Haiti human rights organizations denounce threats against judge investigating rape allegations against CEP president Josué Pierre-Louis

Des organisations de droits humains interpellent le CSPJ sur de graves menaces contre un juge d’instruction

Lettre de 4 organisations et plateforme d’organisations de défense des droits humains aux membres du Conseil Supérieur du Pouvoir Judiciaire (CSPJ)


Document transmis à AlterPresse

(Read the original article here)

Honorables Membres du CSPJ

Les organisations de promotion et de défense des droits humains, signataires de la présente, soucieuses de l’indépendance du pouvoir judiciaire, s’empressent de porter à votre connaissance un fait qui nécessite votre plus urgente intervention.

En effet, M^e Josué PIERRE-LOUIS, président du CEP contesté, est inculpé de viol sur la personne de Marie Danielle BERNADIN. Le Parquet près du Tribunal de Première Instance de Port-au-Prince, saisi du dossier en date du 28 novembre 2012, l’a transféré au Cabinet d’Instruction pour enquête judiciaire. Choix a été fait du Juge d’Instruction Joseph Jeudilien FANFAN, pour instruire l’affaire. A date, diverses étapes ont déjà été franchies dans le cadre de cette instruction notamment, l’audition de plusieurs personnes dont la victime ainsi qu’une interdiction de départ à l’encontre de M^e Josué PIERRE-LOUIS.

Aujourd’hui, le Magistrat Joseph Jeudilien FANFAN fait l’objet de graves menaces de la part d’un autre Juge d’Instruction du Tribunal de Première Instance de Port-au- Prince, M^e Ikenson EDUME.

Ce dernier, frère de M^e Josué PIERRE LOUIS, a entre autres, promis au Magistrat instructeur qu’il s’en prendrait à lui, s’il n’enterrait pas le dossier car, en aucune façon, il ne peut accepter que l’image de son frère soit ternie.

Devant la gravité des menaces proférées, le Juge d’Instruction Joseph Jeudilien FANFAN a sollicité et obtenu du doyen du Tribunal de Première Instance de Port-au-Prince, M^e Raymond JEAN MICHEL, la convocation en urgence d’une Assemblée des Juges. Cette assemblée s’est tenue le 18 décembre 2012 avec la participation de vingt-six (26) Magistrats. Au cours de la rencontre, le Juge d’Instruction Ikenson EDUME a réitéré en présence de tous les Magistrats, ses menaces vis-à-vis du Magistrat instructeur Joseph Jeudilien FANFAN. Invité par le doyen à faire le retrait de ses graves propos contre un collègue Magistrat, le Juge Ikenson EDUME a catégoriquement refusé.

Dans l’après-midi du 18 décembre 2012, une délégation du Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH) a rencontré le Magistrat instructeur Joseph Jeudilien FANFAN qui a confirmé les menaces dont il est l’objet, ce, depuis le lundi 17 décembre 2012.

Honorables Membres du CSPJ

Les organisations de promotion et de défense des droits humains tiennent à rappeler à votre attention que le Magistrat Ikenson EDUME est un ancien suppléant Juge de Paix de Delmas révoqué pour malversations le 5 août 2010 par l’ex-Ministre de la Justice et de la Sécurité Publique Paul DENIS. En effet, ce Magistrat, par son fonctionnement, remplaçait le greffe. De plus, était impliqué dans le détournement, à Delmas, de corps du délit (bijoux volés, argent, volailles, etc.) et la libération de plusieurs prévenus contre des versements de pots de vin.

Mécontent, le Juge de Paix titulaire de Delmas d’alors, M^e Al Duniel DIMANCHE, aujourd’hui Juge d’Instruction près le Tribunal de Première Instance de Port-au- Prince, demanda au Juge Ikenson EDUME de mettre fin à ces pratiques malsaines et de laisser le greffe jouer son rôle. Il s’en est suivi une altercation entre les deux (2) Magistrats et l’intervention du Parquet de Port-au-Prince à travers le substitut Commissaire du Gouvernement d’alors Berge O. SURPRIS.

