Haiti-R.Dominicaine : Michèle Pierre-Louis demande de mettre fin aux abus contre les Haitiens en territoire voisin
lundi 25 mai 2009
Propos de la première ministre Michèle Pierre-Louis, le 21 mai 2009, à l’occasion de l’investiture au ministère des affaires étrangères de la partie nationale de la Commission mixte haitiano-dominicaine
Document soumis à AlterPresse le 23 mai 2009
(Read the original article here)
Je ne saurais procéder ce matin à l’ouverture des travaux de la première réunion de la Partie Haïtienne de la Commission Mixte Haitiano-Dominicaine sans évoquer d’entrée de jeu les problèmes qui se posent depuis quelques semaines de part et d’autre de la frontière et qui méritent une attention particulière.
S’il est vrai que le rôle de la Commission Mixte est de prendre en compte les questions d’Etat entre les deux pays qui se partagent l’île et de les porter à un niveau de dialogue et de compréhension réciproque, les évènements récents demeurent encore l’expression de sentiments complexes et des comportements qui en découlent, qui ont marqué et marquent encore les relations entre les 2 pays.
Les agressions répétées, les assassinats gratuits, les harcèlements, les rapatriements intempestifs, les incidents frontaliers dont sont victimes nos concitoyens et concitoyennes interpellent notre conscience et questionnent notre humanité. Cela n’a que trop duré. C’est pourquoi j’ai le ferme espoir qu’en abordant avec sérénité les multiples aspects de nos relations avec nos voisins qui seront traités au sein de la partie haïtienne de la Commission Mixte, et en souhaitant que la partie dominicaine en fasse autant, nous pourrons ensemble assainir le climat et nous engager dans un nouveau paradigme de coopération.
Sachant que je devais procéder au lancement des travaux de la Partie Haïtienne, mon intérêt pour l’histoire m’a portée à revisiter le Dr. Jean Price-Mars qui dans son importante étude « La République d’Haïti et la République Dominicaine – Les aspects divers d’un problème d’histoire, de géographie et d’ethnologie », avait fait le constat suivant : « Dans la différence des origines démographiques de l’une et l’autre colonie – différence de degrés et non d’espèces – est incluse l’une des données essentielles du problème dont se coloreront les relations haitiano-dominicaines quand dans la genèse des siècles naîtront plus tard les deux entités nationales qui se partageront la domination des terres dont jadis s’enorgueillirent les Couronnes d’Espagne et de France. »
Et plus loin :
« L’Histoire dira la cruauté des éléments humains dans le brassage des contacts multiséculaires – malgré les reniements de style que démentent le miroir brisé des amalgames somatiques, la bigarrure indéfinie des nuances et l’instabilité déconcertante des formes.
… Dans le processus des événements apparaîtra en dernière analyse, le spectre grimaçant d’une perspective de destruction de l’une ou l’autre nationalité par l’une ou l’autre communauté dans la fascination des doctrines de supériorité de races, de classes ou de culture. »
C’était en 1953. Le Dr. Price-Mars avait laissé son poste à la Direction du Ministère des Relations Extérieures de l’époque en 1946, pour aller inaugurer la nouvelle Mission haïtienne transformée en Ambassade Extraordinaire à Ciudad Trujillo. Il resta deux ans à la tête de cette Mission et c’est au cours de ce séjour qu’il commença à amasser les documents qui lui serviront plus tard à écrire son livre. Ses constats sont sans appel, mais ils restent liés à un moment historique précis. Aujourd’hui, 56 plus tard où en sommes-nous ?
Faut-il rappeler que les relations avec la République Dominicaine sont parmi les plus anciennes de l’histoire diplomatique d’Haïti ? Et malgré les soubresauts qui la caractérisent et les traces douloureuses laissées par l’histoire dont Price-Mars nous rappelle l’origine, un certain nombre d’accords récents ont été des tentatives de rapprochement et de coopération.
