New UN envoy for Haiti in juggle of top posts
Fri 27 Jul 2007, 20:27 GMT
By Evelyn Leopold
(Read the original article here)
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed a new top envoy for Haiti Friday in shuffling posts of two veteran officials in the U.N. peacekeeping department.
Hedi Annabi, a Tunisian, will go to Haiti to head the U.N. mission there. Annabi, 63, who joined the world body in 1981, is currently the U.N. assistant secretary-general in the peacekeeping department in charge of operations, including the new joint United Nations-African Union force for Darfur.
Ban had put Annabi on a list in February of U.N. officials who had been with the organization for many years and should retire but he did not name a replacement.
Jean-Marie Guehenno, the head of peacekeeping, fought to keep Annabi as long as feasible, U.N. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Annabi swaps jobs with Edmond Mulet of Guatemala, who is now head of the Haiti mission that includes 7,200 troops and 1,500 police to help keep the peace in the Caribbean nation.
Mullet, a lawyer and former journalist, was a lawmaker for 12 years in Guatemala and served as ambassador to the European Union and the United States.
At the same time, Ban gave a promotion to Dimitri Titov of Russia, the head of the Africa peacekeeping division, which handles 80 percent of the more than 100,000 military and civilian personnel fielded around the world in eight missions.
That division will be split into two units.
Titov was appointed assistant secretary-general for the rule of law and security sector reform in the peacekeeping department, making him the highest-ranking Russian at New York headquarters.
Moscow heads the U.N. center in Geneva but does not have a top post in the New York bureaucracy, as do other permanent U.N. Security Council members.
Although Titov, who has been in the peacekeeping department since 1991, does not have a legal or human rights background, he has played a key role in developing these programs in all U.N. missions, a U.N. statement said.
His position is a new one approved by the General Assembly last month as part of Ban's restructuring, which divided the peacekeeping department into two entities.
Titov has a degree in international relations and was in the Russian diplomatic service, where he participated in negotiations in Afghanistan, Cyprus, Cambodia and Central America.
Monday, July 30, 2007
An anti-journalistic talking shop for the privileged class
Ever since I was libeled in its pages by a wealthy, college-dwelling professional dissembler (York University Professor Justin Podur) and a convicted criminal and perjurer (Patrick Elie), and then denied the right of response, I have always thought that one had about as much chance reasoning with the crowd that populates the internet publication ZNet as one did of reasoning with a barnyard animal, though no doubt the barnyard animal would be less pernicious by nature. This is, after all, a website that has made a gospel out of verbally lauding deniers of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre (refusing to print critiques in response and ignoring evidence and tesimonials to the contrary), fawning over Caribbean despots and killers (again, ignoring evidence upon evidence) and a whole host of other unsavory types, pretty much refining the template for armchair radicalism in the service of attacking genuinely progressive, democratic movements the world over. A recent article by Shirley Pate would seem a case in point.
Read more here.
Read more here.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
20 an apre masak ti peyizan Janrabèl yo « Mare ren nou, sere ran nou pou ranfòse kan popilè a… »
20 an apre masak ti peyizan Janrabèl yo « Mare ren nou, sere ran nou pou ranfòse kan popilè a… »
madi 24 jiyè 2007
Mesaj direksyon nasyonal Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen nan okazyon ventyèm anivèsè masak ti peyizan Janrabèl ak Bochan yo
Dokiman sa a vin jwenn AlterPresse 24 jiyè 2007
(Li atik orijinal la)
23 jiyè 1987 – 23 jiyè 2007, deja 20 tan depi gwo kò deli ak dezas Masak Janrabèl ak Bochan an te voye nan peyi san chapo 139 ti peyizan, san konte blese ak andikape. Gwo dram sa a te lage anpil fanmi peyizan nan depatman Nòdwès la 2 men nan tèt, pandan opinyon nasyonal ak entènasyonal la te anba gwo emosyon.
Gwo masak sa a se repons dezespere, avèg, vyolan e kalkile klas dominan nasyonal ak entènasyonal te bay MOUVMAN TET ANSANM ti peyizan Janrabèl ak Bochan, devan volonte yo pou ti peyizan ayisyen te soti anba tè kote lenmi pèp la antere yo depi 1804. An menm tan, masak 23 jiyè 1987 la te yon avètisman pou tout sektè popilè, pwogresis ak demokratik ki te angaje nan batay kont lòd ekonomik, politik ak sosyal enjis ki tabli nan peyi a depi lontan anba dominasyon kapitalis mondyal la.
Poutan malgre tout klate sa yo nan estrateji ak aksyon fòs dominan yo, 20 tan apre masak la, divès sektè nan peyi a kontinye ap repete pwopagann lenmi pèp la foure nan tèt yo, komkwa, masak Janrabèl la se te rezilta batay ti peyizan ak ti peyizan. Sektè sa yo fè tankou yo bliye kokennchenn limyè Nikòl Pwatvyen te pote sou otè masak la. Okenn moun ki gen bon sans epi ki onèt pa kapab bliye imaj Nikòl Pwatvyen ki t ap bat lestomak an triyonfatè nan Televisyon Nasyonal pou te devwale san li pat rann li kont, veritab planifikatè ak òganizatè masak la. San okenn jèn, li te deklare ak kè kontan : « Nou menm nan kan ameriken an, nou tchwe 1042 kominis ! »
Kòm pòtpawòl klas dominan yo nan moman an, Nikòl Pwatvyen te konnen trè byen de kisa li t ap pale. Li pat gen okenn dout sou sektè ki te planifye masak la. Li te klè se te sektè ki te reprezante sa li te rele : « Kan Ameriken an ». Sa te vle di grandon yo, Lame Dayiti, chèf seksyon, reprezantan dirèk enperyalis la ansanm ak tout lòt zakolit yo. Kidonk, tèz batay ti peyizan ant ti peyizan an, se yon tèz malfektè yo te mete devan kòm paravan pou te maske veritab kriminèl yo. Epi pou detounen atansyon opinyon piblik la. Men li klè, jan Nikòl Pwatvyen te di l, nan masak la, te gen 2 kan : kan masakrè kriminèl yo Gwo Nikòl te rele « Kan Ameriken an » epi kan viktim inosan yo, li te rele « Kan Kominis la ». Pi devan nan deklarasyon li te fè nan dat 25 jiyè 1987 nan Televizyon Nasyonal, Nikòl Pwatvyen te pi klè toujou. Li te deklare : « se ameriken ki sove nou, se yo ki te vin mennen ankèt pou nou ».
Lòt gwo manti ak pwopagann kan masakrè kriminèl yo lage nan lari a pou detounen atansyon moun sou yo : yo vle fè ti peyizan TET ANSANM ak moun ki t ap akonpaye yo pase pou anmèdan, chache kont epi tizè dezòd ak vyolans. Selon pwopagann sa a, se nan chache kont, nan simaye grenn diri ak poud kokayin nan mitan ti peyizan yo, ki te pouse yo al pete batay ki te mennen nan masak 23 jiyè 1987 la.
Mezanmi, ala pwopagandis yo fò, se pa teknik ak ladrès ki manke yo ! Yo vle fè inosan pase pou kriminèl, pandan y ap chache fè asasen yo pase pou inosan ! Yo fè ekspre, yo fè kòmkwa yo pa konnen si masak 23 jiyè 1987 la se te aboutisman yon bann ak pakèt agresyon, entimidasyon, konplo ak atak vyolan grandon, Lame Dayiti, sèten sektè reyaksyonè nan legliz katolik ak pwotestan, nan sendika jòn KAT KLAT ak yon ti ponyen jounalis k ap defann movèz kòz t ap mitonnen san rete kont Gwoupman Tèt Ansanm ak Ekip Misyonè Janrabèl la, pran depi 9 me 1986 rive 23 jiyè 1987.
Jodi a nou pa ka bliye jan grandon Remy Lucas te pran tèt yon bann asasen pou t al boule 15 kay ti peyizan nan Gwosab, jete rekòt yo epi detwi plantasyon yo, jou ki te 9 me 1986. Menm jou a, ak dòt zakolit li, Remy Lucas te antre kay Ekip Misyonè a nan Bouk Janrabèl kote li ta pral sasinen yon manm Ekip la ki te gen tan chape erezman.
Nou pa ka bliye 4 jiyè 1986, lè Nikòl Pwatvyen t ap mache kole trak kont Gwoupman ak Ekip Misyonè a nan bouk Janrabèl. Nou pa ka bliye 2 Dawou 1986, kote Nikòl ak Jèvè Pwatvyen epi Witni Era ki gen ti non jwèt Ti Lyetnan t al kraze vit kay Ekip Misyonè a nan Bouk Janrabèl. Nan menm dat sa a grandon yo te monte bann pou t al atake mann Gwoupman yo ki t ap manifeste mekontantman yo pasifikman kont atak ak menas grandon Mawouj te fè sou manm gwoupman.
Nou pa ka bliye 18 Novanm 1986, lè grandon te monte anbiskad kont manm Gwoupman ak Ekip Misyonè nan Gwo Basen. Nou pap bliye 2 jiyè 1987, lè grandon Janrabèl te atake direktè medikal lopital Janrabèl la ki te sou reskonsablite Ekip Misyonè a. Yo te vle fè kwè se popilasyon an ki te leve kont travay Ekip la.
Nou pa bliye 27 Dawou 1986 lè anbasad meriken tal mennen ankèt sou Gwoupman TET ANSANM ak Ekip Misyonè a nan Janrabèl, sou demann grandon yo, pi espesyalman sou demand Jan Michèl Richadsonn, dapre deklarasyon yon anplwaye anbasad ameriken, David Lee, li menm te fè.
Nou pap bliye atak yon reskonsab Legliz Advantis nan Bochan te fè sou pè Renal Klerisme ak sou kèk antèt Gwoupman nan lannwit 9 pou rive 10 oktob 1987. Nou pa ka bliye e nou pap janm ka bliye dènye seri atak fòs lanmò yo ki ta pral mennen finalman nan masak 23 jiyè 1987 la. Dènye seri atak sa yo te kòmanse nan dat 28 jen 1987 nan 4èm seksyon Janrabèl sou Lamontay, apre prèch Monseyè Kolimon ki te lanse modòd sa a pou fidèl li yo : « lè w bezwen debranche yon gwo pye bwa ki manbre, se nan branch li pou kòmanse ». Se konsa dènye seri atak kont Gwoupman TET ANSANM ak Ekip Misyonè Janrabèl la ta pral tanmen depi 28 jen 1987 nan Lamontay. Atak yo te kontinye 3 jiyè 1987 nan Larezèv epi te rapouswiv pratikman san rete nan zòn mòn yo, pran depi 28 jen 1987 jis lame san fwa ni lwa a te rive atenn zòn Leba yo 23 jiyè 1987 la.
Tout aksyon sa yo t ap mennen kont Gwoupman TET ANSANM ak Ekip Misyonè Janrabèl la paske ti peyizan yo t ap batay an granmoun pou te fè rekonèt dwa ak valè yo, pou pwodiksyon nasyonal ak refòm agrè, pou jistis sosyal nan yon sosyete kote yo te toujou mete peyizan, malere ak malerèz deyò. Epi paske Ekip Misyonè Janrabèl la t ap soutni Gwoupman yo kòmsadwa nan batay sa a. Jodi a, 20 tan apre nou sonje … Bay kou bliye pote mak sonje !... Nou sonje … Nou sonje w Salira, Salira Vilfran ! Nou sonje w Telijèn, Telijèn Janbatis ! Nou sonje w Man Djoul, Man Elvesiyis Devil ! Nou sonje w Amozyèl, Amozyèl Oska ! Nou sonje… Nou sonje…
Ayibobo pou nou konbatan ! Ayibobo pou tout egzanp ak temwayaj korèk nou kite pou nou kirete dèyè ! Aksyon nou yo ap kontinye trase vèvè nan lespri ak nan memwa nou pou lavi ka fleri sou tè Dayiti yon jou kon jodi a ! Nou di sa nan memwa nou tout ki te dakò sans solidarite jounen 23 jiyè a ! Jodi a nou menm ki rete dèyè, nou rete kwè nan solidarite sa a ki dwe mennen nan chanjman pou lòt sosyete nou t ap goumen pou li a ! Nou rete atache a sans batay la, menm lè gen anpil nan nou ki vire kazak, ki trayi, k ap ranpe jodi a, kal rabfòse kan lenmi an, oswa ki dekouraje !
Jodi a, nou menm peyizan Janrabèl ak Bochan ki te tonbe yo, n ap sonje nou nan yon moman kote fòs militè ak sivil etranje okipe peyi nou anba labanyè LONI ak konplisite divès gouvènman ki pase sou pouvwa a, pran depi 2001 sou Aristid, rive sou prezidan Preval ki kòm prezidan konstitisyonèl peyi a kontante l bay okipasyon sa a benediksyon ak jarèt. Nou vle di nou plan meriken nou te konbat ak tout fòs nou an toujou la. Men li gen lòt non jodi a. Yo rele l plan newoliberal, privatizasyon, ajisteman estriktirèl ak mondyalizasyon sistèm kapitalis la ki kontinye ap toupizi malere ak malerèz toupatou nan mond lan. Gouvènman nou genyen jodi a ap mache tèt bese nan likide tout antrepriz rantab Leta posede. L ap fè boujwazi entènasyonal ak nasyonal la kado yo, san konsidere enterè nasyonal la. San mande Lachanm opinyon l ki li menm tou pwofite fè tankou li pa konsène nan desizyon chèf Leta a ap pran.
Lavichè nou te konnen an pat anyen devan kalamite mas pèp la ap pase jodi a anba mache nwa mondyalizasyon kapitalis la. Lajan monte bwa nèt pou peyizan ak malere malerèz paske politisyen trafikan ak esplwatè tout kalib soti pou fini ak pwodiksyon nasyonal la pou pèmèt yo sèl wa. Leta a ak gwo boujwa yo livre peyi a bay patwon yo, gwo pwisans kapitalis yo ki prèske fin pran kontwòl peyi a nèt, nan bab yon prezidan k ap gade n nan je, pandan pèp la ap monte maswife.
Fòk nou di tou fòs òganizasyon, fòs politik, ideyolojik ak inite ki te genyen nan kan popilè a bese anpil jounen jodia. Se sa menm ki pèmèt zòt ap fè tout radiyès sa yo nan figi nou tout san kè sote ! Men, jan nou te toujou konnen l batay la se yon wout ki gen monte, ki gen desann. Nan wout sa a se yon jou pou chasè yon jou pou jibye. Jan nou te konnen l, pèp òganize ka pran so, men li pap janm ka pèdi batay !
Jodi a solidarite ant pèp yo ap ranfòse toupatou sou latè. Kòm prèv, non sèlman TET KOLE rive reprann plas li nan Via Kanpesina ki se pi gwo rezo mondyal òganizasyon peyizan yo sou latè. Jodi a, devan zo kadav nou yo, devan tout delege ak zanmi ki vin pote kole ak nou, kòdonatris Via Kanpesina / Klok pou Rejyon Karayib la prezan nan mitan nou, alatèt yon delegasyon diferan òganizasyon peyizan ki soti an Repiblik Dominikèn pou vin ranfòse lit la, ranfòse solidarite a. Ayibobo pou yo !
Nan okazyon 20 tyèm anivèsè masak Janrabèl la, TET KOLE TI PEYIZAN AYISYEN ap lanse yon gwo apèl bay tout fòs popilè, pwogresis ak demokratik peyi a pou nou mare ren nou, sere ran nou pou ranfòse kan popilè a pou n rive bay lit la yon direksyon politik demokratik e popilè kòrèk pou mennen batay la jouk nan bout. Se sèl kondisyon pou pèp la soti nan sitiyasyon makawon l ap viv jodi a.
SEL FOS NOU SE BON JAN OGANIZASYON POPILE NAN AKSYON KONSETE, PLANIFYE EPI BYEN KODONE VIV LIT TI PEYIAN YO, VIV LIT PEP LA, VIV INITE KAN PEP LA VIV SOLIDARITE NASYONAL AK ENTENASYONAL
Pou Direksyon Nasyonal la :
Silven Jan
Rosnèl Janbatis
madi 24 jiyè 2007
Mesaj direksyon nasyonal Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen nan okazyon ventyèm anivèsè masak ti peyizan Janrabèl ak Bochan yo
Dokiman sa a vin jwenn AlterPresse 24 jiyè 2007
(Li atik orijinal la)
23 jiyè 1987 – 23 jiyè 2007, deja 20 tan depi gwo kò deli ak dezas Masak Janrabèl ak Bochan an te voye nan peyi san chapo 139 ti peyizan, san konte blese ak andikape. Gwo dram sa a te lage anpil fanmi peyizan nan depatman Nòdwès la 2 men nan tèt, pandan opinyon nasyonal ak entènasyonal la te anba gwo emosyon.
Gwo masak sa a se repons dezespere, avèg, vyolan e kalkile klas dominan nasyonal ak entènasyonal te bay MOUVMAN TET ANSANM ti peyizan Janrabèl ak Bochan, devan volonte yo pou ti peyizan ayisyen te soti anba tè kote lenmi pèp la antere yo depi 1804. An menm tan, masak 23 jiyè 1987 la te yon avètisman pou tout sektè popilè, pwogresis ak demokratik ki te angaje nan batay kont lòd ekonomik, politik ak sosyal enjis ki tabli nan peyi a depi lontan anba dominasyon kapitalis mondyal la.
Poutan malgre tout klate sa yo nan estrateji ak aksyon fòs dominan yo, 20 tan apre masak la, divès sektè nan peyi a kontinye ap repete pwopagann lenmi pèp la foure nan tèt yo, komkwa, masak Janrabèl la se te rezilta batay ti peyizan ak ti peyizan. Sektè sa yo fè tankou yo bliye kokennchenn limyè Nikòl Pwatvyen te pote sou otè masak la. Okenn moun ki gen bon sans epi ki onèt pa kapab bliye imaj Nikòl Pwatvyen ki t ap bat lestomak an triyonfatè nan Televisyon Nasyonal pou te devwale san li pat rann li kont, veritab planifikatè ak òganizatè masak la. San okenn jèn, li te deklare ak kè kontan : « Nou menm nan kan ameriken an, nou tchwe 1042 kominis ! »
Kòm pòtpawòl klas dominan yo nan moman an, Nikòl Pwatvyen te konnen trè byen de kisa li t ap pale. Li pat gen okenn dout sou sektè ki te planifye masak la. Li te klè se te sektè ki te reprezante sa li te rele : « Kan Ameriken an ». Sa te vle di grandon yo, Lame Dayiti, chèf seksyon, reprezantan dirèk enperyalis la ansanm ak tout lòt zakolit yo. Kidonk, tèz batay ti peyizan ant ti peyizan an, se yon tèz malfektè yo te mete devan kòm paravan pou te maske veritab kriminèl yo. Epi pou detounen atansyon opinyon piblik la. Men li klè, jan Nikòl Pwatvyen te di l, nan masak la, te gen 2 kan : kan masakrè kriminèl yo Gwo Nikòl te rele « Kan Ameriken an » epi kan viktim inosan yo, li te rele « Kan Kominis la ». Pi devan nan deklarasyon li te fè nan dat 25 jiyè 1987 nan Televizyon Nasyonal, Nikòl Pwatvyen te pi klè toujou. Li te deklare : « se ameriken ki sove nou, se yo ki te vin mennen ankèt pou nou ».
Lòt gwo manti ak pwopagann kan masakrè kriminèl yo lage nan lari a pou detounen atansyon moun sou yo : yo vle fè ti peyizan TET ANSANM ak moun ki t ap akonpaye yo pase pou anmèdan, chache kont epi tizè dezòd ak vyolans. Selon pwopagann sa a, se nan chache kont, nan simaye grenn diri ak poud kokayin nan mitan ti peyizan yo, ki te pouse yo al pete batay ki te mennen nan masak 23 jiyè 1987 la.
Mezanmi, ala pwopagandis yo fò, se pa teknik ak ladrès ki manke yo ! Yo vle fè inosan pase pou kriminèl, pandan y ap chache fè asasen yo pase pou inosan ! Yo fè ekspre, yo fè kòmkwa yo pa konnen si masak 23 jiyè 1987 la se te aboutisman yon bann ak pakèt agresyon, entimidasyon, konplo ak atak vyolan grandon, Lame Dayiti, sèten sektè reyaksyonè nan legliz katolik ak pwotestan, nan sendika jòn KAT KLAT ak yon ti ponyen jounalis k ap defann movèz kòz t ap mitonnen san rete kont Gwoupman Tèt Ansanm ak Ekip Misyonè Janrabèl la, pran depi 9 me 1986 rive 23 jiyè 1987.
Jodi a nou pa ka bliye jan grandon Remy Lucas te pran tèt yon bann asasen pou t al boule 15 kay ti peyizan nan Gwosab, jete rekòt yo epi detwi plantasyon yo, jou ki te 9 me 1986. Menm jou a, ak dòt zakolit li, Remy Lucas te antre kay Ekip Misyonè a nan Bouk Janrabèl kote li ta pral sasinen yon manm Ekip la ki te gen tan chape erezman.