Suite aux rapports reçus au Ministère de la Justice et de la Sécurité Publique contre M^e Ikenson EDUME, il a été décidé de le renvoyer pour malversations. Il est revenu dans le système en catimini en juillet 2012 à la faveur des nominations irrégulières réalisées par l’actuel Ministre de la Justice et de la Sécurité Publique, M^e Jean Renel SANON et a recommencé à travailler en octobre 2012.

Aujourd’hui, c’est ce Magistrat qui profère des menaces sur la personne du Juge d’Instruction Joseph Jeudilien FANFAN en charge de l’affaire Marie Danielle BERNADIN contre Josué PIERRE-LOUIS.
Honorables Membres du CSPJ

Le cas du Magistrat Ikenson EDUME est prévu et puni par le Code Pénal haïtien. De plus, c’est sur la base de l’article 22 de la Loi créant le Conseil Supérieur du Pouvoir Judiciaire que les organisations de promotion et de défense des droits humains signataires de la présente saisissent votre organe. En effet, cet article stipule qu’« En matière disciplinaire, le Conseil Supérieur du Pouvoir Judiciaire est saisi :

• Soit par le Ministre de la Justice et de la Sécurité Publique ;

• Soit par le Doyen du Tribunal Civil, en ce qui concerne les magistrats du siège en poste dans le
ressort de son tribunal et pour les juges du 
Tribunal de Paix ;

• Soit par le Président de la Cour d’Appel, en ce qui concerne les 
magistrats du siège en poste dans le ressort de sa cour ;

• Soit, selon les modalités énoncées à l’article suivant, par toute personne estimant avoir été directement victime du comportement d’un magistrat susceptible d’engager sa responsabilité disciplinaire. »

De plus, le procès-verbal de l’assemblée générale des Juges du Tribunal de Première Instance de Port-au-Prince tenue le 18 décembre 2012 et relatant les menaces du Juge Ikenson EDUME contre le Juge d’Instruction Joseph Jeudilien FANFAN est un élément de preuve tangible, établissant les menaces susmentionnées.

Honorables Membres du CSPJ,

La justice, pour être efficace et crédible, doit être indépendante des pouvoirs exécutif et législatif ainsi que des parties et des forces sociopolitiques et économiques. La justice doit être aussi indépendante par rapport aux individus corrompus et aux délinquants, quels qu’ils soient.
Pourquoi, ayant pour mission principale d’enquêter, de dénoncer et de saisir les autorités compétentes sur les cas de violation de droits humains, les organisations de promotion et de défense des droits humains, signataires de la présente, portent, par devant vous, ces faits qui constituent un exemple des cas typiques de pressions et de menaces qui entravent généralement les enquêtes des Magistrats instructeurs.

Les organisations de promotion et de défense des droits humains signataires de la présente vous exhortent donc à prendre des mesures conservatoires à l’encontre du Magistrat Ikenson EDUME et vous encouragent vivement à porter le Ministère de la Justice et de la Sécurité Publique à prendre toutes les dispositions nécessaires et urgentes afin de garantir la sécurité du Juge et Juge d’instruction M^e Joseph Jeudilien FANFAN. Espérant que prompte suite sera donnée à la présente, les organisations de promotion et de défense des droits humains signataires de la présente, vous prient de recevoir Honorables Membres du CSPJ, l’expression de leurs respectueux hommages.

Liste des Organisations signataires :

• Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH)

• Plateforme des Organisations Haïtiennes de Droits Humains (POHDH)

• Solidarite Fanm Ayisyèn (SOFA)

• Kay Fanm

Pour authentification :

Antonal MORTIME
Secrétaire Exécutif POHDH

Roger Gaillard, Historian, interviewed on TNH, 1982

Letter from Haiti

Letter from Haiti 


By Michael Deibert


The Huffington Post

(Please read the original article here)


During late November, the clouds hung low over Port-au-Prince, pregnant with the threat of rain. When it did issue forth, life in Haiti's overpopulated capital, partially destroyed in a January 2010 earthquake but still vibrant between the Caribbean Sea and looming mountains, continued irrepressibly on. Moto-taxi drivers plied the streets in their jaunty raincoats, and people continued hawking anything there was to sell under any surface providing shelter from the deluge.

