Chile to Take Key Role in Haiti's Reconstruction

[seemslikeadream]

Jul 20, 2004 United Nations
As part of a new U.N. mission to rebuild Haiti and prepare it for democratic elections, the government of Chile is planning to send engineers and police officers to help stabilize the country.
Chilean President Ricardo Lagos Escobar says his country will send 80 engineers to rebuild Haiti's infrastructure and 36 police officers to help train Haitian security forces.

The Chilean leader met with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York Tuesday to discuss ways to assist the interim Haitian government. President Lagos said he hopes the U.N. mission will lead to rapid improvement in the troubled country.

"We believe the role of the United Nations is central," he said. "And it is on the basis of this that Chile decided to take an active role in Haiti."

Observers say the move marks another step by Chile, which has been run by a democratic government since the end of military dictator Augusto Pinochet's rule in 1990, to help foster democracy in the region.

Last week, former Chilean Foreign Minister Juan Gabriel Valdes became the head of the new U.N. mission in Haiti. The U.N. peacekeeping operation, which is expected to number more than seven thousand troops and security officers, replaces a smaller, U.S.-led mission that arrived after a rebellion ousted Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide in February.
more
http://www.politinfo.com/articles/article_2004_07_20_0231.html

[seemslikeadream]

1. Haiti/Levi's protest in London

Haiti/Levi's protest in London: advance notice
Posted on Wednesday, July 21 @ 12:19:40 BST by mark


Anonymous writes "Support workers' rights in Haiti

Demonstrate at Levi's flagship store,
174 Regent St, central London, and at Levi's shop, 117a Long Acre, Covent Garden, London WC2.
Thursday, 29th JULY 2004

More info...

Day of action - details to follow

Haiti: June 2004 - Workers sewing 505 and 555 jeans are threatened and hit by factory supervisors, and beaten up by soldiers.

Following a one-day strike, half the workforce - more than 350 workers assembling Levi's jeans - are fired in mid-June.

With these dismissals, the factory owners effectively smash a newly-formed trade union.

Daily production quotas for the remaining workers are doubled. Workers struggle to make US$2 a day!

Meanwhile, Levi Strauss & Co. looks the other way, doing nothing to protect workers' rights.

Workers have the right to form unions.

Demand that Levi's have the workers re-instated.

Support workers' rights in Haiti.

Email your protest to:
Paul Mason, President, Levi Strauss & Co Europe: email now

copy to the Haiti Support Group: ecopy to hsg

Demonstration called by the Haiti Support Group and the Batttersea and Wandsworth trade union council.

Endorsed by: No Sweat, Central American Women's Network, Batay Ouvriye."

http://www.nosweat.org.uk/article.php?sid=1000&mode=thread&order=0

[seemslikeadream]

2. BUSH'S PLAN FOR PEACE IS THE PEACE OF THE COMMON GRAVE

EVERY DEATH CREATES NEW ENEMIES
MORE TERRORISTS
MORE DANGER
MORE DEATH
AND REMEMBER...

HE IS JUST GETTING STARTED...

BUSH'S PLAN FOR PEACE
IS THE PEACE OF THE COMMON GRAVE

http://www.bushflash.com/pax.html WATCH THIS VIDEO


Wumpscut
Totmacher

sie ahnten nichts von mir
von meiner wilden gier
doch als du kamst zu mir
da wurde ich ein tier
kein gedanke an danach
als ich dir die knochen brach

tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot

tot

fuer mein naechstes leben
schoepfe ich neue kraft
ich bin dem toeten ergeben
in der einzelhaft

tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot
tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot

ein dahinsichen
von gottes hand
ich kann dich riechen
und das denken verschwand

tot tot tot tot tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot tot tot tot tot

ich mache dich tot ich mache dich tot
ich mache dich tot ich mache dich tot

sag mir was du willst
dass du meine sehnsucht stillst
ich mache dich tot fuer immerdar
von blut alles rot auf gottes altar

tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot

ich mache dich tot fuer immerdar
ich mache dich tot glaub mir es ist wahr
ich mache dich tot fuer immerdar
ich mache dich tot auf gottes altar


TRANSLATION

Wumpscut - Deadmaker

They didn't expect me
never expected my wild lust
I turned into an animal
No thought about afterwards
When I broke your bones

Dead, dead, dead I make you dead
Dead, dead, dead stained from blood so red

Dead

For my next life (life after death in the religious sense)
I get the power I need
I’m a slave to the killing
In solitary confinement

("einzelhaft" (solitary confinment) has become part of the german vocabulary after the terrorist attacks of the Red Army Fraction during the 70's. It's used for people in prison, who are put into complete isolation not just from other people, but from all kinds of information. It's what might be known in the US as "sensual deprivation", a kind of torture-technique to destroy people's self.)

Dead, dead, dead I make you dead
Dead, dead, dead stained from blood so red
Dead, dead, dead I make you dead
Dead, dead, dead stained from blood so red

Wasting away
By God’s hand
I can smell you
And my thought disappeared

Dead, dead, dead I make you dead
Dead, dead, dead stained from blood so red
Dead, dead, dead, dead

I make you dead I make you dead
I make you dead I make you dead

Tell me what you want
That you fill my longing (that you satisfy my desire)
I make you dead for evermore
God’s altar stained from blood so red

Dead, dead, dead I make you dead
Dead, dead, dead stained from blood so red

I make you dead for evermore
I make you dead believe me its true
I make you dead for evermore
I make you dead on God’s altar

http://www.bushflash.com/animation.html


Conclusive Evidence of U.S. Role in Kidnapping and Coup
PRESS ADVISORY
Monday, April 4, 2004

As Bush Administration Scrambles to Shore Up Appointed Haitian Regime Commission to Present Conclusive Evidence of U.S. Role in Kidnapping and Coup

Date: Wednesday, April 7
Time: 6:30- 9:30 pm
Location: The Whitman Theatre at Brooklyn College

Panel to include: Rep. Maxine Waters, Rep. Major Owens, Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Ossie Davis, Gil Noble, Amy Goodman, Ron Daniels, and other prominent activists and journalists

The Bush Administration is facing a growing crisis over its role in the coup in Haiti and the kidnapping of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who continues to speak out about his abduction by the U.S. The 15-member organization of Caribbean nations, CARICOM, has refused to recognize the U.S.-installed regime and has called for an investigation, despite intense pressure and threats from the U.S. The 53-member African Union has raised the same demand.

On Wednesday, April 7, the Haiti Commission of Inquiry will initiate a public inquiry of the role of the Bush Administration in the crisis in Haiti. Delegations that visited both the Central African Republic and the Dominican Republic will present conclusive evidence that U.S. Special Forces armed, trained, and directed the "rebels" and engineered the abduction of President Aristide.

The preliminary report from the Commission states, "two hundred U.S. Special Forces soldiers came to the Dominican Republic as part of 'Operation Jaded Task,' with special authorization from President Hipólito Mejia. We have received many reports that this operation was used to train Haitian rebels. We have received many consistent reports of Haitian rebel training centers at or near Dominican military facilities. We have received many consistent reports of guns transported from the Dominican Republic to Haiti, some across the land border, and others shipped by sea."

Johnnie Stevens of the International Action Center, a member of the delegation to the Central African Republic, said, "The U.S.-installed Prime Minister, Gerard Latortue, has hailed the paid mercenaries as freedom fighters, and had thus discredited himself among the Caribbean nations."

Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a desperate bid to lend some credibility to the Latortue government, is now visiting Haiti for the first time. This attempt to put U. S. weight behind the isolated colonial-style regime is a response to its growing isolation. Sara Flounders, of the International Action Center, said, "This visit by Powell is a sign of the Bush Administration’s growing isolation and disarray. The U.S. is desperately trying to shore up a discredited regime in the face of international opposition to the appointed government of Haiti after the stinging rebuke directed at the U.S. by the recent CARICOM meeting." Flounders is a member of the Haiti Commission of Inquiry and was part of the delegation to the Central African Republic, where she visited with President Aristide shortly after his kidnapping.

Kim Ives from Haiti Progres, who was part of the delegation to the Dominican Republic, told the media, "In the course of our investigation here, we met with many Haitians who were forced to flee Haiti following the coup d'etat of Feb. 29. Their testimony gave very concrete names and faces to the stories of violence which we have heard that the so-called rebels, trained and assembled in the Dominican Republic, have carried out in Haiti over the past month. We were also touched by the tears of refugees who told us of how they are apprehensive over the fate of their loved ones left behind in Haiti."

From 2/23/2003:


US Troopers Secretly Land in Dominican Republic
http://english.pravda.ru/world/2003/02/20/43514.html
The military training operation nicknamed Jaded Task took by surprise Dominican Foreign Ministry.

The US Army started today a training operation in the Caribbean country as part of routine maneuvers of the Southern Command. The landing had been kept so secretly that Dominican Foreign Ministry Hugo Tolentino was reported... by the TV.

As per the first reports, the US troops are training Dominican soldiers on anti-terrorism operations in the north of the island. When the national media started announcing the landing, country's Foreign Minister was having a lunch. Tolentino said that, as chief of the Dominican diplomacy, he should have been formally advised, as personally requested to the Dominican Army and the US Embassy to Santo Domingo.

(snip)

However, the most interesting thing, here, is that the Communist Party of the Dominican Republic did know about the operations. This correspondent had access to two formal communications issued by the US Embassy including details of these activities, during the Communist summit held in Buenos Aires in January. There, the US ambassador to Santo Domingo reported about 10.000 soldiers coming to the Dominican Republic to take part of the training.

Moreover, the communists and other leftist forces in the country made know such documents to the local media in November. According to the denounce, US soldiers can freely enter and leave the country without any kind of permission. Also, they can do it through owned means of conveyance.

(more at link)


Conclusive Evidence of U.S. Role in Kidnapping and Coup
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=465773
Who's who of the Haiti Coup - death squad veterans and convicted murderers
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1307941
Haiti: Drugs, Thugs, the CIA, and the Deterrence of Democracy
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1257891
Political Crisis in Haiti House Committee Hearing C-SPAN3 2pm et
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1189042

[Matilda]

3. Observers say what??

How is it possible to foster democracy by forcibly removing the
democratically elected Head of Government?