Rappelons en passant l’Accord de coopération signé entre les 2 Etats en mai 1979 et plus récemment encore la décision prise par les Présidents Préval et Balaguer de créer en 1996 la Commission Mixte Haitiano-Dominicaine comme instrument susceptible d’instituer le dialogue et le respect mutuel dans les relations de coopération. Cette commission a tenu 4 réunions alternativement à Santo Domingo et à Port-au-Prince et 10 thèmes d’intérêt réciproque ont été abordés parmi lesquels le commerce et l’investissement, la sécurité, le tourisme et bien sûr les questions migratoires et frontalières.
La dernière session s’est tenue en octobre 1999 à Santo Domingo, et depuis les consultations intergouvernementales ont été suspendues. Je salue donc l’initiative du Président Préval de relancer les travaux de la Commission Mixte que nous inaugurons aujourd’hui, et je me réjouis de la composition de la partie haïtienne qui rassemble, aux côtés des Ministres et hauts fonctionnaires de l’Etat, des représentants du secteur privé, de la société civile et du secteur syndical.
Je proposerais, en accord avec le Ministre des Affaires Etrangères et tous les membres de la Partie Haïtienne, que nos travaux commencent par faire le bilan de la coopération haitiano-dominicaine dans ses aspects protéiformes, et de définir par la suite un plan, un calendrier et des modalités de travail pour les mois à venir que nous proposerons à la Partie Dominicaine, en tenant compte des préoccupations de l’heure. Je souhaite que nous parvenions à dépasser les pronostics pessimistes du Dr. Price-Mars et que les deux Etats, au plus haut niveau, montrent que l’entente qui existe actuellement entre les deux chefs d’Etat se répande dans les deux sociétés, effaçant les scories qui habitent encore un certain imaginaire imprégné de barbaries coloniales.
Je cite souvent le Président Mandela que j’ai écouté dire un jour alors que je visitais l’Afrique du Sud en 1996, « nous n’avons pas le droit d’oublier le passé, mais nous avons le devoir de le transcender. »
Il nous faut élever le débat et aborder avec sérieux, dans le respect mutuel, les problèmes auxquels font face les deux Etats dans leurs relations de part et d’autre de l’île, de manière à relever les défis et à définir un avenir meilleur et harmonieux pour les deux peuples.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Letter to Sunday Times regarding Haiti
Greetings. My name is Michael Deibert, a journalist, author, and Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York. Having covered Haiti for many years for a variety of publications (including a 2001-2003 tenure as the Reuters correspondent in the country), I authored a book about the 1994-2004 era there, Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press, 2005). As Haiti receives so little press attention, I was pleased to see the Sunday Times devote so much space to the historian Alex von Tunzelmann's account of her recent visit to Haiti (Haiti: the land where children eat mud).
There is, however, a significant factual error in Ms. Von Tunzelmann's story, as well as a conclusion that I believe has not been born out by recent history.
In the article, Ms. Von Tunzelmann writes that Haiti's former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was "ousted in a highly controversial UN intervention in 2004."
When Mr. Aristide flew into exile on the morning of February 29, 2004 (I was in Haiti at the time), there was no multinational force of any kind deployed anywhere in the country. Following Mr. Aristide's departure, a Multinational Interim Force (MIF), authorized by Security Council resolution 1529, entered the country, under the command of Brigadier General Ronald Coleman. The MIF was responsible for peacekeeping duties in Haiti until transferring authority to the Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti (MINUSTAH) on June 1, 2004, a ceremony at which I was present, three months after Mr. Aristide's depature. It is fairly simple for even those new to Haiti, such as Ms. Von Tunzelmann, to find such information, here for example. It is factually inaccurate for Ms. Von Tunzelmann to say that the United Nations was in any way responsible for Mr. Aristide's departure.
A second point: Ms. Von Tunzelmann writes that Mr. Aristide's party, Fanmi Lavalas, which is currently a shadow of its former strength and riddled by internal divisions, is "the most popular party among the impoverished majority."