In the middle of one Saturday afternoon, with clouds rumbling down from the mountainside, a group of about 200 young men commandeered the central Place St. Pierre square in the tony suburb of Petionville, halting traffic and periodically hurling bottles in various directions (one of which shattered at my feet). The lads thumped their chests for about three hours before moving on. Their message was that life was too expensive for people in Haiti and that Haiti's President Michel Martelly, whom they said they had previously supported, wasn't doing enough to ameliorate the situation.

Martelly, in his previous life perhaps the most well-known (and most frequently cross-dressing) purveyor of the sinuous Haitian music known as konpa and popularly known as Sweet Micky or Tèt Kale (Bald Head), was not even in the country at the time, a fact not lost on the protesters.

In office since May 2011, Martelly was winding up a long trip to Europe during which he addressed the European Parliament, attended the Ibero-American Summit in Spain and met with the Pope at the Vatican. He was even absent from Haiti during the must-attend 18 November anniversary of the Battle of Vertières, the 1803 clash during which the rebel Haitian army defeated the French near the northern city of Cap-Haïtien and thus paved the way for Haiti's declaration of independence soon thereafter.

"He wants to work well for the people," said a middle-aged taxi driver named Jackson plying the road near the airport, summing up popular sentiment. "But the problem is his entourage."

Elected to succeed René Préval, the only democratically-elected president in Haiti's 208 year history to finish his term in office (a feat the wily, white-bearded Préval managed twice), the political novice Martelly inherited a to-do list that would have daunted even the most skilled politico.

Much of the country's capital was leveled and some 200,000 people believed killed in the January 2010 earthquake, which at one point had left at least 1.5 million people homeless. Tent encampments dotted the capital and its environs and a cholera epidemic, almost certainly brought to the country by the rather-unloved UN peacekeeping mission in place since the 2004 ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has thus far killed more than 7,500 people.

The most basic services and healthcare remain out of reach of much of the nation's 10 million inhabitants, scattered in far-off provincial districts reached by badly decayed roads. A gradual diminution of Haiti's security situation since the tumultuous ballot that led to Martelly's election culminated last month with the spectacular arrest of Clifford Brandt, scion of one of Haiti's wealthiest families, as the alleged mastermind behind a long-running kidnapping ring.

Also arrested as part of the gang was the commander of a security unit from Martelly's National Palace (there has been no suggestion the president himself was involved), who entered prison as Calixte Valentin, a Martelly advisor accused of murder, exited it. Former members of the country's army, demobilized but not constitutionally disbanded by Aristide in 1995, continue to agitate for the force's reinstatement despite the existence of a police force - the Police Nationale d'Haïti or PNH - currently numbering some 10,000 recruits. A battle over the composition of the country's electoral council has raged for months.

"A stabilization process is taking place albeit a fragile one," says Mariano Fernández, the Chilean diplomat who heads the UN's peacekeeping mission, known by its acronym MINUSTAH, which is envisioned to be scaled back to around 6,300 military personnel in coming months. "We continue planning to reduce and reconfigure MINUSTAH in the coming years depending on the stability of the conditions."

The last caveat is an important one. Haiti's security forces have enjoyed a steadily-improving reputation since the 2006 inauguration of Martelly's predecessor Préval. It has been a marked change from Aristide's 2001-2004 tenure, when politically-connected partisans were inserted into the PNH regardless of their competency or culpability in various crimes, or that of a 2004-2006 interim government when police often made little distinction between armed pro-Aristide gangs and ordinary residents of the capital's poorer neighborhoods.

Until recently, the PNH were headed by Mario Andrésol, widely regarded as one of the most honest and competent officials in the country and who was replaced by Gotson Aurélus in August. Since then, something of a delicate realignment has been taking place. It is widely believed that Secretary of State for Public Security Reginald Delva exercises more operational control over the PNH than Minister of Justice Jean Renel Sanon, his nominal boss. A former senator, Joseph Lambert, now a Martelly advisor, is also spoken of as wielding influence beyond what one would expect.

Though the Brandt arrest was greeted with a gasp in much of the international community (this is, after all, the strata of society most international actors interact with) in Haiti the view was more circumspect.

