Pro-democracy Haitians call on Pres. Bush to Demand immediate
resignation of Roger Noreiga

Roger Noreiga's comments in the recent Pablo Bachelet article published
in the Miami Herald maligns the people of Haiti peacefully advocating
for President Aristide's return; is arbitrary and capricious and based
on no evidence offered, and, is an example of Mr. Noreiga's continued
systemic character assassination of, not only the poor in Haiti, but of
officials from their Constitutionally elected government. We Haitian
pro-democracy, peace and justice advocates demand an apology and
request that the Bush Administration not only censure Mr. Noreiga for
his unfounded statements but demand his immediate resignation.

Just today, a white Canadian MINUSTHA officer was apprehended at the
Haitian airport in Port-au-Prince with a bunch of passports in hand and
is a suspect for masterminding many of the kidnappings in Haiti.

Mr. Noreiga, who, as a former Jesse Helms protégé, is known for his
pathological hatred of President Aristide, not only accused the
President of involvement in directing violence in Haiti, but implicated
the entire Lavalas party as directly responsible for the insecurity and
lawlessness. Noreiga told the Herald that: "Aristide and his camp are
singularly responsible for most of the violence and for the concerted
nature of the violence." Yet many human rights investigators have
uniformly illustrated the current repression in Haiti was brought to
Haiti because of Bush regime change, the Coup D'etat masterminded by
Mr. Noreiga and the U.S. arms, funding and remobilizing of the bloody
Haitian military to re-image them as the current "policeforce."

Mr. Noreiga conveniently failed to mention the role of the U.S.-backed
Haitian "police" in shooting unarmed demonstrators (on February 28,
2005 and April 27, 2005 to name a few dates). He failed to mention
anything about the thousands of civilian killed - from babies,
grandmothers, mothers to handicapped, by said "policeforce" and
MINUSTHA troops in their sweeps in Bel Air and Cite Soleil, nor did he
remember the murder of up to 107 unarmed detainees at the Haitian
National Penitentiary on December 1, 2005 while Colin Powell was
visiting Haiti. Noreiga simply typically, irrationally and with scant
qualification lays total blame for the insecurity and lawlessness in
Haiti at the door of exiled President Aristide, the Lavalas party and
"pro-Aristide" gangs.

This is in direct contrast, not only to many human rights reports, but
to the findings of Massachusetts Congressman William Delahunt (see
Delahunt letter below) whose recent letter to the Bush Administration
would dispute that Mr. Noreiga does not mention 1) the role of the
U.S.-backed government's politicized justice system that only cracks
down on President Aristide's followers in sowing violence in Haiti, 2)
nor mention the role of the gang members, ex-soldiers, thugs, felons
and terrorists who helped overthrow the democratically-elected
government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in continuing the
violence they started in Haiti when they murdered duly appointed police
officers and emptied the country's jails in the process of the Coup
D'etat.

With the U.N. (MINUSTHA) representative now being implicated in the
kidnappings, it is imperative that the people of Haiti stopped being so
maligned by the likes of Roger Noreiga.

Mr. Noreiga has proven over and over again that he has no competency to
fairly represent the democratic and just interests of the people of the
United States, nor the peaceful interests of all peoples in the Western
Hemisphere. Roger Noreiga must be removed from his position
immediately.
(See, also letter below from Father Gerald Jean-Juste, "
KEEP THE AMERICAS TOGETHER. NORIEGA SHOULD GO!")

Marguerite Laurent, Esq.
Chair and Founder,
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
(Dedicated to protecting the civil, cultural and human rights of
Haitians living at home and abroad)
June 23, 2005

**********


Regarding Miami Herald Article: "Aristide accused of fostering
violence"

Dear Pablo,

I've just heard on the Haitian radios about your character
assassination article. I've just found it too on the net. This is a
disgraceful article to such a great Floridian and international media.
You've accepted to crucify President Jean-Bertrand Aristide without
giving him or any member of Fanmi Lavalas a chance to respond to these
false accusations, (former Secretary of State C. Powell's type on
Iraq), of the extreme right winger, Ambassador Roger Noriega.

KEEP THE AMERICAS TOGETHER. NORIEGA SHOULD GO!

I and many other Haitians, Haitian-Americans, have called for
Noriega's resignation long time ago. (See Herald's article by J.
Charles on 04-23-'05)

Ambassador Noriega is a disgrace contributing largely to the downfall
of the Republican Administration and to the bad reputation of USA in
the Americas. I love my continent, the Americas, so much and I feel bad
to see the extreme right wingers within the Bush Administration
continue to hurt it, destroy it as they have started during Baby Bush
first mandate.