Nou pa ka bliye 4 jiyè 1986, lè Nikòl Pwatvyen t ap mache kole trak kont Gwoupman ak Ekip Misyonè a nan bouk Janrabèl. Nou pa ka bliye 2 Dawou 1986, kote Nikòl ak Jèvè Pwatvyen epi Witni Era ki gen ti non jwèt Ti Lyetnan t al kraze vit kay Ekip Misyonè a nan Bouk Janrabèl. Nan menm dat sa a grandon yo te monte bann pou t al atake mann Gwoupman yo ki t ap manifeste mekontantman yo pasifikman kont atak ak menas grandon Mawouj te fè sou manm gwoupman.
Nou pa ka bliye 18 Novanm 1986, lè grandon te monte anbiskad kont manm Gwoupman ak Ekip Misyonè nan Gwo Basen. Nou pap bliye 2 jiyè 1987, lè grandon Janrabèl te atake direktè medikal lopital Janrabèl la ki te sou reskonsablite Ekip Misyonè a. Yo te vle fè kwè se popilasyon an ki te leve kont travay Ekip la.
Nou pa bliye 27 Dawou 1986 lè anbasad meriken tal mennen ankèt sou Gwoupman TET ANSANM ak Ekip Misyonè a nan Janrabèl, sou demann grandon yo, pi espesyalman sou demand Jan Michèl Richadsonn, dapre deklarasyon yon anplwaye anbasad ameriken, David Lee, li menm te fè.
Nou pap bliye atak yon reskonsab Legliz Advantis nan Bochan te fè sou pè Renal Klerisme ak sou kèk antèt Gwoupman nan lannwit 9 pou rive 10 oktob 1987. Nou pa ka bliye e nou pap janm ka bliye dènye seri atak fòs lanmò yo ki ta pral mennen finalman nan masak 23 jiyè 1987 la. Dènye seri atak sa yo te kòmanse nan dat 28 jen 1987 nan 4èm seksyon Janrabèl sou Lamontay, apre prèch Monseyè Kolimon ki te lanse modòd sa a pou fidèl li yo : « lè w bezwen debranche yon gwo pye bwa ki manbre, se nan branch li pou kòmanse ». Se konsa dènye seri atak kont Gwoupman TET ANSANM ak Ekip Misyonè Janrabèl la ta pral tanmen depi 28 jen 1987 nan Lamontay. Atak yo te kontinye 3 jiyè 1987 nan Larezèv epi te rapouswiv pratikman san rete nan zòn mòn yo, pran depi 28 jen 1987 jis lame san fwa ni lwa a te rive atenn zòn Leba yo 23 jiyè 1987 la.
Tout aksyon sa yo t ap mennen kont Gwoupman TET ANSANM ak Ekip Misyonè Janrabèl la paske ti peyizan yo t ap batay an granmoun pou te fè rekonèt dwa ak valè yo, pou pwodiksyon nasyonal ak refòm agrè, pou jistis sosyal nan yon sosyete kote yo te toujou mete peyizan, malere ak malerèz deyò. Epi paske Ekip Misyonè Janrabèl la t ap soutni Gwoupman yo kòmsadwa nan batay sa a. Jodi a, 20 tan apre nou sonje … Bay kou bliye pote mak sonje !... Nou sonje … Nou sonje w Salira, Salira Vilfran ! Nou sonje w Telijèn, Telijèn Janbatis ! Nou sonje w Man Djoul, Man Elvesiyis Devil ! Nou sonje w Amozyèl, Amozyèl Oska ! Nou sonje… Nou sonje…
Ayibobo pou nou konbatan ! Ayibobo pou tout egzanp ak temwayaj korèk nou kite pou nou kirete dèyè ! Aksyon nou yo ap kontinye trase vèvè nan lespri ak nan memwa nou pou lavi ka fleri sou tè Dayiti yon jou kon jodi a ! Nou di sa nan memwa nou tout ki te dakò sans solidarite jounen 23 jiyè a ! Jodi a nou menm ki rete dèyè, nou rete kwè nan solidarite sa a ki dwe mennen nan chanjman pou lòt sosyete nou t ap goumen pou li a ! Nou rete atache a sans batay la, menm lè gen anpil nan nou ki vire kazak, ki trayi, k ap ranpe jodi a, kal rabfòse kan lenmi an, oswa ki dekouraje !
Jodi a, nou menm peyizan Janrabèl ak Bochan ki te tonbe yo, n ap sonje nou nan yon moman kote fòs militè ak sivil etranje okipe peyi nou anba labanyè LONI ak konplisite divès gouvènman ki pase sou pouvwa a, pran depi 2001 sou Aristid, rive sou prezidan Preval ki kòm prezidan konstitisyonèl peyi a kontante l bay okipasyon sa a benediksyon ak jarèt. Nou vle di nou plan meriken nou te konbat ak tout fòs nou an toujou la. Men li gen lòt non jodi a. Yo rele l plan newoliberal, privatizasyon, ajisteman estriktirèl ak mondyalizasyon sistèm kapitalis la ki kontinye ap toupizi malere ak malerèz toupatou nan mond lan. Gouvènman nou genyen jodi a ap mache tèt bese nan likide tout antrepriz rantab Leta posede. L ap fè boujwazi entènasyonal ak nasyonal la kado yo, san konsidere enterè nasyonal la. San mande Lachanm opinyon l ki li menm tou pwofite fè tankou li pa konsène nan desizyon chèf Leta a ap pran.
Lavichè nou te konnen an pat anyen devan kalamite mas pèp la ap pase jodi a anba mache nwa mondyalizasyon kapitalis la. Lajan monte bwa nèt pou peyizan ak malere malerèz paske politisyen trafikan ak esplwatè tout kalib soti pou fini ak pwodiksyon nasyonal la pou pèmèt yo sèl wa. Leta a ak gwo boujwa yo livre peyi a bay patwon yo, gwo pwisans kapitalis yo ki prèske fin pran kontwòl peyi a nèt, nan bab yon prezidan k ap gade n nan je, pandan pèp la ap monte maswife.
Fòk nou di tou fòs òganizasyon, fòs politik, ideyolojik ak inite ki te genyen nan kan popilè a bese anpil jounen jodia. Se sa menm ki pèmèt zòt ap fè tout radiyès sa yo nan figi nou tout san kè sote ! Men, jan nou te toujou konnen l batay la se yon wout ki gen monte, ki gen desann. Nan wout sa a se yon jou pou chasè yon jou pou jibye. Jan nou te konnen l, pèp òganize ka pran so, men li pap janm ka pèdi batay !
Jodi a solidarite ant pèp yo ap ranfòse toupatou sou latè. Kòm prèv, non sèlman TET KOLE rive reprann plas li nan Via Kanpesina ki se pi gwo rezo mondyal òganizasyon peyizan yo sou latè. Jodi a, devan zo kadav nou yo, devan tout delege ak zanmi ki vin pote kole ak nou, kòdonatris Via Kanpesina / Klok pou Rejyon Karayib la prezan nan mitan nou, alatèt yon delegasyon diferan òganizasyon peyizan ki soti an Repiblik Dominikèn pou vin ranfòse lit la, ranfòse solidarite a. Ayibobo pou yo !
Nan okazyon 20 tyèm anivèsè masak Janrabèl la, TET KOLE TI PEYIZAN AYISYEN ap lanse yon gwo apèl bay tout fòs popilè, pwogresis ak demokratik peyi a pou nou mare ren nou, sere ran nou pou ranfòse kan popilè a pou n rive bay lit la yon direksyon politik demokratik e popilè kòrèk pou mennen batay la jouk nan bout. Se sèl kondisyon pou pèp la soti nan sitiyasyon makawon l ap viv jodi a.
SEL FOS NOU SE BON JAN OGANIZASYON POPILE NAN AKSYON KONSETE, PLANIFYE EPI BYEN KODONE VIV LIT TI PEYIAN YO, VIV LIT PEP LA, VIV INITE KAN PEP LA VIV SOLIDARITE NASYONAL AK ENTENASYONAL
Pou Direksyon Nasyonal la :
Silven Jan
Rosnèl Janbatis
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Guy Philippe nie toute implication dans le trafic illicite de la drogue et annonce sa décision de regagner son domicile
Haïti/Etats-Unis/Lutte contre la drogue
Guy Philippe nie toute implication dans le trafic illicite de la drogue et annonce sa décision de regagner son domicile
L’ancien chef des rebelles anti-Aristide affirme ne pas vouloir prendre le maquis et être prêt à mourir héroïquement. Toutefois, il dit avoir constitué avocat tant à Port-au-Prince qu’en Floride
lundi 23 juillet 2007,
Radio Kiskeya
(Read the original here)
Dans une déclaration préenregistrée remise lundi à Radio Kiskeya, l’ancien chef des rebelles anti-Aristide, Guy Philippe, nie toute implication dans le trafic illicite des stupéfiants et met au défi quiconque de prouver le contraire.
L’ancien commissaire de police et leader du Front de Reconstruction Nationale (FRN) dénonce la perquisition opérée lundi dernier en sa résidence à Bergeau (Cayes, Sud) par des agents de la Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) des Etats-Unis et des agents du Bureau de Lutte contre le Trafic des Stupéfiants (BLTS) de la Police Nationale d’Haïti (PNH). Sans expliquer comment il a pu s’échapper, Guy Philippe soutient pourtant avoir personnellement réclamé un mandat aux agents qui lui auraient alors répondu qu’il n’en est pas du tout question. Ils auraient par la suite mis en joue et brutalisé son épouse et ses deux enfants.
Pour l’ancien chef des rebelles anti-Aristide, on était vraisemblablement venu l’assassiner plutôt que l’appréhender. « Il fut un temps, on qualifiait de communistes ceux qu’on voulait éliminer de la scène politique. Aujourd’hui, c’est l’implication dans le trafic de la drogue qui sert d’alibi au même objectif », poursuit-il.
« Il est inconcevable que des étrangers puissent débarquer de cette manière-là dans un pays souverain pour impliquer qui ils veulent dans le trafic de la drogue », déclare Guy Philippe.
« Une telle prérogative ne figure sans doute pas dans l’accord signé entre l’Etat haïtien et les Etats-Unis concernant la lutte contre le narcotrafic », ajoute-t-il.
A l’appui de sa protestation contre son implication dans le trafic de la drogue, Guy Philippe fait état d’une autorisation que les Etats-Unis lui auraient délivrée en avril 2006 pour qu’il puisse visiter ces proches dans ce pays, après une investigation ouverte en 2000 sur plainte de l’ancien président Jean Bertrand Aristide, sur son implication présumée dans le trafic de la drogue. Le leader du FRN ne précise cependant pas, dans sa déclaration, s’il s’était alors rendu aux Etats-Unis. Il avance aussi le fait qu’il fut candidat à la présidence au cours de la même année sans être nullement inquiété.
Affirmant sa disponibilité à se rendre aux autorités judiciaires si son implication dans le trafic de la drogue venait à être établie, l’ancien chef des rebelles anti-Aristide annonce sa décision de regagner son domicile et, le cas échéant, de « mourir en Guy Philippe ». Entre-temps, il dit avoir constitué avocat tant à Port-au-Prince qu’en Floride.
Dans la même déclaration, le leader du FRN s’est montré particulièrement critique vis-à-vis d’une station privée de la capitale haïtienne, Radio Métropole, qui avait annoncé son arrestation suivie de son extradition aux Etats-Unis. Il soutient que c’est par le même média qu’il a appris l’appartenance à la DEA et au BLTS des agents qui s’étaient présentés lundi dernier en son domicile. [jmd/RK]
Guy Philippe nie toute implication dans le trafic illicite de la drogue et annonce sa décision de regagner son domicile
L’ancien chef des rebelles anti-Aristide affirme ne pas vouloir prendre le maquis et être prêt à mourir héroïquement. Toutefois, il dit avoir constitué avocat tant à Port-au-Prince qu’en Floride
lundi 23 juillet 2007,
Radio Kiskeya
(Read the original here)
Dans une déclaration préenregistrée remise lundi à Radio Kiskeya, l’ancien chef des rebelles anti-Aristide, Guy Philippe, nie toute implication dans le trafic illicite des stupéfiants et met au défi quiconque de prouver le contraire.
L’ancien commissaire de police et leader du Front de Reconstruction Nationale (FRN) dénonce la perquisition opérée lundi dernier en sa résidence à Bergeau (Cayes, Sud) par des agents de la Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) des Etats-Unis et des agents du Bureau de Lutte contre le Trafic des Stupéfiants (BLTS) de la Police Nationale d’Haïti (PNH). Sans expliquer comment il a pu s’échapper, Guy Philippe soutient pourtant avoir personnellement réclamé un mandat aux agents qui lui auraient alors répondu qu’il n’en est pas du tout question. Ils auraient par la suite mis en joue et brutalisé son épouse et ses deux enfants.
Pour l’ancien chef des rebelles anti-Aristide, on était vraisemblablement venu l’assassiner plutôt que l’appréhender. « Il fut un temps, on qualifiait de communistes ceux qu’on voulait éliminer de la scène politique. Aujourd’hui, c’est l’implication dans le trafic de la drogue qui sert d’alibi au même objectif », poursuit-il.
« Il est inconcevable que des étrangers puissent débarquer de cette manière-là dans un pays souverain pour impliquer qui ils veulent dans le trafic de la drogue », déclare Guy Philippe.
« Une telle prérogative ne figure sans doute pas dans l’accord signé entre l’Etat haïtien et les Etats-Unis concernant la lutte contre le narcotrafic », ajoute-t-il.
A l’appui de sa protestation contre son implication dans le trafic de la drogue, Guy Philippe fait état d’une autorisation que les Etats-Unis lui auraient délivrée en avril 2006 pour qu’il puisse visiter ces proches dans ce pays, après une investigation ouverte en 2000 sur plainte de l’ancien président Jean Bertrand Aristide, sur son implication présumée dans le trafic de la drogue. Le leader du FRN ne précise cependant pas, dans sa déclaration, s’il s’était alors rendu aux Etats-Unis. Il avance aussi le fait qu’il fut candidat à la présidence au cours de la même année sans être nullement inquiété.
Affirmant sa disponibilité à se rendre aux autorités judiciaires si son implication dans le trafic de la drogue venait à être établie, l’ancien chef des rebelles anti-Aristide annonce sa décision de regagner son domicile et, le cas échéant, de « mourir en Guy Philippe ». Entre-temps, il dit avoir constitué avocat tant à Port-au-Prince qu’en Floride.
Dans la même déclaration, le leader du FRN s’est montré particulièrement critique vis-à-vis d’une station privée de la capitale haïtienne, Radio Métropole, qui avait annoncé son arrestation suivie de son extradition aux Etats-Unis. Il soutient que c’est par le même média qu’il a appris l’appartenance à la DEA et au BLTS des agents qui s’étaient présentés lundi dernier en son domicile. [jmd/RK]
Monday, July 23, 2007
Ballots instead of bullets
Editorial
Ballots instead of bullets
By Michael Deibert, Special Correspodent
Newsday
November 6, 2005
(Read the orginal here)
When Jacques Roche's body was found on a road in Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince in July -- his wrists handcuffed, his arms broken and the coup de grace having been administered with a bullet to the head -- one of that nation's best-known journalists had become only the most high-profile victim of a grinding march of violence that has claimed some 800 lives in the past year.
Roche, an editor at the newspaper Le Matin, had worked extensively to protest the brutal treatment of Haiti's peasants on the country's Maribahoux plain, who were evicted from some of the best farmland in the nation in 2002 to make way for a free-trade zone by the government of then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Following Aristide's ouster by formerly loyal street gangs and members of Haiti's disbanded military, Roche hosted a television program where members of political parties and civil society groups -- frequently including members of a civil coalition that helped drive Aristide from power -- would discuss the issues of the day. He was exactly the kind of well-meaning person, intent on furthering a peaceful civil society, that Haiti needs. Those needs will be further explored in presidential and legislative elections next month.
When accusations of blame for Roche's killing pointed to gangs from the capital's impoverished Bel Air district, a hotbed of support for the former president, and several defectors from Aristide's political party charged publicly that the former president is orchestrating the violence from exile in South Africa, a painful sense of the inevitable descended upon me.
When I had arrived in Haiti in 1997, I found a country midway through the presidency of Rene Preval, the only president in its history to serve out his full term in office and oversee the transfer of power to an elected successor. Given little respect by a recalcitrant parliamentary opposition, often treated with disdain by the international community and undermined by Aristide himself (who formed his Fanmi Lavalas political party the year I arrived), Preval looked moderate and progressive compared to what followed. The Preval administration worked well in tandem with international development organizations. Haiti began the process of integration into the regional Caribbean Community and Common Market, and huge strides were made in professionalizing a police force that had been merely another wing of repression during the tenure of Haiti's army, disbanded by Aristide in 1995.
All of that came to an end with Aristide's re-inauguration in 2001. The president, once a priest in a Port-au-Prince slum, had first been elected in 1990, only to be ousted in a coup seven months later. Returned by a force of international troops in 1994, Aristide seemed determined not to let history repeat itself. But he became a mirror of the dictators that many hoped his election would drive from office.
On my frequent visits to the capital's sprawling Cité Soleil district, where more than 250,000 people exist in conditions of deprivation and squalor that can only be described as criminal, I watched as young men were armed by a now-politicized police force. Aristide had filled the force with cronies and some of the most notorious members of the military he had disbanded less than a decade earlier.
Helped to weapons and ammunition by individuals such as Hermione Leonard, then police director for the region around Haiti's capital, reporting to the president, these young men with names like Labanye (Banner), Kolobri (Hummingbird), Tupac and Billy -- who long had been excluded from Haiti's political process -- were given the honor of meeting with Aristide at Haiti's National Palace. They were promised that help would come to their community if they attacked opposition demonstrations.
I often asked why they would defend a government that seemed to have done so little. On the contrary, they often said, would any other government in Haiti have even acknowledged their existence, let alone invited them to the palace? But in darker moments, they would confess that they felt they would be killed by the police if they did not do the government's bidding.
With presidential and legislative elections now scheduled for mid-December following two postponements, the question of whether these gangs feel they have a stake in the process will determine how fairly voting in the capital will proceed. With the Lavalas movement split into two camps -- one backing Preval, who is running for re-election, and one backing former World Bank official Marc Bazin -- and thousands registering in Cité Soleil and Bel Air, the signs are guardedly hopeful.
Far from being the simple thugs they were often depicted as, these gunmen could have represented a youth movement to help turn the nation around. But their legions were blurred with those of hard-core criminals, and it was people like Jacques Roche who paid the price.
Ballots instead of bullets
By Michael Deibert, Special Correspodent
Newsday
November 6, 2005
(Read the orginal here)
When Jacques Roche's body was found on a road in Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince in July -- his wrists handcuffed, his arms broken and the coup de grace having been administered with a bullet to the head -- one of that nation's best-known journalists had become only the most high-profile victim of a grinding march of violence that has claimed some 800 lives in the past year.
Roche, an editor at the newspaper Le Matin, had worked extensively to protest the brutal treatment of Haiti's peasants on the country's Maribahoux plain, who were evicted from some of the best farmland in the nation in 2002 to make way for a free-trade zone by the government of then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Following Aristide's ouster by formerly loyal street gangs and members of Haiti's disbanded military, Roche hosted a television program where members of political parties and civil society groups -- frequently including members of a civil coalition that helped drive Aristide from power -- would discuss the issues of the day. He was exactly the kind of well-meaning person, intent on furthering a peaceful civil society, that Haiti needs. Those needs will be further explored in presidential and legislative elections next month.
When accusations of blame for Roche's killing pointed to gangs from the capital's impoverished Bel Air district, a hotbed of support for the former president, and several defectors from Aristide's political party charged publicly that the former president is orchestrating the violence from exile in South Africa, a painful sense of the inevitable descended upon me.
When I had arrived in Haiti in 1997, I found a country midway through the presidency of Rene Preval, the only president in its history to serve out his full term in office and oversee the transfer of power to an elected successor. Given little respect by a recalcitrant parliamentary opposition, often treated with disdain by the international community and undermined by Aristide himself (who formed his Fanmi Lavalas political party the year I arrived), Preval looked moderate and progressive compared to what followed. The Preval administration worked well in tandem with international development organizations. Haiti began the process of integration into the regional Caribbean Community and Common Market, and huge strides were made in professionalizing a police force that had been merely another wing of repression during the tenure of Haiti's army, disbanded by Aristide in 1995.
All of that came to an end with Aristide's re-inauguration in 2001. The president, once a priest in a Port-au-Prince slum, had first been elected in 1990, only to be ousted in a coup seven months later. Returned by a force of international troops in 1994, Aristide seemed determined not to let history repeat itself. But he became a mirror of the dictators that many hoped his election would drive from office.