"The bourgeois control the police with their money, and a lot of police officers also provide security for businesses and the private sector because there is no control, and they can receive more money for their work," says Pierre Espérance, the Executive Director of the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, Haiti's most prominent human rights organization. "Each kidnapping gang has its connection with the police."

Despite such realities, one of Martelly's chief plans of attack appears to be an attempt to re-band Haiti and change its relentlessly negative image from a place solely of natural disaster, coups, misery and death to one of a place open to investment and boasting a vibrant and tourist-friendly culture.

Though this approach has been rather too smugly sneered at by the international chattering class that comments on Haiti, most people I spoke with in the country actually saw its value and supported it in principle, even if they didn't quite understand why the president was spending so much time abroad.

There is some evidence that Martelly's approach may be succeeding. The president, ever the extrovert natural showman, would seem a perfect fit for such a campaign. In July, the president even declared a three day out-of-season Carnaval des fleurs (Carnival of Flowers) designed to highlight the country's flair for music and pageantry. The camps from the central part of the capital have mostly been cleared, but with some to their inhabitants relocated to a windswept moonscape situated on denuded land on a road leading north out of the city

A new industrial park in the country's north - which itself has hardly been free from controversy - was opened in October, with, among others, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and British billionaire Richard Branson in attendance. The lure of potential gold reserves in northern Haiti has brought a number of international mining companies, some with questionable records, to stake claims on huge swathes of land, creating economic potential but only of the most fraught kind.

Though the vast overpopulation of the capital - a consequence in part of international economic policies inflicted upon Haiti - helped lead to the vast death toll from the earthquake, the decentralization of economic and political power from Port-au-Prince still remains an agonizingly slow and complex process. Privately, many in Haiti's business community, intensely nationalistic at heart despite their comfortable economic status, complain the country has been "invaded" by foreign companies and non-governmental organizations.

In some economically struggling communities, the feeling is one of hopes delayed if not dashed entirely.

"We liked Martelly and we thought he would help a lot of people," says Pè Nico, a diminutive young man whose moniker ("Father Nico") belies his youthful appearance. "But this neighborhood has always been forgotten."

Pushing 30 years old but looking barely into his 20s and resplendent in a Miami Heat baseball cap, Pè Nico leads an armed faction in the capital's quartier populaire of St. Martin, an area of deeply-rutted roads and at times precarious-looking structures from which the PNH and MINUSTAH appear completely absent.

Pè Nico's baz say they voted - "99%" in their words - for Martelly. In their neighborhood, once a war zone and still subject to occasional bouts of violence, residents have been tending to the Partnership for Peace and Prosperity in Saint Martin, under whose aegis members of the private sector operating in the zone and local community leaders have sought dialogue and improvement in living conditions there. The two sides began talking in 2007 and, even through the earthquake and after, they are still talking. It is perhaps a hopeful sign.

I had known Martelly very slightly in his previous life as Sweet Micky. We spent a memorable evening more than a decade ago cruising through Port-au-Prince in his SUV with a loaded pistol between us as he bemoaned the state of Haiti and the irresponsibility of its leaders both political and economic, a scene depicted in a book I later wrote about the country.

When I visited Haiti in August 2011, just after Martelly's election, I found popular support for the colorful, eccentric president among the pep la, as Haiti's struggling class (which is to say almost everybody) is known, still high.

Despite the eroding of that hope when confronted with the immense challenge of governing Haiti and his own missteps, Haitians still seem to be giving Martelly the benefit of the doubt.
So many factors - rising food prices, civil unrest underwritten by various malefactors, another natural calamity - could change that. But in a country whose leaders have often promoted themselves through terror and abuse, Martelly - whose signature colour is pink - has offered something of a change of tone, however unorthodox.

On my last day in Haiti, purely by chance, my path overlapped with that of Michel Martelly.

Waiting at the airport to board my flight home, I saw Martelly's American Airlines plane fly in from Miami. As if on cue and so apt for a showman, the cloudy gloom that had plagued the capital for days broke and rays of brilliant golden sunshine spilled out of a blue sky. Diplomats, Haitian police officers in their crisp khaki uniforms and every airport worker that could sneak away from their job were standing there to greet him. He was going to be inaugurating a new arrival hall, they told me, then this week he would be leaving again, this time for Cuba.