AFRICA, REFUGE OF THE "LITTLE" ONES

Please, get your hands off Grand Mother continent, Africa. President
Thabo Mbeki did a marvelous deed in the tradition of Africa by
receiving a beloved son of the African Diaspora. Recently, Pope
Benedict XVI reminded us the Holy Family (Jesus, Mary and Joseph) were
gratified hospitality in Northern Africa, Egypt. AFRICA, AFRICA,
AFRICA, KEEP UP THE TRADITION FROM NORTH TO SOUTH! You are the refuge
of the "little" ones.

Respectfully yours,

Gérard Jean-Juste
Pastor
St. Clare's church
Tiplas Kazo, Haiti

****

Aristide accused of fostering violence

A U.S. diplomat accused former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
of stirring up violence in his home country, the boldest accusation of
Aristide since his ouster early last year.

BY PABLO BACHELET

pbachelet@herald.com

WASHINGTON - A top U.S. diplomat Thursday accused former Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of personally stirring the violence
there and said Washington has expressed its concerns to South Africa,
where he is living in exile.

''We believe that his people are receiving instructions directly from
his voice and indirectly through his acolytes that communicate with him
personally in South Africa,'' said Roger Noriega, assistant secretary
of state for Western Hemisphere affairs.

''As a longtime observer of Haiti and a longtime consumer of
information about Haiti, it is abundantly clear to me . . . that
Aristide and his camp are singularly responsible for most of the
violence and for the concerted nature of the violence,'' Noriega told
The Herald.

STRONG WORDS

His statement was the strongest so far blaming Aristide for the
violence that has rocked the country since his ouster early last year
amid an armed uprising. In the past, Washington has blamed the violence
more generally on Aristide's Lavalas Family Party.

The violence, which has increased significantly since September, is
threatening to affect the Oct. 9 local elections and Nov. 13
legislative and presidential elections. Hundreds are estimated to have
died in clashes involving armed gangs of Aristide supporters and foes
and U.N. peacekeepers.

''A few hundred principal bad guys'' are behind the violence, Noriega
said in a telephone interview.

He made a quick visit to Haiti two weeks ago for a close-up look at the
political and security situation.

Asked if the U.S. government had expressed its concerns to South
African officials, Noriega said, ``We have had the diplomatic contacts
that you would expect us to have with the key actors, explaining that
Aristide's role is not a helpful one.''

A South African government spokesman in Pretoria declined to comment.

Noriega also urged the U.N. peacekeeping force, known as MINUSTAH, to
take a more ''proactive role'' in going after the armed pro-Aristide
gangs. He said the gangs were not many in numbers but were
strategically based in slums near the airport road and commercial
districts, allowing them to damage the Haitian economy.

A CENTRAL ROLE

He said there also were some ''opportunistic criminal organizations''
that engaged in kidnappings and other crimes, but that it was ``also
extraordinarily apparent that Aristide and his gangs are playing a
central role in generating violence, and trying to sow insecurity.''

Noriega said Aristide had a 15-year ''pattern'' of using political
violence and that it was not surprising that he was making ``this one
last stand to terrorize the Haitian people and deny them good
government.''

On Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council voted to send 1,000 more
security forces to bolster the 8,300-strong force already there.

The Brazilian-led peacekeeping force has been widely criticized for
doing too little to disarm criminal gangs.

He praised the U.N. decision but added that the success or failure of
MINUSTAH ``depends on what they do in the next days and weeks.''

Asked if there was a resurgence in drug trafficking through Haiti
because of lack of security, Noriega said, ''I don't know that we can
say that it's gotten appreciably worse'' but that there was a sense
that drug traffickers were trying to set a stronger foothold in Haiti.
*******



The Honorable Condoleezza Rice

Secretary of State

US Department of State

2201 C Street NW

Washington, DC 20520



Dear Secretary Rice:



We are writing regarding a matter of the greatest urgency - the lack of
justice in Haiti - and to propose a solution.



Madame Secretary, Haiti today is essentially a failed state. Most of
its institutions exist in name only, and the state cannot fulfill even
its most basic functions without international assistance. In fact,
the recent report of the United Nations Security Council mission to
Haiti noted that even the exact number of Haitian National Police
officers "could not be established." As the UNSC report noted, "In
essence, the mission considered that a modern public administration did
not yet exist in the country."



