This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
newsweekly. For the complete edition with other news in French
and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100,
(fax) 718-434-5551 or e-mail at editor@haitiprogres.com.
Also visit our website at <www.haitiprogres.com>.
HAITI PROGRES
"Le journal qui offre une alternative"
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *
October 12 - 18, 2005
Vol. 23, No. 31
TRIBUNAL'S COMMISSION OF INQUIRY UNCOVERS NEW MASSACRES
FURTHER INDICTMENTS FORTHCOMING
During a five day visit to Haiti, a Commission of Inquiry, dispatched by
the International Tribunal on Haiti, gathered evidence of and testimony
about new massacres and other crimes against humanity which allegedly
have been committed in Haiti since Feb. 29, 2004, when U.S. soldiers
kidnapped elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and flew him into
exile.
The Commission met with over 50 witnesses who told it of massacres,
summary executions, torture, arbitrary arrests and many other human
rights abuses being carried out by Haitian police and foreign occupation
troops. The Commission also interviewed Haitian National Police (PNH)
director Mario Andresol as well as a high-ranking officer in the U.N.
Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH).
A Commission of Inquiry member said that the evidence collected, once
presented to the Tribunal's investigating judge, would make new
indictments "inevitable." The Tribunal has already indicted 21
individuals of the PNH, MINUSTAH, former "rebels," and U.S., French and
Canadian armed forces. Those convicted will be sent to the International
Criminal Court in The Hague, for international criminal prosecution.
Led by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the Commission of
Inquiry visited Haiti from Oct. 6 to 11 after being announced at the
opening session of the International Tribunal on Haiti held in
Washington, DC on Sep. 23 (see HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 23, No. 29,
9/28/2005).
Other members of the Commission of Inquiry include Captain Lawrence
Rockwood, a former counter-intelligence officer in the U.S. Army who was
court-martialed in 1995 after acting without orders to save the lives of
prisoners in Haiti's National Penitentiary on September 30, 1994 (see
HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 12, No. 49, 3/1/2005); Tom Griffin, an immigration
lawyer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and author of a widely acclaimed
January 2005 human rights report issued by the University of Miami Law
School; Kim Ives, a journalist with HaVti ProgrPs; Dave Welsh, a
delegate of the San Francisco Labor Council and organizer of a U.S.
labor human rights delegation to Haiti in June and July 2005; John
Parker, west coast coordinator of the International Action Center (IAC);
and Katharine Kean, a documentary filmmaker. Bishop Thomas Gumbleton,
the archbishop of Detroit, Michigan, also planned to be part of the
Commission but had to cancel his travel plans at the last minute.
During its stay, the Commission met primarily with eye-witnesses and the
relatives of victims of massacres in Cité Soleil, Belair, Nazon, Solino,
Carrefour, Canapé Vert, Pernal, and BelladPre. Hours of testimony and
evidence were videotaped, photographed and recorded.
At a press conference held at the Plaza Hotel in Port-au-Prince just
prior to the delegation's departure from Haiti, Commission members
explained the origin and mission of the International Tribunal on Haiti,
read from the prosecution's indictment, and gave some idea of whom they
had been meeting with and what they were investigating.
Delegation leader Ramsey Clark condemned the "terrible police and
military violence against the people of Haiti" in the framework of the
Feb. 29, 2004 coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. "It is
absolutely imperative for the future of Haiti and to peace on earth that
there be accountability for these crimes," he said. "If international
forces under the auspices of the United Nations can come to Haiti and
engage in systematic summary executions of its people, what place on
earth will be safe from that power?"
"The truth about the actions of U.N. military forces and Haitian police
acting in cooperation with their own gangs, which commit murder, is
essential to the future of this country," Clark said.
WHEREVER THERE IS IMPUNITY FOR POWER, THERE IS NO LAW
Statement of Ramsey Clark at the Oct. 11 press conference of the
International Tribunal on Haiti's Commission of Inquiry in
Port-au-Prince
I first came to Haiti in 1946, before probably anybody else in this room
was born. Over the years, I've been back maybe a dozen times, but
because of the nature of my work, never at a happy time.
You have heard descriptions of terrible police and military violence
against the people of Haiti. All who revere life and seek peace have to
recognize that police and military violence against the people is the
greatest of all crimes. Who will protect the people when the police and
military are violating their rights?