Martelly disembarked from the plane, his bald head and smiling visage visible among the mostly smaller Haitians.

They cheered.


Michael Deibert's forthcoming book, Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair, will be published by Zed Books in cooperation with the Royal African Society, the International African Institute and the Social Science Research Council. His previous book, Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press, 2005), was praised by the Miami Herald as "a powerfully documented exposé" and by the San Antonio Express-News as "a compelling mix of reportage, memoir and social criticism."

Hommage a Préfète Duffaut

Hommage a  Préfète Duffaut

Dr Frantz Large

Tous ceux qui se rendent a la ville de Jacmel connaissent cet endroit précis de le route ou,  tel un flash  leur est donnée une première vue du lieu ou ils se  rendent : Jacmel.

Oui  c’est bien cela, un flash. Baignés de  soleil, les collines, les pâtés de maison, et, bien évidemment ce qui baigne tout, ce qui explique tout : la Mer

«  Un peuple prisonnier de la mer » disait Barthes au sujet de l’Iphigénie de Racine.

A Jacmel, la ville natale de Préfète, tout est prisonnier de la Mer : on l’entend gronder la nuit, lorsque tos les autres bruits se sont tus. C’est d’elle que vient la vie, mais c’est d’elle également que peut venir la mort.

Les figures architecturales de la Mer, aussi impressionnantes que fugaces, auront laissé peut être leur empreinte a la ville, traversée d’invraisemblables rues en escaliers, s’efforçant par deux bras de ceinturer la mer, et ne réussissant qu’a rendre cette dernière encore plus bouillonnante, encore pus incontrôlable.

Tout dans la vie du peintre jacmeilien Préfète Duffaut, gravite autour de la mer.

Il vient comme moi de Cyvadier,  ou l’air est saturé du sel de la mer, et ou un escalier  construit par mon oncle Felder  Large ( parrain du mariage de l’artiste ) permet  d’avoir accès  a la mer toute proche. C’est d’ailleurs l’un des fils de Felder , Michel, qui  , aux dires de Préfète, lui  aura donné, tout petit , sa première leçon de dessin.

Il a perdu  sa mère très tôt. Comme tout le monde à Cyvadier vit de la mer, on lui a appris à faire des  bateaux. 

L’expérience aidant, le groupe dont il fait partie reçoit davantage de commandes, et  il se retrouve, par la force des choses , à l’ ile de la Gonâve pour satisfaire à l’une d’ elles.

Et c’est la que l’histoire commence

L’histoire ou la Légende ? Qu’’est ce qui est l’un et qu’est ce qui  est l’autre ?

Apres tout qu’importe ?

Un soir  à l’ile de la  Gonâve, une belle dame lui est apparue, et lui a demandé de lui peindre un autel à son Eglise.

Oui….il sait peindre.  S’est il souvenu des leçons de Michel ? Sont-ce les illustrations qu’il  trouve dans les livres ? La vérité est qu’il passe tous les moments de liberté que lui laisse  la construction des tableaux à  couvrir de dessins ses  cahiers.  Ceux qu’il trouve  bien, il les colle sur les murs de sa cahute.

Oui il sait peindre, et à la Belle Dame il  peindra son autel.  Lors  de mon dernier voyage pour une journée de consultations a l’Anse a Galets, je l’ai cherché cet autel.  Je promets de le faire avec plus d’attention la prochaine fois.

Préfète  a répondu sans  arrière pensée à la demande de la  Belle dame, mais celle-ci n’oubliera pas ce geste.

A son  retour a Cyvadier, Préfète apprendra que des étrangers lui ont acheté ses petits dessins. 

A coté des billets , il y a une  enveloppe avec  la dedans une adresse à  PAP : le Centre d’Art.

On  est en 1944 : Préfète vient d’avoir 21 ans.

La fantastique aventure vient juste de débuter.

Deux théories s’affrontent alors au Centre d’Art,  une école d’art fondée par Dewitt Peters , un objecteur de conscience d’origine hollandaise envoyé par le gouvernement américain pour apprendre la peinture aux haïtiens

D’abord la thèse originale de Dewitt , qui  semble être celle d’artistes haïtiens comme Maurice Borno : apprendre aux haïtiens intéressés aux  arts plastiques à discipliner leur talent a l’intérieur des limites rigides de l’art classique.