On my frequent visits to the capital's sprawling Cité Soleil district, where more than 250,000 people exist in conditions of deprivation and squalor that can only be described as criminal, I watched as young men were armed by a now-politicized police force. Aristide had filled the force with cronies and some of the most notorious members of the military he had disbanded less than a decade earlier.
Helped to weapons and ammunition by individuals such as Hermione Leonard, then police director for the region around Haiti's capital, reporting to the president, these young men with names like Labanye (Banner), Kolobri (Hummingbird), Tupac and Billy -- who long had been excluded from Haiti's political process -- were given the honor of meeting with Aristide at Haiti's National Palace. They were promised that help would come to their community if they attacked opposition demonstrations.
I often asked why they would defend a government that seemed to have done so little. On the contrary, they often said, would any other government in Haiti have even acknowledged their existence, let alone invited them to the palace? But in darker moments, they would confess that they felt they would be killed by the police if they did not do the government's bidding.
With presidential and legislative elections now scheduled for mid-December following two postponements, the question of whether these gangs feel they have a stake in the process will determine how fairly voting in the capital will proceed. With the Lavalas movement split into two camps -- one backing Preval, who is running for re-election, and one backing former World Bank official Marc Bazin -- and thousands registering in Cité Soleil and Bel Air, the signs are guardedly hopeful.
Far from being the simple thugs they were often depicted as, these gunmen could have represented a youth movement to help turn the nation around. But their legions were blurred with those of hard-core criminals, and it was people like Jacques Roche who paid the price.
Micro-finance travels fast in a poor country
Micro-finance travels fast in a poor country
By Michael Deibert
Published: 05 September, 2005
The Banker
Page 191
(Read the original here)
Amid economic and political turmoil, Haitian banks have woken up to the fact that micro-finance is an essential part of business, reports Michael Deibert in Port-au-Prince.
Port-au-Prince's Rue des Miracles, near Haiti's shuttered parliament, is usually bustling with activity in its fume-choked lanes. Recently, though, the area seemed rather quiet. The street vendors who usually clog its sidewalks had moved away in fear of the running gun battles between Haiti's police and gangs allied with ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which have become an almost daily occurrence in the capital. In his office at the Banque de la Republique de Haiti (BRH), Haiti's central bank deputy governor Philippe Lahens surveys the situation in which the country was left when Mr Aristide flew into exile, following an armed rebellion and massive street protests against his rule in February 2004.
"The central bank was in very bad shape after Aristide," Mr Lahens says. Haiti had no net international reserves after Mr Aristide, who had widely been accused of corruption, went into exile. The public deficit was 3% of Haiti's GDP and the government had defaulted on two separate contracts designed to provide the country with electricity, totalling $12m.
Economy improves
Now, a year and a half later, despite continuing violence, the interim government of President Boniface Alexandre and Prime Minister Gerard Latortue - which is in place until legislative and presidential elections are held this autumn - has managed to stabilise the situation somewhat. Haiti's net international reserves are about $80m and the rate of exchange has been stabilised at about 35-40 Haitian gourdes to the dollar. Although inflation is still about 22%, the Ministry of Finance and the BRH hope to bring it down to about 12% by the end of this month.
"I think the unique challenge for the central bank in Haiti is to obtain autonomy from the government," says Mr Lahens. A series of Haitian despots have viewed the institution as little more than their private savings account and historically the bank has had difficulty in establishing a sustained path for the country's economic well-being.
"With this independence, we will be more at ease to provide transparency and more at ease with the government in terms of the everyday running of the bank, in terms of the interest rate, the rate of exchange and depreciation of the gourde and other areas," says Mr Lahens.
Haiti is not an easy place in which to run a financial institution. With 80% of the population living in poverty and more than two-thirds of the labour force without formal jobs, the traditional means of lending and borrowing do not apply. This has resulted in the rapid growth of a micro-finance industry that leapt from social experiment to profitable financial model in very short order.
Group lending
Though Haiti had a long history of peasant co-operatives, the first institution to target this niche of the financial market on a mass level was the Fondasyon Kole Zepol bank (Fonkoze), literally translated as the shoulder-to-shoulder foundation. It was created in 1994 by a liberation theologian priest Jean-Marie Vincent (slain by gunmen that same year) and another priest, Father Joseph Philippe, during the turmoil of the military government that ousted Mr Aristide for three years during his first term as Haiti's president. Recognised as a foundation by the Haitian government in October 1995, it opened its first savings accounts soon after.
Based on the group-lending model, Fonkoze has peer-group borrowing whereby a group of five individuals agree to cover each member for any amount loaned to the group as a whole. Many of the clients are ti machanns, the name Haitians give to the market women who swelter under the sun, selling their wares on the streets of the capital and elsewhere.
The sums are modest. Each member of a group of five is eligible to borrow 2500 gourdes (about $64) at first, gradually working their way up to 50,000 gourdes each (about $1282). The results are profound, says Anne Hastings, director general of Fonkoze, speaking to The Banker in the foundation's office in Port-au-Prince.
"Fonkoze believes that everyone needs access to financial services,"says Ms Hastings. "In Haiti, where the unemployment rate is so high, everybody has to be a micro-entrepreneur. Our ultimate mission is to empower the people who are the have-nots in this society so they can contribute to the economy and can improve their lives and their family's lives; it's providing financial services but also accompanying them as they struggle to make their way out of poverty."
Branching out
Fonkoze has largely paved the way for Haiti's commercial banks to branch out into micro-finance, and now the foundation has 24 branches around Haiti (including rural areas where it is the only bank for many miles) and 335 employees. It services 67,000 active savings accounts and has 25,000 active borrowers. Each year, 7000 to 8000 people graduate from the bank's basic literacy and business skills training programmes.
Pierre-Marie Boisson, president of the Administrative Counsel of Sogesol, the micro-credit unit of Sogebank, Haiti's largest, was initially met with incredulity when, in his previous role as the bank's chief economist, he tried to convince his colleagues of the necessity for Haiti's most venerable financial institution to reach out to this huge section of the Haitian market. "There was scepticism, definitely," says Mr Boisson.
He helped to launch Sogesol in 2000 from his office in Petionville, an affluent suburb in the hills above Port-au-Prince that is, like much of Haiti, ringed by shantytowns. "I was able to show to the board the business side of it and how profitable it was," he says.
When Mr Boisson joined Sogebank in 1991, out of 400,000 depositors, fewer than 3000 people were eligible to borrow from the bank. Now Sogesol's 8000 clients (7000 micro-enterprises and 1000 workers' credit portfolios) comprise a substantial part of Sogebank's 250,000 depositors.
Banking on the poor
"The poor were very good credit subjects in the sense that, not only were they good payers, but also they had more per-dollar profit than their formal competitors because they had a very high turnover," says Mr Boisson.
He sought and received technical assistance from the Action International micro-finance network to help launch his project. The network also became one of Sogesol's main shareholders.
"The poor were better able to utilise a dollar lent to them than a big business. There was an opportunity that was not being met by the banking system," he says.
Following Sogesol's lead, Haiti's five other main banks - Unibank, Socabank, Capital Bank, Banque Populaire Haitienne and the state-owned BRH - created micro-credit ventures.
"If you want to be profitable as a bank in Haiti, you have to very quickly adapt your product to the reality of Haiti and to the fact that Haiti is a poor country, with a lot of poor people," says Mr Boisson, as market women scatter from the driving rain beneath his office window. "That's why micro-finance has become so very important."
By Michael Deibert
Published: 05 September, 2005
The Banker
Page 191
(Read the original here)
Amid economic and political turmoil, Haitian banks have woken up to the fact that micro-finance is an essential part of business, reports Michael Deibert in Port-au-Prince.
Port-au-Prince's Rue des Miracles, near Haiti's shuttered parliament, is usually bustling with activity in its fume-choked lanes. Recently, though, the area seemed rather quiet. The street vendors who usually clog its sidewalks had moved away in fear of the running gun battles between Haiti's police and gangs allied with ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which have become an almost daily occurrence in the capital. In his office at the Banque de la Republique de Haiti (BRH), Haiti's central bank deputy governor Philippe Lahens surveys the situation in which the country was left when Mr Aristide flew into exile, following an armed rebellion and massive street protests against his rule in February 2004.
"The central bank was in very bad shape after Aristide," Mr Lahens says. Haiti had no net international reserves after Mr Aristide, who had widely been accused of corruption, went into exile. The public deficit was 3% of Haiti's GDP and the government had defaulted on two separate contracts designed to provide the country with electricity, totalling $12m.
Economy improves
Now, a year and a half later, despite continuing violence, the interim government of President Boniface Alexandre and Prime Minister Gerard Latortue - which is in place until legislative and presidential elections are held this autumn - has managed to stabilise the situation somewhat. Haiti's net international reserves are about $80m and the rate of exchange has been stabilised at about 35-40 Haitian gourdes to the dollar. Although inflation is still about 22%, the Ministry of Finance and the BRH hope to bring it down to about 12% by the end of this month.
"I think the unique challenge for the central bank in Haiti is to obtain autonomy from the government," says Mr Lahens. A series of Haitian despots have viewed the institution as little more than their private savings account and historically the bank has had difficulty in establishing a sustained path for the country's economic well-being.
"With this independence, we will be more at ease to provide transparency and more at ease with the government in terms of the everyday running of the bank, in terms of the interest rate, the rate of exchange and depreciation of the gourde and other areas," says Mr Lahens.
Haiti is not an easy place in which to run a financial institution. With 80% of the population living in poverty and more than two-thirds of the labour force without formal jobs, the traditional means of lending and borrowing do not apply. This has resulted in the rapid growth of a micro-finance industry that leapt from social experiment to profitable financial model in very short order.
Group lending
Though Haiti had a long history of peasant co-operatives, the first institution to target this niche of the financial market on a mass level was the Fondasyon Kole Zepol bank (Fonkoze), literally translated as the shoulder-to-shoulder foundation. It was created in 1994 by a liberation theologian priest Jean-Marie Vincent (slain by gunmen that same year) and another priest, Father Joseph Philippe, during the turmoil of the military government that ousted Mr Aristide for three years during his first term as Haiti's president. Recognised as a foundation by the Haitian government in October 1995, it opened its first savings accounts soon after.
Based on the group-lending model, Fonkoze has peer-group borrowing whereby a group of five individuals agree to cover each member for any amount loaned to the group as a whole. Many of the clients are ti machanns, the name Haitians give to the market women who swelter under the sun, selling their wares on the streets of the capital and elsewhere.
The sums are modest. Each member of a group of five is eligible to borrow 2500 gourdes (about $64) at first, gradually working their way up to 50,000 gourdes each (about $1282). The results are profound, says Anne Hastings, director general of Fonkoze, speaking to The Banker in the foundation's office in Port-au-Prince.
"Fonkoze believes that everyone needs access to financial services,"says Ms Hastings. "In Haiti, where the unemployment rate is so high, everybody has to be a micro-entrepreneur. Our ultimate mission is to empower the people who are the have-nots in this society so they can contribute to the economy and can improve their lives and their family's lives; it's providing financial services but also accompanying them as they struggle to make their way out of poverty."
Branching out
Fonkoze has largely paved the way for Haiti's commercial banks to branch out into micro-finance, and now the foundation has 24 branches around Haiti (including rural areas where it is the only bank for many miles) and 335 employees. It services 67,000 active savings accounts and has 25,000 active borrowers. Each year, 7000 to 8000 people graduate from the bank's basic literacy and business skills training programmes.
Pierre-Marie Boisson, president of the Administrative Counsel of Sogesol, the micro-credit unit of Sogebank, Haiti's largest, was initially met with incredulity when, in his previous role as the bank's chief economist, he tried to convince his colleagues of the necessity for Haiti's most venerable financial institution to reach out to this huge section of the Haitian market. "There was scepticism, definitely," says Mr Boisson.
He helped to launch Sogesol in 2000 from his office in Petionville, an affluent suburb in the hills above Port-au-Prince that is, like much of Haiti, ringed by shantytowns. "I was able to show to the board the business side of it and how profitable it was," he says.
When Mr Boisson joined Sogebank in 1991, out of 400,000 depositors, fewer than 3000 people were eligible to borrow from the bank. Now Sogesol's 8000 clients (7000 micro-enterprises and 1000 workers' credit portfolios) comprise a substantial part of Sogebank's 250,000 depositors.
Banking on the poor
"The poor were very good credit subjects in the sense that, not only were they good payers, but also they had more per-dollar profit than their formal competitors because they had a very high turnover," says Mr Boisson.
He sought and received technical assistance from the Action International micro-finance network to help launch his project. The network also became one of Sogesol's main shareholders.
"The poor were better able to utilise a dollar lent to them than a big business. There was an opportunity that was not being met by the banking system," he says.
Following Sogesol's lead, Haiti's five other main banks - Unibank, Socabank, Capital Bank, Banque Populaire Haitienne and the state-owned BRH - created micro-credit ventures.
"If you want to be profitable as a bank in Haiti, you have to very quickly adapt your product to the reality of Haiti and to the fact that Haiti is a poor country, with a lot of poor people," says Mr Boisson, as market women scatter from the driving rain beneath his office window. "That's why micro-finance has become so very important."
Amid Strife, Haiti Seeks Sense of Order
Amid Strife, Haiti Seeks Sense of Order
News & Notes, July 19, 2005 · A Brazilian-led U.N. peacekeeping force works to maintain some sense of order in Haiti, plagued by gang-style violence, a rash of kidnappings and yet another hurricane. Brazil's president says his troops need help, and the United Nation's Kofi Annan agrees. Farai Chideya speaks with journalist Michael Deibert, who's just returned from Haiti, about the strife, and about efforts to conduct elections.
Listen to the interview here.
News & Notes, July 19, 2005 · A Brazilian-led U.N. peacekeeping force works to maintain some sense of order in Haiti, plagued by gang-style violence, a rash of kidnappings and yet another hurricane. Brazil's president says his troops need help, and the United Nation's Kofi Annan agrees. Farai Chideya speaks with journalist Michael Deibert, who's just returned from Haiti, about the strife, and about efforts to conduct elections.
Listen to the interview here.
Reclaiming the streets
Reclaiming the streets
JANE'S DEFENCE WEEKLY - JUNE 15, 2005
By Michael Deibert, JDW Special Correspondent
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
The UN mission in Haiti faces a daunting task in reforming Haiti's police force. Michael Deibert reports
It was then that, seven months after the resignation and flight into exile of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, street gangs allied with the former president (who are known as 'chimeres') launched in Haiti's capital what came to be known as 'Operation Baghdad': a series of violent attacks against police (often ending in gruesome public murders), civilians and officials of the interim government of President Boniface Alexandre and Prime Minister Gerard Latortue.
The attacks abated somewhat at the beginning of 2005, but have recently shown signs of flaring up again.
After the killings in May, the PNH's Interim Police Chief, Leon Charles, denounced on Haitian radio what he called "the hypocrisy" of the international community's continued embargo on arms to Haiti - put in place during a military regime that ousted Aristide for three years in the 1990s.
The Bel Air episode, coming in an impoverished neighborhood where allegations of police brutality have been rife, only underlined the daunting task faced by the Civilian Police (CIVPOL) forces, part of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) force attempting to lay the groundwork for legislative and presidential elections in Haiti later in 2005.
The force - numbering 620 CIVPOL personnel and 750 members of foreign police units - was put in place in Haiti after Aristide's flight and is charged with reforming a battered force that many hoped would be the humane, professional successor to Haiti's violent military, disbanded after Aristide's return in 1994.
"There was huge progress in the 1990s, that stemmed from ... some stability in a three- to five-year period [during the presidency of Rene Preval, who ruled Haiti from 1996-2001]," according to CIVPOL commissioner David Beer.
"A large number of the people in executive positions remained in place; there was some continuity in the organization. Upon the election of the Aristide government, virtually the entire executive of the organization was wiped out - either fired or quit. With the destruction of the senior management of the organization, parallel entry without proper qualifications and politicization was the start of big problems with criminality, all of which have, recently, anyway, served to demoralize the organization," Beer said.
The stories of how Aristide nearly destroyed the PNH as an institution, replacing competent and dedicated police officials with loyalists and activists of his Fanmi Lavalas political party - in a country where strengthening institutions often takes a back seat to clinging to political power - are legion, many of them revolving around the PNH's feared riot police, the Corps d'intervention et de Maintien de l'ordre (CIMO).
According to several former PNH officials, as well as the gang leaders themselves, shortly after Aristide's return to office in 2001 the PNH began regular contacts with street gangs in the capital's urban centers. Their purpose was to distribute ammunition and occasionally money on behalf of the government in a move brought on in part, some said, by Aristide's fear of another coup, such as the one that ousted him in 1991.
In addition to using their newfound firepower to attack demonstrations and opposition protests, the gangs often turned their guns on each other.
Following a fierce gang war in the capital's Cité Soleil slum in 2002, Hermione Leonard, then PNH director for the region around Haiti's capital, staged a weapons search in the zone. This was farcical, as Leonard and PNH officers had previously driven to collect and safely stash 'their' weapons from the militants, and two of the local gang leaders going by the noms de guerres Labanye and Kolobri (now both dead) were given masks and CIMO outfits so as to 'participate' in the search.
When the Aristide government was facing the threat of an armed rebellion in February 2004, a notorious gang leader and ex-Haitian Army officer (called Jeudi) from the area around the capital's port was given a CIMO uniform and sent to the northern city of Saint Marc. There he and other armed government partisans acted in concert with PNH forces and a local street gang called Bale Wouze (Clean Sweep) to lay siege to the neighborhood of La Scierie, an attack during which over 20 people, most of them civilians, were killed.
Given such a pedigree and the prevailing climate of graft - a senior CIVPOL official recently estimated that, for some 8,000 PNH cheques issued every month, there are in fact only 4,500 PNH employees - it is easy to appreciate the challenges faced by the recent graduating class of the PNH academy, which included 368 new police officers, as well as 39 commissioners and 49 inspectors. The institution has also been bedeviled by a weak and ineffectual judicial system. A February report by the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH) human rights group noted that only 5 per cent of the incarcerated population in Haiti had ever been tried and sentenced. In poor neighborhoods, many people say that any young man caught by the police is charged with being an Aristide gang member and liable to be summarily executed by the police.
"If you ask me if the police are still involved in human rights violations, I would say, yes, a lot," said Pierre Esperance, RNDDH's executive director.
"The change we have right now is that this government doesn't use gangs or civilians to persecute those who criticize it, but that's all. When police are involved in human rights violations, there is no effort by the government to punish them."
In addition to its institutional weakness, many observers point to the painfully slow roll-out of the UN mission in Haiti as part of the problem; as of March only $220 million of some $1.08 billion pledged to rebuild the country had been disbursed. It appears the outside world, following Aristide's return with the help of a US-led multinational force, seemed to largely lose interest in the nuts-and-bolts of building Haiti's democracy.
However, the CIVPOL in Haiti has not yet despaired, and it looks at the base of the new police force - those officers being closely vetted before being integrated into the organization - as the potential future of Haiti's law enforcement.
"There is a core of people in the organization that are extremely committed to their job," Beer said. "They work 12 hours a day, six days a week; they travel in by camionette [van] to start their week; they find places to sleep here; they don't make a whole lot of money. We, the international community, have to be prepared to be here with the resources necessary to get that done and stay here long enough to make sure it's a sustainable programme, unlike last time."
JANE'S DEFENCE WEEKLY - JUNE 15, 2005
By Michael Deibert, JDW Special Correspondent
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
The UN mission in Haiti faces a daunting task in reforming Haiti's police force. Michael Deibert reports
(Read the orginal here)
When two Haitian policemen were killed in battle with an armed gang in the desperately poor Bel Air section of Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince on 22 May, they were the latest fatalities in a troubling cycle of violence that has seen an average of one Police Nationale d'Haïti (PNH) officer killed every five days since the end of September 2004.It was then that, seven months after the resignation and flight into exile of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, street gangs allied with the former president (who are known as 'chimeres') launched in Haiti's capital what came to be known as 'Operation Baghdad': a series of violent attacks against police (often ending in gruesome public murders), civilians and officials of the interim government of President Boniface Alexandre and Prime Minister Gerard Latortue.
The attacks abated somewhat at the beginning of 2005, but have recently shown signs of flaring up again.
After the killings in May, the PNH's Interim Police Chief, Leon Charles, denounced on Haitian radio what he called "the hypocrisy" of the international community's continued embargo on arms to Haiti - put in place during a military regime that ousted Aristide for three years in the 1990s.
The Bel Air episode, coming in an impoverished neighborhood where allegations of police brutality have been rife, only underlined the daunting task faced by the Civilian Police (CIVPOL) forces, part of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) force attempting to lay the groundwork for legislative and presidential elections in Haiti later in 2005.
The force - numbering 620 CIVPOL personnel and 750 members of foreign police units - was put in place in Haiti after Aristide's flight and is charged with reforming a battered force that many hoped would be the humane, professional successor to Haiti's violent military, disbanded after Aristide's return in 1994.