The very special context of this police and military violence against
the people of Haiti has to be observed with the greatest care because it
has happened in the wake of yet another U.S. regime change of the
government of Haiti. Whatever might have happened if George Bush, and
Dick Cheney and finally Colin Powell hadn't said that Aristide has to
go, we will never know. But what did happen because President Bush
decided that Aristide has to go we know very well: systematic violence
against the people of Haiti that is clearly overwhelmingly politically
motivated.
You report in the press here regularly that there is a war against what
they want to call gangs and bandits. What they are really talking about
is Aristide supporters and the Lavalas. Very often they use the name
Lavalas as a synonym for the gangs, the bandits. And they go out and
commit summary executions against the people, to control the country for
the future.
It is especially tragic to see the United Nations forces used in this
way. The United Nations was created to end the scourge of war. Its first
peace-keeping forces were unarmed. I remember the tragedy of seeing the
bodies of six young men from Fiji wearing blue helmets and unarmed,
killed by an Israeli invasion in southern Lebanon. Now what we see is
MINUSTAH adopting the military tactics of Special Forces. We have to
remember that soldiers come to love war too well. The United States has
created an international militarism that mimics its tactics. You only
have to look at Iraq today in towns like Falluja and elsewhere to see
the systematic destruction of the resistance of the people.
It is absolutely imperative for the future of Haiti and to peace on
earth that there be accountability for these crimes. If international
forces under the auspices of the United Nations can come to Haiti and
engage in systematic summary executions of its people, what place on
earth will be safe from that power?
You've heard that cumulatively deaths by military and police actions in
Haiti amount to some hundreds of people. You've heard a minor fraction
of what's happened. Only yesterday the police here told us that there
are deaths every day from police actions.
At the beginning of corrections are the facts. The truth about the
actions of U.N. military forces and Haitian police acting in cooperation
with their own gangs, which commit murder, is essential to the future of
this country. That truth will depend upon a vigilant press and a public
in Haiti which is unafraid to tell what has happened to it.
I served in the U.S. government for eight years in the 1960s. It was a
period of civil rights. It began really for the government in 1961 with
what we call the "Freedom Riders," with public school integration for
the first time, so that African American and white children would go to
the same school. The introduction of the first African American into the
University of Mississippi in September 1962 cost several lives and
thousands and thousands of rounds of ammunition fired to prevent the
admission of one person into that university solely because of the color
of his skin.
For the next years, we addressed the problem of civil rights in the
United States with the highest priority on the elimination of poverty.
Gandhi correctly called poverty the greatest genocide. And in Malawi and
Niger and other parts of Africa you see literally tens of millions of
people at risk of starvation.
But during the so-called War on Poverty in the United States, the
expenditures for public education, for public healthcare, for social
welfare, social security, housing and all the rest more than tripled.
And then from rising expectations, beginning in August 1965 race riots
broke out in our major cities. In Maryland in 1964, Los Angeles in 1965,
Cleveland in 1966, Newark and Chicago in 1967. Then with the death of
Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968, there were over 100 cities where
race riots broke out spontaneously. Police repression was enormous.
Hundreds of people were shot dead for the most serious offense of,
perhaps, looting. People called for the shooting of looters. There was a
picture of a 14-year-old kid who had been running down the street with a
basket of apples, shot in the back and killed.
The U.S. Department of Justice [which Ramsey Clark headed at that time -
Ed.] announced that its highest criminal law enforcement priority was
the prosecution of police for violating the rights of citizens.
And against the vehement opposition of the police and political power in
the United States and the National Guard, we began to prosecute police
in cities across the country who had killed citizens living in their own
country.
And that's very much what's happened here in Haiti. But you are
afflicted not only with your own police, which have had their problems
for generations, but with foreign military forces from many countries,
acting under different commanders, under the auspices and direction of
the United Nations, and they must be held accountable for their crimes.
There was an international conference in Paris from September 23 to 25
this year, on impunity for power. It asked how does one address the
problem of the police, soldiers, and the rich being above the law. The
conclusion was obvious: wherever there is impunity for power, there is
no law. If power can have its way, the people live in a jungle, and it's
survival of the fittest. We have to come to grips with the lawlessness
of the United Nations forces here, and political gangs acting under
their orders and direction, and make all of them equally accountable for
their acts.
We expect the International Criminal Court, created by a treaty signed
by over 120 nations, and now sitting in The Hague, to receive evidence
of these crimes in Haiti and to hold those convicted for them
accountable under the law of nations. And we hope Haiti can do its part
to protect itself from such lawlessness too.