In Haiti’s 2006 parliamentary elections (the country's last nationwide ballot in which Fanmi Lavalas participated), Fanmi Lavalas gained only 4 seats in the country's senate, the same amount as political parties such as the Fusion des Sociaux-Démocrates Haïtienne (FUSION) and the Organisation du Peuple en Lutte (OPL). By comparison, the Lespwa party of Haitian President René Préval won 11 seats. In Haiti's lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, Fanmi Lavalas failed to win a single seat in 6 of the country's 9 departments, while Lespwa won seats in all but two. and Fusion won seats in six departments. In the Chamber, Lespwa garnered a total of of 19 seats, the Alliance Démocratique (Alyans) took 13 seats and the OPL 10 seats. Fanmi Lavalas won only 6 seats.
As Haiti is unarguably a poor-majority country, how could one thus argue that Fanmi Lavalas is "the most popular party among the impoverished majority?" On what factual basis does Ms. Von Tunzelmann make her claim?
Many thanks for your time in reading this email, and I hope that the Times will consider issuing a clarification, certainly on the first point and perhaps on the second, as well. Though a small, impoverished country, I believe that Haiti is no less deserving of rigorous scholarship than any other nation.
Very best regards,
Michael Deibert
There is, however, a significant factual error in Ms. Von Tunzelmann's story, as well as a conclusion that I believe has not been born out by recent history.
In the article, Ms. Von Tunzelmann writes that Haiti's former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was "ousted in a highly controversial UN intervention in 2004."
When Mr. Aristide flew into exile on the morning of February 29, 2004 (I was in Haiti at the time), there was no multinational force of any kind deployed anywhere in the country. Following Mr. Aristide's departure, a Multinational Interim Force (MIF), authorized by Security Council resolution 1529, entered the country, under the command of Brigadier General Ronald Coleman. The MIF was responsible for peacekeeping duties in Haiti until transferring authority to the Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti (MINUSTAH) on June 1, 2004, a ceremony at which I was present, three months after Mr. Aristide's depature. It is fairly simple for even those new to Haiti, such as Ms. Von Tunzelmann, to find such information, here for example. It is factually inaccurate for Ms. Von Tunzelmann to say that the United Nations was in any way responsible for Mr. Aristide's departure.
A second point: Ms. Von Tunzelmann writes that Mr. Aristide's party, Fanmi Lavalas, which is currently a shadow of its former strength and riddled by internal divisions, is "the most popular party among the impoverished majority."
In Haiti’s 2006 parliamentary elections (the country's last nationwide ballot in which Fanmi Lavalas participated), Fanmi Lavalas gained only 4 seats in the country's senate, the same amount as political parties such as the Fusion des Sociaux-Démocrates Haïtienne (FUSION) and the Organisation du Peuple en Lutte (OPL). By comparison, the Lespwa party of Haitian President René Préval won 11 seats. In Haiti's lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, Fanmi Lavalas failed to win a single seat in 6 of the country's 9 departments, while Lespwa won seats in all but two. and Fusion won seats in six departments. In the Chamber, Lespwa garnered a total of of 19 seats, the Alliance Démocratique (Alyans) took 13 seats and the OPL 10 seats. Fanmi Lavalas won only 6 seats.
As Haiti is unarguably a poor-majority country, how could one thus argue that Fanmi Lavalas is "the most popular party among the impoverished majority?" On what factual basis does Ms. Von Tunzelmann make her claim?
Many thanks for your time in reading this email, and I hope that the Times will consider issuing a clarification, certainly on the first point and perhaps on the second, as well. Though a small, impoverished country, I believe that Haiti is no less deserving of rigorous scholarship than any other nation.
Very best regards,
Michael Deibert
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
"Coup d’Etat" or "Coup de Broom" in Haiti and at WBAI?
(Note: The following post was penned by Daniel Simidor, a longtime progressive activist from New York's vibrant Haitian-American community. I have known Daniel, first via the internet and later in person, for some years and, though we don't agree on all issues (Cuba, for example), I have found him to be one of the more eloquent voices from Haiti's democratic left writing regularly in English. This note was originally posted to the Haiti discussion list of Bob Corbett, and is re-printed here with Daniel's permission. MD)
"Coup d’Etat" or "Coup de Broom" in Haiti and at WBAI?