I think Chile still has a long way to go.

[redqueen]

5. They are playing by the elite's rules

probably to avoid facing the same fate as Allende.

[Octafish]

10. BFEEthink: Liberation Theology is un-Christian.

"When you feed the poor, they call you a saint.
When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist."

-- Archbishop Helder Camara, Brazilian Liberation Theologian

[Matilda]

16. I like that.

I've printed it up and put it on my office notice board.

[seemslikeadream]

4. The Invasion of Haiti Anthony Fenton interviews Stan Goff

The Invasion of Haiti Anthony Fenton interviews Stan Goff


The Invasion of Haiti
Anthony Fenton interviews Stan Goff

by Stan Goff and Anthony Fenton

Fenton: What kind of background should one be familiar with when undertaking this type of investigation?

Goff: There's been a longstanding relationship between the Dominican military and the old military apparatus that developed after Papa Doc had his rapprochment with the Americans.

A lot of people think that Papa Doc was vaulted into power by the Americans, but actually, the opposite was true. The ideology of Papa Doc was one that grew out of a very xenophobic and nationalistic resistance against the Americans, and they in fact plotted a coup against him early on. There were two factions of the ruling class: one was was very much based on the old share-cropping land system and then there were the up and coming compradore class that were much more international and cosmopolitan in their outlook and they were the ones that were gaining the most from the military occupation - the 19 year military occupation from right after World War I, all the way up until the mid-30s, by the United States.

For 19 years the US Marines basically ran Haiti directly, and Papa Doc was vaulted into power in reaction to that because the Capitalist form of agriculture that was brought into Haiti was a real threat to this land tendency system, this share cropping system. This is really the social base of Papa Doc's movement was this landed class, the big land owners. One of the origins of the tonton macoutes was that this was a militia that he used to protect himself from an army that was still in many ways loyal to this competitor class, the compradors, and were politically unreliable until Papa Doc had time to affect his own transformation in the military.

This military that developed under Papa Doc had a relationship with the Dominican military. In fact , they sort of existed with one another as their raison d'etre. They both collaborated in a lot of ways: they collaborated in criminal enterprises, they collaborated in security issues, they collaborated politically, because both of them were sort of the armed enforcement wing of their respective states, and had a direct interest in stability on both sides of the border, and this relationship has lasted. The Dominicans themselves, the dominant Dominican elites, were not at all happy about Aristide, just as many members of the Dominican military were unhappy about Aristide dissolving the military {Aristide dissolved the military when he came back the first time}.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=5...


Bushwhacked In the Caribbean

By Randall Robinson
Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A23

In addition, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has warned Caricom leaders that if one U.S. soldier is killed in Haiti, Caribbean governments will be held responsible because the Aristide family was granted sanctuary in the region. In short, the Bush administration is strong-arming the Caribbean to confer on Haiti's new "government," headed by Gerard Latortue, a legitimacy it has not earned and does not deserve. Indeed, 33 of the 39 members of the Congressional Black Caucus stayed away from a recent Washington meeting arranged by two congressmen for Latortue.

The United States' demand that Caricom abandon its long-held insistence on democratic principles is psychic poison to the region. When Eastern Europe was going through its totalitarian nightmare, when coups and despotic rule were "normal" in Central and South America, and when civil strife and dictatorship wracked much of Africa and Asia, the Caribbean steadfastly upheld its democratic traditions -- and it continues to do so today. This is because of the region's well-educated populace and the caliber of its leaders; no military thugs in business suits here. From Rhodes Scholar-Prime Minister Percival J. Patterson of Jamaica in the north, to professor-lawyer Prime Minister Ralph Gonslaves in the south (St. Vincent-Grenadines), and from the physician Prime Minister Denzil Douglas in tiny St. Kitts-Nevis to the economist Prime Minister Owen Arthur in Barbados, Caribbean heads of government understand the lessons of history. They recognize the supremacy of the ballot. And they know that only democratic values will keep the Caribbean a zone of peace. Reinhold Niebuhr warned that man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but that man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. Yet the United States has unleashed its venom on Caribbean governments because they have proclaimed Caricom's democratic principles to be inviolable.

The Bush administration, however, has been implacable. Its officials were to have come to the Caribbean in April and May to discuss, among other things, terrorism, but the administration presented Caribbean governments with an ultimatum: no recognition of Latortue, no meetings between the United States and the Caribbean leaders. Caricom reminded U.S. officials that Latortue was not elected by anyone. And so the meetings are off. Why is the unelected Latortue more important to the Bush administration than the Caribbean's 14 democratically elected governments?

Americans must speak out against their government's behavior abroad. And they must recognize that the atrocities inflicted by U.S. soldiers on Iraqi prisoners grow out of a hubris and contempt that far too many U.S. officials display when dealing with much of the rest of the world. If stable Caribbean democracies are being slapped around by America because they uphold democratic values, who is safe in this unipolar world? Certainly not the American people, who are being made targets of global rage because of these tactics.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38008-20...

Haitian Police kill peaceful demonstrators
by Anthony Fenton Thursday May 20, 2004 at 12:18 PM
[e-mail]

Chile is part of an illegal occupation that has overseen the slaughter of as many as 3000 Haitians since February 29th. Emerging evidence shows that the destabilization and coup d'etat began in 2000, planned and executed by the US, UN, Canada, France, EU, and the Dominican. Empires and vassals. The same forces that helped overthrow Allende have repeated history in Haiti!!!


by the Haiti Information Project

May 18, 2004
Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Special Forces units (CIMO) of the Haitian National Police (PNH) killed Lavalas demonstra-tors today in Port-au-Prince as a larger U.S. Marine "peacekeeping" force of about 50 soldiers stood by.

About 6,000 Lavalas demonstrators in one of many separate marches tried to converge near the Champ De Mars for a larger demonstration. The march had been planned for some time and the organizations that planned the march received written approval by the PNH to hold this demonstration on Haitian Flag Day.

It is hard to estimate the actual size of the demonstration but figures of 30,000 to 60,000 different demonstrators in various parts of the city seem credible.

A contingent of about 50 U.S. Marines patroled every hour at the start of one march in Bel-Air trying to intimidate the population there. One of the marines officers in command tried to threaten an American journalist who was filming the action. Whenever, any of the groups of marchers tried to reach Champ de Mars a CIMO unit would "appear out of nowhere" and commence shooting into the crowds of demonstrators.

Reports of similar killing is coming in from different areas of the city. At 10PM in Haiti, there were nine verified dead by the U.S. trained killers. The Marine's seem to be coordinating this carnage, and are standing by with heavy artillery in case the population tries to stop the killers.

Recently the U.S. Marines have been directly involved in the current violent political repression of Lavalas activists. Last week the Marines used explosives to gain access to Annette Auguste's home before they arrested her and her family on the pretense that she was arming Lavalas militants to attack the Marines during Haitian Solidarity Week. No weapons were witnessed or found in possession of any of the protesters today.

Even though the demonstrators were rather angry no rocks were thrown or violence was witnessed to provoke the shooting.

One demonstrator who was shot 30 yards in front of the journalist lay dying of a gunshot wound to the head. The only item in his possession was a Walkman disk player. The CIMO unit that shot the non-violent Lavalasien drove up in a red truck license plate: 1-0060.

Later reports indicate that the U.S. Marines have begun reprisals for the large show of solidarity, once darkness descended on Port-au-Prince

fair use


Haitian leader misses Flag Day celebration

Staff report
Posted May 20 2004

Pompano Beach · The aftermath of violent political protests in Haiti kept Prime Minister Gérard Latortue from keeping an appointment to celebrate Haitian Flag Day at the Worldwide Christian Church Center on Wednesday night.

The church, along with the Louverture Center for Freedom and Development, scheduled a week of special events and services to commemorate Flag Day, which was Tuesday. Latortue was scheduled to pick up the Louverture Haiti Renaissance Award. Gov. Jeb Bush, who could not attend, was given the Star of Freedom Award.


On Tuesday, the Westminster Academy Haiti Missions Team from Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and Jean Colin, executive director of the Haitian Health Foundation of South Florida, were given the Spirit of Excellence Award during a celebration sponsored by Minority Development and Empowerment Inc
more
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-cfla ... ...


At least 9 demonstrators killed during huge march on Haiti’s Flag Day

This pro-Aristide demonstrator, Titus Simpson, 23, was shot by Haitian Special Forces (CIMO) less than 30 yards in front of an American journalist covering Tuesday’s march celebrating Haiti’s Flag Day. U.S. Marines threatened the journalist with arrest for filming the events, and he was shot at twice. Simpson was unarmed, the only item in his possession a Walkman disk player.

Marchers face down US Marines, shout ‘Liberty or death,’ ‘Bring back Aristide’

by Marguerite Laurent, J.D.

Haitian Lawyers Leadership

This pro-Aristide demonstrator, Titus Simpson, 23, was shot by Haitian Special Forces (CIMO) less than 30 yards in front of an American journalist covering Tuesday’s march celebrating Haiti’s Flag Day. U.S. Marines threatened the journalist with arrest for filming the events, and he was shot at twice. Simpson was unarmed, the only item in his possession a Walkman disk player.
May 18 is Haiti’s Flag Day, and a demonstration was planned and authorized by the police authorities. Copies of the authorization letter, dated May 10, were sent by Fanmi Lavalas to the United Nations, OAS and CARICOM.

Yet today the Haitian police, along with U.S. Marines, shot indiscriminately into the crowd aiming to break up the demonstration.

“They slapped us hard today,” one of the demonstrators stated over the phone from Port-au-Prince. “But we slapped them right back because they thought all their killings of Lavalas and torturing had intimidated us all into hiding in our own country. They did not expect so many of us to take to the street to ask for the return of President Aristide and the disbanding of the army soldiers who are now running the Haitian National Police. That’s why we slapped them back.”

more
http://www.sfbayview.com/051904/haitisflagday051904.sht ...


