
any, guns. One raid on Wednesday, October 6, a purported arms search in
the poor neighborhood of Bel-Air, yielded 75 illegal arrests and not a
single weapon.<br><br>
The United Nations troops in Haiti have not intervened to restrain
illegal police behavior. UN troops guarded the perimeter of the radio
station during the October 2 arrests, and routinely accompany police on
illegal raids. According to a BBC translation of an interview broadcast
October 8 on Haiti’s Radio Metropole, the UN Commander General Brazilian
Augusto Heleno Ribero Pereira, in discussing police raids in poor
neighborhoods, declared that “we must kill the bandits but it will have
to be the bandits only, not everybody.”<br><br>
The term “bandits” in Haiti sometimes refers to presumed criminals, but
also more generally to poor urban young men, especially those who support
<i>Lavalas</i>. General Pereira later blamed the recent upsurge in
violence on a March 2004 speech by John Kerry, expressing support for
democracy in Haiti.<br><br>
<br><br>
</font><h3><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4><b>Disturbing the
Peace</b></font></h3><font size=3>The United States, Prime Minister
Latortue’s principal international patron, is well-placed to rein in
these abuses, and should use its leverage to pry the political prisons
open. The State Department did scold Haiti’s authorities after July’s
arrest of Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, but it was more bark than bite.
Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega declared that “sooner rather
than later the authorities in Haiti are going to have to give Neptune an
opportunity to defend himself before an independent judge.” That was July
17; three days later the U.S. pledged $230 million to the authorities in
Haiti, and four months later Neptune has not seen the judge who issued
his arrest warrant.<br><br>
The police at Sainte Claire’s may have given the most honest explanation
for the arrest of Fr. Jean-Juste, and the attacks against the democracy
movement. They said Jean-Juste was accused of “troubling the public
order.” When “public order” means widespread violence, political arrests
reminiscent of the Duvalier era, and hunger unprecedented in modern
times, Fr. Gerry’s preaching peace, working for justice, and feeding
children may indeed make him guilty as charged.<br><br>
<i>Brian Concannon Jr., Esq. is the Director of the Institute for Justice
and Democracy in Haiti, <a href="http://www.ijdh.org/">www.ijdh.org</a>.
The Institute’s Lawyers in Haiti are representing Fr. Jean-Juste. He is a
contributor to the IRC’s Americas Program, online at
<a href="http://www.americaspolicy.org/">www.americaspolicy.org</a>. This
article was adapted from an article in </i>The Boston Haitian
Reporter<i>, November 2004. <br><br>
</i> <br><br>
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