This week’s issue of Kim Ives’ newspaper, “Haiti Liberté” (May 6-12, 2009), carries not one but two lengthy denunciations against me, one in Haitian Creole, the other in English. Normally this would be cause for glee – all this free promotion! Plus I believe with Mao that to be attacked by one’s enemies is proof of one’s good work. But a quick look at Haiti-Liberté reveals a sadly irrelevant and useless newspaper. There just isn’t any glory in being thrashed in Haiti-Liberté, because Haiti-Liberté doesn’t matter to anyone outside the small clique that runs it.
My preference was in fact to shrug off this Lilliputian event, until its authors managed to get it past Bob Corbett’s guidelines against personal attacks and posts not directly related to Haiti. In spite of its “This Week in Haiti” heading, the article in question is only tangentially related to Haiti. It is about a power struggle over WBAI, a radio station in the middle of the FM dial in New York, between an incompetent gang of Afrocentric sinecurists, and the majority of the Local Station Board who want to bring-in new management to save the station from bankruptcy. (Accusations and instances of racism unfortunately abound on both sides.) Kim Ives and his sidekick Marquez Osson, who authored one of the two diatribes in question, run a Haiti program on WBAI, which they stole from a Haitian radio collective, with the complicity of the Justice and Unity Coalition sinecurists in charge of the station. I told that story last week in a letter to the Interim Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation which owns WBAI. I apologize for the tedium involved in recounting it here.
I first became aware of Marquez Osson in the late 1970s when he was producing a Haitian radio program called “Mayi Anmè” (Bitter Corn) on WFUV, the Fordham University student radio station. Mayi Anmè was so dogmatic that the Haitian community literally ignored it. (In comparison another program, “L’Heure Haitienne,” also on a student-run radio station, Columbia University’s WKCR, was the most influential media outlet in the Haitian community.) Marquez’s radio skills have not dramatically improved in the intervening years. This partly explains why “Haiti: the Struggle Continues” has virtually no impact in the Haitian community, in spite of WBAI’s broad reach. But his faithful service to Kim Ives has afforded him a comfortable window from where he can throw mud at other people, without glory or much
impact.
The way Osson tells the story, he and Kim Ives expelled me and the members/supporters of MOKAM and the Batay Ouvriye workers organization, who were the majority of the Haitian radio collective at WBAI, because we were supporters of the “coup” that overthrew “democratically-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide” in February 2004. My sin, among others, was an open letter I wrote in Dec. 2002, calling on Aristide to resign in order to save the country an unnecessary bloodbath and the shame of a second foreign military occupation under his mandate. The Haitian left – arguably with one exception – also echoed the growing outcry against the corruption of Aristide’s Lavalas party and against Aristide’s own use of gang
violence to consolidate his power.
The one exception in question was the so-called National Popular Party (PPN), a group run by Kim Ives’ stepfather, Ben Dupuy, that was opportunistically loyal to Aristide. Interestingly, Kim’s promotion of PPN ended abruptly with his split from Ben two years or so ago. Now Kim has no one to support, except Aristide and the Lavalas factions that are vying against each other for power. The problem for Kim is that he needs Aristide more than Aristide needs him, and Aristide knows it. Aristide also knows that Kim’s and Ben’s allegiances lie elsewhere (in Ben’s case with Ben alone), and that the two men can and have turned against him in the past without so much as a “Bonsoir, Titide!”
The claim by Osson and his acolytes that the Haitian left conspired with the U.S. embassy and the Haitian bourgeoisie to overthrow Aristide is a bold-faced lie that, repeated often enough, only convinced those whose semblance of sanity needed them to believe that Aristide could do nothing wrong. In reality, Batay Ouvriye’s conclusion that Aristide and his subalterns and accomplices on the one hand, and the Haitian bourgeoisie with its Group 184 on the other,
were “two dirty butt cheeks in the same torn trousers,” summed up quite well the Haitian left’s attitude at that juncture. The two groups of contenders belonged to the same side of history, and what the left was calling on the people to do was to sweep them aside with a vigorous “coup de balai” (Coup de Broom). What happened in Feb. 2004 is best described as “the coup that wasn’t.” Aristide once again called on the U.S. for protection. If he was deceived in the process and if the U.S. found the other side more reliable the second time around, well, that’s just what happens when small-time players try to fool around with Uncle Sam.