Thousands demonstrate in call for return of Aristide to power

Supporters of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide march during a demonstration celebrating the 201st birthday of the Haitian flag in Port-au-Prince, Haiti Tuesday, May 18, 2004. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

http://www.timesdaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20 ... ...


Pro-Aristide March Turns Violent in Haiti

By AMY BRACKEN
Associated Press Writer

Supporters of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide march during a demonstration celebrating the 201st birthday of the Haitian flag in Port-au-Prince, Haiti Tuesday, May 18, 2004. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Thousands of demonstrators called for the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide during a Flag Day rally Tuesday that turned violent, leaving at least one man dead.

Waving flags and carrying umbrellas bearing Aristide's smiling face, the demonstrators marched from the pro-Aristide stronghold of Belair toward the National Palace, just blocks away from a cathedral where interim President Boniface Alexandre was attending a Mass.

As the protesters neared the cathedral, riot police fired tear gas and then warning shots to disperse the crowd, which reacted by pelting government vehicles with rocks.

A 23-year-old demonstrator was shot and killed. It was unclear who fired the fatal shot, and police were not immediately available for comment.
more
http://www.timesdaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20 ... ...


Thousands demonstrate in call for return of Aristide to power

As the protesters neared the cathedral, riot police fired tear gas and then warning shots to disperse the crowd, which reacted by pelting government vehicles with rocks.

Demonstrator Titus Simpton, 23, was shot and killed. It was unclear who fired the fatal shot, and police were not immediately available for comment.

U.S. Marines helped the police by conducting patrols but did not fire any rounds, according to Colonel David Lapan, a spokesman for the U.S.-led multinational force that will be replaced by a U.N. force. Peacekeepers and international police are scheduled to start arriving on June 1.

Aristide claims that the United States forced him to resign amid a spreading three-week revolt on February 29, a claim the United States denies.

The 15-nation Caribbean Community, which has refused to recognize Haiti's interim government because of the allegations that Aristide has made, has asked the Organization of American States to investigate the circumstances of Aristide's departure.
more
http://www.etaiwannews.com/World/2004/05/20/1085022289 ....


Former Rebels Form New Political Party in Haiti

VOA News
20 May 2004, 14:13 UTC

AP
Guy Philippe
(File photo)
Former Haitian rebels who played a major role in February's ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide say they have formed a new political party.
The former members of the National Resistance Front have created a group called the National Reconstruction Front.

Former rebel leader Guy Philippe is expected to have a lead role in the party, which says it will field candidates in Haiti's general elections next year.

The announcement was made Tuesday in Haiti's fourth-largest city, Gonaives, which the rebels held during the armed revolt that led to Mr. Aristide's departure.
more
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=824A0A42-87 ... ...


Rebel commander Wilfort Ferdinand, also known by the nickname Ti-Wil, greets leader Guy Philippe, right, with an affectionate pat as he arrives with a group of rebel troops in Cap Haitien, Haiti, Saturday. (AP /Pablo Aneli).


Haitian rebels form political party
Rebel leader Guy Philippe, 36, who was sacked by the Aristide government for plotting a coup, Winter Etienne, 40, and Buteur Metayer, 32, will hold respectively the roles of secretary general, general coordinator and president.

Mr Etienne is a supporter of fellow rebel leader and former death squad member Louis-Jodel Chamblain, who was convicted in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1993 murder of Mr Aristide's financier Antoine Izmery.

Mr Metary is the leader of the Cannibal Army gang in the northern city of Gonaives and a former Aristide supporter

Tuesday's announcement was made before a crowd of 1,000 in Gonaives, held by the FRN rebels during the armed insurgency against Mr Aristide.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1112625.htm


In Haiti's chaos, rape without punishment was norm

"It was worse than I have ever seen," said Yolette Jeanty, director of the women's rights group Kay Fanm. "At least before, there were some ways to get justice."

Rape has always carried a certain level of impunity in Haiti. Even the concept of rape is often limited to young victims.

"The adult women, they don't consider it rape," Jeanty said. "There is this mentality that if you're not a virgin, it's not a rape."

By law, it is considered a crime against honor - a squandering of virginity that can often be settled with a payment to the victim's family.

"Sometimes the judge will even suggest as a reparation that the rapist marry the girl," Jeanty said.
more
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0520HaitiRape20 -...


Haiti: Marines arrest woman leader on Mother’s Day
U.S. Marines invaded the home of renowned entertainer and community leader Annette Auguste after midnight May 9, arresting and detaining everyone present including four great-grandchildren, TransAfrica said, citing reports from Haiti.

While the others were later released, Ms. Auguste, known as So Ann, was interrogated throughout the night without counsel or anyone present except herself and the Marines. She was then transferred to the Haitian National Police where she was still detained late last week.

The Marines breached her gate with explosives, shot and killed the household dogs and ransacked the home, searching for non-existent weapons.

TransAfrica said it believes Ms. Auguste was arrested because “she is a prominent leader of Haitians who understand and object that the right-wing elite has returned to Haiti behind the guns of convicted criminals and death squad thugs, with the blessing of their right-wing allies here in the United States.”
more
http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/5264/1/216


Chile Approves Troops For Haiti Peacekeeping

Thursday, May 20, 2004; Page A26

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Chile's Senate agreed Wednesday to send 650 troops to Haiti as part of a U.N. peacekeeping mission that will take over the task of restoring stability from a U.S.-led multinational force on June 1.

Chile, a member of the U.N. Security Council, deployed 130 troops in March after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled Haiti under international pressure as an armed rebellion threatened the capital, Port-au-Prince.

That Chilean deployment is due to end in June. The new contingent, approved by a vote of 27 to 0 with 15 abstentions, adds to that military presence and includes 38 members from the national police force.

The Security Council unanimously approved on April 30 the new mission of up to 5,700 U.N. troops and as many as 1,622 police officers.
more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41466-20 ...


Brazil to send 1,200 troops to Haiti
Brazilian soldiers receive training in Brasilia, Brazil, before their Haiti deployment.

BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) -- Brazil's Senate agreed late Wednesday to send 1,200 troops to Haiti to lead a U.N peacekeeping mission as Brazil seeks to build a role as a regional crisis mediator.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has championed the interests of the world's poorest nations since taking office, offered Brazil's biggest ever U.N. peacekeeping force to head the mission.

The Senate vote was the last hurdle for deployment. It was approved with 38 votes for and 10 votes against.

Lula, who objected to the U.S.-led war on Iraq last year, conditioned Brazilian leadership of the mission on international support to build a democracy in Haiti after two U.S.
more
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/05/20/brazil.hai ... /


Haitian Police kill peaceful demonstrators
by Anthony Fenton Thursday May 20, 2004 at 12:18 PM
[e-mail]

Chile is part of an illegal occupation that has overseen the slaughter of as many as 3000 Haitians since February 29th. Emerging evidence shows that the destabilization and coup d'etat began in 2000, planned and executed by the US, UN, Canada, France, EU, and the Dominican. Empires and vassals. The same forces that helped overthrow Allende have repeated history in Haiti!!!

by the Haiti Information Project
May 18, 2004
Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Special Forces units (CIMO) of the Haitian National Police (PNH) killed Lavalas demonstra-tors today in Port-au-Prince as a larger U.S. Marine "peacekeeping" force of about 50 soldiers stood by.

About 6,000 Lavalas demonstrators in one of many separate marches tried to converge near the Champ De Mars for a larger demonstration. The march had been planned for some time and the organizations that planned the march received written approval by the PNH to hold this demonstration on Haitian Flag Day.

It is hard to estimate the actual size of the demonstration but figures of 30,000 to 60,000 different demonstrators in various parts of the city seem credible.

A contingent of about 50 U.S. Marines patroled every hour at the start of one march in Bel-Air trying to intimidate the population there. One of the marines officers in command tried to threaten an American journalist who was filming the action. Whenever, any of the groups of marchers tried to reach Champ de Mars a CIMO unit would "appear out of nowhere" and commence shooting into the crowds of demonstrators.

Reports of similar killing is coming in from different areas of the city. At 10PM in Haiti, there were nine verified dead by the U.S. trained killers. The Marine's seem to be coordinating this carnage, and are standing by with heavy artillery in case the population tries to stop the killers.

Recently the U.S. Marines have been directly involved in the current violent political repression of Lavalas activists. Last week the Marines used explosives to gain access to Annette Auguste's home before they arrested her and her family on the pretense that she was arming Lavalas militants to attack the Marines during Haitian Solidarity Week. No weapons were witnessed or found in possession of any of the protesters today.

Even though the demonstrators were rather angry no rocks were thrown or violence was witnessed to provoke the shooting.

One demonstrator who was shot 30 yards in front of the journalist lay dying of a gunshot wound to the head. The only item in his possession was a Walkman disk player. The CIMO unit that shot the non-violent Lavalasien drove up in a red truck license plate: 1-0060.

Later reports indicate that the U.S. Marines have begun reprisals for the large show of solidarity, once darkness descended on Port-au-Prince
More details on this tragic event later.
http://chile.indymedia.org/news/2004/05/18974.php
fair use

[redqueen]

8. Broken Links Fixed Where Possible

For those articles for which I could find no exact matches - there is information out there, I was searching for the original articles only. Please search for related information - this is our government's foreign policy in action.


The Invasion of Haiti
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=55&ItemID=5557


Bushwhacked In the Caribbean
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38008-2004May18.html


Haitian leader misses Flag Day celebration
No hits at source, no exact match from net.


At least 9 demonstrators killed during huge march on Haiti’s Flag Day
http://www.sfbayview.com/051904/haitisflagday051904.shtml


Thousands demonstrate in call for return of Aristide to power
No hits at source, no exact match from net.


Pro-Aristide March Turns Violent in Haiti
Interestingly, -1 hits at source... wtf?
http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0504/147691.html


Thousands demonstrate in call for return of Aristide to power
No hits at source (only 7 days avail), no exact match from net.