"There was huge progress in the 1990s, that stemmed from ... some stability in a three- to five-year period [during the presidency of Rene Preval, who ruled Haiti from 1996-2001]," according to CIVPOL commissioner David Beer.
"A large number of the people in executive positions remained in place; there was some continuity in the organization. Upon the election of the Aristide government, virtually the entire executive of the organization was wiped out - either fired or quit. With the destruction of the senior management of the organization, parallel entry without proper qualifications and politicization was the start of big problems with criminality, all of which have, recently, anyway, served to demoralize the organization," Beer said.
The stories of how Aristide nearly destroyed the PNH as an institution, replacing competent and dedicated police officials with loyalists and activists of his Fanmi Lavalas political party - in a country where strengthening institutions often takes a back seat to clinging to political power - are legion, many of them revolving around the PNH's feared riot police, the Corps d'intervention et de Maintien de l'ordre (CIMO).
According to several former PNH officials, as well as the gang leaders themselves, shortly after Aristide's return to office in 2001 the PNH began regular contacts with street gangs in the capital's urban centers. Their purpose was to distribute ammunition and occasionally money on behalf of the government in a move brought on in part, some said, by Aristide's fear of another coup, such as the one that ousted him in 1991.
In addition to using their newfound firepower to attack demonstrations and opposition protests, the gangs often turned their guns on each other.
Following a fierce gang war in the capital's Cité Soleil slum in 2002, Hermione Leonard, then PNH director for the region around Haiti's capital, staged a weapons search in the zone. This was farcical, as Leonard and PNH officers had previously driven to collect and safely stash 'their' weapons from the militants, and two of the local gang leaders going by the noms de guerres Labanye and Kolobri (now both dead) were given masks and CIMO outfits so as to 'participate' in the search.
When the Aristide government was facing the threat of an armed rebellion in February 2004, a notorious gang leader and ex-Haitian Army officer (called Jeudi) from the area around the capital's port was given a CIMO uniform and sent to the northern city of Saint Marc. There he and other armed government partisans acted in concert with PNH forces and a local street gang called Bale Wouze (Clean Sweep) to lay siege to the neighborhood of La Scierie, an attack during which over 20 people, most of them civilians, were killed.
Given such a pedigree and the prevailing climate of graft - a senior CIVPOL official recently estimated that, for some 8,000 PNH cheques issued every month, there are in fact only 4,500 PNH employees - it is easy to appreciate the challenges faced by the recent graduating class of the PNH academy, which included 368 new police officers, as well as 39 commissioners and 49 inspectors. The institution has also been bedeviled by a weak and ineffectual judicial system. A February report by the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH) human rights group noted that only 5 per cent of the incarcerated population in Haiti had ever been tried and sentenced. In poor neighborhoods, many people say that any young man caught by the police is charged with being an Aristide gang member and liable to be summarily executed by the police.
"If you ask me if the police are still involved in human rights violations, I would say, yes, a lot," said Pierre Esperance, RNDDH's executive director.
"The change we have right now is that this government doesn't use gangs or civilians to persecute those who criticize it, but that's all. When police are involved in human rights violations, there is no effort by the government to punish them."
In addition to its institutional weakness, many observers point to the painfully slow roll-out of the UN mission in Haiti as part of the problem; as of March only $220 million of some $1.08 billion pledged to rebuild the country had been disbursed. It appears the outside world, following Aristide's return with the help of a US-led multinational force, seemed to largely lose interest in the nuts-and-bolts of building Haiti's democracy.
However, the CIVPOL in Haiti has not yet despaired, and it looks at the base of the new police force - those officers being closely vetted before being integrated into the organization - as the potential future of Haiti's law enforcement.
"There is a core of people in the organization that are extremely committed to their job," Beer said. "They work 12 hours a day, six days a week; they travel in by camionette [van] to start their week; they find places to sleep here; they don't make a whole lot of money. We, the international community, have to be prepared to be here with the resources necessary to get that done and stay here long enough to make sure it's a sustainable programme, unlike last time."
Thousands of Haitians are expelled by Dominicans
Thousands of Haitians are expelled by Dominicans
3,500 Haitians forced out
By Michael Deibert, Special Correspondent
Newsday
June 10, 2005
(Read the original here)
OUANAMINTHE, Haiti -- The Dominican Republic carried out a massive expulsion of Haitians living in a remote region last month, forcing thousands to leave behind family members, possessions and jobs, according to UN officials and humanitarian aid workers.
At least 3,500 Haitians living in a broad swath of northwest Dominican Republic were sent back to Haiti. Many were transported on buses under military control and taken by armed soldiers to the border post of Dajabon, where they crossed the bridge over the Massacre river to this Haitian town, humanitarian aid workers here said.
It was a "massive and unexpected influx," said Javier Hernandez, a regional head of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti.
"People arrived, children without their mothers and their fathers ... parents without their children," said Sister Yolande Duverger at the Sisters of Saint John the Evangelist convent in Ouanaminthe. She estimated that 2,000 expelled Haitians had slept in and around the town's Notre Dame church during the first days of the expulsion.
Statements by Dominican officials, including the president, former New Yorker Leonel Fernandez, indicated the deportation had top-level approval. Asked in mid-May about the expulsion, Fernandez described it as an issue of "sovereignty." Officials at the Dominican Republic diplomatic missions in New York and Washington declined to comment yesterday.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees formally protested to the Dominican government on May 17 and demanded the expulsions not be repeated.
"We were very disturbed by the reports of human rights abuses and family separations," said Janice Marshall, senior regional protection officer in Washington.
While many of the Haitians lacked residence papers, officials of the British charity Christian Aid said those caught up in the operation included a significant number in the Dominican Republic legally. Many reported their documents had been torn up by soldiers before they were forced back into Haiti.
Aid workers on the Haitian side of the border said the expulsions began after the May 8 murder of Dominican businesswoman Maritza Nuñez in Hatillo Palma, 166 miles northwest of the capital, Santo Domingo, for which four Haitian immigrants were blamed.
Lissaint Antoine, director of the Jesuit Service for Refugees and Migrants in this muddy frontier town, first saw Haitians filtering across the border after the murder. Quoting expellees, he said the people of Hatillo Palma began protesting the presence of Haitians and the provincial governor ordered that 400 of them be expelled. Haitians also were forced from the La Vega, Monte Christi and Santiago districts.
He said the number rose on May 11 and reached its height on May 13, when eight buses arrived at the border full of Haitians.
There were numerous reports of violence against Haitians, including murders and house-burnings. "We had a woman who stayed for three days [who] said that her husband had been killed," Antoine told Newsday. Separately, two brothers, 13 and 14, told the Jesuit mission official that Dominican civilians armed with machetes had killed their parents.
Sister Duverger said she heard other accounts "... of men who said their wives had been killed, women who said their husbands had been killed." Aid workers also said the military roughed up the Haitians. "The Dominican army tore up many people's papers at the border," Duverger said. "A lot of people looked like they had been beaten up."
Louis Amelice, the caretaker at her church, concurred. "They said the army had destroyed their documents so they couldn't return," he said. Dominican border guards indirectly confirmed that anti-Haitian violence coincided with the expulsion.
An immigration officer in Dajabon said Dominican authorities did not intentionally expel Haitians with Dominican papers, that when the Haitians "saw what was going on in Hatillo Palma, they fled back to their country. Mothers went back with their children. They went back voluntarily."
Another officer said bluntly, "We have too many Haitians in the Dominican Republic." The officers declined to give their names.
Haitian-Dominican relations often have been tense because of their economic and cultural differences. Although they are close in population, with 8.1 million Haitians and 9 million Dominicans, Haiti is 95 percent black, and 80 percent of the population lives in poverty. The Dominican population is 89 percent white or mixed, with 25 percent impoverished. About 500,000 Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, many doing the jobs locals disdain.
Haitians still recall vividly the fall of 1937, when Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, motivated by factors that have never been satisfactorily explained, instigated a pogrom in which Dominican soldiers and police massacred 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians throughout the country. The attacks occurred at a particularly furious pace in the region where today's unrest is centered.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
3,500 Haitians forced out
By Michael Deibert, Special Correspondent
Newsday
June 10, 2005
(Read the original here)
OUANAMINTHE, Haiti -- The Dominican Republic carried out a massive expulsion of Haitians living in a remote region last month, forcing thousands to leave behind family members, possessions and jobs, according to UN officials and humanitarian aid workers.
At least 3,500 Haitians living in a broad swath of northwest Dominican Republic were sent back to Haiti. Many were transported on buses under military control and taken by armed soldiers to the border post of Dajabon, where they crossed the bridge over the Massacre river to this Haitian town, humanitarian aid workers here said.
It was a "massive and unexpected influx," said Javier Hernandez, a regional head of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti.
"People arrived, children without their mothers and their fathers ... parents without their children," said Sister Yolande Duverger at the Sisters of Saint John the Evangelist convent in Ouanaminthe. She estimated that 2,000 expelled Haitians had slept in and around the town's Notre Dame church during the first days of the expulsion.
Statements by Dominican officials, including the president, former New Yorker Leonel Fernandez, indicated the deportation had top-level approval. Asked in mid-May about the expulsion, Fernandez described it as an issue of "sovereignty." Officials at the Dominican Republic diplomatic missions in New York and Washington declined to comment yesterday.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees formally protested to the Dominican government on May 17 and demanded the expulsions not be repeated.
"We were very disturbed by the reports of human rights abuses and family separations," said Janice Marshall, senior regional protection officer in Washington.
While many of the Haitians lacked residence papers, officials of the British charity Christian Aid said those caught up in the operation included a significant number in the Dominican Republic legally. Many reported their documents had been torn up by soldiers before they were forced back into Haiti.
Aid workers on the Haitian side of the border said the expulsions began after the May 8 murder of Dominican businesswoman Maritza Nuñez in Hatillo Palma, 166 miles northwest of the capital, Santo Domingo, for which four Haitian immigrants were blamed.
Lissaint Antoine, director of the Jesuit Service for Refugees and Migrants in this muddy frontier town, first saw Haitians filtering across the border after the murder. Quoting expellees, he said the people of Hatillo Palma began protesting the presence of Haitians and the provincial governor ordered that 400 of them be expelled. Haitians also were forced from the La Vega, Monte Christi and Santiago districts.
He said the number rose on May 11 and reached its height on May 13, when eight buses arrived at the border full of Haitians.
There were numerous reports of violence against Haitians, including murders and house-burnings. "We had a woman who stayed for three days [who] said that her husband had been killed," Antoine told Newsday. Separately, two brothers, 13 and 14, told the Jesuit mission official that Dominican civilians armed with machetes had killed their parents.
Sister Duverger said she heard other accounts "... of men who said their wives had been killed, women who said their husbands had been killed." Aid workers also said the military roughed up the Haitians. "The Dominican army tore up many people's papers at the border," Duverger said. "A lot of people looked like they had been beaten up."
Louis Amelice, the caretaker at her church, concurred. "They said the army had destroyed their documents so they couldn't return," he said. Dominican border guards indirectly confirmed that anti-Haitian violence coincided with the expulsion.
An immigration officer in Dajabon said Dominican authorities did not intentionally expel Haitians with Dominican papers, that when the Haitians "saw what was going on in Hatillo Palma, they fled back to their country. Mothers went back with their children. They went back voluntarily."
Another officer said bluntly, "We have too many Haitians in the Dominican Republic." The officers declined to give their names.
Haitian-Dominican relations often have been tense because of their economic and cultural differences. Although they are close in population, with 8.1 million Haitians and 9 million Dominicans, Haiti is 95 percent black, and 80 percent of the population lives in poverty. The Dominican population is 89 percent white or mixed, with 25 percent impoverished. About 500,000 Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, many doing the jobs locals disdain.
Haitians still recall vividly the fall of 1937, when Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, motivated by factors that have never been satisfactorily explained, instigated a pogrom in which Dominican soldiers and police massacred 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians throughout the country. The attacks occurred at a particularly furious pace in the region where today's unrest is centered.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
Friday, July 20, 2007
An older, art-related Haiti piece
Monday July 29 2002, 7:51 PM
Haitian artists find viewers and buyers online
By Michael Deibert
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - In a sweltering room in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haitian painter Etzer Pierre unrolls a canvas showing computer screens separated by a rainbow ascending into a five-pointed voodoo symbol.
"It's a marriage between modernity and tradition, you might say," he says. "Elements of mystery and the world trying to co-exist together."
He might be speaking of Haitian art's forays into cyberspace.
Haiti's painters, sculptures, metal workers and sequined "voodoo" flag artisans -- famed in the Caribbean, but traditionally rather isolated -- are starting to see the power of the Internet in finding exposure and markets for their works.
Whereas Haitian art previously relied largely on word of mouth among collectors and aficionados, the Internet has allowed for more direct marketing from Haiti, a Caribbean nation of eight million which is the poorest country in the Americas.
ArtMedia Haiti, an online gallery (www.artmediahaiti.com) based in the airy Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville, specializes in shipping works by Haitian artists to a worldwide audience.
The creation of Lori Manuel Steed -- the daughter of Haitian artist Michele Manuel-- and American expatriate Birgit Coles, ArtMedia has helped bring modern Haitian painters like Frantz Zephirin and Pascale Monin, as well as more traditional artists, to a wide audience.
One of several relatively new online windows to Haitian art, such as the Pittsburgh-based Galerie Macondo (www.artshaitian.com) or MedaliaArt (www.medalia.net), which operates out of East Setauket, Long Island, ArtMedia has met with impressive success.
"We've been online for nearly a year and the numbers of people visiting has been amazing," says Steed. "At the moment, we have 10,000 subscribers to our newsletter."
"We've shipped pretty much all over the world, but we've been especially strong in North America, Mexico and Europe," adds Coles.
A painter herself, who was initially encouraged by Haitian gallery owner and former jazz musician Issa El Saieh of Galerie Issa, Steed says Haitian artists have been quick to grasp the potential of selling online.
"Our financial relationships with the artists vary, depending on who they are and where they are in their career," she says. "But many artists have a set price for their piece and will simply ask us to put it out on the Web."
IN TOUCH WITH THE WORLD
The painters seem to agree.
"The Internet is a kind of global village where anyone in different areas of the world can be in touch very fast," says painter Jhomson Vidho Lorville, a young Haitian painter who sells his art via his Web site, http://www.vidholorville.com/.
"It's made a huge difference for exposing the art in terms of a country like Haiti, where communications are very poor," Lorville says.
"Young Haitian artists are trying different things, and being exposed to different influences than in the past. And whatever Internet or world market there is, I think there's a place for everyone."
Lorville's work, and that of other young artists such as Etzer Pierre and painters working out of the National School of Arts, is often characterized by exaggerated, almost caricature-like depiction of facial features and scale, reminiscent of the graffiti murals one sees in Brooklyn, New York.
In one painting, "Figi Beton," Lorville depicts a "chimere" -- Haitian slang for paid political rabble rouser -- gazing at the world from behind mirrored sunglasses, a bandanna wrapped around a huge head that takes up nearly the entire canvas. There are burning tires in the background.
Steed said such paintings belonged in a new realist movement that began with Stevenson Magloire, who was killed during Haiti' brutal military government of 1991-94, and produced work with harsh and angry imagery and colors. The work contrasted with that of painters like his mother, Louisianne St.-Fleurant, who helped found the famous "Saint-Soleil" school of lyrical, voodoo-influenced Haitian painting three decades earlier.
Haitian art, which started coming into its own in the first half of the 20th century, has developed into one of the most diverse in the Caribbean, encompassing everything from formal portraits and scenes of peasant life to images of voodoo deities and sophisticated political commentary.
There is a hope that its appearance on the Internet will help Haitian art attract the appreciation and serious critical discussion that many believe it deserves.
"I would love to see more serious art critics interested, in an academic way, in Haitian art," says Dr. Frantz Large, a Haitian ophthalmologist and member of the French-language International Association of Art Critics.
"The art of the voodoo temple, for example, has some very explosive qualities which we today consider in some ways to be ultra-modern."
"Jackson Pollock and his shamanistic splatter painting," says Large, who delivered the eulogy at Stevenson Magloire's funeral. "And the voodoo priest going into a trance creating a veve (five-pointed symbol) on the temple floor are not, after all, that far removed."
Haitian artists find viewers and buyers online
By Michael Deibert
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - In a sweltering room in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haitian painter Etzer Pierre unrolls a canvas showing computer screens separated by a rainbow ascending into a five-pointed voodoo symbol.
"It's a marriage between modernity and tradition, you might say," he says. "Elements of mystery and the world trying to co-exist together."
He might be speaking of Haitian art's forays into cyberspace.
Haiti's painters, sculptures, metal workers and sequined "voodoo" flag artisans -- famed in the Caribbean, but traditionally rather isolated -- are starting to see the power of the Internet in finding exposure and markets for their works.
Whereas Haitian art previously relied largely on word of mouth among collectors and aficionados, the Internet has allowed for more direct marketing from Haiti, a Caribbean nation of eight million which is the poorest country in the Americas.
ArtMedia Haiti, an online gallery (www.artmediahaiti.com) based in the airy Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville, specializes in shipping works by Haitian artists to a worldwide audience.
The creation of Lori Manuel Steed -- the daughter of Haitian artist Michele Manuel-- and American expatriate Birgit Coles, ArtMedia has helped bring modern Haitian painters like Frantz Zephirin and Pascale Monin, as well as more traditional artists, to a wide audience.
One of several relatively new online windows to Haitian art, such as the Pittsburgh-based Galerie Macondo (www.artshaitian.com) or MedaliaArt (www.medalia.net), which operates out of East Setauket, Long Island, ArtMedia has met with impressive success.
"We've been online for nearly a year and the numbers of people visiting has been amazing," says Steed. "At the moment, we have 10,000 subscribers to our newsletter."
"We've shipped pretty much all over the world, but we've been especially strong in North America, Mexico and Europe," adds Coles.
A painter herself, who was initially encouraged by Haitian gallery owner and former jazz musician Issa El Saieh of Galerie Issa, Steed says Haitian artists have been quick to grasp the potential of selling online.
"Our financial relationships with the artists vary, depending on who they are and where they are in their career," she says. "But many artists have a set price for their piece and will simply ask us to put it out on the Web."
IN TOUCH WITH THE WORLD
The painters seem to agree.
"The Internet is a kind of global village where anyone in different areas of the world can be in touch very fast," says painter Jhomson Vidho Lorville, a young Haitian painter who sells his art via his Web site, http://www.vidholorville.com/.
"It's made a huge difference for exposing the art in terms of a country like Haiti, where communications are very poor," Lorville says.
"Young Haitian artists are trying different things, and being exposed to different influences than in the past. And whatever Internet or world market there is, I think there's a place for everyone."
Lorville's work, and that of other young artists such as Etzer Pierre and painters working out of the National School of Arts, is often characterized by exaggerated, almost caricature-like depiction of facial features and scale, reminiscent of the graffiti murals one sees in Brooklyn, New York.
In one painting, "Figi Beton," Lorville depicts a "chimere" -- Haitian slang for paid political rabble rouser -- gazing at the world from behind mirrored sunglasses, a bandanna wrapped around a huge head that takes up nearly the entire canvas. There are burning tires in the background.
Steed said such paintings belonged in a new realist movement that began with Stevenson Magloire, who was killed during Haiti' brutal military government of 1991-94, and produced work with harsh and angry imagery and colors. The work contrasted with that of painters like his mother, Louisianne St.-Fleurant, who helped found the famous "Saint-Soleil" school of lyrical, voodoo-influenced Haitian painting three decades earlier.
Haitian art, which started coming into its own in the first half of the 20th century, has developed into one of the most diverse in the Caribbean, encompassing everything from formal portraits and scenes of peasant life to images of voodoo deities and sophisticated political commentary.
There is a hope that its appearance on the Internet will help Haitian art attract the appreciation and serious critical discussion that many believe it deserves.
"I would love to see more serious art critics interested, in an academic way, in Haitian art," says Dr. Frantz Large, a Haitian ophthalmologist and member of the French-language International Association of Art Critics.
"The art of the voodoo temple, for example, has some very explosive qualities which we today consider in some ways to be ultra-modern."
"Jackson Pollock and his shamanistic splatter painting," says Large, who delivered the eulogy at Stevenson Magloire's funeral. "And the voodoo priest going into a trance creating a veve (five-pointed symbol) on the temple floor are not, after all, that far removed."
A pair of older articles
Haiti private sector decries ‘climate of terror’
By Michael Deibert, Reuters, 24 November 2002
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Nov 24 (Reuters)—In another blow to embattled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s largest private sector association blamed high authorities on Sunday for allowing a climate of terror to roil the poor nation.
"In unison, we raise our voices in indignation," an association of 18 businesses and chambers of commerce from around the Caribbean country said in a statement after a week of protests and shootings. "The private sector cannot accept ... orchestrated criminal actions, planned and implemented with the taxes of taxpayers and the equipment of the state."