The “democratically-elected” mantra that was supposed to protect Aristide from his enemies and from his own misdeeds still has some currency even today in some quarters. But it should not come as a surprise how much some of the actors in this story look down on democracy itself. It is obvious that Kim Ives and his Workers World Party’s support of the likes of Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and Manual Noriega had more to do with those dictators’ perceived willingness to stand up to the U.S., than with democracy or the fate of the people under them.
But what about Aristide’s own willingness to stand up to the U.S? As a priest he railed in the past against U.S. imperialism, but as head of state he shamelessly begged the U.S. for money, for troops and for personal enrichment deals. His private guard was a select group of 60 Steele Foundation mercenaries that cost the impoverished Haitian people the neat sum of $9 million annually. We won’t even go into his unabashed neoliberal policies and his corrupt privatization of state assets. You call that standing up to U.S. imperialism?
The last point I want to make is about Kim Ives’ own aspiration to lead the Haitian community. Last week in the Dominican Republic, a Haitian man by the name of Carlos Mérilus was publicly decapitated on the assumption that his brother had killed a Dominican man. The lynching was witnessed and applauded by many, and coming on the heels of other anti-Haitian acts in recent months and years, raises the specter of another mass killing of Haitians similar to what happened in the Dominican Republic in 1937. One week after Mérilus’ lynching, a smiling photo of his presumed assassin, one Roosevelt de Leon Lara who had surrendered to the police, was published in the Dominican press. The subtext: gruesome as his act might have been, there goes an ordinary Dominican man standing up for his family’s honor against the invading Haitians.
How did "Haiti-Liberté" honor the innocent victim in this instance? With a color photo of his decapitated body splashed on the front page! Kim Ives not only stripped Mérilus of his humanity, he did not even print the victim’s name in his newspaper. The denunciation of my humble person commanded far more space than Mérilus’s horrible execution. A May Day demonstration organized by Batay Ouvriye and other progressive groups that was savagely repressed by the Haitian government’s special police was similarly derided by Haiti-Liberté as a ragtag group of pro-coup opportunists who were getting a measure of their own medicine! And that was the extent of the Haiti coverage in this week’s Haiti-Liberté. The point here is that there is ample room for Haiti-Liberté to write about Haiti. But when it comes to speaking for Haitians, whether in print or on the radio, it’s time for Kim Ives to step aside and let Haitians speak for themselves!
Daniel Simidor
"Coup d’Etat" or "Coup de Broom" in Haiti and at WBAI?
This week’s issue of Kim Ives’ newspaper, “Haiti Liberté” (May 6-12, 2009), carries not one but two lengthy denunciations against me, one in Haitian Creole, the other in English. Normally this would be cause for glee – all this free promotion! Plus I believe with Mao that to be attacked by one’s enemies is proof of one’s good work. But a quick look at Haiti-Liberté reveals a sadly irrelevant and useless newspaper. There just isn’t any glory in being thrashed in Haiti-Liberté, because Haiti-Liberté doesn’t matter to anyone outside the small clique that runs it.
My preference was in fact to shrug off this Lilliputian event, until its authors managed to get it past Bob Corbett’s guidelines against personal attacks and posts not directly related to Haiti. In spite of its “This Week in Haiti” heading, the article in question is only tangentially related to Haiti. It is about a power struggle over WBAI, a radio station in the middle of the FM dial in New York, between an incompetent gang of Afrocentric sinecurists, and the majority of the Local Station Board who want to bring-in new management to save the station from bankruptcy. (Accusations and instances of racism unfortunately abound on both sides.) Kim Ives and his sidekick Marquez Osson, who authored one of the two diatribes in question, run a Haiti program on WBAI, which they stole from a Haitian radio collective, with the complicity of the Justice and Unity Coalition sinecurists in charge of the station. I told that story last week in a letter to the Interim Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation which owns WBAI. I apologize for the tedium involved in recounting it here.
