Politics & Democracy

Associated Press February 8, 2007  Hundreds of supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide protested outside the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission in Port au Prince on Wednesday. They were demanding the exiled leader’s return and blaming blue-helmeted troops of killing civilians. Protesters shouted “down with the UN” as they gathered at the headquarter. “If you look at what is happening in Cite de Soleil, it is a disaster. We did not imagine the United Nations would be causing the violence in Cite Soleil,” protester Walqing Desire said. “We are calling upon the government to stop the violence in Cite Soleil. We are calling upon the government for the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and to tell the UN to stop killing the people in Cite Soleil,” he added. Aristide, a former priest turned president, fled the Caribbean nation in February 2004 […]

February 6, 2007 Update: Some sad news- political prisoner Wantales Lormejuste died Saturday on the way from the prison to the hospital in St. Marc. Mr. Lormejuste’s family reported that he had not appeared ill. One cause of his death was injustice: Mr. Lormejuste had spent 593 days in prison on the La Scierie case, even through the appeals prosecutor concluded last June that there was not enough evidence to go to trial. The appeals court has refused to decide his case, sixteen months after he filed his appeal, or even to rule on his request for pre-trial release. Two other defendants in the La Scierie case, Ronald Dauphin and former Parliamentarian Amanus Mayette, are ill. The British Medical Journal The Lancet has finally confirmed the findings of the study it published August 31, 2006, Human Rights and Other Criminal […]

U.S. Reporting on the Coup Haiti How to Turn a Priest into a Cannibal By DIANA BARAHONA When Haiti’s wealthy elites removed President Jean Bertrand Aristide from office in a February 2004 coup, they had the help of the Bush administration, as well as that of the French and Canadian governments. But they also had help from the U.S. press, which helped publicize a carefully planned narrative to justify the overthrow. I have always been interested in how a supposedly independent press so often manages to report on foreign affairs from the point of view of the State Department. What are the mechanisms by which the government’s narrative ends up being the frame for stories about U.S. military interventions and CIA-backed coups in the Americas? Who are the foreign correspondents and how do they learn the “correct” way to report […]

UN terror kills Haiti’s children at night Protestors reportedly hurled insults at the UN forces and shouted “Down with Preval” – an apparent reference to Haiti’s president who is said to have sanctioned the raids. The spontaneous protest was broke up by UN forces who first used tear gas to disperse them and then began firing guns towards the crowd. A spontaneous demonstration errupts in Cite Soleil on February 2, 2007 after word that UN forces killed seven year-old Stephanie Lubin and four year-old Alexandra Lubin. Their parents were wounded by indiscriminate UN gunfire as they slept in their home. The parents of nine year-old Boadley Bewence Germain react after his death from UN gunfire on Jan. 20, 2007. Nine year-old Boadley Bewence Germain died in a hospital bed after having been shot in the head by United Nations forces […]

By Tania Valdemoro, Miami Herald Jan. 28, 2007 HAITIAN COMMUNITY Jean-Juste impatient to return to Haiti The Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste — powerful Haitian activist and former political prisoner — longs to minister again in Haiti, but he is thwarted by political backlash and his own fragile health. Watching the Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste relax on a folding chair at the storefront office of Veye Yo, a political group he founded in Little Haiti, it is hard to tell the priest was wracked by leukemia.Two months after finishing chemotherapy, his sallow complexion has cleared. He has gained weight. And he no longer uses a cane to walk. ”I’m very patient. I think my health will get better with time,” said Jean-Juste, who led a decades-long fight in South Florida to legalize Haitians in the United States. Leukemia was Jean-Juste’s ticket out of […]

January 17, 2007 Update: �Good news: the first bill of the year supporting justice in Haiti was filed in the U.S. Congress. Rep. Barbara Lee introduced H.R. 351, the TRUTH Act, which was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. It now needs our help (see below). Thank you to everyone who wrote Edmond Mulet, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Haiti. We have not yet received a response from Mr. Mulet; please let us know if you have. On Friday, Cite Soleil residents returned a machine gun that UN peacekeepers had abandoned following a skirmish in December. Coming Attractions: �Democracy is celebrated in Haiti on February 7, the anniversary of the departure of Jean-Claude �Baby Doc� Duvalier (1986) and the inaugurations of Presidents Aristide (1991 and 2001) and Preval (1996). �Haiti�s Fondation Trente Septembre, joined by […]