Former Rebels Form New Political Party in Haiti
No hits from source, or exact match from net.


In Haiti's chaos, rape without punishment was norm
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/8712201.htm

Chile Approves Troops For Haiti Peacekeeping
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41466-2004May19.html

Brazil to send 1,200 troops to Haiti
No hits from source, no exact matches from net.


:kick:

[seemslikeadream]

18. Thanks so much redqueen

I didn't realize this. I'll try and fix the rest.

[redqueen]

22. My pleasure

Just trying to help... you're doing so much already, I didn't want to just tell you to fix 'em. :)

:kick:

[seemslikeadream]

6. SOMEONE'S LOVED ONE'S HEART STOPS BEATING IN A STREET SOMEWHERE

WHILE I SIT HERE TRYING TO THINK OF THINGS TO SAY

SOMEONE LIES BLEEDING IN A FIELD SOMEWHERE

SO IT WOULD SEEM WE'VE STILL GOT A LONG LONG WAY TO GO

I'VE SEEN ALL I WANNA SEE TODAY

WHILE I SIT HERE TRYING TO MOVE YOU ANYWAY I CAN

SOMEONE'S SON LIES DEAD IN A GUTTER SOMEWHERE

AND IT WOULD SEEM THAT WE'VE GOT A LONG LONG WAY TO GO

BUT I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE

SWITCH IT OFF IT WILL GO AWAY

TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO

SWITCH IT OFF OR LOOK AWAY

WHILE I SIT AND WE TALK AND TALK AND WE TALK SOME MORE

SOMEONE'S LOVED ONE'S HEART STOPS BEATING IN A STREET SOMEWHERE

SO IT WOULD SEEM WE'VE STILL GOT A LONG LONG WAY TO GO, I KNOW

I'VE HEARD ALL I WANNA HEAR TODAY

TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO (TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO)

SWITCH IT OFF IT WILL GO AWAY (SWITCH IT OFF IT WILL GO AWAY)

TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO (TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO)

SWITCH IT OFF OR LOOK AWAY (SWITCH IT OFF OR LOOK AWAY)

SWITCH IT OFF

SWITCH IT OFF

SWITCH IT OFF

SWITCH IT OFF

SWITCH IT OFF

TURN IT OFF

Thanks to
phil collins for the words
the people of Haiti for their struggle
bob my friend

[bullimiami]

7. I have to question ANY support for Haiti now.

Now that there is an illegal coup running the country so the sweatshop slumlords can get back to business.

Now there is money?

Where was the money when Aristide needed it to help the poor and the restevecs? Where was it when they were scraping together each gourde to build schools?

Forget it. Dirty money stained in blood.

[nolabels]

9. Hey, you might want to look around this map to see if that is true?

Your statement "there is an illegal coup running the country", check this map, maybe you can spot another place where one took place :think:



http://www.usacn.com/usa/state/_derived/

btw I can't read that either, but I sure can figure it out and it has nothing to do with the chinese or communist

[seemslikeadream]

12. 300,000 RESTAVECS

Haiti's Dark Secret: The Restavecs
Servitude Crosses the Line Between Chores and Child Slavery

Josimène's Story


Josiméne, 10, and photojournalist Gigi Cohen.
Credit: Gigi Cohen/The Photo Project
© 2004


March 27, 2004 -- Haiti, a nation of only eight million people, is home to some 300,000 restavecs -– young children who are frequently trafficked from the rural countryside to work as domestic servants in the poverty-stricken nation's urban areas.

Parents send their children away, often to wealthy looking strangers, hoping that they will be fed and educated in exchange for performing domestic work.

As poverty and political turmoil in Haiti increases, human rights observers report that the number of restavecs continues to rise dramatically.

Documentary photographer Gigi Cohen spent a month in Haiti photographing Josiméne, a 10-year-old restavec. Cohen's is one of 11 stories that are part of Child Labor and the Global Village: Photography for Social Change, a project of The Tides Center and Julia Dean & Associates.

Cohen's month with Josiméne evolved into more than a simple assignment –- the two forged a close relationship. Freelance producer Rachel Leventhal asked Cohen if, in addition to her photographic assignment, she would also make recordings for the radio. Using Cohen’s recordings, she tells Josiméne's story.

A Child Caring for Children
One of the two children Josiméne cares for argues and points at Josiméne while the girl's mother fixes her hair. Josiméne also bathes the children, cleans the two-room house, washes dishes, scrubs laundry by hand, runs errands, and sells small items from the family's informal store.
Credit: Gigi Cohen/The Photo Project Copyright: 2004
MORE
http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_1779562.html

[shadu]

15. I was trying to recall that word: Restavec

I had never heard about that before you mentioned it here.
Thank You for refreshing our memories. It is horribly sad
and we need to not forget.

[seemslikeadream]

17. Pines couple charged with enslaving teen after smuggling her into U.S.

sun-sentinel.com
Posted March 23 2004, 2:15 PM EST

FORT LAUDERDALE – A federal grand jury on Tuesday returned an indictment alleging a Pembroke Pines couple snuck a teenage girl into the country from her native Haiti, then held her in virtual slavery for three years.

The child broke the chain of alleged sexual and economic abuse in 1999 when she told her schoolteacher that she was being sexually abused by a member of the household.

The indictment charges Willie and wife Marie Pompee with harboring a young Haitian girl in their South Florida home. If convicted as charged, the Pompees each face a prison term of up to 10 years and a fine of up to $250,000, plus restitution to the victim.

According to the indictment, the Pompees concealed the child from 1996 until 1999, when the child, then 12, was removed from the Pompee home by local police. The couple used the child as a household servant after she was smuggled into the United States from Haiti, where she and her mother had performed similar work for Marie Pompee's mother and sister, the indictment alleges.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-323p...


JudiLyn

This is so hideous, for two reasons
First, that there are NO safeguards to keep this from happening in the first place in a country as organized and enlightened as ours imagines itself.

Second, George Bush hurled charges last year at several countries, accusing them of "human trafficking," and it was discussed here then.

From the article:

Trafficking in people - also known as human trafficking - is a form of modern-day slavery, according to federal immigration officials and the FBI. Recent government estimates indicate 18,000 to 20,000 persons are brought into the United States annually for the purposes of sexual exploitation or forced labor.
(snip)
Un-bleeping believable. Yet, the pResident continues to point his soft, moist, squishy fingers at any number of other countries. Takes all kinds.


Of Haitian Bondage
Friday, May 4, 2001, Time Magazine, TIM PADGETT/MIAMI AND PORT-AU-PRINCE

By the late 1990s, Haitian-American community activists like Romer had begun to detect the presence of restaveks in Miami. When the activists began to broach the issue on Haitian radio shows and at church gatherings, they first faced denial and even veiled threats of ostracism from some of the community's old guard. But the phenomenon could no longer be covered up after Oct. 2, 1999, when Florida officials working on a tip from neighbors removed a 12-year-old Haitian girl--filthy, unkempt and in acute abdominal pain from repeated rape--from the affluent suburban home of middle-class Haitian-American merchants Willy and Marie Pompee in Pembroke Pines. The girl, a restavek, said she had been forced to have sex with the Pompees' 20-year-old son Willy Jr. since she was nine. The father and son, who police say are on the lam in Haiti, have been charged with slaveholding and sexual battery, respectively. Marie, who would not take repeated phone requests for comment, remains under investigation.

It is impossible to estimate how many others like the Pembroke Pines girl, nicknamed Little Hope in the Haitian community, are laboring in American households. But Romer and other Haitian- American social workers report that current and former restaveks are coming to them in greater numbers now for help, largely because the Pembroke Pines case galvanized support for such victims. Several organizations have set up hotlines for kids seeking help; they offer ex-restaveks assistance in finding homes, jobs and opportunities for schooling.
http://www.racematters.org/ofhaitianbondage.htm

Pines couple charged with enslaving Haitian girl after smuggling her into
The case came to light when the girl befriended three employees of a Fort Lauderdale modeling school after responding to a television ad for the school. During daily calls, details of the girl's life slowly emerged.

She said although she shared the house with the Pompees and their four children, she slept on the floor and was forced to clean the house from the moment she returned home from school until she went to bed. She said she was not allowed to have any personal possessions and was hardly fed. Then, as she held her abdomen in pain, details of the alleged sexual abuse came out.


The U.S. Attorney's Office said human trafficking is a modern form of slavery. According to recent government estimates, as many as 20,000 people a year are brought into the United States for forced labor or sexual exploitation.

Child slavery is an entrenched tradition in Haiti where, according to some estimates, there are as many as 300,000 child slaves, called restaveks. Restavek means "to stay with" in Creole, and children on the impoverished island sometimes are referred to as "animals."
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl...


12-year-old girl on hit list for giving Aristide flowers
One of Haiti's 400,000 restaveks (unpaid domestic servants) is in hiding in Northern Haiti. Death squads targeted her after they looted her school, where they found a photograph of her giving flowers to President Aristide. The girl, whose name has been withheld for her own safety, is 12 years old. Her story was read Monday on Flashpoints, the investigative news show broadcast weekdays at 5 p.m. on KPFA 94.1 FM.

It is the words of Aristide that freed me, and it is the words about Aristide that condemn me.

My mother died when I was a child, and my father sent me to live with a family in Cap Haitian. I was four years old. Every day I got up and I washed the floor. I hauled water on my head. I went to the market and bought food and charcoal. I cooked the food and I washed the clothes. I did work all day and my back hurt.

I felt that I was not a person, just a zombie walking around asleep. I was not allowed to eat at the table or sleep in a bed. Instead I ate whatever food was left when others were finished. I slept under the table with the dogs. I was not yet alive. I had not been born.