I first became aware of Marquez Osson in the late 1970s when he was producing a Haitian radio program called “Mayi Anmè” (Bitter Corn) on WFUV, the Fordham University student radio station. Mayi Anmè was so dogmatic that the Haitian community literally ignored it. (In comparison another program, “L’Heure Haitienne,” also on a student-run radio station, Columbia University’s WKCR, was the most influential media outlet in the Haitian community.) Marquez’s radio skills have not dramatically improved in the intervening years. This partly explains why “Haiti: the Struggle Continues” has virtually no impact in the Haitian community, in spite of WBAI’s broad reach. But his faithful service to Kim Ives has afforded him a comfortable window from where he can throw mud at other people, without glory or much
impact.
The way Osson tells the story, he and Kim Ives expelled me and the members/supporters of MOKAM and the Batay Ouvriye workers organization, who were the majority of the Haitian radio collective at WBAI, because we were supporters of the “coup” that overthrew “democratically-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide” in February 2004. My sin, among others, was an open letter I wrote in Dec. 2002, calling on Aristide to resign in order to save the country an unnecessary bloodbath and the shame of a second foreign military occupation under his mandate. The Haitian left – arguably with one exception – also echoed the growing outcry against the corruption of Aristide’s Lavalas party and against Aristide’s own use of gang
violence to consolidate his power.
The one exception in question was the so-called National Popular Party (PPN), a group run by Kim Ives’ stepfather, Ben Dupuy, that was opportunistically loyal to Aristide. Interestingly, Kim’s promotion of PPN ended abruptly with his split from Ben two years or so ago. Now Kim has no one to support, except Aristide and the Lavalas factions that are vying against each other for power. The problem for Kim is that he needs Aristide more than Aristide needs him, and Aristide knows it. Aristide also knows that Kim’s and Ben’s allegiances lie elsewhere (in Ben’s case with Ben alone), and that the two men can and have turned against him in the past without so much as a “Bonsoir, Titide!”
The claim by Osson and his acolytes that the Haitian left conspired with the U.S. embassy and the Haitian bourgeoisie to overthrow Aristide is a bold-faced lie that, repeated often enough, only convinced those whose semblance of sanity needed them to believe that Aristide could do nothing wrong. In reality, Batay Ouvriye’s conclusion that Aristide and his subalterns and accomplices on the one hand, and the Haitian bourgeoisie with its Group 184 on the other,
were “two dirty butt cheeks in the same torn trousers,” summed up quite well the Haitian left’s attitude at that juncture. The two groups of contenders belonged to the same side of history, and what the left was calling on the people to do was to sweep them aside with a vigorous “coup de balai” (Coup de Broom). What happened in Feb. 2004 is best described as “the coup that wasn’t.” Aristide once again called on the U.S. for protection. If he was deceived in the process and if the U.S. found the other side more reliable the second time around, well, that’s just what happens when small-time players try to fool around with Uncle Sam.
The “democratically-elected” mantra that was supposed to protect Aristide from his enemies and from his own misdeeds still has some currency even today in some quarters. But it should not come as a surprise how much some of the actors in this story look down on democracy itself. It is obvious that Kim Ives and his Workers World Party’s support of the likes of Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and Manual Noriega had more to do with those dictators’ perceived willingness to stand up to the U.S., than with democracy or the fate of the people under them.
But what about Aristide’s own willingness to stand up to the U.S? As a priest he railed in the past against U.S. imperialism, but as head of state he shamelessly begged the U.S. for money, for troops and for personal enrichment deals. His private guard was a select group of 60 Steele Foundation mercenaries that cost the impoverished Haitian people the neat sum of $9 million annually. We won’t even go into his unabashed neoliberal policies and his corrupt privatization of state assets. You call that standing up to U.S. imperialism?