Et puis , il y a la thèse de Selden Rodman, vice président du Centre d’Art : n’imposer aucune limite à l’imagination des artistes, leur fournir  uniquement les voies et moyens de s’exprimer totalement.
Bien heureusement c’est a Selden  Rodman que va être confié le soin de la décoration des murs de Cathédrale Sainte Trinité.

Pourquoi les murs de l’église épiscopale ? A ce  que m’a rapporté Selden Rodman, on aurait eu d’abord  le projet de décorer les murs de la cathédrale de PAP. L’idée- qui aura constitué toute sa vie l’obsession de Selden Rodman- était d’avoir un nouveau Rinascimento , de  faire de  la cathédrale de PAP l’équivalent de la Santa Maria della Rovere de Florence, des Obin Benoit Bazile Duffaut les nouveaux Giotto della  Francesca, Ghirlandajo et Botticelli.

Ceci dit le père Froisset ne l’entendait pas de cette oreille ; que voulez vous mettre sur les murs de ma cathédrale ?   Vociféra ce prélat  que les signes avant coureurs de Vatican 2 n’avaient en apparence pas effleuré.

On  se tourna vers l’église anglicane dont l’évêque  Voegeli accueillit l’idée avec enthousiasme.

Se mirent alors au travail des hommes qu’on se serait davantage attendu à voir décharger des sacs de marchandise qu’à manier des pinceaux.  Ces noms se sont déjà imposés parmi les grands noms de l’art mondial : Obin Bazile Benoit Bigaud, Leveque, Jasmin Joseph.

Parmi eux un jacmelien de 21 ans : Préfète Duffaut.

Préfète va avoir deux commandes :  la  Tentation du Christ et la Procession de la Croix.

Ces deux fresques, peintes avec du jaune d’œuf comme liant, et qui se trouvent Dieu seul sait  dans  quel état actuellement ne vont pas seulement constituer deux chefs  d’œuvre

Elles vont  complètement révolutionner l’écriture picturale

Prenons d’abord la  Tentation du Christ.

Jouant sur les contraintes de l’ouverture de la  fenêtre, Duffaut va avoir  l’idée géniale de dresser l’une en face de l’autre les deux tours de la Cathédrale de sa ville de Jacmel.

Au dessus de chacune des tours, les deux forces  primordiales de la création : jésus et Satan
Jésus est vêtu  de la robe rouge d’Ogoun le dieu de la guerre. Le diable est en noir, les murs de là cathédrale en blanc,  les couleurs sont d’une formidable intensité , en diapason avec celle du  drame qui se joue, oui d’une intensité insoutenable , même lorsqu’on les compare  à celles de l’autre jacmélien  de Sainte Trinité, Castera Bazille.

Mais il y  a plus : sur les murs de la cathédrale se trouvent des symboles étranges , issus d’on ne sait quel grimoire de  conjurations : araignées , images d’embarcation d’autres carrément indefinisssslbes.
Jamais  l’imagination ne s’était libérée avec  une telle puissance. 

Sur le mur d’en  face une autre composition de Duffaut : la Procession de la Croix. La  seule composition qui de prés ou de loin me rappelle l’œuvre de  Duffaut  est  « L’Entrée du Christ à  Bruxelles » d’Ensor.

Mais cette toile que Duffaut n’a évidemment pu avoir sous les yeux est loin d’avoir la puissance de celle du peintre jacmélien :

Cette dernière, même lorsqu’on l a  compare aux autres  œuvres de la Cathédrale Sainte Trinite, s’inscrit dans une logique de rupture.

Elle est la seule ou  aucune  mention n’est faite du sujet :  dans  la pièce en question,  il n’est,  du Christ  et de son supplice,  pas une trace

Il y a par contre autre chose,   quelque chose de puissant ,  quelque chose  qui  explique  tout :

La Route.

La route  qui se tourne et qui se  retourne 

Sur la route les promeneurs et de chaque  cote de la route, les points ou l’on s’arrête pour des motifs divers : il ya des boutiques  le bureau de police, le télégraphe.