President Aristide spoke about the restaveks on the radio, and he said, “All the restaveks are people.” I did not know who he was, so it made me laugh because I thought he must be a fool to think I was a person and to say that the restaveks are the future of Haiti.

http://www.sfbayview.com/031004/onhitlist031004.shtml



Thanks for listening shadu :hi:

[Octafish]

11. Project X, Drugs & Death Squads (Consortium News Lost History Archives)

Lost History: Project X, Drugs & Death Squads

By Robert Parry

WASHINGTON -- "The C.I.A. Cleanses Itself," declared a mostly upbeat lead editorial in The New York Times on March 4. The U.S. spy agency had severed its ties to about 100 foreign agents who were "killers, torturers, terrorists and other assorted miscreants," the editorial observed with satisfaction:

SNIP...

Two days later, a front-page story in The Washington Post described the Pentagon's release of long-withheld documents that described how, for decades, the U.S. Army had been training soldiers around the world in techniques of blackmail, kidnapping, murder and spying on non-violent political opponents. That mysterious training program went by the spooky code name "Project X."

SNIP...

Meanwhile, in Washington, senior national security officials mocked Aristide's repeated charge that the military government was deeply implicated in drug trafficking. And when President Clinton pressed to restore Aristide to power in 1993, the CIA undercut that strategy by sending a classified report to Congress that portrayed the exiled president as a psychopath. With its well-placed allies in Washington, Haiti's military government held on for another year before Clinton finally ordered an invasion that ousted Francois and Haiti's generals.

The indictment in Miami accuses Francois of collaborating with Colombian drug cartels to smuggle 33 tons of cocaine and heroin into the United States over a nine-year period. The Francois indictment came only two months after the indictment of another U.S. "counter-narcotics" ally, Venezuelan Gen. Ramon Guillen Davillaver.

This string of stories, tumbling out one on top of another, left a troubling image of an American foreign policy that had collaborated with a very foul cast of criminals. But it was equally troubling that these remarkable admissions had an ephemeral one-day-story quality about them. They had almost no "bounce" onto the talk shows, the op-ed pages and the evening news.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/lost19.html

[seemslikeadream]

13. Powell urges support for Haiti's government

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

By HARRY DUNPHY
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON -- New international aid must flow rapidly to Haiti to bring jobs, better roads, water fit to drink and other improvements to people's lives, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday.

Opening a donors' conference for the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation, he urged support for the interim government to help establish a working democracy and a stable economy.

"Haiti's needs are great, but with our help her government and people will be equal to the task," Powell said.

The session at World Bank headquarters drew representatives from more than 20 countries as well as 30 intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations. Organizers said the two-day session, which began Monday, yielded pledges of $1.085 billion, more than the $924 million objective.

"I am delighted to say we raised more than expected, which reflects a great vote of confidence in the interim government and signals a bright future for Haiti," said Caroline Anstey, the World Bank's director for the Caribbean.
more
http://www.napanews.com/templates/index.cfm?template=story_full&id=4D02C737-B7E0-4EA5-9359-5D2286BFDC4C

[seemslikeadream]

14. Go America. Just GO! GO AWAY!

from my friend Tinoire

Go America. Just GO! GO AWAY! / My response to your powerful post


But these light-skinned people, descendants of the Old Colonials, and their darker skinned "house niggers"

living in these houses

and riding these very rare horses in Haiti on jump courses most Upper-class Americans can only dream of

thought it was worth it

to send School of the Americas thugs like these to kill our own countrymen

and bring the Ton-Ton Macoute Republican/DLC-loving tortures back.

These people, very dark-skinned as you can see, disagreed.

This boy will die from it

This girl, still alive, dreams of a better world
http://www.sakapfet.com/photocontest/2003/images/entries/Mariejo%20Mont-Reynaud,%20Palo%20alto,%20CA/The%20%20Red%20Kivet,%20Fort%20Kampon,%204hrs%20Hike%20from%20Leogane.jpg
Be afraid America. We will gracefully carry our burden but we shall expose your shame once again, just as in 1804.
http://www.sakapfet.com/photocontest/2003/images/entries/Andre%20Boulmier,%20Meyrin%20Switzerland/Commerce%20de%20Proximite,%20Port-au-Prince.jpg
because our children, too, have a right to dreams & rightful expectations of a decent life
http://www.sakapfet.com/photocontest/2003/images/entries/Jermain%20J%20Merola,%20Jacquet%20Haiti/Haut%20de%20Kenscoff1.jpg
We shall not forgive you or the evil bogeymen you bought

We shall not forget the boys you slaughtered

all in the name of Americans and Haitian collaborators who live in homes like this

So take your ass-hole

Take your DLC

Take your God-damned imperialistic military

And get the fuck out of my country

No need to fly your Stars and Stripes

because we have our own flag of which we are sufficiently proud, & which means things through its colors which give you NIGHTMARES

& a constitution that REALLY meant something and liberated South American countries from 'subsidizing' your way of life

Haiti, not America, was the first "Free" Republic in the Western Hemisphere but it galls America, built on the blood & sweat of slaves, to acknowledge that a bunch of slaves whooped imperialistic ass.

18 May, 2004 denouncing the US occupation of Haiti

Tens of thousands of Haitians took to the streets on May 18 to call for the return of democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and for an end to the country’s foreign military occupation.

Haitian police units backed up by U.S. Marines fired in the air and into crowds, killing at least one demonstrator. Saintus “Titus” Simpson, 23, of Delmas 33 was shot in the head, spilling his brain, as demonstrators approached the central Champ de Mars square.

Marguerite Laurent of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership cited sources saying that at least four people died. “One Haitian woman seized the fourth body that fell next to her and refused to give it to the Marines,” Laurent reported. “She removed all her clothes to show she had no weapons while Marines surrounded her at gunpoint. She cursed in Kreyol, calling on the revolutionary ancestors and shouting “Liberte ou lamo!” (Liberty or death!) She picked up the body herself and put it on her bare back, daring the Marines to kill her also while she carried it away.”

<snip>

The night before the march, U.S. helicopters flew and hovered low all over the city, Washington’s now common form of psychological warfare in Haiti.

<snip>

http://www.haitiprogres.com/eng05-19.html



:hi:T wherever you are

[seemslikeadream]

19. Who's who of the Haiti Coup - death squad veterans and convicted murderers

Rebel leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain talks with other rebels at their headquarters in the Mont Joli Hotel in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, Saturday Feb. 28, 2004. (AP Photo/Pablo Aneli).

Louis-Jodel Chamblain

Convicted assassin and leader of death squads

Chamblain was the number 2 man in the FRAPH death squad which participated in the campaign of terror during the 1991 coup against Aristide.
Terrorising supporters of Aristide's Lavalas Family party, the group was blamed for thousands of killings before a US intervention ended three years of military rule in 1994.
"I am scared of what I did, not of what I didn't do," Chamblain told the AP. "I never committed murder. I am not a terrorist. I am not a drug dealer. I am not a criminal."

He was, however, convicted in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment for the September 11, 1993 murder of Aristide financier Antoine Izmery, who was dragged from Mass in a church, made to kneel outside and shot.
Chamblain was also convicted for the April 23, 1994 massacre in the pro-democracy region of Raboteau.
A CIA intelligence memorandum implicated him in the October 14, 1993 assassination of Justice Minister Guy Malary who, with his bodyguard, was ambushed and machine-gunned.

According to the CIA memorandum, dated October 28, 1993, and obtained by the Centre for Constitutional Rights, "FRAPH members Jodel Chamblain, Emmanuel Constant, and Gabriel Douzable met with an unidentified military officer on the morning of 14 October to discuss plans to kill Malary".
Emmanuel "Toto" Constant was the founder of FRAPH.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20040307T04000... ...

Analysis: Haiti's diverse rebels


The exiles' leader is Louis Jodel Chamblain, 50, who fled to the Dominican Republic in 1994.

A former sergeant, he is accused taking part in a number of atrocities during the years of military rule.

He was suspected of involvement in a 1987 election massacre, in which 34 voters were killed and a civilian-run ballot aborted.

In 1993 in co-founded the Front for Haitian Advancement and Progress - Fraph, which sounds like "hit" in French.


The group is accused of killing thousands of supporters of Mr Aristide.

Plots

Mr Chamblain denies involvement in any paramilitary activities and describes himself as a "Haitian patriot".

He returned from exile with another controversial former soldier, Guy Philippe, 35.


Aristide supporters are being hunted down across the north
Trained in the United States and Ecuador, he was a senior security official under President Rene Preval, a civilian elected in 1995.

Now Mr Philippe and Mr Chamblain are allies, and celebrating their capture of Cap-Haitien, the country's second city at the weekend.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3515267.stm


Louis Jodel Chamblain


Chamblain was joint leader - along with CIA operative Emmanuel “Toto” Constant - of the Front révolutionnaire pour l’avancement et le progrès haïtien, (Revolutionary Front for Haitian Advancement and Progress) known by its acronym - FRAPH - which phonetically resembles the French and Creole words for ‘to beat’ or ‘to thrash’. FRAPH was formed by the military authorities who were the de facto leaders of the country during the 1991-94 military regime, and was responsible for numerous human rights violations before the 1994 restoration of democratic governance.

Among the victims of FRAPH under Chamblain’s leadership was Haitian Justice Minister Guy Malary. He was ambushed and machine-gunned to death with his body-guard and a driver on October 14, 1993. According to an October 28, 1993 CIA Intelligence Memorandum obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights: “FRAPH members Jodel Chamblain, Emmanuel Constant, and Gabriel Douzable met with an unidentified military officer on the morning of 14 October to discuss plans to kill Malary.” (Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, the leader of FRAPH, is now living freely in Queens, NYC.)

In September 1995, Chamblain was among seven senior military and FRAPH leaders convicted in absentia and sentenced to forced labour for life for involvement in the September 1993 extrajudicial execution of Antoine Izméry, a well-known pro-democracy activist. In late 1994 or early 1995, it is understood that Chamblain went into exile to the Dominican Republic in order to avoid prosecution.

http://www.haiti-progres.com/eng02-25.html

The most disturbing figure in the rebel leadership is Louis Jodel Chamblain. He is reported to have led the insurgents’ attacks on Central Plateau towns, including the regional capital of Hinche.