"People acting under the protection of high authorities ... have set up a climate of terror," the statement said.
The business leaders’ message follows a week of large-scale protests against Aristide’s government and tire-burning counter-demonstrations by armed supporters of the president that paralyzed the capital on Friday.
The business group called for the arrests of some government supporters suspected of leading disturbances, including Amiot Metayer, who had briefly been at odds with Aristide over his imprisonment for gang-related activity. Metayer, a fugitive who staged a spectacular jailbreak in August, led a pro-government rally in the provincial city of Gonaives on Friday.
Friday’s demonstrations blocked roads in the capital with flaming barricades, and many businesses and schools were closed. Armed Aristide supporters also fired into the air from the backs of pick-up trucks, witnesses said.
Residents in Port-au-Prince on Sunday stocked up on foodstuffs and supplies because of rumors an equally chaotic pro-government demonstration was planned for Monday.
Discontent with Aristide, who began a second term as president last year but has been mired in a dispute over elections with the main political opposition, has recently flared into a series of large demonstrations.
Last week, thousands of high school students and their supporters rallied in the provincial city of Petit Goave, southwest of the capital. Displaying a bloody school uniform, they protested the shootings a day earlier of seven high school students by police.
Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, has been locked in a dispute with the opposition Democratic Convergence coalition over the results of contested May 2000 elections, which his opponents contend were biased in his party’s favor.
The deadlock has stalled up to $500 million in international aid, adding to the woes of the 8 million inhabitants of the poorest country in the Americas.
**************************
Haitians seek diversion in traditional cockfights
By Michael Deibert, Reuters, 19 February 2003
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb 19 (Reuters)—It’s Sunday afternoon in the hilly and crowded Port-au-Prince neighbourhood of Nazon.
As people head home from church dressed in their Sunday best and others pause to sample the aromatic pork fried by market women in black pots, Emil Piton, 63, heads to the gague or cockfighting ring he owns.
Inside, dozens of men gather around a concrete pit littered with feathers and spattered with blood. The tin roof above them does not quite reach down to the concrete blocks supporting it, and the resulting space lets some air into the otherwise sweltering room.
"How much men? Place your bets!" Piton says as the men, beer or rum bottles and cigarettes in their hands, eagerly gesture to the two birds, one black and one greenish-brown, being led into the pit by their owners.
In a flash the hoods which the birds wear to keep them calm are off, and they are clucking and clawing away at one another.
Cockfighting, a tradition in many Caribbean and Latin American countries, is older than the nation of Haiti itself, imported to the region from England and France, where it was hugely popular in colonial times, historians say.
Perfectly legal in Haiti, the sport is less vicious than the version practiced in some parts of the world. The birds do not wear metal spurs and rather than fight to the death, they fight only until an owner calls time and a winner is declared.
Although it seems brutal to some, cockfighting is as much a part of Haiti’s traditional life as bullfighting is to Spain, and there have rarely been any voices raised in protest.
In Haiti today, as an economic downturn sends people scrambling for survival in an atmosphere of instability and political crisis, the tradition provides a much-needed release for the country’s beleaguered poor majority.
"When there is a gague, people are there only to attend and watch the match, our problems can’t enter," said 27-year-old Lithene Pierre as he ate bits of spicy conch from a plastic cup.
"Cockfighting is a distraction from the losing battle that so many Haitians are fighting with poverty," said Michele Wucker, author of Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola. "The cockfight mirrors Haiti’s political violence, but it also provides a ’safe’ arena where Haitians can release frustration and aggression. Spectators may lose money betting, or an owner’s pride may get bruised, but only the birds really get hurt."
Haitians have watched their country get poorer in recent years as the value of its currency, the gourde, has tumbled, and the country has been racked by political unrest.
Since his re-election in November 2000, Haiti’s President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has been locked in a bitter dispute with opposition politicians over May 2000 parliamentary elections that observers charge were tabulated to favour Aristide’s Lavalas Family party.
In recent months pro- and anti-government protests, riots and strikes have affected all parts of the poverty-stricken Caribbean nation of eight million.
Inside the gague, none of that seems to matter. As the birds claw and peck at one another, a great roar goes up from the crowd whenever contact is made.
The birds stagger and rush around the pit, with men standing on any available surface and leaning on their neighbours, straining to watch the action.
The crowd is overwhelmingly male. The only women present are the vendors selling rum, moonshine and snacks.
As a reminder that cockfighting is not only a pastime, but a significant business, a man passes out cards advertising a match to be held the following weekend.
The prize for first place will be 3,000 gourdes or roughly US$67, an astronomical sum to most Haitians and more than most families bring home in a month.
By Michael Deibert, Reuters, 24 November 2002
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Nov 24 (Reuters)—In another blow to embattled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s largest private sector association blamed high authorities on Sunday for allowing a climate of terror to roil the poor nation.
"In unison, we raise our voices in indignation," an association of 18 businesses and chambers of commerce from around the Caribbean country said in a statement after a week of protests and shootings. "The private sector cannot accept ... orchestrated criminal actions, planned and implemented with the taxes of taxpayers and the equipment of the state."
"People acting under the protection of high authorities ... have set up a climate of terror," the statement said.
The business leaders’ message follows a week of large-scale protests against Aristide’s government and tire-burning counter-demonstrations by armed supporters of the president that paralyzed the capital on Friday.
The business group called for the arrests of some government supporters suspected of leading disturbances, including Amiot Metayer, who had briefly been at odds with Aristide over his imprisonment for gang-related activity. Metayer, a fugitive who staged a spectacular jailbreak in August, led a pro-government rally in the provincial city of Gonaives on Friday.
Friday’s demonstrations blocked roads in the capital with flaming barricades, and many businesses and schools were closed. Armed Aristide supporters also fired into the air from the backs of pick-up trucks, witnesses said.
Residents in Port-au-Prince on Sunday stocked up on foodstuffs and supplies because of rumors an equally chaotic pro-government demonstration was planned for Monday.
Discontent with Aristide, who began a second term as president last year but has been mired in a dispute over elections with the main political opposition, has recently flared into a series of large demonstrations.
Last week, thousands of high school students and their supporters rallied in the provincial city of Petit Goave, southwest of the capital. Displaying a bloody school uniform, they protested the shootings a day earlier of seven high school students by police.
Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, has been locked in a dispute with the opposition Democratic Convergence coalition over the results of contested May 2000 elections, which his opponents contend were biased in his party’s favor.
The deadlock has stalled up to $500 million in international aid, adding to the woes of the 8 million inhabitants of the poorest country in the Americas.
**************************
Haitians seek diversion in traditional cockfights
By Michael Deibert, Reuters, 19 February 2003
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb 19 (Reuters)—It’s Sunday afternoon in the hilly and crowded Port-au-Prince neighbourhood of Nazon.
As people head home from church dressed in their Sunday best and others pause to sample the aromatic pork fried by market women in black pots, Emil Piton, 63, heads to the gague or cockfighting ring he owns.
Inside, dozens of men gather around a concrete pit littered with feathers and spattered with blood. The tin roof above them does not quite reach down to the concrete blocks supporting it, and the resulting space lets some air into the otherwise sweltering room.
"How much men? Place your bets!" Piton says as the men, beer or rum bottles and cigarettes in their hands, eagerly gesture to the two birds, one black and one greenish-brown, being led into the pit by their owners.
In a flash the hoods which the birds wear to keep them calm are off, and they are clucking and clawing away at one another.
Cockfighting, a tradition in many Caribbean and Latin American countries, is older than the nation of Haiti itself, imported to the region from England and France, where it was hugely popular in colonial times, historians say.
Perfectly legal in Haiti, the sport is less vicious than the version practiced in some parts of the world. The birds do not wear metal spurs and rather than fight to the death, they fight only until an owner calls time and a winner is declared.
Although it seems brutal to some, cockfighting is as much a part of Haiti’s traditional life as bullfighting is to Spain, and there have rarely been any voices raised in protest.
In Haiti today, as an economic downturn sends people scrambling for survival in an atmosphere of instability and political crisis, the tradition provides a much-needed release for the country’s beleaguered poor majority.
"When there is a gague, people are there only to attend and watch the match, our problems can’t enter," said 27-year-old Lithene Pierre as he ate bits of spicy conch from a plastic cup.
"Cockfighting is a distraction from the losing battle that so many Haitians are fighting with poverty," said Michele Wucker, author of Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola. "The cockfight mirrors Haiti’s political violence, but it also provides a ’safe’ arena where Haitians can release frustration and aggression. Spectators may lose money betting, or an owner’s pride may get bruised, but only the birds really get hurt."
Haitians have watched their country get poorer in recent years as the value of its currency, the gourde, has tumbled, and the country has been racked by political unrest.
Since his re-election in November 2000, Haiti’s President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has been locked in a bitter dispute with opposition politicians over May 2000 parliamentary elections that observers charge were tabulated to favour Aristide’s Lavalas Family party.
In recent months pro- and anti-government protests, riots and strikes have affected all parts of the poverty-stricken Caribbean nation of eight million.
Inside the gague, none of that seems to matter. As the birds claw and peck at one another, a great roar goes up from the crowd whenever contact is made.
The birds stagger and rush around the pit, with men standing on any available surface and leaning on their neighbours, straining to watch the action.
The crowd is overwhelmingly male. The only women present are the vendors selling rum, moonshine and snacks.
As a reminder that cockfighting is not only a pastime, but a significant business, a man passes out cards advertising a match to be held the following weekend.
The prize for first place will be 3,000 gourdes or roughly US$67, an astronomical sum to most Haitians and more than most families bring home in a month.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Music set the tone for change
POLITICAL VOICES IN HAITI
Music set the tone for change
Instrumental in ousting Aristide, singer in a popular band now faces death threats for his work
BY MICHAEL DEIBERT SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Newsday
July 18, 2004
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Theodore (Lolo) Beaubrun Jr., lead singer of Haiti's most popular musical group, says he's glad his work had a role in helping overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, even though fear of retribution has meant he has occasionally had to watch his back.
"Not just as a musician but as a human, there are certain things you can't accept in society," says Beaubrun, of Boukman Eksperyans, a group named for a slave who helped spark Haiti's uprising against the French 200 years ago.
Brushing his graying dreadlocks aside, he says Aristide's increasingly violent, corrupt rule was the reason he lent his songs and celebrity to the protests that swept Haiti in the months before the president fled in February. By that time, Aristide faced growing unrest and an armed rebel movement that had effectively cut the country in half.
A rallying cry
"It was time for a revolution; no one could play politics like that anymore," said Beaubrun, who formed Boukman in 1978 and helped popularize its "voodoo rock" style as a vehicle for social commentary in this impoverished nation of 8 million. The group continues a Haitian tradition of music as both political statement and rallying cry.
But the effort has its costs: Beaubrun has not slept at home since December, when he says neighbors warned him that his house was being staked out by Aristide loyalists on a mission to assassinate him. Since then he has divided his time between the homes of family and friends around the capital, and Haitian diaspora communities such as New York and Miami.
Instrumental in the founding of the "Non" artistic collective that protested what they characterized as Aristide's misrule, Beaubrun marched in rallies and performed at events whose size and energy would eventually help topple the regime.
After an attack by pro-government gangs that severely damamged the rector of Haiti's State University in December, Boukman played at a rally at the school along with such local bands as Sweet Micky and Jah Nesta. Students, who were in the vanguard of the protests of Aristide, were among the thousands in the enthusiastic crowd.
"It was a way to show that there are not only demonstrations on the streets, you can have cultural demonstrations. It was a really nice day; people were dancing," Beaubrun says.
Music as political commentary is nothing new in Haiti. In the struggle to oust the French in the late 18th century, bands of rebel slaves were fortified for battle by passionate voodoo drumming. During the 20-year U.S. occupation in the early 20th century, singers launched frequent musical broadsides at perceived abuses by the U.S. forces.
The oppressive dictatorship of François Duvalier forced politically aware music underground, but in the late 1970s it resurfaced under his slightly less severe son, Jean-Claude Duvalier. Singer Ti Manno's pointed but highly danceable tunes dominated the revival.
Under subsequent military regimes, bands like Boukman Eksperyans continued the tradition. The band's 1990 entry for Haiti's Carnival, "Ke m pa sote" ("My Heart Doesn't Leap"), obliquely targeted political malefactors and was considered pivotal in the struggle to oust Gen. Prosper Avril's dictatorship.
Genesis of oppression
In September 2002, following a summer of student protests against Aristide, a Boukman Eksperyans concert on a plaza within easy earshot of the National Palace was broken up by armed riot police who stormed the stage, saying the orders had come from "high up."
"This was one of Aristide's first real tries at dictatorship," Beaubrun said. "He sent his guys and everyone was frightened."
The band was playing "We Don't Want No War," interpreted as a critique of political violence under Aristide and containing the line "Mr. President, it's you I'm talking to."
"Man, after that, people who were inside [the National Palace] said that he was frightened, that he thought I was talking directly to him," Beaubrun said.
"The coalition against Aristide was remarkably broad-based," said Gage Averill, chairman of New York University's music department, "and this was reflected in the musical challenges that musicians posed to the government."
Music as political message
"In a country not yet fully literate, oral musical transmission carries information about political events and attitudes in ways that are particularly powerful," said Averill, author of "A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti." "And the power of music to move people, to encourage dancing and marching and an attitude of abandon, has helped to make of political protests something more emotionally compelling and moving."
Beaubrun says musicians have learned some vital lessons since Aristide's ouster, such as the need to be ever-vigilant in a shifting tide of political opportunism and potential violence.
"Music will always have a role to play for me," says Beaubrun, who remains wary of the future in a country where turmoil has never been too far away. "The situation doesn't mean that everything is all right just because we have a new government, because we can lose that thing that we've been fighting for. We've lost it before. We have to really change the country, completely, the state, the system. We have to disarm, and nobody can be above justice."
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
Music set the tone for change
Instrumental in ousting Aristide, singer in a popular band now faces death threats for his work
BY MICHAEL DEIBERT SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Newsday
July 18, 2004
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Theodore (Lolo) Beaubrun Jr., lead singer of Haiti's most popular musical group, says he's glad his work had a role in helping overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, even though fear of retribution has meant he has occasionally had to watch his back.
"Not just as a musician but as a human, there are certain things you can't accept in society," says Beaubrun, of Boukman Eksperyans, a group named for a slave who helped spark Haiti's uprising against the French 200 years ago.
Brushing his graying dreadlocks aside, he says Aristide's increasingly violent, corrupt rule was the reason he lent his songs and celebrity to the protests that swept Haiti in the months before the president fled in February. By that time, Aristide faced growing unrest and an armed rebel movement that had effectively cut the country in half.
A rallying cry
"It was time for a revolution; no one could play politics like that anymore," said Beaubrun, who formed Boukman in 1978 and helped popularize its "voodoo rock" style as a vehicle for social commentary in this impoverished nation of 8 million. The group continues a Haitian tradition of music as both political statement and rallying cry.
But the effort has its costs: Beaubrun has not slept at home since December, when he says neighbors warned him that his house was being staked out by Aristide loyalists on a mission to assassinate him. Since then he has divided his time between the homes of family and friends around the capital, and Haitian diaspora communities such as New York and Miami.
Instrumental in the founding of the "Non" artistic collective that protested what they characterized as Aristide's misrule, Beaubrun marched in rallies and performed at events whose size and energy would eventually help topple the regime.
After an attack by pro-government gangs that severely damamged the rector of Haiti's State University in December, Boukman played at a rally at the school along with such local bands as Sweet Micky and Jah Nesta. Students, who were in the vanguard of the protests of Aristide, were among the thousands in the enthusiastic crowd.
"It was a way to show that there are not only demonstrations on the streets, you can have cultural demonstrations. It was a really nice day; people were dancing," Beaubrun says.
Music as political commentary is nothing new in Haiti. In the struggle to oust the French in the late 18th century, bands of rebel slaves were fortified for battle by passionate voodoo drumming. During the 20-year U.S. occupation in the early 20th century, singers launched frequent musical broadsides at perceived abuses by the U.S. forces.
The oppressive dictatorship of François Duvalier forced politically aware music underground, but in the late 1970s it resurfaced under his slightly less severe son, Jean-Claude Duvalier. Singer Ti Manno's pointed but highly danceable tunes dominated the revival.
Under subsequent military regimes, bands like Boukman Eksperyans continued the tradition. The band's 1990 entry for Haiti's Carnival, "Ke m pa sote" ("My Heart Doesn't Leap"), obliquely targeted political malefactors and was considered pivotal in the struggle to oust Gen. Prosper Avril's dictatorship.
Genesis of oppression
In September 2002, following a summer of student protests against Aristide, a Boukman Eksperyans concert on a plaza within easy earshot of the National Palace was broken up by armed riot police who stormed the stage, saying the orders had come from "high up."
"This was one of Aristide's first real tries at dictatorship," Beaubrun said. "He sent his guys and everyone was frightened."
The band was playing "We Don't Want No War," interpreted as a critique of political violence under Aristide and containing the line "Mr. President, it's you I'm talking to."
"Man, after that, people who were inside [the National Palace] said that he was frightened, that he thought I was talking directly to him," Beaubrun said.
"The coalition against Aristide was remarkably broad-based," said Gage Averill, chairman of New York University's music department, "and this was reflected in the musical challenges that musicians posed to the government."
Music as political message
"In a country not yet fully literate, oral musical transmission carries information about political events and attitudes in ways that are particularly powerful," said Averill, author of "A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti." "And the power of music to move people, to encourage dancing and marching and an attitude of abandon, has helped to make of political protests something more emotionally compelling and moving."
Beaubrun says musicians have learned some vital lessons since Aristide's ouster, such as the need to be ever-vigilant in a shifting tide of political opportunism and potential violence.
"Music will always have a role to play for me," says Beaubrun, who remains wary of the future in a country where turmoil has never been too far away. "The situation doesn't mean that everything is all right just because we have a new government, because we can lose that thing that we've been fighting for. We've lost it before. We have to really change the country, completely, the state, the system. We have to disarm, and nobody can be above justice."
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
Floods Kill Hundreds in Haiti, Dominican Republic
Floods Kill Hundreds in Haiti, Dominican Republic
(Listen to the original here)
All Things Considered, May 26, 2004 · Massive flooding takes hundreds of lives on Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Days of torrential rain have caused floods and mudslides in both countries, leaving more than 500 dead as rescue workers try to find victims and survivors. Hear NPR's Melissa Block and freelance reporter Michael Deibert.
(Listen to the original here)
All Things Considered, May 26, 2004 · Massive flooding takes hundreds of lives on Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Days of torrential rain have caused floods and mudslides in both countries, leaving more than 500 dead as rescue workers try to find victims and survivors. Hear NPR's Melissa Block and freelance reporter Michael Deibert.
Post-Aristide Haiti Seeks Stability
Post-Aristide Haiti Seeks Stability
(Listen to the original here)
Morning Edition, April 22, 2004 · Haiti's interim government has been trying to create political and economic stability in the two months since Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide was driven into exile. Many areas have calmed down since the bloody rebellion, but problems remain. Hear NPR's Bob Edwards and Newsday reporter Michael Deibert
(Listen to the original here)
Morning Edition, April 22, 2004 · Haiti's interim government has been trying to create political and economic stability in the two months since Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide was driven into exile. Many areas have calmed down since the bloody rebellion, but problems remain. Hear NPR's Bob Edwards and Newsday reporter Michael Deibert
Aristide departs, Marines move in
Aristide departs, Marines move in
UN approves U.S. - led mission to restore peace as fragmented opposition groups in Haiti battle for political influence
BY TINA SUSMAN AND MICHAEL DEIBERT;
Tina Susman is a staff correspondent and Michael Deibert is a special correspondent.
Newsday
March 1, 2004
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - President Jean-Bertrand Aristide slipped into exile yesterday and left a capital in chaos. Shotgun-wielding loyalists overran the streets and fired at will, looters tore through businesses, and armed men claiming allegiance to a rebel army began marching through neighborhoods.
U.S. Marines took the lead in establishing a multinational force approved last night by the United Nations Security Council for a three-month mission to restore order. The first hundred of what were expected to be several hundred Marines left Camp Lejeune, N.C., yesterday evening and arrived in Port-au-Prince after dark, according to John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the UN.
Hours earlier, Aristide's constitutional successor, Supreme Court Justice Boniface Alexandre, was sworn into office and pleaded for calm. "We need all sons and daughters of the country to work for peace, justice and law," he read from a hand-written statement, a sign of the haste with which the transition was made.
Haiti's first democratically elected president, who in recent years had been accused of corruption, human rights abuses and ineptitude, apparently flew out of the capital undetected about 6:45 a.m. in a U.S.-provided jet after losing the support not only of many Haitians, but of his chief international backers. Once among Aristide's strongest supporters, both the United States and France, Haiti's former colonial ruler, praised his resignation and said it was the only way to halt the carnage.