The last point I want to make is about Kim Ives’ own aspiration to lead the Haitian community. Last week in the Dominican Republic, a Haitian man by the name of Carlos Mérilus was publicly decapitated on the assumption that his brother had killed a Dominican man. The lynching was witnessed and applauded by many, and coming on the heels of other anti-Haitian acts in recent months and years, raises the specter of another mass killing of Haitians similar to what happened in the Dominican Republic in 1937. One week after Mérilus’ lynching, a smiling photo of his presumed assassin, one Roosevelt de Leon Lara who had surrendered to the police, was published in the Dominican press. The subtext: gruesome as his act might have been, there goes an ordinary Dominican man standing up for his family’s honor against the invading Haitians.
How did "Haiti-Liberté" honor the innocent victim in this instance? With a color photo of his decapitated body splashed on the front page! Kim Ives not only stripped Mérilus of his humanity, he did not even print the victim’s name in his newspaper. The denunciation of my humble person commanded far more space than Mérilus’s horrible execution. A May Day demonstration organized by Batay Ouvriye and other progressive groups that was savagely repressed by the Haitian government’s special police was similarly derided by Haiti-Liberté as a ragtag group of pro-coup opportunists who were getting a measure of their own medicine! And that was the extent of the Haiti coverage in this week’s Haiti-Liberté. The point here is that there is ample room for Haiti-Liberté to write about Haiti. But when it comes to speaking for Haitians, whether in print or on the radio, it’s time for Kim Ives to step aside and let Haitians speak for themselves!
Daniel Simidor
Monday, May 4, 2009
Un haïtien décapité en pleine rue à Santo Domingo
Haïti-République Dominicaine
Un haïtien décapité en pleine rue à Santo Domingo sous les applaudissements d’un public chauffé à blanc
Le Ministre haïtien des Affaires Etrangères, Alrich Nicolas, condamne « cet acte de barbarie prémédité » et appelle les autorités dominicaines à assumer leurs responsabilités
dimanche 3 mai 2009,
Radio Kiskeya
(Read the original article here)
Un ressortissant haïtien dont l’identité n’a pas encore été établie, a été décapité samedi dernier dans le quartier de Herrera, à Buenos Aires (Santo Domingo) en présence d´une foule réunie spécialement pour assister à l’acte macabre, rapporte le quotidien dominicain Listin Diario.
Accusé d´avoir, la veille, décapité le citoyen dominicain Leon Lara dans le quartier de Bayona, le ressortissant haïtien, identifié à tort comme l’auteur de l’acte, selon des témoins, a été horriblement torturé avant d’être exécuté au moyen d’une hache. La tête de la victime a été projetée à plusieurs mètres de son corps, sous les applaudissements du public constitué, entre autres, d’adolescents dont certains ont filmé l’horreur au moyen de leurs cellulaires.
Aucune arrestation n´a été effectuée sur le champ, rapporte le journal.
Réagissant dimanche soir à cet acte horrible dans une conversation téléphonique avec Radio Kiskeya, le chancelier haïtien, Alrich Nicolas, a vigoureusement condamné cet « acte de barbarie prémédité », en référence au fait qu’un public avait été convoqué pour assister à l’exécution. Il a en cens déploré l’absence d’autorités policières pour empêcher la perpétration de l’acte qui s’est pourtant étalée sur une certaine durée.
Le ministre haïtien des affaires étrangères a tout aussi bien condamné l’acte imputé à un citoyen haïtien relatif à la décapitation vendredi soir d’un citoyen dominicain.
Estimant que de tels incidents peuvent affecter les bonnes relations entre les deux pays, M. Nicolas a demandé aux autorités dominicaines d’assumer leurs responsabilités face à ces actes et à leurs auteurs, quels qu’ils soient.
En ce sens, une note officielle sera transmise dès lundi au gouvernement dominicain par le Ministère haïtien des Affaires Etrangères, informe M. Nicolas.
Parallèlement, une note de protestation a déjà été transmise aux autorités dominicaines par l’Ambassade d’Haïti à Santo Domingo.