Chamblain was a sergeant in the Haitian army (FAd’H), and a member of the elite Corps des Leopards. He left the army in 1989 or 1990 and reappeared on the scene in 1993 as one of the founders of the Revolutionary Front for Haitian Advancement and Progress (Front révolutionnaire pour l’avancement et le progrès haïtien, FRAPH). Known as its number two leader, he had a reputation for violence and action (in contrast to the better known and more media-friendly Emmanuel “Toto” Constant). In the report of Haitian Truth and Justice Commission, there is a statement by Emmanuel Constant that explains that FRAPH’s central committee was composed of himself, Chamblain, Mireille Durocher-Bertin, a lawyer who was murdered in 1995, and Alphonse Lahens (a prominent Duvalierist).

Chamblain was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for the 1993 murder of businessman and activist Antoine Izmery, as well as for involvement in the 1994 Raboteau massacre. He is also implicated in the assassination of Justice Minister Guy Malary, who was ambushed and machine-gunned to death with his body-guard and a driver on October 14, 1993. According to a 1993 CIA Intelligence Memorandum obtained by the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights, “FRAPH members Jodel Chamblain, Emmanuel Constant, and Gabriel Douzable met with an unidentified military officer on the morning of 14 October to discuss plans to kill Malary.”

Chamblain escaped to the Dominican Republic in 1994, after the U.S. military intervention in Haiti, and returned to the country in late 2003 or early 2004.

http://www.flashpoints.net/Haiti_Rebel_Leaders.html



Novak's friend Boniface Alexandre


When Caribbean neighbor Jamaica gave asylum to Aristide two weeks ago, an infuriated LaTortue immediately recalled Haiti's ambassador to Kingston. A second return of Aristide as a free man is ruled out. Boniface Alexandre, the Supreme Court chief justice who became provisional president upon Aristide's resignation under Haiti's constitution, is a careful jurist who measures his words -- except when it comes to Aristide. "He cannot come back to Haiti," Alexandre told me. Aristide will return only if it is decided to indict and extradite him, Justice Minister Bernard Grousse informed me.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn200403...

Haiti: Marines patrol and rebels disarm


While Aristide has been replaced by interim President Boniface Alexandre, his real authority in Haiti has come into question, particularly now that rebel forces have entered the city and proclaimed their intention to reinstate the military.

Led by 36-year-old former military officer Guy Philippe -- who Tuesday proclaimed himself the "military chief" in Haiti -- the rebels began taking over cities in the North in early February with the intention of forcing Aristide's resignation.

The rebels and Haiti's political opposition -- though not aligned -- had been calling for Aristide to step down after what has been termed faulty elections in 2000 and widespread allegations of human rights abuses and corruption.

Since completing their sweep of the Caribbean nation, the rebels said days ago that they would put down their weapons at the request of the president, then appeared to modify their stance as Haiti's second coming of the military. Many of the rebels were soldiers in the nation's army when Aristide disbanded it in 1995.

The president was ousted in a military coup in the early 1990s then restored to power in 1994 with the help of 20,000 U.S. troops.

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040303-123122-1...

29 February 2004

Haitian President Resigns, Supreme Court President Sworn In
U.S. deploys Marines as initial contingent of multinational force

Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned and departed Port-au-Prince the morning of February 29, resolving the impasse at the root of violence in Haiti in recent weeks, according to the U.S. State Department.

In a February 29 statement, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that the United States facilitated Aristide's safe departure and noted that Haitian Supreme Court President Boniface Alexandre has been sworn in as head of state until presidential elections are held.

The statement called on all Haitians to respect the peaceful and constitutional succession, and added that the United States will deploy U.S. Marines as the intitial contingent of a multinational force.

The U.S. will also work with the international community to seek a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing international support for Haiti's transition, the statement said.

Under a plan crafted by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the U.S. and international community "will facilitate the urgent formation of an independent government that will represent the interests of all of the Haitian people."

Following is the text of the statement:




Statement by Richard Boucher, Spokesman


Statement on the Resignation of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti


Jean-Bertrand Aristide has resigned as president of the Republic of Haiti, submitting a letter of resignation before departing Port-au-Prince safely early this morning. At President Aristide's request, the United States facilitated his safe departure from Haiti.
.
In conformity with Haiti's constitution, Supreme Court President Boniface Alexandre has been sworn in as head of state until presidential elections are held. We have been informed that Prime Minister Yvon Neptune will continue to serve as Haiti's head of government until a successor is appointed in the next days, within the framework of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Plan of Action.

We call on all Haitians to respect this peaceful and constitutional succession and to refrain from any actions that will undermine national reconciliation. We urge all Haitians to cooperate with the international community as it supports measures to build a more just society and to help defeat the scourge of poverty and disease.

The decision by President Aristide to resign resolves the political impasse that is the root of the violent unrest in Haiti in recent weeks. Therefore, the United States will deploy a contingent of U.S. Marines as the initial contingent of a multinational interim force. We have been informed that several other countries are prepared to move quickly to join this mission.

During the course of the day we will continue consulting with our partners in CARICOM and the Organization of American States, as well as Canada and France, to seek a resolution of the United Nations Security Council authorizing international support for a peaceful and constitutional transition in Haiti. As envisaged under the CARICOM plan, the international community will facilitate the urgent formation of an independent government that will represent the interests of all of the Haitian people.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/200... ...



André “Andy” Apaid, Jr.,


Last December, after a powwow with the International Republican Institute in Santo Domingo, the Haitian opposition returned to Port-au-Prince to establish the “Group of 184,” a supposedly broad front of “civil society” organizations modeled on similar anti-government coalitions in Chavez’s Venezuela and Allende’s Chile.

The head of the “184" today is André “Andy” Apaid, Jr., also head of Alpha Industries, one of the oldest and largest assembly factories in Haiti.

On Nov. 11, Haiti’s Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert confirmed that Apaid is indeed a U.S. citizen, a rumor which had been circulating since the industrialist’s emergence on the political scene. According to Privert, Apaid was born to Haitian parents in the U.S. and came to Haiti in 1976 as a foreign businessman on a visitor’s visa.

After five years, any foreigner can obtain Haitian nationality by naturalization under the Constitution’s Article 12, but “Andy” Apaid has never done this, according to the government.

Andy is following in the political footsteps of his father. As founder of Alpha Sewing in the 1970s, André senior was a close to dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier and remains “a notorious Duvalierist,” according to Eric Verhoogen in the Multinational Monitor (April 1996). Apaid senior headed up the “civil society” (read: bourgeoisie) campaign to support the 1991-1994 military coup against President Aristide, which successfully eased U.S. sanctions on the export of goods from Haiti’s assembly sweat-shops.

“When asked at a business conference in Miami soon after the coup in 1991 what he would do if President Aristide returned to Haiti, Apaid replied vehemently, ‘I’d strangle him!’” Verhoogen wrote. “At the time, Apaid was heading up the United States Agency for International Develop-ment’s (USAID’s) PROMINEX business promotion project, a $12.7 million program to encourage U.S. and Canadian firms to move their businesses to Haiti.”

http://www.haiti-progres.com/eng11-12.html


ANDY APAID JR.:

The most outspoken leader of the opposition coalition, Apaid is a factory owner born in the United States. His family fled Haiti under Francois Duvalier, or "Papa Doc," who ruled from 1957 to 1971.

Favoring pressed pastel shirts and gold-rimmed glasses, Apaid looks like a Miami businessman but says he is totally Haitian at heart.

"I am just as much a part of this country as anyone," Apaid, in his early 50s, said recently. "That's why I am saying we must choose another path for the country."

But without a constitutional amendment, he will never become president because of his dual nationality. He has rejected the U.S.-backed settlement plan, saying Aristide must leave office.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0204/26haitiwho.ht...

The most outspoken leader of the opposition coalition, Andre (Andy) Apaid is a factory owner born in the United States. His family fled Haiti under Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, who ruled from 1957 to 1971.

Favoring pressed pastel shirts and gold-rimmed glasses, Apaid looks like a Miami businessman but says he is totally Haitian at heart.

"I am just as much a part of this country as anyone," Apaid, in his early 50s, said recently. "That's why I am saying we must choose another path for the country."

But without a constitutional amendment, he will never become president because of his dual nationality.

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/03/01/Worldandnation/Key_fi... ...

The Washington-backed Democratic Convergence opposition front and the Haitian bourgeoisie’s “Group of 184” civil society front (G184), led by a U.S. citizen and sweatshop magnate André “Andy” Apaid, Jr. (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 21, No. 35, 11/12/03), have been quick to embrace, foment and urge on the student demonstrations.

So on Dec. 11, about 10,000 students, with the G184 and Democratic Convergence leaders in tow, marched through the streets of the capital. (Bourgeois radio stations inflated the demonstration up to 5 fold). On hand were Apaid, former Haitian Army colonel Himmler Rébu, Convergence leader Evans Paul, writer Gary Victor, the head of the Civil Society Initiative (ISC) Rosny Desroches, and dissident Lavalas senators Prince Sonson Pierre and Dany Toussaint. Later that day on Radio Kiskeya, Toussaint virtually called for a coup by saying that the “international community” was reluctant to remove Aristide from power only because they feared anarchy would result. But, he reassured them, he could “restore order within 48 hours” due to his connections in the police and former army.

http://www.haiti-progres.com/2003/sm031217/eng12-17.htm...


Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship. (William Blum)



Evans Paul


The Kerry report claims Martinez is the bag man for Colombia’s cocaine cartels, and supervises bribes paid to the Haitian military. According to Miami attorney John Mattes, who is defending a Cuban-American drug trafficker cooperating with U.S. prosecutors, Martinez was paid $30,000 to bribe Haitian authorities into releasing two drug pilots jailed in Haiti after the engine in their plane conked out, forcing them to land in Port-au-Prince.

Martinez claims innocence from his lavish home in Petionville, an ornate suburb where Haiti’s ruling class live, overlooking the slums of the capital. He runs the casino at the plush El Rancho Hotel, that prior to the embargo realized nearly $50 million in business each week, a cash flow adequate to conceal a major money laundering operation.