"The government believes it is essential that Haiti have a hopeful future," President George W. Bush said at the White House as he announced the deployment of Marines, who join 50 sent here last week to protect the U.S. Embassy. France was also expected to contribute troops.
Rumors about the circumstances of Aristide's departure ran wild: that he was bundled onto the plane handcuffed because he refused to quit voluntarily; that Alexandre was roused from bed and informed he was president; that U.S. officials threatened to charge Aristide with drug-trafficking unless he resigned.
No matter what the true circumstances, once news of Aristide's departure spread at about 8 a.m., mania ensued. Some jails were emptied as police abandoned their posts, looters used machetes and sticks to break into shops, and black smoke from burning barricades and torched businesses billowed into the air downtown. Some revelers cheered Aristide's downfall with shouts of "Happy New Year!" Within hours, small groups of armed men claiming to be fighters of rebel leader Guy Philippe, whose insurrection began Feb. 5, appeared in Port-au-Prince.
"We are with Guy Philippe's team, and we are here...to make sure that everything can function normally," said Fautsin Radeux as he marched through the Petionville neighborhood clutching an Uzi submachine gun. Small groups of residents clapped.
More often, though, the scene was ugly as armed gangs known as chimeres, who claimed loyalty to Aristide, unleashed their anger on passersby. "They stopped us. I got out of the car and raised my hands and said I work for a hospital, and if you hurt me you will be hurting a lot of people," said a hospital director stopped at a roadblock.
The gang let him pass, then opened fire and shot out his tires, said the man, who declined to give his name.
Across from his hospital, a group discussed the day's events and warily eyed the few vehicles that passed. "I'm happy, because it's a government of terror that has left the country," said Carl-Henri Dorsainville.
Samuel Pierre, though, said he expected only an increase in the turmoil that had left him unable to find work. "Aristide had been taking care of us....I'm just worried about how I'm going to eat."
Aristide, whose destination was not known, had insisted as late as Saturday that he would not resign, despite increased pressure and the encroaching rebel forces. Scores of people have died since the rebels took up arms, including several in the capital. A letter read by Prime Minister Yvon Neptune at a news conference announcing Aristide's departure said he decided to leave to "avert bloodshed."
"I know it is not what the vast majority of the people ... would have wished to happen," said Neptune, calling the resignation a "great sacrifice" that would let peace "truly blossom."
In Haiti's second-largest city, rebel-held Cap-Haitien, Philippe said his forces would stop fighting. "If we move in Port-au-Prince, it will be to impose security," he told CNN.
Political opposition leaders, meanwhile, who have always claimed to be independent of the armed opposition, gathered to plot strategy. One problem will be how to deal with the armed rebels should they demand roles in a new government. Some, like Louis-Jodel Chamblain, are linked to atrocities in the regimes that ruled Haiti before Aristide's 1990 election. Many are former members of the army, which Aristide disbanded in 1994, three years after a military coup drove him from power.
"These guys are basically military," said one opposition leader, Charles Baker, saying he doubted they would demand a governing role. However, Baker also admitted there was no plan for what to do with the armed resistance since Haiti lacked the money to re-form its army.
Politically, things were equally unclear. The constitution called for Alexandre to take over but said he must be approved by parliament. It was also unclear if Alexandre would serve the remainder of Aristide's term, which was to end in 2006, or if a transitional administration would take over. Whatever happens, "We have to have a government that belongs to the citizens of Haiti," said Baker, a member of the coalition of political groups making up the opposition.
It won't be the first try. The island nation, which became independent from France in 1804, has been ruled by military juntas and civilian dictatorships for most of its history. Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest, was expected to change that in 1990 when he ran for president in Haiti's first free elections. With backing from millions of poor Haitians inspired by his anti-government sermons, Aristide won the vote by a two-thirds majority. A few months later he was ousted and fled into exile, not returning until 1994 when President Bill Clinton flew him home under Marine guard.
After his return, opposition activists began accusing Aristide of having adopted the same dictatorial tendencies as his predecessors, culminating in election boycotts and a cutoff of most international aid following disputed elections in 2000. Human rights groups accused him of ordering killings of political opponents and of involvement in drug trafficking, charges that Aristide denied.
Despite those accusations, Aristide still had the support of many. "Aristide was voted into power. He was supposed to serve until 2006, and he should have had time," said Jean Thermogine, a barbershop owner. "We should have been able to organize a political solution."
In the United States, the Black Congressional Caucus also denounced the Bush administration's decision to press Aristide to resign. "We're just as much a part of this coup d'etat as the rebels, as the looters, or anyone else," said Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem).
Tina Susman is a staff correspondent and Michael Deibert is a special correspondent. Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
UN approves U.S. - led mission to restore peace as fragmented opposition groups in Haiti battle for political influence
BY TINA SUSMAN AND MICHAEL DEIBERT;
Tina Susman is a staff correspondent and Michael Deibert is a special correspondent.
Newsday
March 1, 2004
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - President Jean-Bertrand Aristide slipped into exile yesterday and left a capital in chaos. Shotgun-wielding loyalists overran the streets and fired at will, looters tore through businesses, and armed men claiming allegiance to a rebel army began marching through neighborhoods.
U.S. Marines took the lead in establishing a multinational force approved last night by the United Nations Security Council for a three-month mission to restore order. The first hundred of what were expected to be several hundred Marines left Camp Lejeune, N.C., yesterday evening and arrived in Port-au-Prince after dark, according to John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the UN.
Hours earlier, Aristide's constitutional successor, Supreme Court Justice Boniface Alexandre, was sworn into office and pleaded for calm. "We need all sons and daughters of the country to work for peace, justice and law," he read from a hand-written statement, a sign of the haste with which the transition was made.
Haiti's first democratically elected president, who in recent years had been accused of corruption, human rights abuses and ineptitude, apparently flew out of the capital undetected about 6:45 a.m. in a U.S.-provided jet after losing the support not only of many Haitians, but of his chief international backers. Once among Aristide's strongest supporters, both the United States and France, Haiti's former colonial ruler, praised his resignation and said it was the only way to halt the carnage.
"The government believes it is essential that Haiti have a hopeful future," President George W. Bush said at the White House as he announced the deployment of Marines, who join 50 sent here last week to protect the U.S. Embassy. France was also expected to contribute troops.
Rumors about the circumstances of Aristide's departure ran wild: that he was bundled onto the plane handcuffed because he refused to quit voluntarily; that Alexandre was roused from bed and informed he was president; that U.S. officials threatened to charge Aristide with drug-trafficking unless he resigned.
No matter what the true circumstances, once news of Aristide's departure spread at about 8 a.m., mania ensued. Some jails were emptied as police abandoned their posts, looters used machetes and sticks to break into shops, and black smoke from burning barricades and torched businesses billowed into the air downtown. Some revelers cheered Aristide's downfall with shouts of "Happy New Year!" Within hours, small groups of armed men claiming to be fighters of rebel leader Guy Philippe, whose insurrection began Feb. 5, appeared in Port-au-Prince.
"We are with Guy Philippe's team, and we are here...to make sure that everything can function normally," said Fautsin Radeux as he marched through the Petionville neighborhood clutching an Uzi submachine gun. Small groups of residents clapped.
More often, though, the scene was ugly as armed gangs known as chimeres, who claimed loyalty to Aristide, unleashed their anger on passersby. "They stopped us. I got out of the car and raised my hands and said I work for a hospital, and if you hurt me you will be hurting a lot of people," said a hospital director stopped at a roadblock.
The gang let him pass, then opened fire and shot out his tires, said the man, who declined to give his name.
Across from his hospital, a group discussed the day's events and warily eyed the few vehicles that passed. "I'm happy, because it's a government of terror that has left the country," said Carl-Henri Dorsainville.
Samuel Pierre, though, said he expected only an increase in the turmoil that had left him unable to find work. "Aristide had been taking care of us....I'm just worried about how I'm going to eat."
Aristide, whose destination was not known, had insisted as late as Saturday that he would not resign, despite increased pressure and the encroaching rebel forces. Scores of people have died since the rebels took up arms, including several in the capital. A letter read by Prime Minister Yvon Neptune at a news conference announcing Aristide's departure said he decided to leave to "avert bloodshed."
"I know it is not what the vast majority of the people ... would have wished to happen," said Neptune, calling the resignation a "great sacrifice" that would let peace "truly blossom."
In Haiti's second-largest city, rebel-held Cap-Haitien, Philippe said his forces would stop fighting. "If we move in Port-au-Prince, it will be to impose security," he told CNN.
Political opposition leaders, meanwhile, who have always claimed to be independent of the armed opposition, gathered to plot strategy. One problem will be how to deal with the armed rebels should they demand roles in a new government. Some, like Louis-Jodel Chamblain, are linked to atrocities in the regimes that ruled Haiti before Aristide's 1990 election. Many are former members of the army, which Aristide disbanded in 1994, three years after a military coup drove him from power.
"These guys are basically military," said one opposition leader, Charles Baker, saying he doubted they would demand a governing role. However, Baker also admitted there was no plan for what to do with the armed resistance since Haiti lacked the money to re-form its army.
Politically, things were equally unclear. The constitution called for Alexandre to take over but said he must be approved by parliament. It was also unclear if Alexandre would serve the remainder of Aristide's term, which was to end in 2006, or if a transitional administration would take over. Whatever happens, "We have to have a government that belongs to the citizens of Haiti," said Baker, a member of the coalition of political groups making up the opposition.
It won't be the first try. The island nation, which became independent from France in 1804, has been ruled by military juntas and civilian dictatorships for most of its history. Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest, was expected to change that in 1990 when he ran for president in Haiti's first free elections. With backing from millions of poor Haitians inspired by his anti-government sermons, Aristide won the vote by a two-thirds majority. A few months later he was ousted and fled into exile, not returning until 1994 when President Bill Clinton flew him home under Marine guard.
After his return, opposition activists began accusing Aristide of having adopted the same dictatorial tendencies as his predecessors, culminating in election boycotts and a cutoff of most international aid following disputed elections in 2000. Human rights groups accused him of ordering killings of political opponents and of involvement in drug trafficking, charges that Aristide denied.
Despite those accusations, Aristide still had the support of many. "Aristide was voted into power. He was supposed to serve until 2006, and he should have had time," said Jean Thermogine, a barbershop owner. "We should have been able to organize a political solution."
In the United States, the Black Congressional Caucus also denounced the Bush administration's decision to press Aristide to resign. "We're just as much a part of this coup d'etat as the rebels, as the looters, or anyone else," said Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem).
Tina Susman is a staff correspondent and Michael Deibert is a special correspondent. Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Mohammed's Religion Finds a Place in Haiti
Mohammed's Religion Finds a Place in Haiti
by Michael Deibert (Reuters, June 13, 2002)
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - Tucked away on a corner of the Haitian capital's dusty, congested Delmas Road, a modest white building bears a curious sign, painstakingly stenciled in green Western and Arabic script.
"Mosquee Al-Fatiha," it reads. "Communaute Musulmane d'Haiti."
An attendant splashing water on the ground greets a visitor who approaches the gate. "As-salaam aleikum (peace be upon you)," he says, breaking into a smile. "Welcome to the mosque."
Haiti, the Caribbean nation closely associated with the African-derived faith of voodoo, is home to a small but growing community of Muslims. Two Islamic centers in the capital of Port-au-Prince are among nearly a dozen around the country started by those who have converted to the faith.
Officials with the major Islamic groups estimate there are between 4,000 and 5,000 Muslims in Haiti, a nation of about 8 million people.
In the lanes of the historic Carrefour-Feuilles quarter, a neighborhood that snakes up the mountains surrounding Port-au-Prince, a plangent, timeless sound echoes.
Among the market women haggling over prices while portable radios blare popular Haitian "compas" music, the muezzin's call to prayer goes forth from a new Islamic masjeed, or prayer center.
"Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La ilaha ila Allah," -- "God is greater, God is greater, there is no god but God."
Haiti is about 80 percent Catholic and 20 percent Protestant, according to State Department figures, while some 85 percent of its people regularly practice voodoo.
MUSLIMS NOTICEABLE IN CITIES
But followers of Islam have recently stepped into the public eye. Muslim men distinctive in their kufi headwear and finely groomed beards, and women in traditional scarves, are now seen on the streets of several cities.
Nawoon Marcellus, who comes from the northern city of San Raphael, recently became the first Muslim elected to the Chamber of Deputies, Haiti's lower house of parliament.
"I returned to Haiti in 1985 just to preach Islam," said Abdul Al-Ali, the Delmas mosque's white-bearded, commanding imam, or spiritual leader. "I converted while I was in Canada and we bought the space for the mosque in 1993."
"Haitians would like to have the truth and Islam will bring it to them. If we follow Allah, peace be upon him, I think things can change."
In impoverished Haiti, beset by a faltering economy, malnutrition, political violence and a two-year-old electoral dispute that has led to a freeze on $500 million of international aid, some converts find the attention Islam devotes to charity and social justice particularly appealing.
"If you see someone who is in need, the ones who need help, whether it's education, money or what have you, we Haitians as a whole tend to be very generous in helping with one another," said Racin Ganga, the imam of the Carrefour Feuilles center, who attended college and was introduced to Islam in New York.
"Those who don't have anything tend to help out. It is in some way inborn to us as Haitians, as well as Muslims, to help out. So that principle of responsibility, of helping those less fortunate, resonated very well."
Yacine Khelladi, an Algerian economist who has conducted an informal survey of the religion in Haiti, said in its idealized form, Islam could address many of Haiti's needs, including social justice, literacy and a sense of community.
"It even regulates business, land disputes, banking and other things -- all of which could be perceived as attractive in Haiti as an alternative model," Khelladi said.
REVISIONIST HISTORY
The study of Islam has also resulted in some provocative new theories about Haitian history, including a revisionist view of Boukman, a rebel slave who inspired other slaves to rise up against their colonial masters.
"Boukman was never a voodoo priest, like they say, he was a Muslim," said Samaki Foussoyni, a worshiper at the Delmas mosque.
"When they describe his name, Boukman, in English, as he was from Jamaica, they are really describing 'book man,' because of the book he was always reading, which the French here in Haiti always referred to as an "upside-down" book," Foussoyni said.
"They described it as such because it was the Koran, which you read left to right. When they say they had a voodoo ceremony at Bois Cayman, where Boukman lived, it was in fact 'Bwa Kay Imam,' or 'the woods of the house of the imam' in Creole."
Although the mosques are locally maintained and receive no assistance from Islamic charities abroad, the nascent faith got an international boost from the U.S.-led military force that entered Haiti in 1994 to restore exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.
"The Pakistani and Bangladeshi soldiers came to our mosque to pray and enjoy our faith and they encouraged us with this belief," Al-Ali said.
Conscious of their status as outsiders in overtly voodoo and Catholic Haiti, a nation that endured decades of dictatorship and brutal military repression, Muslims are quick to stress the peaceful nature of their faith and to distance themselves from the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
"Allah says that if a man kills another man it is as if he has killed all humanity," said Racin Ganga. "The people who did what they did in New York, they are not even human. Islamic people should use the weapon of their love, because violence, as we've seen here in Haiti, will not take us anywhere."
by Michael Deibert (Reuters, June 13, 2002)
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - Tucked away on a corner of the Haitian capital's dusty, congested Delmas Road, a modest white building bears a curious sign, painstakingly stenciled in green Western and Arabic script.
"Mosquee Al-Fatiha," it reads. "Communaute Musulmane d'Haiti."
An attendant splashing water on the ground greets a visitor who approaches the gate. "As-salaam aleikum (peace be upon you)," he says, breaking into a smile. "Welcome to the mosque."
Haiti, the Caribbean nation closely associated with the African-derived faith of voodoo, is home to a small but growing community of Muslims. Two Islamic centers in the capital of Port-au-Prince are among nearly a dozen around the country started by those who have converted to the faith.
Officials with the major Islamic groups estimate there are between 4,000 and 5,000 Muslims in Haiti, a nation of about 8 million people.
In the lanes of the historic Carrefour-Feuilles quarter, a neighborhood that snakes up the mountains surrounding Port-au-Prince, a plangent, timeless sound echoes.
Among the market women haggling over prices while portable radios blare popular Haitian "compas" music, the muezzin's call to prayer goes forth from a new Islamic masjeed, or prayer center.
"Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La ilaha ila Allah," -- "God is greater, God is greater, there is no god but God."
Haiti is about 80 percent Catholic and 20 percent Protestant, according to State Department figures, while some 85 percent of its people regularly practice voodoo.
MUSLIMS NOTICEABLE IN CITIES
But followers of Islam have recently stepped into the public eye. Muslim men distinctive in their kufi headwear and finely groomed beards, and women in traditional scarves, are now seen on the streets of several cities.
Nawoon Marcellus, who comes from the northern city of San Raphael, recently became the first Muslim elected to the Chamber of Deputies, Haiti's lower house of parliament.
"I returned to Haiti in 1985 just to preach Islam," said Abdul Al-Ali, the Delmas mosque's white-bearded, commanding imam, or spiritual leader. "I converted while I was in Canada and we bought the space for the mosque in 1993."
"Haitians would like to have the truth and Islam will bring it to them. If we follow Allah, peace be upon him, I think things can change."
In impoverished Haiti, beset by a faltering economy, malnutrition, political violence and a two-year-old electoral dispute that has led to a freeze on $500 million of international aid, some converts find the attention Islam devotes to charity and social justice particularly appealing.
"If you see someone who is in need, the ones who need help, whether it's education, money or what have you, we Haitians as a whole tend to be very generous in helping with one another," said Racin Ganga, the imam of the Carrefour Feuilles center, who attended college and was introduced to Islam in New York.
"Those who don't have anything tend to help out. It is in some way inborn to us as Haitians, as well as Muslims, to help out. So that principle of responsibility, of helping those less fortunate, resonated very well."
Yacine Khelladi, an Algerian economist who has conducted an informal survey of the religion in Haiti, said in its idealized form, Islam could address many of Haiti's needs, including social justice, literacy and a sense of community.
"It even regulates business, land disputes, banking and other things -- all of which could be perceived as attractive in Haiti as an alternative model," Khelladi said.
REVISIONIST HISTORY
The study of Islam has also resulted in some provocative new theories about Haitian history, including a revisionist view of Boukman, a rebel slave who inspired other slaves to rise up against their colonial masters.
"Boukman was never a voodoo priest, like they say, he was a Muslim," said Samaki Foussoyni, a worshiper at the Delmas mosque.
"When they describe his name, Boukman, in English, as he was from Jamaica, they are really describing 'book man,' because of the book he was always reading, which the French here in Haiti always referred to as an "upside-down" book," Foussoyni said.
"They described it as such because it was the Koran, which you read left to right. When they say they had a voodoo ceremony at Bois Cayman, where Boukman lived, it was in fact 'Bwa Kay Imam,' or 'the woods of the house of the imam' in Creole."
Although the mosques are locally maintained and receive no assistance from Islamic charities abroad, the nascent faith got an international boost from the U.S.-led military force that entered Haiti in 1994 to restore exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.
"The Pakistani and Bangladeshi soldiers came to our mosque to pray and enjoy our faith and they encouraged us with this belief," Al-Ali said.
Conscious of their status as outsiders in overtly voodoo and Catholic Haiti, a nation that endured decades of dictatorship and brutal military repression, Muslims are quick to stress the peaceful nature of their faith and to distance themselves from the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
"Allah says that if a man kills another man it is as if he has killed all humanity," said Racin Ganga. "The people who did what they did in New York, they are not even human. Islamic people should use the weapon of their love, because violence, as we've seen here in Haiti, will not take us anywhere."
Aristide's Tinderbox
Aristide's Tinderbox
Haitian Militants Losing Faith in President’s Promise of Reform
by Michael Deibert
August 28 - September 3, 2002
The Village Voice
(Read the original here)
Pierre Fabienne cradles his baby in his arms as his girlfriend, a shy-eyed beauty, stands in the doorway of their home on a noisy lane in Port-au-Prince's impoverished Cite Soleil quarter. Fabienne, a gang leader and supporter of embattled Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was instrumental in organizing a cease-fire among most of the district's warring factions last February. He hasn't gotten much in return for his efforts at diplomacy.
"I've sat with Aristide many times and I still have nothing," says Fabienne (not his real name).
"I still have the same room that I pay $300 for six months"—about U.S. $50—"no TV, no nothing, and Aristide knows that I'm a militant for change. He knows I fight for him. When he has something in Port-au-Prince, he calls us. When he wants people to go to his rally in Leogane, he calls us. When he's afraid of a coup d'état, he calls us. He wants us to stay in Cite Soleil, so no one hears about Cite Soleil, so he can call on us whenever he needs us to do something."
In Haiti's ramshackle and decaying capital of 2 million, where exuberantly colored tap-tap buses speed through congested streets blaring sinuous compas music and dark, mysterious mountains rise out of the bay, Cite Soleil's 200,000 residents have long formed the backbone of support for Aristide. Just north of Fort Dimanche—a former prison and torture center favored by former dictators Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier now turned into a squatter camp—and pinioned away from the rest of the city by dusty, potholed Route Nationale 1, Cite Soleil is a place where political activism and a criminal element born of desperate poverty exist side by side.