All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Progres.
newsweekly. For the complete edition with other news in French
and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-434-8100,
(fax) 718-434-5551 or e-mail at editor@haitiprogres.com.
Also visit our website at <www.haitiprogres.com>.
HAITI PROGRES
"Le journal qui offre une alternative"
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *
October 12 - 18, 2005
Vol. 23, No. 31
TRIBUNAL'S COMMISSION OF INQUIRY UNCOVERS NEW MASSACRES
FURTHER INDICTMENTS FORTHCOMING
During a five day visit to Haiti, a Commission of Inquiry, dispatched by
the International Tribunal on Haiti, gathered evidence of and testimony
about new massacres and other crimes against humanity which allegedly
have been committed in Haiti since Feb. 29, 2004, when U.S. soldiers
kidnapped elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and flew him into
exile.
The Commission met with over 50 witnesses who told it of massacres,
summary executions, torture, arbitrary arrests and many other human
rights abuses being carried out by Haitian police and foreign occupation
troops. The Commission also interviewed Haitian National Police (PNH)
director Mario Andresol as well as a high-ranking officer in the U.N.
Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH).
A Commission of Inquiry member said that the evidence collected, once
presented to the Tribunal's investigating judge, would make new
indictments "inevitable." The Tribunal has already indicted 21
individuals of the PNH, MINUSTAH, former "rebels," and U.S., French and
Canadian armed forces. Those convicted will be sent to the International
Criminal Court in The Hague, for international criminal prosecution.
Led by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the Commission of
Inquiry visited Haiti from Oct. 6 to 11 after being announced at the
opening session of the International Tribunal on Haiti held in
Washington, DC on Sep. 23 (see HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 23, No. 29,
9/28/2005).
Other members of the Commission of Inquiry include Captain Lawrence
Rockwood, a former counter-intelligence officer in the U.S. Army who was
court-martialed in 1995 after acting without orders to save the lives of
prisoners in Haiti's National Penitentiary on September 30, 1994 (see
HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 12, No. 49, 3/1/2005); Tom Griffin, an immigration
lawyer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and author of a widely acclaimed
January 2005 human rights report issued by the University of Miami Law
School; Kim Ives, a journalist with HaVti ProgrPs; Dave Welsh, a
delegate of the San Francisco Labor Council and organizer of a U.S.
labor human rights delegation to Haiti in June and July 2005; John
Parker, west coast coordinator of the International Action Center (IAC);
and Katharine Kean, a documentary filmmaker. Bishop Thomas Gumbleton,
the archbishop of Detroit, Michigan, also planned to be part of the
Commission but had to cancel his travel plans at the last minute.
During its stay, the Commission met primarily with eye-witnesses and the
relatives of victims of massacres in Cité Soleil, Belair, Nazon, Solino,
Carrefour, Canapé Vert, Pernal, and BelladPre. Hours of testimony and
evidence were videotaped, photographed and recorded.
At a press conference held at the Plaza Hotel in Port-au-Prince just
prior to the delegation's departure from Haiti, Commission members
explained the origin and mission of the International Tribunal on Haiti,
read from the prosecution's indictment, and gave some idea of whom they
had been meeting with and what they were investigating.
Delegation leader Ramsey Clark condemned the "terrible police and
military violence against the people of Haiti" in the framework of the
Feb. 29, 2004 coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. "It is
absolutely imperative for the future of Haiti and to peace on earth that
there be accountability for these crimes," he said. "If international
forces under the auspices of the United Nations can come to Haiti and
engage in systematic summary executions of its people, what place on
earth will be safe from that power?"
"The truth about the actions of U.N. military forces and Haitian police
acting in cooperation with their own gangs, which commit murder, is
essential to the future of this country," Clark said.
WHEREVER THERE IS IMPUNITY FOR POWER, THERE IS NO LAW
Statement of Ramsey Clark at the Oct. 11 press conference of the
International Tribunal on Haiti's Commission of Inquiry in
Port-au-Prince
I first came to Haiti in 1946, before probably anybody else in this room
was born. Over the years, I've been back maybe a dozen times, but
because of the nature of my work, never at a happy time.
You have heard descriptions of terrible police and military violence
against the people of Haiti. All who revere life and seek peace have to
recognize that police and military violence against the people is the
greatest of all crimes. Who will protect the people when the police and
military are violating their rights?