Regarding the judicial system, the UNSC report concluded that it
"remained dysfunctional" and "lacked basic infrastructure and had lost
archival documents during periods of unrest." These problems, the UNSC
mission found, "had compounded the human rights situation…and
negatively affected the reconciliation process." As Stuart Holliday,
the US Deputy Ambassador to the UN said recently, "the backlog of cases
is such that most of those imprisoned and awaiting trial in Haiti have
already been incarcerated for longer periods of time than if they had
been tried and found guilty."



Madame Secretary, the UNSC report was too polite. The fact is that the
judicial system in Haiti is a sham. What few trappings of the system
that remain have been completely politicized by the so-called interim
government of Haiti and turned into an instrument of repression.



Although the unelected interim government was supposed to be composed
of non-political technocrats, it has proved itself to be as fiercely
partisan as previous Haitian regimes. The interim Prime Minister,
Gerard Latortue, described the gang members, ex-soldiers, and
terrorists who helped overthrow the democratically-elected government
of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as "freedom fighters." And the
interim Justice Minister, Bernard Gousse, has focused on cracking down
on Aristide's followers, not on arresting and prosecuting the
participants in the rebellion - even though they murdered police
officers and emptied the country's jails in the process.



The most recent example of the justice system's politicization was the
annulment by the Haitian Supreme Court of the convictions of several
participants in the infamous Raboteau massacre in 1994. These men -
many of them members of the feared paramilitary group known as FRAPH
(the French acronym for the Revolutionary Front for Advancement and
Progress in Haiti) - had been convicted in a trial that the UN
Independent Expert on Haiti, Adama Dieng, described as "a huge step
forward" in the history of Haiti's judicial system, because of its
thoroughness, transparency, and fairness. But FRAPH's notorious
second-in-command, Louis-Jodel Chamblain - who was convicted in
absentia for the Raboteau massacre - played a role in last year's
ousting of Aristide.



So it appears that the recent Supreme Court decision was a reflection
of political bias. This is reinforced by the earlier decision to
acquit Chamblain of the 1993 murder of pro-democracy activist Antoine
Izmery in a one-day retrial that was denounced worldwide as a sham.



Meanwhile, members of Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party have been arrested
and held without seeing a judge on often questionable charges. The
most high-profile case is that of former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune,
who has been imprisoned without trial for almost 10 months, and who
reportedly appeared before a judge on May 25, 2005 - even though the
Haitian constitution requires that a suspect see a judge within 48
hours. The interim government had claimed the delay was because
Neptune would not see a judge. This is a strange and dubious argument,
given that the man is a prisoner and could have been forced to appear
in court at any time, or a magistrate could have visited him in a
secure environment to discharge any procedural requirements.



Madame Secretary, it is obvious that there will be no justice in Haiti
under this current government. Dramatic and effective steps are needed
- because without a functioning judicial system, Haiti will remain
unstable. And that instability is a direct threat to the United
States. Since the Haitian government will not address the situation,
and because the UN cannot act in Haiti without US support, it is up to
the US to take the lead.



Another compelling reason to act is the effect this situation is having
on our own reputation as a leader for democracy and human rights. The
fact is that the Haitian interim government is widely perceived as a US
puppet regime. So its failings are seen as our failings. Given the
already negative US image in Latin America, where a Zogby poll found
that 87 percent of the region's elite have a negative opinion of
President Bush, we must act immediately to prevent our credibility from
being diminished further.



First, it is obvious that interim Justice Minister Gousse must be
removed immediately. He has clearly demonstrated that he is unwilling
to conduct his duties in an objective and responsible manner. His
continued presence in the government eliminates any chance that
elections planned for later this year will be free and fair. Put
simply, both his attitude and his actions have actually increased
Haiti's instability and have guaranteed that Haiti will remain volatile
even after the elections. This is a direct challenge to US interests.



Second, it is clear that the Haitian judicial system does not exist
beyond a politicized shell. Therefore, the international community -
either through the UN, the Organization of American States, or the
Caribbean Community (CARICOM) - must assume the administration of
justice in Haiti until a real judicial system can be established. This
initiative must be accompanied by a deep and sustained commitment by
the international community to rebuilding and reforming the Haitian
judicial system. We ask that you consider making this request to an
emergency session of the UN Security Council or some other relevant
multilateral organization.



