<html>
<body>
<h1><b>Aristide's Lavalas puts UN duplicity to the test in
Haiti</b></h1><font size=3><a href="http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/3_5_5/3_5_5.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/3_5_5/3_5_5.html<br>
</a><i>Commentary<br>
</i>by the <b>Haiti Information Project</b> <br><br>
</font><font size=2><b>(HIP) March 3, 2005 -</b></font><font size=3>
Evidence continues to mount of the United Nation's complicity in an
on-going campaign by the US-installed government of Gerard Latortue to
terrorize and exterminate sympathizers of President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide's political party known as Lavalas. Despite detailed
documentation of innumerable massacres committed by the Police Nationale
de Haiti (PNH) over the last five months, the UN insisted in a new report
released on February 25 that "the general security environment
across Haiti has improved." Any sensible observer of Haiti must ask,
<i>"improved for whom?"</i> The recent attack by the PNH
against unarmed demonstrators demanding Aristide's return on February 28
destroyed the credibility of several such statements made recently by the
UN in Haiti and exposed the duplicitous role of their forces in propping
up an unpopular regime.<br><br>
The reality is the UN has dirtied its hands to keep the US-installed
regime in power. Their main role and objective has arguably been to
insure there is no resistance as the current regime undertakes a campaign
to eliminate the Lavalas party. Whenever the UN moved into the poor slums
of the capital to occupy it by force, the Haitian National Police (PNH)
soon followed with violent incursions against the population. Wherever
the UN opened the gates the PNH soon followed to tear apart their
victims. Following these bloody exercises in terror, the UN dutifully
covered them up by accepting the PNH's denials and justifications while
twisting reality by representing the Latortue regime as a centrist
government embattled between the extremes of deadly Lavalas gunmen and
the former brutal military. Meanwhile, the lopsided death toll of Lavalas
sympathizers versus any other identifiable sector of Haitian society is
incontrovertible and exposes the UN's subservience to US foreign policy
whose main goal has been to consolidate the coup that ousted the
democratically elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide on February
29, 2004.<br><br>
Continuing a relentless campaign of misinformation by the Latortue
regime, PNH spokeswoman Gessy Coicou commented on the killings of
February 28 by stating, "The police broke up the march because it
was violent and about half the protesters were carrying weapons."
This stood in stark contradiction to press reports by the likes of Knight
Ridder Newspapers (KRT) who wrote, "Two days after Haitian police
opened fire on a crowd of peaceful protesters and killed two, the head of
the U.N. mission here said police brutality is undercutting progress and
such action will no longer be tolerated." The Miami Herald also
quoted U.N. Ambassador Juan Gabriel Valdes as stating, "We cannot
tolerate executions. We can't tolerate shooting out of control. We will
not permit human rights abuses." KRT continued by adding "He
[U.N. Ambassador Juan Gabriel Valdes] said U.N. peacekeepers will
intervene and use force if necessary if Haitian police attack unarmed
civilians again."<br><br>
The former statement by Valdes was disingenuous at best given that the UN
has in the past given the PNH a freehand to kill Lavalas supporters with
impunity in well-documented massacres in poor neighborhoods like Cite
Soleil, Cite de Dieu, Bel Air and La Saline over the past five months.
The latter statement of UN armed intervention against PNH for
"attacking unarmed civilians" remains just words until put to
the test. <br><br>
Putting the UN's threat against PNH to the test is exactly what
Aristide's Lavalas party intends to do over the next weeks and months
before elections designed to legitimize the coup against him are held in
October and November. Nothing less than the already compromised
credibility of the UN is at stake in Haiti as the world braces itself for
yet another feeble justification to continue the campaign of
extermination against Lavalas supporters demanding Aristide's
return.<br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
</font><font size=3><a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">www.freedomarchives.org</a></font></body>
</html>