But the most disturbing allegations have been of the role played by the CIA in keeping many of the coup leaders on the agency’s payroll, as part of an anti-drug intelligence unit set up by the U.S. in Haiti in 1986. Many of these same military men have had their U.S. assets frozen, and are prevented from entering this country because of their role in overthrowing Aristide, and subsequent human rights violations, including torture and murders of political opponents, raising the question—was the U.S. involved in a cocaine coup that overthrew Aristide?

Former Democratic party head and current secretary of commerce Ron Brown headed a law firm that represented the Duvalier family for decades. Part of that representation was a public relations campaign that stressed Duvalier’s opposition to communism in the cold war. United States support for Duvalier was worth more than $400 million in aid to the country, before the man who called himself Haiti’s President-for-Life was forced from the country.

Even Duvalier’s exit from Haiti, in February 1986, is shrouded in covert intrigue and remains an unexplored facet of the career of Lt. Col. Oliver North. Shortly after Duvalier’s ouster, North was quoted as saying he had brought an end to Haiti’s nightmare, a cryptic statement that was never publicly perused by the Iran-Contra hearings.

Francois and his men have a history of involvement in the torture of opponents and death-squad-style murders of Aristide supporters. In one recent incident, attaches mobbed Port-au-Prince City Hall to prevent the capital’s mayor, Evans Paul, an Aristide supporter, from entering his offices.

One person was killed and 11 wounded during the September 8th incident, when the mob opened fire on Aristide supporters. Witnesses say the attack began when attaches dragged two of Paul’s aides from a car, viciously beating an Aristide official. Francois is also considered responsible for the murder of Justice Minister Guy Malary.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/415.html

Another top figure in the opposition coalition, Paul is a former mayor of Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, who was in hiding from the brutal military regime during much of his term until U.S. troops arrived in 1994.

Paul, who is in his late 40s, was head of a center-left coalition that nominated Aristide for president in 1990. Paul managed Aristide's successful election campaign but broke ranks after Aristide left him out of his inner circle.

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/03/01/Worldandnation/Key_fi... ...

EVANS PAUL:

Another top figure in the opposition coalition, Paul is a former mayor of Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, who was in hiding from the brutal military regime during much of his term until U.S. troops arrived in 1994.

Paul, who is in his late 40s, was head of a center-left coalition that nominated Aristide for president in 1990. Paul managed Aristide's successful election campaign but broke ranks after Aristide left him out of his inner circle.

A playwright and journalist when dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier ruled Haiti, Paul was jailed for opposing him.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0204/26haitiwho.ht...



DENIS CODERRE:



Canada's minister responsible for the Francophonie — of French-speaking countries that include former French colonies like Haiti — was minister for citizenship and immigration in January 2002, which would have put him in touch with Canada's large Haitian community. Coderre oversaw the implementation of a new act to protect refugees and migrants.

A political scientist, Coderre was first elected to Canada's House of Commons in 1997. In 1999, he joined the federal Cabinet as secretary of state for amateur sport and helped establish the headquarters for the World Anti-Doping Agency in Montreal.

Coderre came to Haiti declaring, "We clearly don't want Aristide's head. We think Aristide must remain in place."

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0204/26haitiwho.ht...



Guy Philippe: Profile


In 2000, Haitian authorities said they had discovered Philippe was plotting a coup with a group of other police chiefs. Philippe fled to the Dominican Republic, the country that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

Haitian and U.S. authorities say that Philippe was involved in drug trafficking while he was police chief in Cap-Haitien, as well as during his exile in the Dominican Republic, although he has never been officially accused of any drug crimes.

The Haitian government has accused Philippe of organizing an attack on the police academy in Petionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, in July 2001, and another attack in December 2001 on the national palace. The Organization of American States investigated, but was unable to find out who was behind the attacks.

Philippe was thought to have been in exile, but in February 2004, he appeared at a news conference at the side of one of the leaders of the anti-Aristide rebels.

His rebel group, the National Front for the Liberation of Haiti, is largely made up of former soldiers who lost their jobs when the military was demobilized.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/haiti/philippe.html

Guy Philippe
Guy Philippe is a former member of the FAD’H (Haitian Army). During the 1991-94 military regime, he and a number of other officers received training from the US Special Forces in Equador, and when the FAD’H was dissolved by Aristide in early 1995, Philippe was incorporated into the new National Police Force.

He served as police chief in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Delmas and in the second city, Cap-Haitien, before he fled Haiti in October 2000 when Haitian authorities discovered him plotting what they described as a coup, together with a clique of other police chiefs. Since that time, the Haitian government has accused Philippe of master-minding deadly attacks on the Haitian Police Academy and the National Palace in July and December 2001, as well as hit-and-run raids against police stations on Haiti’s Central Plateau over last two years.

http://www.haiti-progres.com/eng02-25.html

The leader of the insurrectionary forces, Guy Philippe, age thirty-five, trained by the United States as an army officer in Ecuador. He was integrated into the new Haitian National Police in 1995 and his first command post was in Ouanaminthe, on the northern border with the Dominican Republic. Later, in about 1997 to 1999, he served as police chief for Delmas, a large urban district on the north side of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. During his tenure there, the UN/OAS International Civilian Mission learned that dozens of suspected gang members were summarily executed, mainly by police under the command of Inspector Berthony Bazile, Philippe’s deputy.

On October 18, 2000, Haiti’s prime minister announced that Philippe and other officers were plotting a coup d’etat. Before they were arrested, however, the men escaped over the border to the Dominican Republic.

http://www.flashpoints.net/Haiti_Rebel_Leaders.html

Ernst Ravix



According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report on Haiti, dated 7 September 1988, FAD’H Captain Ernst Ravix, was the military commander of Saint Marc, and head of a paramilitary squad of “sub-proletariat youths” who called themselves the Sans Manman (Motherless Ones). In May 1988, the government of President Manigat tried to reduce contraband and corruption in the port city of Saint Marc, but Ravix, the local Army commander, responded by organising a demonstration against the President in which some three thousand residents marched, chanted, and burned barricades. Manigat removed Ravix from his post, but after Manigat’s ouster, he was reinstated by the military dictator, Lt. Gen. Namphy.

Ravix was not heard of again until December 2001 when former FAD’H sergeant, Pierre Richardson, the person captured following the 17 December attack on the National Palace, reportedly confessed that the attack was a coup attempt planned in the Dominican Republic by three former police chiefs- Guy Philippe, Jean-Jacques Nau and Gilbert Dragon - and that it was led by former Captain Ernst Ravix. According to Richardson, Ravix’s group withdrew from the National Palace and fled to the Dominican Republic when reinforcements failed to arrive.

http://www.haiti-progres.com/eng02-25.html


Jean-Pierre Baptiste - nom de guerre is Jean Tatoune


Among the rebel leaders was the notorious Jean-Pierre Baptiste, smiling and looking triumphant. It did not seem to matter that Mr. Baptiste, whose nom de guerre is Jean Tatoune, had been freed by rebels last year from a prison where he had been serving a life sentence for his participation in the killings of Aristide supporters in Gonaïves in 1994. Mr. Latortue hailed the rebels as "freedom fighters."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/29/international/america...

Haiti: Perpetrators of serious past abuses re-emerge

Haiti Support Group

The emergence of former paramilitary leaders convicted of past human rights violations as leaders of the armed opposition force is fuelling a conflict that has already taken too many lives, said Amnesty International as the crisis in Haiti continues to deepen.

"At the best of times, the spectre of past violations continues to haunt Haiti," Amnesty International said today. "At this crucial stage, when the rule of law is so fragile, the last thing that the country needs is for those who committed abuses in the past to take up leadership positions in the armed opposition."

On 14 February Louis Jodel Chamblain, a notorious former paramilitary leader, reportedly gave an interview to a Haitian radio station to say that he had joined the armed movement seeking to overthrow President Jean Bertrand Aristide. He was accompanied by a former police commissioner.

In September 1995 Chamblain was among seven senior military and paramilitary leaders convicted in absentiaand sentenced to forced labour for life for involvement in the September 1993 extrajudicial execution of Antoine Izméry, a well-known pro-democracy activist. Chamblain had gone into exile to avoid prosecution.

Chamblain has reportedly joined forces with the leaders of the armed opposition based in Gonaïves.

Another of the leaders, Jean Pierre Baptiste, alias "Jean Tatoune", is also a former paramilitary leader who was sentenced to forced labour for life for participation in the 1994 Raboteau massacre. He was among the prisoners who escaped from Gonaïves prison during the August 2002 jailbreak of Amiot 'Cubain' Métayer, deceased leader of the formerly pro-government group which violently took over control of Gonaïves on 5 February. Gang
members under Jean Tatoune's direction have been accused of numerous abuses against government officials and supporters, as well as other Gonaïves residents, over past months.

"The Haitian authorities must do everything in their power to arrest these individuals, who have both already been convicted of serious violations," Amnesty International said. "For their part, political opposition parties must condemn the emergence of these notorious figures at the head of the armed movement to oust Aristide, and must do everything in their power to demonstrate their own commitment to human rights and the rule of law."

Background Information

Louis Jodel Chamblain and Jean Tatoune both belonged to the paramilitary organisation FRAPH, formed by military authorities who were the de facto leaders of the country following the 1991 coup against then-President Jean Bertrand Aristide. FRAPH members were responsible for numerous human rights violations before the 1994 restoration of democratic governance.

The group was at first known as the Front révolutionnaire pourl'avancement et le progrès haïtiens, Revolutionary Front for Haitian Advancement and Progress. The acronym FRAPH phonetically resembles the French and Creole words for 'to beat' or 'to thrash.'

Antoine Izméry was gunned down in the Church of the Sacred Heart in Port-au-Prince on 11 September 1993, while attending mass. The mass was being held to commemorate the fifth anniversary of a massacre committed during an attack on Aristide, then a parish priest, on 11 September 1988 at the St. Jean Bosco Church in La Saline, a shanty town on the outskirts of the capital.