The tension between the two worlds exploded last month when Amiot Metayer, a political militant and gang leader, was freed by machine-gun-wielding members of his "Cannibal Army," who attacked the Gonaives jail he was being held in with a bulldozer. Metayer had been arrested on suspicion of ordering buildings torched during an outbreak of violence with a rival gang leader. Upon his release, he denounced Aristide, vowing to "fight to the death" any attempt to put him back in prison.
Once, people like Metayer and Fabienne celebrated Aristide. After his first election in 1990, it was the people of the slums who danced in the streets, carrying Aristide's picture and rejoicing at the ouster of the military dictatorship. When Aristide was himself ousted in a bloody coup d'état the next year, the residents of Cite Soleil fought for his return. They endured the nighttime terror of raids by the FRAPH (Front Révolutionnaire Pour l'Avancement et le Progrès d'Haiti) death squads, and often turned up tortured on narrow muddy lanes for uttering the deposed president's name.
Today, however, it is these same militants, claiming they feel forgotten and betrayed, who have begun to call for Aristide's removal, and for the dismissal of both his ruling Lavalas Family political party and Haiti's roundly loathed political opposition, the Convergence Democratique coalition. They argue it's the only way to restore the hope of a just nation that people in the district had fought for for so long. This is no polite debate.
In May, three local activists were shot dead by police, who later claimed to have been attacked by gangs. Local residents, for their part, charged the activists were shot while arriving at an arranged meeting with police. The killings triggered two days of shooting between police and gangs, leaving a pervasive suspicion among locals that, having outlived their usefulness, the militants have become targets.
When asked about the situation at a recent press conference, Aristide replied: "The people of Cite Soleil are the sons and daughters of the country. Their rights are violated when they cannot eat; their rights are violated when they cannot go to school. We must work with all sectors, the opposition and the elite, to improve their lives. We are committed to working with them and we will not rest until we do that."
"We have to protect the rights of every citizen," Aristide added, "but we must also protect those who are visiting Haiti and who live in Haiti."
In Cite Soleil, people are preparing to protect themselves. "I don't think that this government will change, and I don't think that the opposition will change, either," says Dessalines Jacques, a muscular man who takes his name from Haiti's greatest hero, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, creator of the national flag and victor over the colonizing French. This Dessalines, clad in a blue tank top, has just finished inspecting bags of weapons—9mms, shotguns, and M-1s—that Cite Soleil has held in its grasp to ensure it will never again be defenseless.
He says the people need a rache manyok, a peasant expression that literally means to "pull up your manioc"—a root vegetable—but is used by militants to mean getting rid of something tainted or corrupt. "We could form a new political movement, but we cannot do it on our own," he says. "We need all of Haiti's nine departments, plus the Tenth Department"—the name Aristide gave to the estimated 1 million Haitians living abroad—"because we are the children of the Tenth Department. And they know that their children are suffering here."
However shakily, Aristide remains in control; he was re-elected in November 2000 with little opposition. That would have come from the Convergence Démocratique coalition, a motley group of social democrats and ex-authoritarian functionaries with scant public support and pronounced distaste for the Haitian masses. But Convergence members contended the parliamentary elections held earlier were tabulated to favor Aristide's Lavalas party, so they sat out the presidential round.
The Organization of American States has been attempting to broker a deal ever since. Following a mysterious attack on the National Palace by nearly two dozen gunmen last December 17, thousands of armed Aristide partisans, including the youth of Cite Soleil, took to the streets, burning down headquarters and private homes affiliated with the Convergence and, in their words, "defending our palace and defending our president."
Accusations of electoral rigging from Convergence have led to the suspension of $500 million of desperately needed international aid. The group is further demanding that the government not only pay reparations but also disarm militant government supporters. In the meantime, capital residents witness daily scenes of armed convoys of Lavalas officials—who have been continually embroiled in scandal—speeding by in bulletproof SUVs as street children wash their faces in puddles of rainwater.
Some in the slums say they're not ready to abandon faith in their president's promise of reform. "We cannot forget what Aristide has been for us, and we will always be on his side when we see things being done," says Wily Sauvenur, a studious, bearded young man. Sauvenur (not his real name) is carrying a manila envelope containing the freshly printed stationery of a new political movement, the Organizasyon Revolisyone Chalo Jaklen, named after a murdered pro-democracy activist and founded the day militants stormed the National Palace. "But we will not support this or any government when we see nothing being done, and right now we see him sitting with the gwo manje—"high-living political types"—and living like them. Now is not like the days of the coup d'état. We're armed and we're very determined to change this country and they know that, and they will have to deal with us."
Haiti's poor have always had to fight. "In 1991, when the military made Aristide go and began killing our families, we were 10, 12—we were small kids," says Labanier, another self-described political activist. "We are not militants out of the blue. Our fathers and mothers were already militants, against Duvalier, against the military, because it was always bad here and people here always cling onto the dream that things can change."
The chimere, as the largely male and jobless contingent of Haitian society is often called, have been used as a political tool in Haiti for many years. Government and opposition leaders alike draw on the clannish—but not necessarily criminal—gang culture powered by the very real threats young men face in the slums.
"My mother died in '91 when FRAPH came and killed her in Cite Soleil, then they kidnapped my father in 1994 and killed him, too," says Pierre Fabienne, who rallied government partisans on the streets after being contacted by Haitian National Police forces in the early morning hours of December 17. "One day I think the people will stand up to defend their rights. If they keep doing this, if Aristide kills me, if he kills Labanier, all the gangs will come out and he will lose his power. We'll have a rache manyok again."
In the surreal landscape that can be Haiti today—pro-bin Laden graffiti scrawled on crumbling walls, former comedians rallying pro-government partisans with apocalyptic anti-foreign rhetoric—the situation of the militants of Cite Soleil and other neighborhoods is perhaps the clearest sign of just how grave things can become. "One day, man, I'd like to be able to give up this politics," says Fabienne, looking down the hill at the shacks and the naked, laughing children. "If not, I'll die and I couldn't do anything for myself."
Fabienne remembers the days of the U.S. invasion that returned Aristide to power. Ten years old then, he became something of a mascot to the visiting American soldiers and the journalists who accompanied them. He shined the boots of General Henry Shelton, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, "so they looked like mirrors," he says, and one American photographer even bought him some basic photo equipment, which he wore strung around his neck with obvious pride.
"I've done too much work for politics," Fabienne says, though he refuses to give up hope that Haiti can change. "Now, too many people hate me, and they hate what I say. But it's for this I try to help my little son, so we can arrive at a new place."
Haitian Militants Losing Faith in President’s Promise of Reform
by Michael Deibert
August 28 - September 3, 2002
The Village Voice
(Read the original here)
Pierre Fabienne cradles his baby in his arms as his girlfriend, a shy-eyed beauty, stands in the doorway of their home on a noisy lane in Port-au-Prince's impoverished Cite Soleil quarter. Fabienne, a gang leader and supporter of embattled Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was instrumental in organizing a cease-fire among most of the district's warring factions last February. He hasn't gotten much in return for his efforts at diplomacy.
"I've sat with Aristide many times and I still have nothing," says Fabienne (not his real name).
"I still have the same room that I pay $300 for six months"—about U.S. $50—"no TV, no nothing, and Aristide knows that I'm a militant for change. He knows I fight for him. When he has something in Port-au-Prince, he calls us. When he wants people to go to his rally in Leogane, he calls us. When he's afraid of a coup d'état, he calls us. He wants us to stay in Cite Soleil, so no one hears about Cite Soleil, so he can call on us whenever he needs us to do something."
In Haiti's ramshackle and decaying capital of 2 million, where exuberantly colored tap-tap buses speed through congested streets blaring sinuous compas music and dark, mysterious mountains rise out of the bay, Cite Soleil's 200,000 residents have long formed the backbone of support for Aristide. Just north of Fort Dimanche—a former prison and torture center favored by former dictators Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier now turned into a squatter camp—and pinioned away from the rest of the city by dusty, potholed Route Nationale 1, Cite Soleil is a place where political activism and a criminal element born of desperate poverty exist side by side.
The tension between the two worlds exploded last month when Amiot Metayer, a political militant and gang leader, was freed by machine-gun-wielding members of his "Cannibal Army," who attacked the Gonaives jail he was being held in with a bulldozer. Metayer had been arrested on suspicion of ordering buildings torched during an outbreak of violence with a rival gang leader. Upon his release, he denounced Aristide, vowing to "fight to the death" any attempt to put him back in prison.
Once, people like Metayer and Fabienne celebrated Aristide. After his first election in 1990, it was the people of the slums who danced in the streets, carrying Aristide's picture and rejoicing at the ouster of the military dictatorship. When Aristide was himself ousted in a bloody coup d'état the next year, the residents of Cite Soleil fought for his return. They endured the nighttime terror of raids by the FRAPH (Front Révolutionnaire Pour l'Avancement et le Progrès d'Haiti) death squads, and often turned up tortured on narrow muddy lanes for uttering the deposed president's name.
Today, however, it is these same militants, claiming they feel forgotten and betrayed, who have begun to call for Aristide's removal, and for the dismissal of both his ruling Lavalas Family political party and Haiti's roundly loathed political opposition, the Convergence Democratique coalition. They argue it's the only way to restore the hope of a just nation that people in the district had fought for for so long. This is no polite debate.
In May, three local activists were shot dead by police, who later claimed to have been attacked by gangs. Local residents, for their part, charged the activists were shot while arriving at an arranged meeting with police. The killings triggered two days of shooting between police and gangs, leaving a pervasive suspicion among locals that, having outlived their usefulness, the militants have become targets.
When asked about the situation at a recent press conference, Aristide replied: "The people of Cite Soleil are the sons and daughters of the country. Their rights are violated when they cannot eat; their rights are violated when they cannot go to school. We must work with all sectors, the opposition and the elite, to improve their lives. We are committed to working with them and we will not rest until we do that."
"We have to protect the rights of every citizen," Aristide added, "but we must also protect those who are visiting Haiti and who live in Haiti."
In Cite Soleil, people are preparing to protect themselves. "I don't think that this government will change, and I don't think that the opposition will change, either," says Dessalines Jacques, a muscular man who takes his name from Haiti's greatest hero, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, creator of the national flag and victor over the colonizing French. This Dessalines, clad in a blue tank top, has just finished inspecting bags of weapons—9mms, shotguns, and M-1s—that Cite Soleil has held in its grasp to ensure it will never again be defenseless.
He says the people need a rache manyok, a peasant expression that literally means to "pull up your manioc"—a root vegetable—but is used by militants to mean getting rid of something tainted or corrupt. "We could form a new political movement, but we cannot do it on our own," he says. "We need all of Haiti's nine departments, plus the Tenth Department"—the name Aristide gave to the estimated 1 million Haitians living abroad—"because we are the children of the Tenth Department. And they know that their children are suffering here."
However shakily, Aristide remains in control; he was re-elected in November 2000 with little opposition. That would have come from the Convergence Démocratique coalition, a motley group of social democrats and ex-authoritarian functionaries with scant public support and pronounced distaste for the Haitian masses. But Convergence members contended the parliamentary elections held earlier were tabulated to favor Aristide's Lavalas party, so they sat out the presidential round.
The Organization of American States has been attempting to broker a deal ever since. Following a mysterious attack on the National Palace by nearly two dozen gunmen last December 17, thousands of armed Aristide partisans, including the youth of Cite Soleil, took to the streets, burning down headquarters and private homes affiliated with the Convergence and, in their words, "defending our palace and defending our president."
Accusations of electoral rigging from Convergence have led to the suspension of $500 million of desperately needed international aid. The group is further demanding that the government not only pay reparations but also disarm militant government supporters. In the meantime, capital residents witness daily scenes of armed convoys of Lavalas officials—who have been continually embroiled in scandal—speeding by in bulletproof SUVs as street children wash their faces in puddles of rainwater.
Some in the slums say they're not ready to abandon faith in their president's promise of reform. "We cannot forget what Aristide has been for us, and we will always be on his side when we see things being done," says Wily Sauvenur, a studious, bearded young man. Sauvenur (not his real name) is carrying a manila envelope containing the freshly printed stationery of a new political movement, the Organizasyon Revolisyone Chalo Jaklen, named after a murdered pro-democracy activist and founded the day militants stormed the National Palace. "But we will not support this or any government when we see nothing being done, and right now we see him sitting with the gwo manje—"high-living political types"—and living like them. Now is not like the days of the coup d'état. We're armed and we're very determined to change this country and they know that, and they will have to deal with us."
Haiti's poor have always had to fight. "In 1991, when the military made Aristide go and began killing our families, we were 10, 12—we were small kids," says Labanier, another self-described political activist. "We are not militants out of the blue. Our fathers and mothers were already militants, against Duvalier, against the military, because it was always bad here and people here always cling onto the dream that things can change."
The chimere, as the largely male and jobless contingent of Haitian society is often called, have been used as a political tool in Haiti for many years. Government and opposition leaders alike draw on the clannish—but not necessarily criminal—gang culture powered by the very real threats young men face in the slums.
"My mother died in '91 when FRAPH came and killed her in Cite Soleil, then they kidnapped my father in 1994 and killed him, too," says Pierre Fabienne, who rallied government partisans on the streets after being contacted by Haitian National Police forces in the early morning hours of December 17. "One day I think the people will stand up to defend their rights. If they keep doing this, if Aristide kills me, if he kills Labanier, all the gangs will come out and he will lose his power. We'll have a rache manyok again."
In the surreal landscape that can be Haiti today—pro-bin Laden graffiti scrawled on crumbling walls, former comedians rallying pro-government partisans with apocalyptic anti-foreign rhetoric—the situation of the militants of Cite Soleil and other neighborhoods is perhaps the clearest sign of just how grave things can become. "One day, man, I'd like to be able to give up this politics," says Fabienne, looking down the hill at the shacks and the naked, laughing children. "If not, I'll die and I couldn't do anything for myself."
Fabienne remembers the days of the U.S. invasion that returned Aristide to power. Ten years old then, he became something of a mascot to the visiting American soldiers and the journalists who accompanied them. He shined the boots of General Henry Shelton, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, "so they looked like mirrors," he says, and one American photographer even bought him some basic photo equipment, which he wore strung around his neck with obvious pride.
"I've done too much work for politics," Fabienne says, though he refuses to give up hope that Haiti can change. "Now, too many people hate me, and they hate what I say. But it's for this I try to help my little son, so we can arrive at a new place."
Haiti's battered faith
Haiti's battered faith
Impoverished, terrorized, their elections corrupted, the country's people still believe in their hero, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
-
By Michael Deibert
Salon.com
(Read the original here)
June 27, 2000 Haiti, a country I love and where I lived for months in 1997, seems once again to be drifting, inexorably, toward its own terrible, particular marriage of anarchy and dictatorship. In the run-up to the parliamentary elections that were held May 21 (where former president Jean Bertrand-Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party won 16 of 19 Senate seats outright), the country witnessed a spate of political violence on a level not seen since the dark days of Raul
Cedras' military junta of the early 1990s.
In the space of six months, Jean Dominique, the country's most respected journalist, was gunned down outside his radio station, an opposition campaign director was macheted to death inside his home and the campaign offices of opposition party Espace de Concertation were burned to the ground by a mob chanting pro-Lavalas slogans and calling for the death of Espace's leader, former mayor of Port-au-Prince Evans Paul. Recently, the president of Haiti's electoral council fled to the United States, fearing for his life after he refused to sign off on the election results.
Members of various opposition groups were jailed in advance of last week's announcement of the electoral results. The Lavalas government has given explanations for these "detainments" ranging from the accusation that those arrested were accumulating firearms in preparation for a strike against the government, to saying that the detained were being threatened and that they were taken into protective custody for their own good as a "preventative measure." Meanwhile, the disputed count has Lavalas taking 16 of the 17 available Senate seats and likely to control both houses of Parliament.
While a second round of voting has been indefinitely postponed, the elections so far have been marred by allegations of fraud. The opposition has declared the results invalid, vowing to sit out the runoff elections. People murmur that the Organization of American States (OAS) electoral monitors are trying to shove a sham election down the country's throat just so all the international types can go home feeling that their money was well spent on "democratic" development programs, since some form of democracy was restored in 1994. Although the OAS recently released a statement calling the methodology of the vote tally "incorrect," there are many who think that it is too little, too late.
This situation is all the more troubling because Fanmi Lavalas ("lavalas" means "the flood" in Creole) is a political party whose dominant figure, Jean Bertrand-Aristide, has been the country's most outspoken, fearless champion of democratic rights. He fought for those rights during days when championing such a cause meant death.
Aristide is the preeminent political figure in the country. It was Aristide who spoke out against the Tonton Macoutes and human rights abuses of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier's regimes. Aristide, who continued the democratic struggle under the military regimes of Henri Namphy and Prosper Avril, men who found it politically expedient to massacre voters in 1987 on Ruelle Vaillant at Port-au-Prince, and then again in 1988 at the Cathedral St. Jean-Bosco while Aristide, then a practicing Catholic priest, was celebrating Mass.
It was Aristide and Lavalas, also, who were chased out of the country by a military coup in 1991 (after Aristide had become Haiti's first democratically elected president) and then returned to power by the U.S. Marines in 1994. Barred from serving consecutive terms as president, Aristide reluctantly handed over power to his protege, Rene Preval, and is said to be waiting until he can again run for (and almost certainly win) the presidency of Haiti in 2001.
Haitians, meanwhile, are left wondering whether they will have a heroic, visionary Nelson Mandela or an authoritarian, scapegoating Robert Mugabe (two other third-world leaders who came to power on a tide of popular movements) on their hands come that time.
Sadly, as I found out, the hard facts of Haiti don't make it easy to stay a hero for long.
"These are difficult times in Haiti," said Mirlande Manigat, an unsuccessful candidate for the Senate. Manigat is a member of the Assembly of Progressive National Democrats (RDNP), and a constitutional law professor at the University of Quisqueya in the capital. "The many political parties in Haiti reflect the polarization of Haitian society, and one party wins over 90 percent of the vote? Impossible."
A pleasant, highly educated woman, Manigat is the wife of onetime Haitian president Leslie Manigat. Her husband (whom Haitians had never really warmed to and whose election many regarded as fraudulent itself) was booted out of the post in 1988 in the chaos of post-Duvalier Haiti by Gen. Henri Namphy, a vicious dictator now alleged to be slowly and quietly drinking himself to death in exile in the Dominican Republic.
"My political party doesn't believe in violence or dictatorial force, so we now have no recourse ... We are heading for a gloomy time in Haiti." She looked down at her desk, and then wistfully out the window of her university office. "I didn't expect this for my country, now."
The climate of violence affects everyone here. A shellshocked Reuters correspondent, just arrived from the States, appeared at the house I was staying at in Port-au-Prince to inform us that his car had been detained as a group of young men ran past, smashing bottles and carrying tires under their arms. Word on the street had it that they were angry because Lavalas still hadn't paid them for their "work" during the elections. Zenglendos (armed thugs) stuck a gun in my friend's sister's face as she sat stuck in traffic on a downtown street. Finding notebooks that indicated she was a student, they threw them back at her through the car window as they drove away on their motorcycles.
As a friend of mine, a wealthy progressive mulatto, said, "The security situation here is not good." The fact that the streets of a city of 2 million people are empty at 8 p.m. is testimony enough to that.
I got a taste of how unstable that situation was firsthand when a group of friends and I ventured out one night to a hotel in the affluent suburb of Petionville. We went to see a concert by Sweet Micky, the legendary "president" of compas, Haiti's singularly slinky and sensual popular music. Micky is an unrepentant supporter of the 1991 coup against Aristide, and is as famous for his scabrous double-entendres as for his anti-Lavalas politics. His sweaty, exhilarating shows are known to attract a raucous crowd of ex-secret police, soldiers and gang members.
Sure enough, once we arrived among the massive, dressed-to-kill crowd, the audience scattered over the demurely arranged deck chairs and around a pair of illuminated pools -- not once but three times -- as groups of men drew their guns on one another, spitting invective and threatening violence. After one particularly nasty stampede, where I badly twisted my ankle knocking over a table to get away from any potentially flying bullets, a teenage Haitian boy got up with his girlfriend from their own pile of scattered chairs, looked at me and said simply, "Blan," the Creole world for foreigner. He was doubled over with laughter.
But in the face of such terror, kindness persists. A musician insisted that I partake of his young daughter's first Communion cake. An evangelist minister drove me the whole, hot, long, dusty way from Aristide's foundation at Tabarre to drop me off in downtown Port-au-Prince and then refused to take any payment for his services. A Haitian English teacher in a frayed suit who had lived near my own home in Brooklyn for 14 years began a conversation with me, unsolicited, just to hear what New York was like these days. As we walked down the street, he asked me with a sad shake of his head to tell people "what they [Lavalas] did to these elections."