Un haïtien décapité en pleine rue à Santo Domingo sous les applaudissements d’un public chauffé à blanc
Le Ministre haïtien des Affaires Etrangères, Alrich Nicolas, condamne « cet acte de barbarie prémédité » et appelle les autorités dominicaines à assumer leurs responsabilités
dimanche 3 mai 2009,
Radio Kiskeya
(Read the original article here)
Un ressortissant haïtien dont l’identité n’a pas encore été établie, a été décapité samedi dernier dans le quartier de Herrera, à Buenos Aires (Santo Domingo) en présence d´une foule réunie spécialement pour assister à l’acte macabre, rapporte le quotidien dominicain Listin Diario.
Accusé d´avoir, la veille, décapité le citoyen dominicain Leon Lara dans le quartier de Bayona, le ressortissant haïtien, identifié à tort comme l’auteur de l’acte, selon des témoins, a été horriblement torturé avant d’être exécuté au moyen d’une hache. La tête de la victime a été projetée à plusieurs mètres de son corps, sous les applaudissements du public constitué, entre autres, d’adolescents dont certains ont filmé l’horreur au moyen de leurs cellulaires.
Aucune arrestation n´a été effectuée sur le champ, rapporte le journal.
Réagissant dimanche soir à cet acte horrible dans une conversation téléphonique avec Radio Kiskeya, le chancelier haïtien, Alrich Nicolas, a vigoureusement condamné cet « acte de barbarie prémédité », en référence au fait qu’un public avait été convoqué pour assister à l’exécution. Il a en cens déploré l’absence d’autorités policières pour empêcher la perpétration de l’acte qui s’est pourtant étalée sur une certaine durée.
Le ministre haïtien des affaires étrangères a tout aussi bien condamné l’acte imputé à un citoyen haïtien relatif à la décapitation vendredi soir d’un citoyen dominicain.
Estimant que de tels incidents peuvent affecter les bonnes relations entre les deux pays, M. Nicolas a demandé aux autorités dominicaines d’assumer leurs responsabilités face à ces actes et à leurs auteurs, quels qu’ils soient.
En ce sens, une note officielle sera transmise dès lundi au gouvernement dominicain par le Ministère haïtien des Affaires Etrangères, informe M. Nicolas.
Parallèlement, une note de protestation a déjà été transmise aux autorités dominicaines par l’Ambassade d’Haïti à Santo Domingo.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC/HAITI: Border Market Embodies Inequalities
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC/HAITI: Border Market Embodies Inequalities
By Elizabeth Eames Roebling
Inter Press Service
ELIAS PINA/BELLEDARE, Apr 29, 2009 (IPS) - Elias Pina sits in a fertile high mountain valley on the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Twice weekly, the side streets fill with Haitians and Dominicans trading produce, used clothing, kitchen equipment and shoes.
The merchants, predominantly women, pay a fee to the town for a place to sit and spread their merchandise. There is an occasional man selling low-end electronics, sunglasses, and pirated DVDs. Most of the men have tables while the women sit on the ground.
Juanita Duran, 48, comes down twice a month to buy because the used clothing here is cheaper than up in the northern market in Dajabon, Dominican Republic, where she lives.
Juanita returned to her native country after working for 18 years in the United States, taking care of the elderly. She speaks with mixed emotions of her life back there.
Read the full article here.
By Elizabeth Eames Roebling
Inter Press Service
ELIAS PINA/BELLEDARE, Apr 29, 2009 (IPS) - Elias Pina sits in a fertile high mountain valley on the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Twice weekly, the side streets fill with Haitians and Dominicans trading produce, used clothing, kitchen equipment and shoes.
The merchants, predominantly women, pay a fee to the town for a place to sit and spread their merchandise. There is an occasional man selling low-end electronics, sunglasses, and pirated DVDs. Most of the men have tables while the women sit on the ground.
Juanita Duran, 48, comes down twice a month to buy because the used clothing here is cheaper than up in the northern market in Dajabon, Dominican Republic, where she lives.
Juanita returned to her native country after working for 18 years in the United States, taking care of the elderly. She speaks with mixed emotions of her life back there.
Read the full article here.
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