The very special context of this police and military violence against
the people of Haiti has to be observed with the greatest care because it
has happened in the wake of yet another U.S. regime change of the
government of Haiti. Whatever might have happened if George Bush, and
Dick Cheney and finally Colin Powell hadn't said that Aristide has to
go, we will never know. But what did happen because President Bush
decided that Aristide has to go we know very well: systematic violence
against the people of Haiti that is clearly overwhelmingly politically
motivated.
You report in the press here regularly that there is a war against what
they want to call gangs and bandits. What they are really talking about
is Aristide supporters and the Lavalas. Very often they use the name
Lavalas as a synonym for the gangs, the bandits. And they go out and
commit summary executions against the people, to control the country for
the future.
It is especially tragic to see the United Nations forces used in this
way. The United Nations was created to end the scourge of war. Its first
peace-keeping forces were unarmed. I remember the tragedy of seeing the
bodies of six young men from Fiji wearing blue helmets and unarmed,
killed by an Israeli invasion in southern Lebanon. Now what we see is
MINUSTAH adopting the military tactics of Special Forces. We have to
remember that soldiers come to love war too well. The United States has
created an international militarism that mimics its tactics. You only
have to look at Iraq today in towns like Falluja and elsewhere to see
the systematic destruction of the resistance of the people.
It is absolutely imperative for the future of Haiti and to peace on
earth that there be accountability for these crimes. If international
forces under the auspices of the United Nations can come to Haiti and
engage in systematic summary executions of its people, what place on
earth will be safe from that power?
You've heard that cumulatively deaths by military and police actions in
Haiti amount to some hundreds of people. You've heard a minor fraction
of what's happened. Only yesterday the police here told us that there
are deaths every day from police actions.
At the beginning of corrections are the facts. The truth about the
actions of U.N. military forces and Haitian police acting in cooperation
with their own gangs, which commit murder, is essential to the future of
this country. That truth will depend upon a vigilant press and a public
in Haiti which is unafraid to tell what has happened to it.
I served in the U.S. government for eight years in the 1960s. It was a
period of civil rights. It began really for the government in 1961 with
what we call the "Freedom Riders," with public school integration for
the first time, so that African American and white children would go to
the same school. The introduction of the first African American into the
University of Mississippi in September 1962 cost several lives and
thousands and thousands of rounds of ammunition fired to prevent the
admission of one person into that university solely because of the color
of his skin.
For the next years, we addressed the problem of civil rights in the
United States with the highest priority on the elimination of poverty.
Gandhi correctly called poverty the greatest genocide. And in Malawi and
Niger and other parts of Africa you see literally tens of millions of
people at risk of starvation.
But during the so-called War on Poverty in the United States, the
expenditures for public education, for public healthcare, for social
welfare, social security, housing and all the rest more than tripled.
And then from rising expectations, beginning in August 1965 race riots
broke out in our major cities. In Maryland in 1964, Los Angeles in 1965,
Cleveland in 1966, Newark and Chicago in 1967. Then with the death of
Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968, there were over 100 cities where
race riots broke out spontaneously. Police repression was enormous.
Hundreds of people were shot dead for the most serious offense of,
perhaps, looting. People called for the shooting of looters. There was a
picture of a 14-year-old kid who had been running down the street with a
basket of apples, shot in the back and killed.
The U.S. Department of Justice [which Ramsey Clark headed at that time -
Ed.] announced that its highest criminal law enforcement priority was
the prosecution of police for violating the rights of citizens.
And against the vehement opposition of the police and political power in
the United States and the National Guard, we began to prosecute police
in cities across the country who had killed citizens living in their own
country.
And that's very much what's happened here in Haiti. But you are
afflicted not only with your own police, which have had their problems
for generations, but with foreign military forces from many countries,
acting under different commanders, under the auspices and direction of
the United Nations, and they must be held accountable for their crimes.
There was an international conference in Paris from September 23 to 25
this year, on impunity for power. It asked how does one address the
problem of the police, soldiers, and the rich being above the law. The
conclusion was obvious: wherever there is impunity for power, there is
no law. If power can have its way, the people live in a jungle, and it's
survival of the fittest. We have to come to grips with the lawlessness
of the United Nations forces here, and political gangs acting under
their orders and direction, and make all of them equally accountable for
their acts.
We expect the International Criminal Court, created by a treaty signed
by over 120 nations, and now sitting in The Hague, to receive evidence
of these crimes in Haiti and to hold those convicted for them
accountable under the law of nations. And we hope Haiti can do its part
to protect itself from such lawlessness too.
All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Progres.