Cleansing rain showers began in a flash on an afternoon of brilliant sunshine, the city never darkening a bit. These people's kindnesses and the stunning beauty of this place are what make the story of what is happening in Haiti something you must know.
"I came down here in 1985 to research voodoo rhythms," says Richard Morse, a surpassingly tall New York transplant, as he takes a drag off an early morning cigarette. We're in the lobby of the hotel he runs, a space where his group, Ram, also plays regular weekly gigs. The hotel itself is one of the outstanding examples of gingerbread architecture in Port-au-Prince.
"I took over the hotel in 1987, formed a band in 1990 and stopped counting governments in 1996." He remembers a time in the early 1990s when coups and counter-coups gave the country three governments in 12 hours. Morse, a Haitian-American educated at Princeton, is not hopeful about the current state of affairs in his adopted country. He says the lines between the old military regimes and Lavalas are getting fuzzier.
"They're trying to set up a system where there's no opposition, and they're willing to try any methods necessary to attain that," he says. He disagrees with the Organization of American States' qualified approval of the election results. "The OAS is saying, 'There were some discrepancies, but everything's OK.' Well everything's not OK. They're killing people. They're killing people and people are going into hiding."
Lavalas essentially terrorized the opposition into hiding until two weeks before the elections, Morse believes. Then, with a statement from Aristide calling for peaceful elections, the violence miraculously ceased and the opposition was told to field their candidates in what was to be a competitive election.
Morse thinks that the OAS is trying to pretend an election is valid despite obvious fraud and unfair voting practices, as they are currently accused of doing in Peru. Critics say the OAS is lowering the bar for what is acceptable in democratic elections under the philosophy that some movement forward (i.e., the holding of elections at all) is better than no movement forward.
Reiterating Manigat's sentiment, Morse stated flatly: "The precedent has been set that if you want to be involved in politics in this country, you've got to get your guns together ... Nothing's changed, the teams have changed but not the modus operandi."
Before we switched to music and New York, he punctuated our political conversation simply. "You can get killed here for saying the shit I just said."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Yvon Neptune and I sat around a table inside the house where he keeps his offices in downtown Port-au-Prince. An intense man with his beard and hair going gray around the edges, Neptune is the spokesman for Fanmi Lavalas who recently defeated Manigat to become a senator in the Haitian parliament.
The room was cool and quiet, away from the noise of the street. Cabinets were arranged around the room, lined with books in several languages. A bird chattered away from somewhere in the garden out back.
"The Haitian people are pleased" with the results of the election, he said. "The majority of the voters are pleased, because the elections have been an opportunity for them to state their position on the situation in Haiti."
Over the course of an hour, Neptune spoke of the policy of agrarian reform begun under President Aristide and continued under Preval, and also about encouraging the private sector, local and foreign, to invest in Haiti. He alluded to the pending approval of agreements with the IMF and World Bank by the new parliament, and of the necessity of modernizing the administrative infrastructure of Haiti.
Asked about Lavalas' commitment to democracy, and about the violence preceding the election, Neptune commented that "we continually stated our position on violence in Haiti: denouncing the violence, condemning the violence. We encourage everybody, everybody," he continued, "not to let themselves be intimidated and to come out and vote. And that's exactly what they did."
When questioned about the attacks on the opposition headquarters, specifically the arson of Espace de Concertation's offices, Neptune shifted blame back to that party's leaders, and their supporters, whom he characterized as party "cronies."
"It is difficult to accept the value of the opposition, the weight of that opposition, because it is practically nonexistent except for a few politicians who would use the airwaves to make accusations," he said. "They often commit violent act [sic] or delegate people to commit violent acts and they go as far as posturing as Fanmi Lavalas partisans. It is very easy for them to do that."
The fire, he implied, was probably set by Espace themselves. "That particular organization failed to pay the rent on that building for almost five years."
Again and again, talking to people of various backgrounds and political stripes, I heard of how Aristide's party has been acting recently in ways that are reminiscent of dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. It's hard for many Haitans to forget that Papa Doc came to power on a wave of noirisme, resentment of the elite light-skinned minority. And recently Lavalas members on state-run TV labeled mulattos of any ideological orientation as the "racist bourgeoisie" for the crime of criticizing Fanmi Lavalas (and by extension Aristide).
Dany Toussaint, a close confidant of Aristide and a newly elected senator, dismissively referred to several prominent mulattos including journalist Jean Dominique as "ti wouj" (the little red ones). Dominique had been an advisor to Preval. But he was murdered shortly after Toussaint's comment. That fact, and Dominique's intimations about Toussaint's alleged involvement in drug trafficking, shifted suspicion for the journalist's killing onto Lavalas.
And yet.
One goes downtown in Port-au-Prince to the slums of Bel Air, near the Palais Nacional, the crowded, congested streets of Avenue Jean-Jacques Dessalines, or the dusty, chaotic suburb of Delmas (favored base for the zenglendos) where, as one friend told me, "everyone gets robbed." You go to these neighborhoods and you are struck by the absolute belief that exists there that "Titid" (as Aristide is affectionately known) is the only man capable of solving Haiti's multitude of problems, the only man who has ever stood up for the poor, the only one who ever gave a damn.
The desperate, begging street boys on the Champs Mars dress in rags and sleep on the ground. I talked to young men who have moved from the countryside to the Cite Soleil and La Saline slums who have never found a job and probably never will. Old women sell fritays and fried bananas under the withering noonday sun. "N'ap toujou renme w Titid" (We will always love you Aristide) is scrawled on crumbling walls.
Some words come to mind that Aristide spoke, just days before the coup of 1991 forced him out of office and Cedras and company began an orgy of bloodletting unrivaled even in Papa Doc's time. Aristide, his back to the wall, had been informed of rumors that a plot was about to topple him and perhaps kill him, and that lists of his supporters who were also to be killed were being drawn up. This was the famous "Pere Lebraun" speech, which many in the media never tire of referring to as the moment when Aristide began calling for the "necklacing" of the opposition:
Again, under the flag of pride, under this flag of dignity, under this flag of solidarity, hand in hand, one encouraging the other, [...] each one will pick up the message of respect that I share with you, this message of justice that I share with you, so that the word ceases to be the word and becomes action. [...] it's you who will find what you deserve, according to what the Mother Law of the country declares.
One alone, we are weak, Together we are strong. Together, together.
Together we are the flood (crowd: Frenzy!)
Do you feel proud? (crowd: Yeah!)
Do you feel proud? (crowd: Yeah!)
So true, that there is power in numbers. Whether or not Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas are committed to using their popularity -- and, more important, Aristide's sacred relationship with many in the country -- to push forward a program of real democratic change remains to be seen, but the signs are not encouraging.
If they fail, or succumb to the temptations for a naked power grab that have too long plagued Haiti's rulers, their betrayal of the Haitian people will be doubly bitter, coming as it does on the backs of all who followed Aristide's clarion call for democracy to their graves: the voters at Ruelle Vaillant, the martyrs of St. Jean Bosco and the thousands who died under the junta of 1991-94.
As always in Haiti, only time (and not words) will bear out their true intentions. But they're walking on a razor's edge.
"With a strong government and parliament, and a strong political program," Neptune said to me toward the end of our interview, "we'll spend less time bickering over power, so the majority who represent the people will have enough time to concentrate on their jobs. I think that's what needs to happen. And it is about to happen."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Michael Deibert is a writer living in New York City. He recently completed his first novel.
Impoverished, terrorized, their elections corrupted, the country's people still believe in their hero, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
-
By Michael Deibert
Salon.com
(Read the original here)
June 27, 2000 Haiti, a country I love and where I lived for months in 1997, seems once again to be drifting, inexorably, toward its own terrible, particular marriage of anarchy and dictatorship. In the run-up to the parliamentary elections that were held May 21 (where former president Jean Bertrand-Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party won 16 of 19 Senate seats outright), the country witnessed a spate of political violence on a level not seen since the dark days of Raul
Cedras' military junta of the early 1990s.
In the space of six months, Jean Dominique, the country's most respected journalist, was gunned down outside his radio station, an opposition campaign director was macheted to death inside his home and the campaign offices of opposition party Espace de Concertation were burned to the ground by a mob chanting pro-Lavalas slogans and calling for the death of Espace's leader, former mayor of Port-au-Prince Evans Paul. Recently, the president of Haiti's electoral council fled to the United States, fearing for his life after he refused to sign off on the election results.
Members of various opposition groups were jailed in advance of last week's announcement of the electoral results. The Lavalas government has given explanations for these "detainments" ranging from the accusation that those arrested were accumulating firearms in preparation for a strike against the government, to saying that the detained were being threatened and that they were taken into protective custody for their own good as a "preventative measure." Meanwhile, the disputed count has Lavalas taking 16 of the 17 available Senate seats and likely to control both houses of Parliament.
While a second round of voting has been indefinitely postponed, the elections so far have been marred by allegations of fraud. The opposition has declared the results invalid, vowing to sit out the runoff elections. People murmur that the Organization of American States (OAS) electoral monitors are trying to shove a sham election down the country's throat just so all the international types can go home feeling that their money was well spent on "democratic" development programs, since some form of democracy was restored in 1994. Although the OAS recently released a statement calling the methodology of the vote tally "incorrect," there are many who think that it is too little, too late.
This situation is all the more troubling because Fanmi Lavalas ("lavalas" means "the flood" in Creole) is a political party whose dominant figure, Jean Bertrand-Aristide, has been the country's most outspoken, fearless champion of democratic rights. He fought for those rights during days when championing such a cause meant death.
Aristide is the preeminent political figure in the country. It was Aristide who spoke out against the Tonton Macoutes and human rights abuses of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier's regimes. Aristide, who continued the democratic struggle under the military regimes of Henri Namphy and Prosper Avril, men who found it politically expedient to massacre voters in 1987 on Ruelle Vaillant at Port-au-Prince, and then again in 1988 at the Cathedral St. Jean-Bosco while Aristide, then a practicing Catholic priest, was celebrating Mass.
It was Aristide and Lavalas, also, who were chased out of the country by a military coup in 1991 (after Aristide had become Haiti's first democratically elected president) and then returned to power by the U.S. Marines in 1994. Barred from serving consecutive terms as president, Aristide reluctantly handed over power to his protege, Rene Preval, and is said to be waiting until he can again run for (and almost certainly win) the presidency of Haiti in 2001.
Haitians, meanwhile, are left wondering whether they will have a heroic, visionary Nelson Mandela or an authoritarian, scapegoating Robert Mugabe (two other third-world leaders who came to power on a tide of popular movements) on their hands come that time.
Sadly, as I found out, the hard facts of Haiti don't make it easy to stay a hero for long.
"These are difficult times in Haiti," said Mirlande Manigat, an unsuccessful candidate for the Senate. Manigat is a member of the Assembly of Progressive National Democrats (RDNP), and a constitutional law professor at the University of Quisqueya in the capital. "The many political parties in Haiti reflect the polarization of Haitian society, and one party wins over 90 percent of the vote? Impossible."
A pleasant, highly educated woman, Manigat is the wife of onetime Haitian president Leslie Manigat. Her husband (whom Haitians had never really warmed to and whose election many regarded as fraudulent itself) was booted out of the post in 1988 in the chaos of post-Duvalier Haiti by Gen. Henri Namphy, a vicious dictator now alleged to be slowly and quietly drinking himself to death in exile in the Dominican Republic.
"My political party doesn't believe in violence or dictatorial force, so we now have no recourse ... We are heading for a gloomy time in Haiti." She looked down at her desk, and then wistfully out the window of her university office. "I didn't expect this for my country, now."
The climate of violence affects everyone here. A shellshocked Reuters correspondent, just arrived from the States, appeared at the house I was staying at in Port-au-Prince to inform us that his car had been detained as a group of young men ran past, smashing bottles and carrying tires under their arms. Word on the street had it that they were angry because Lavalas still hadn't paid them for their "work" during the elections. Zenglendos (armed thugs) stuck a gun in my friend's sister's face as she sat stuck in traffic on a downtown street. Finding notebooks that indicated she was a student, they threw them back at her through the car window as they drove away on their motorcycles.
As a friend of mine, a wealthy progressive mulatto, said, "The security situation here is not good." The fact that the streets of a city of 2 million people are empty at 8 p.m. is testimony enough to that.
I got a taste of how unstable that situation was firsthand when a group of friends and I ventured out one night to a hotel in the affluent suburb of Petionville. We went to see a concert by Sweet Micky, the legendary "president" of compas, Haiti's singularly slinky and sensual popular music. Micky is an unrepentant supporter of the 1991 coup against Aristide, and is as famous for his scabrous double-entendres as for his anti-Lavalas politics. His sweaty, exhilarating shows are known to attract a raucous crowd of ex-secret police, soldiers and gang members.
Sure enough, once we arrived among the massive, dressed-to-kill crowd, the audience scattered over the demurely arranged deck chairs and around a pair of illuminated pools -- not once but three times -- as groups of men drew their guns on one another, spitting invective and threatening violence. After one particularly nasty stampede, where I badly twisted my ankle knocking over a table to get away from any potentially flying bullets, a teenage Haitian boy got up with his girlfriend from their own pile of scattered chairs, looked at me and said simply, "Blan," the Creole world for foreigner. He was doubled over with laughter.
But in the face of such terror, kindness persists. A musician insisted that I partake of his young daughter's first Communion cake. An evangelist minister drove me the whole, hot, long, dusty way from Aristide's foundation at Tabarre to drop me off in downtown Port-au-Prince and then refused to take any payment for his services. A Haitian English teacher in a frayed suit who had lived near my own home in Brooklyn for 14 years began a conversation with me, unsolicited, just to hear what New York was like these days. As we walked down the street, he asked me with a sad shake of his head to tell people "what they [Lavalas] did to these elections."
Cleansing rain showers began in a flash on an afternoon of brilliant sunshine, the city never darkening a bit. These people's kindnesses and the stunning beauty of this place are what make the story of what is happening in Haiti something you must know.
"I came down here in 1985 to research voodoo rhythms," says Richard Morse, a surpassingly tall New York transplant, as he takes a drag off an early morning cigarette. We're in the lobby of the hotel he runs, a space where his group, Ram, also plays regular weekly gigs. The hotel itself is one of the outstanding examples of gingerbread architecture in Port-au-Prince.
"I took over the hotel in 1987, formed a band in 1990 and stopped counting governments in 1996." He remembers a time in the early 1990s when coups and counter-coups gave the country three governments in 12 hours. Morse, a Haitian-American educated at Princeton, is not hopeful about the current state of affairs in his adopted country. He says the lines between the old military regimes and Lavalas are getting fuzzier.
"They're trying to set up a system where there's no opposition, and they're willing to try any methods necessary to attain that," he says. He disagrees with the Organization of American States' qualified approval of the election results. "The OAS is saying, 'There were some discrepancies, but everything's OK.' Well everything's not OK. They're killing people. They're killing people and people are going into hiding."
Lavalas essentially terrorized the opposition into hiding until two weeks before the elections, Morse believes. Then, with a statement from Aristide calling for peaceful elections, the violence miraculously ceased and the opposition was told to field their candidates in what was to be a competitive election.
Morse thinks that the OAS is trying to pretend an election is valid despite obvious fraud and unfair voting practices, as they are currently accused of doing in Peru. Critics say the OAS is lowering the bar for what is acceptable in democratic elections under the philosophy that some movement forward (i.e., the holding of elections at all) is better than no movement forward.
Reiterating Manigat's sentiment, Morse stated flatly: "The precedent has been set that if you want to be involved in politics in this country, you've got to get your guns together ... Nothing's changed, the teams have changed but not the modus operandi."
Before we switched to music and New York, he punctuated our political conversation simply. "You can get killed here for saying the shit I just said."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Yvon Neptune and I sat around a table inside the house where he keeps his offices in downtown Port-au-Prince. An intense man with his beard and hair going gray around the edges, Neptune is the spokesman for Fanmi Lavalas who recently defeated Manigat to become a senator in the Haitian parliament.
The room was cool and quiet, away from the noise of the street. Cabinets were arranged around the room, lined with books in several languages. A bird chattered away from somewhere in the garden out back.
"The Haitian people are pleased" with the results of the election, he said. "The majority of the voters are pleased, because the elections have been an opportunity for them to state their position on the situation in Haiti."
Over the course of an hour, Neptune spoke of the policy of agrarian reform begun under President Aristide and continued under Preval, and also about encouraging the private sector, local and foreign, to invest in Haiti. He alluded to the pending approval of agreements with the IMF and World Bank by the new parliament, and of the necessity of modernizing the administrative infrastructure of Haiti.
Asked about Lavalas' commitment to democracy, and about the violence preceding the election, Neptune commented that "we continually stated our position on violence in Haiti: denouncing the violence, condemning the violence. We encourage everybody, everybody," he continued, "not to let themselves be intimidated and to come out and vote. And that's exactly what they did."
When questioned about the attacks on the opposition headquarters, specifically the arson of Espace de Concertation's offices, Neptune shifted blame back to that party's leaders, and their supporters, whom he characterized as party "cronies."
"It is difficult to accept the value of the opposition, the weight of that opposition, because it is practically nonexistent except for a few politicians who would use the airwaves to make accusations," he said. "They often commit violent act [sic] or delegate people to commit violent acts and they go as far as posturing as Fanmi Lavalas partisans. It is very easy for them to do that."
The fire, he implied, was probably set by Espace themselves. "That particular organization failed to pay the rent on that building for almost five years."
Again and again, talking to people of various backgrounds and political stripes, I heard of how Aristide's party has been acting recently in ways that are reminiscent of dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. It's hard for many Haitans to forget that Papa Doc came to power on a wave of noirisme, resentment of the elite light-skinned minority. And recently Lavalas members on state-run TV labeled mulattos of any ideological orientation as the "racist bourgeoisie" for the crime of criticizing Fanmi Lavalas (and by extension Aristide).
Dany Toussaint, a close confidant of Aristide and a newly elected senator, dismissively referred to several prominent mulattos including journalist Jean Dominique as "ti wouj" (the little red ones). Dominique had been an advisor to Preval. But he was murdered shortly after Toussaint's comment. That fact, and Dominique's intimations about Toussaint's alleged involvement in drug trafficking, shifted suspicion for the journalist's killing onto Lavalas.
And yet.
One goes downtown in Port-au-Prince to the slums of Bel Air, near the Palais Nacional, the crowded, congested streets of Avenue Jean-Jacques Dessalines, or the dusty, chaotic suburb of Delmas (favored base for the zenglendos) where, as one friend told me, "everyone gets robbed." You go to these neighborhoods and you are struck by the absolute belief that exists there that "Titid" (as Aristide is affectionately known) is the only man capable of solving Haiti's multitude of problems, the only man who has ever stood up for the poor, the only one who ever gave a damn.
The desperate, begging street boys on the Champs Mars dress in rags and sleep on the ground. I talked to young men who have moved from the countryside to the Cite Soleil and La Saline slums who have never found a job and probably never will. Old women sell fritays and fried bananas under the withering noonday sun. "N'ap toujou renme w Titid" (We will always love you Aristide) is scrawled on crumbling walls.
Some words come to mind that Aristide spoke, just days before the coup of 1991 forced him out of office and Cedras and company began an orgy of bloodletting unrivaled even in Papa Doc's time. Aristide, his back to the wall, had been informed of rumors that a plot was about to topple him and perhaps kill him, and that lists of his supporters who were also to be killed were being drawn up. This was the famous "Pere Lebraun" speech, which many in the media never tire of referring to as the moment when Aristide began calling for the "necklacing" of the opposition:
Again, under the flag of pride, under this flag of dignity, under this flag of solidarity, hand in hand, one encouraging the other, [...] each one will pick up the message of respect that I share with you, this message of justice that I share with you, so that the word ceases to be the word and becomes action. [...] it's you who will find what you deserve, according to what the Mother Law of the country declares.
One alone, we are weak, Together we are strong. Together, together.
Together we are the flood (crowd: Frenzy!)
Do you feel proud? (crowd: Yeah!)
Do you feel proud? (crowd: Yeah!)
So true, that there is power in numbers. Whether or not Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas are committed to using their popularity -- and, more important, Aristide's sacred relationship with many in the country -- to push forward a program of real democratic change remains to be seen, but the signs are not encouraging.
If they fail, or succumb to the temptations for a naked power grab that have too long plagued Haiti's rulers, their betrayal of the Haitian people will be doubly bitter, coming as it does on the backs of all who followed Aristide's clarion call for democracy to their graves: the voters at Ruelle Vaillant, the martyrs of St. Jean Bosco and the thousands who died under the junta of 1991-94.
As always in Haiti, only time (and not words) will bear out their true intentions. But they're walking on a razor's edge.
"With a strong government and parliament, and a strong political program," Neptune said to me toward the end of our interview, "we'll spend less time bickering over power, so the majority who represent the people will have enough time to concentrate on their jobs. I think that's what needs to happen. And it is about to happen."
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About the writer
Michael Deibert is a writer living in New York City. He recently completed his first novel.
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