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<font size=3><b><u>For Immediate Release: <br>
</u></b>May 31, 2011 <b><u>Contact: <br>
</u>USA: </b>Kim Ives, 718-421-0162 <br>
<b>Haiti:</b> Yves Pierre-Louis, 3407-0761 <br>
<br><br>
</font><font size=5><b><i>Haiti Liberté </font><font size=3> </i>to Begin
Releasing This Week <br>
Secret U.S. Embassy Cables Provided by WikiLeaks <br>
</b> <br><br>
The weekly Haïti Liberté begins publishing a series of exclusive articles
which will draw from 1,918 secret diplomatic cables about Haiti from U.S.
Embassies around the world in its June 1 edition. The cables were
obtained by the transparency-advocacy group WikiLeaks and made available
to <i>Haïti Liberté</i>.<br><br>
The articles will be published in print and on the web at:
<a href="http://www.haitiliberte.com/"><b>http://www.haitiliberte.com</a>
.<br><br>
</b>The cables cover an almost seven-year period from Apr. 17, 2003, ten
months before the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d’état which ousted President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to Feb. 28, 2010, just after the Jan. 12
earthquake that devastated the capital, Port-au-Prince, and surrounding
cities.<br><br>
“<i>Haïti Liberté is publishing these cables because they offer
unparalleled insight into how the United States government has tried to
manipulate Haitian affairs in its own interests, not in the interests of
the Haitian people,”</i> said Berthony Dupont, <i>Haïti Liberté’s</i>
director. <i>“We hope that the release of the cables will help bring
about some transparency and accountability for the Haitian
people.”<br><br>
</i>The cables range from “<i>Secret</i>” and “<i>Confidential</i>”
classification to “<i>Unclassified.</i>” Cables of the latter
classification are not public, and many remain marked “<i>For Official
Use Only</i>” or “<i>Sensitive.</i>”<br><br>
The cables cover official U.S. strategies and maneuvering in Haiti during
the coup years (2004-2006) and the period after President René Préval’s
election (2006-2010). We see Washington’s obsession with keeping Aristide
out of Haiti and the hemisphere, the microscope it trained on the
democratic Lavalas movement, the relentless focus on rebellious shanty
towns like Cité Soleil and Bel Air, and Washington’s tight supervision of
Haiti’s police leadership and of the United Nation’s 9,000-man military
occupation known as the UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH).
<br><br>
In November 2010, WikiLeaks began publishing the 251,287 leaked U.S.
embassy cables it obtained last year by providing them to large
newspapers like the <i>New York Times</i>, <i>The Guardian</i> and <i>Der
Spiegel</i>. <br><br>
Now, WikiLeaks is selecting media in many other countries to provide them
with the U.S. Embassy cables relative to their specific country.
<i>“Haiti Liberté is honored that WikiLeaks has entrusted it with
releasing the cables relative to Haiti,</i>” Dupont said. “<i>Haiti
Liberté is also pleased to partner with The Nation, the oldest
continuously published magazine in the U.S., in publishing and
distributing English-language articles based on those WikiLeaks
cables.”<br><br>
</i>This coming week’s article will examine how Washington tried to
torpedo implementation of the PetroCaribe oil agreement between Venezuela
and Haiti, a struggle which frayed the U.S. relationship with President
Préval. Future articles will deal with Washington’s backing of assembly
industry owners in their fight against raising the minimum wage and how
it militarized aid to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.<br><br>
The cables offer many clues as to how Washington brought Haiti from the
paramilitary and Special Forces coup of 2004 to the electoral coup that
installed the neo-Duvalierist Michel Martelly in 2011.<br><br>
<br><br>
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