If these steps are not taken, Haitians will continue to suffer from a
lack of justice. Haiti will continue to be a failed state. And US
Marines will eventually have to return to Haiti. We urge you to take
these steps, and look forward to your prompt written response.
******


***************
Forwarded by the Haitian Lawyers' Leadership Network

***************
"Men anpil chay pa lou" is Kreyol for - "Many hands make light a heavy
load."

Join our International Solidarity - THE FREE HAITI MOVEMENT. For info,
see:
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/photogallery/haitisolidarityday.html
and,
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/solidarityday/infoforsponsors.html


Help stop the slaughter in Cite Soleil, Bel Air and throughout Haiti,
now. Learn more:
"Bandit King in Cite Soleil"
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/campaigns/campaignone/presswork/interviewdread.html

There's no time to waste. All the nationalities are down there in
Haiti, in the form of UN troops, quietly liquidating young Black
brothers who will not accept the recolonization of Haiti and return of
the bloody Haitian bourgeiosie and army back to power.

Even after death, our indignities and sufferings don't stop, because
their families can't afford to bury them and their bodies are just
dumped in mass graves, left to rot in the streets or morgue:
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/solidarityday/pictures/orel_01.html

Keep up to date with Ezili Danto Witness Project that publishes the
voices and pictures from the streets of Haiti of this hidden genocide:

http://www.margueritelaurent.com/campaigns/campaignone/testimonies/personaltestimonies.html

http://www.margueritelaurent.com/solidarityday/pictures/hsd_pictures.html

1. Carnage and chaos brought to Haiti by the U.S. "technocrats" and
Bush
regime change: See, the incinerated cadaver of a Haitian marketwoman
with her arms still wrapped-up around her tiny incinerated child from
the May 31, 2005 firebombing at the Ox head market
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/solidarityday/pictures/fire_tetbef_07.html

2. See, incinerated cadavers of marketwomen in Haiti:
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/solidarityday/pictures/fire_tetbef_03.html

3. Funeral pictures for Sanel Joseph on our website:
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/solidarityday/pictures/sanel_funeral_01.html

4. Sanel Joseph was killed on flag day, May 18, 2005:
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/flagdaymay18-05_killings.html

*******************
Here is what you can do to help us help the people of Haiti:
***************
Action Requested from Haiti solidarity groups and activists for justice
and democracy
**********************

Please circulate our mailings and posts to your mailing list and e-mail
contacts. Subscribe or unsubscribe by writing to:
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Read, adopt and circulate the Haiti Resolution (see below) from the
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network.

Circulate our human rights reports:
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/campaigns/campaignone/human_rights_reports/c1humanrightsreports.html


Do Press Work: Join our letter writing campaigns to help free the
political prisoners in Haiti, stop the persecution of Haiti's most
popular political party and restore Constitutional rule. Write a
letter, call the media, fax, - See our Press Work page for sample
letters and contact information:
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*********

Support the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Haiti Resolution:

1. Demand the return of constitutional rule to Haiti by restoring all
elected officials of all parties to their offices throughout the
country until the end of their mandates and another election is held,
as mandated by Haiti's Constitution;

2. Condemn the killings, illegal imprisonment and confiscation of the
property of supporters of Haiti's constitutional government and insist
that Haiti's illegitimate "interim government" immediately cease its
persecution and put a stop to persecution by the thugs and murderers
from sectors in their police force, from the paramilitaries, gangs and
former soldiers;

3. Insist on the immediate release of all political prisoners in
Haitian jails, including Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, Interior Minister
Privert and other constitutional government officials and
folksinger-activist Sò Anne;

4. Insist on the disarmament of the thugs, death squad leaders and
convicted human rights violators and their prosecution for all crimes
committed during the attack on Haiti's elected government and support
the rebuilding of Haiti's police force, ensuring that it excludes
anyone who helped to overthrow the democratically elected government or
who participated in other human rights violations;

5. Stop the indefinite detention and automatic repatriation of Haitian
refugees and immediately grant Temporary Protected Status to all
Haitian refugees presently in the United States until democracy is
restored to Haiti; and

6. Support the calls by the OAS, CARICOM and the African Union for an
investigation into the circumstances of President Aristide's removal.
Support the enactment of Congresswoman Barbara Lee's T.R.U.T.H Act
which calls for U.S. Congressional investigation of the forcible
removal of the democratically elected President and government of
Haiti.
***************
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