After the 5 February attack in Gonaïves, unrest spread to nearly a dozen towns in the center and north of Haiti. Concerns are increasing about the humanitarian situation in the towns under control of anti-government forces and other areas cut off by the conflict. The first demonstration of the political opposition since the violence began took place in Port-au-Prince on 15 February; demonstrators were confronted by rock-throwing government supporters, and police used tear gas and fired their guns into the air to disperse both groups.
http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engAMR360062004?Op...


Public Document
http://www.oneworld.net/article/view/79531/1 /

Jean Pierre Baptiste ("Jean Tatoune") is another FRAPH member convicted in the Raboteau massacre trial and sentenced to forced labour for life.

Others convicted of or indicted for human rights abuses escaped from the National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince on Sunday 29 February in the atmosphere of lawlessness that followed the departure of President Jean Bertrand Aristide. AI fears that they may join the rebel forces, thus gaining access to weapons and potentially to positions of influence.

Police and judicial officers, witnesses and human rights defenders involved in past prosecutions may be at risk of reprisal attacks from those they helped bring to justice.

http://web.amnesty.org/pages/hti-100304-action-eng

Even US officials acknowledge that the leaders of the Haitian coup d’etat are “death squad veterans and convicted murderers,” (NYT 2/28/04). Two of these are Louis-Jodel Chamblain and Jean-Pierre Baptiste, leaders of FRAPH (Haitian Front for Advancement and Progress), a murderous rightwing group that was funded by the US for many years and played a leading role in overthrowing Aristide in 1991. FRAPH’s name, according to the Times, is a play on the French “frapper” (“to hit”).

Both Chamblain and Baptiste have been convicted of political murders. Chamblain, a former Haitian Army officer, has been hiding in the neighboring Dominican Republic. Baptiste was serving a life sentence until he recently broke out of jail.

http://www.ucimc.org/feature/display/16099/index.php

Mr. Latortue has no democratic mandate. Haitians are bitterly split between Aristide supporters and opponents, and both sides are heavily armed. Clearly, he needs to reach out to those on both sides of this divide who want to move their country forward. But Mr. Latortue aided neither national reconciliation nor his own shaky legitimacy by the unseemly ceremony he took part in last Saturday.

Ferried by American military helicopters to the city of Gonaïves, where the anti-Aristide revolt began, he stood on a stage with killers like Jean-Pierre Baptiste. Mr. Baptiste, who escaped from prison in 2002, is a death squad leader convicted of participating in a 1994 massacre of Aristide supporters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/24/opinion/24WED2.html?t...

Jean Tatoune
Jean Pierre Baptiste, alias “Jean Tatoune”, first came to prominence as a leader of the anti-Duvalier mobilisations in his home town of Gonaives in 1985. For some years he was known and respected for his anti-Duvalierist activities but during the 1991-94 military regime he emerged as a local leader of FRAPH.

On 22 April 1994, he led a force of dozens of soldiers and FRAPH members in an attack on Raboteau, a desperately poor slum area in Gonaives and a stronghold of support for Aristide. Between 15 and 25 people were killed in what became known as the Raboteau massacre.

In 2000, Tatoune was put on trial and sentenced to forced labour for life for his participation in the Raboteau massacre. He was subsequently imprisoned in Gonaives, from where he escaped in August 2002, and took up arms again in his base in a poor area of the city. At various times he has spoken out against the government, and at other times in favour of it, but since September 2003 he has allied himself with the followers of murdered community leader, Amiot Metayer, and vowed to overthrow the government by force.
http://www.haiti-progres.com/eng02-25.html



Butteur Metayer


Butteur immediately assumed command of his brother's army, soon renamed the Artibonite Resistance Front. The situation in Gonaives rapidly disintegrated, and some said Butteur's tactics were just as cruel as paramilitary operations in previous years.

The Times of London reported that Butteur's army "left the rotting bodies of dead policemen to be eaten by wild pigs and have taken several other towns in the interior, where they murdered more policemen."

Butteur sometimes sported a Hyatt Orlando golf shirt and bands of bullets across his chest. He challenged Aristide openly during press conferences at the family home.

Aristide, said Butteur and the other rebels, had become corrupt, relying on armed gangs and siphoning money away from the poor, away from schools, giving it to his supporters.

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/03/04/Worldandnation/Haitia... ...

Amiot Metayer's Sept. 22 assassination led to protest rallies in Gonaives that eventually boiled over into rebellion. He had been the leader of the Cannibal Army street gang, which Butteur Metayer says was armed by Aristide's Lavalas Party to terrorize the president's opponents in the city -- a charge Aristide denied.

Metayer was viewed by many people in Gonaives as a Robin Hood who lavished gifts on slum dwellers and his killing angered supporters.

After Butteur Metayer launched the rebellion, former soldiers of the disbanded Haitian army crossed the border from the Dominican Republic to join the uprising. It was the former troops who gave impetus to the push that put half of Haiti in rebel hands within two weeks.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,112992,00.html

Aristide finally had Metayer arrested last year after months of pressure from the OAS, which demanded he be tried for allegedly burning homes of opponents. Gang members rammed a tractor into the prison to free him in September, and Metayer's bullet-riddled and mutilated body was found days later.

"They took out his eyes. They took out his heart," Latortue said.

Metayer's brother, Butteur, assumed leadership of the gang; he claimed Aristide ordered his brother's killing to keep him from publicizing damaging information about him.

With his death prompting the uprising that brought about Aristide's downfall, Metayer has become a hero in the town. Many feared him. Others saw him as a Robin Hood who lavished gifts on slum-dwelling Aristide supporters.

Thousands of them have fled the city since the Feb. 5 gunbattle in which Metayer's men killed several police officers and torched government buildings.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/03/20/haiti.... /

The city of Gonaives, where the slaves finally overcame Napolean's forces and gained independence has been one of the most political cities in the country. In the 1980s, the city was again the center of independence when rebel forces defeated the brutal (U.S. supported) Duvalier dictatorship. The country has experienced 30 coups since gaining its independence. As of February 5, it seems the country is thrown into armed conflict again. Rebel forces began a violent effort to overthrow the Aristide government and take control of the capital. Over 40 people been killed and more than a dozen cities seized by the rebels. Gonaives is now in the hands of what the newly named "Artibonite Resistance Front" (formally known as the Cannibal Army). Led by two brothers, Amiot and Butteur Metayer, the Gonaives chapter of the resistance has received "reinforcements" from neighboring Dominican Republic. The men who have joined the resistance from abroad are largely former military leaders of Haiti, exiled or hiding from histories of torture and abuse. Butteur Metayer told the Associated Press that Louis-Jodel Chamblain, former soldier from Haiti responsible for death squads in the 1980s and atrocities following the 1991 military coup is gathering forces for the resistance as well.

Back in Orlando, Metayer and his sister also have gratitude for another person: President Bush.

"I don't know how to thank him" for encouraging Aristide to get out, said Gertrude Metayer.

http://www.thesnapper.com/news/2004/02/19/NationWorldIs... ...



The new Prime Minister of Haiti, Gerard Latortue, waves duirng a visit to his hometown, Gonaives, Haiti on Saturday, March 20, 2004.(AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

[seemslikeadream]

20. Haiti's loan-aid deal a debt trap - Oxfam

AP
Thursday, July 22, 2004



PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Too much of the US$1 billion in aid pledged to rebuild Haiti is in loans that could force the country deeper into debt and poverty, a British-based charity said yesterday.

The group Oxfam said some pledges made Tuesday at an international donors' conference in Washington weren't generous enough.

Some US$663 million came in grants, and the remaining US$422 million in loans, said Lee Morrison, a spokesman for the World Bank.

"The Haitian people will continue to suffer because of the debt load," said Helen DaSilva, a spokeswoman for Oxfam in Boston. "We want to see the cycles of poverty be broken, not be perpetuated by the systems that are in place."

Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue said he was pleased with the outcome, calling it a "victory" for Haiti.
more
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20040721T230000-0500_63234_OBS_HAITI_S_LOAN_AID_DEAL_A_DEBT_TRAP___OXFAM_.asp

[redqueen]

23. That's the whole point, isn' t it?

Debt, poverty... control.

[seemslikeadream]

21. Jamaica assures Chile of Caricom help for Haiti

Observer Reporter
Thursday, July 22, 2004



Jamaica has told Chile that the Caribbean Community (Caricom) remains committed to the people of Haiti and would work to promote law and order and the restitution of constitutional democracy in that country.

Chile has a large contingent of soldiers in Haiti as part of a United Nations Stabilisation Force that was sent to the French-speaking Caribbean country in the aftermath of last February's ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which caused serious friction between Caricom and the United States, France and Canada.

Caricom, while it has been edging in that direction, has not yet formally recognised the interim administration that was installed after Aristide's ouster, so Chile's President Ricardo Lagos sought to take the temperature of the region's attitude to Haiti during a short stop in Jamaica Tuesday night on his way to Port-au-Prince.

Lagos had a one-hour meeting with Prime Minister P J Patterson, and according to Jamaica House, the Chilean president was told of Jamaica and the wider region's wish to end the isolation of Haiti.

"I thought it was extremely important to listen to what the prime minister had to say," Lagos told reporters shortly before leaving Jamaica.

"Haiti is a part of Caricom and Caricom has been able to give a good example to Latin America of the meaning of democracy and the rule of law," he added.

Caricom has outlined a set of conditions which it wants to see adopted by Haiti for the interim administration of Gerard Latortue to take Haiti's seat in the Community's councils.

While Latortue has indicated that Haiti was already on course to meeting those obligations, including working towards democratic elections and restoring the rule of law, a small group of Caricom leaders will review the French-speaking island's progress next month during a meeting of the Community's Bureau - a sort of management group of leaders who meet in-between summits.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20040721T230000-0500_63250_OBS_JAMAICA_ASSURES_CHILE_OF_CARICOM_HELP_FOR_HAITI.asp