Et puis la route s’élève, et s’élève et s’approche du ciel. Au dessus , pour tous ceux qui connaissent ma ville , il y  a le cimetière de Jacmel

Et de ce cimetière une vue de ce qui ceinture et  qui explique  notre ville : la mer.

Avec cette œuvre, un constructeur d’embarcations agrandit la thématique des arts plastiques d’un  nouveau titre : celui des villes imaginaires

Oh oui ces villes : on les a vues et revues et encore vues

Elles prennent corps  dans notre âme comme les murs de la Citadelle prennent corps  dans notre sol, comme la voix prenante de ti Paris et le tambour d'Azor pr4nnent corps dans nos tripes.

Elles sont bien sur, comme on l’a dit  sa ville , c'est-à-dire ma ville, Jacmel imprévisible Jacmel de tous les héroïsmes et de toues les douleurs, Jacmel a chaque instant ouvert sur la mer, mais elles sont également notre vie.

Parce que dans ces constructions qui  défient les lois de l’équilibre, dans ces routes sans début  ni fin, ces routes qui serpentent  a l’infini,  réveil de Damballah- Kundalini ou préfiguration du spiralisme que Franketienne nous donne comme la réponse dialectique a l’affrontement entre la ligne et le cercle, entre la progression et le statisme,  a travers cette route qui ne s’arrête jamais, c’est nous , c’est notre Destinée qui  est représentée dans un instantané saisissant de nos multiples moi, c’est l’expression saisissante de l’aphorisme de Patanjali : tout arrive en même  temps,  c’est la traque impitoyable de l’Etre a  travers ses catégories identitaires,  et puis…

Et puis enfin,  et  puis surtout, c’est la mise a nu, en nous , d’une puissance inimaginable de rêve et de tendresse.

Il aura fallu attendre Jacques Derrida et les post structuralistes pour nous entendre dire ce qu’ ici nous savions  depuis longtemps :  que l’œuvre d’art dessine le spectateur.

C’est  vrai.

En nous laissant capter par le  recourbement infini de ces rues et de ces ruelles, par l’éclat  de la mer et la pureté immaculée du ciel, c’est un nouveau moi qui se découvre un moi plus en phase avec ce qui l’entoure, un moi  plus libre et plus serein.

Ne nous y laissons pas tromper : si les  constructions de Duffaut défient toutes les lois physiques, si la mer par moments  semble plus haute que la terre et rejoint le ciel, à  aucun moment tout cela ne nous choque.

C’est que  celui qui savait construire des embarcations capables de  résister a la fureur des flots sait comment mettre à jour d’autres embarcations, qui  naviguent dans les méandres du  rêve avec la même assurance que les autres  se frayaient un chemin au sein  des ouragans

C’est que – par delà l’apparente anarchie de la composition- il  y a tout un jeu subtil d’équilibres, un maniement instinctif de la perspective  chromatique qui s’opposant a la perspective linéaire emprisonne tout dans un espace fictif sans rapport avec l’espace réel, ( il s’agit de l’espace haïtien dont le Dr Lerebours a si heureusement dit la spécificité )  il y a , grâce au mouvement de la route , une multiplication des points de fuite, une superposition d’espaces , tout cela débouchant  par le jeu d’audaces a la fois graphiques et chromatiques , a la mise en place de l’ un  des univers les plus achevés de la peinture  moderne

Cet univers, et le message qu’il porte : un message d’affranchissement de purification, sont l’un des legs les plus merveilleux qu’un  artiste ait pu faire a son pays, et que notre pays au sein  d’autres merveilles ait pu faire a l’Humanité

C’est pourquoi  a cet homme a ce concitadin que j’ai connu  toute mon existence, avec qui je travaille depuis quarante ans, avec lequel j’aurai réalisé une vingtaine d’interviews, je dis aujourd’hui ;

Dors de ton dernier sommeil, mon ami, mon frère, et en quelque sorte mon moi.

Dans un pays ravagé et  humilié, entre droit dans l’histoire avec rayonnant autour de ta personne  l’éclat resplendissant  qui est celui de nos plus  grands  héros. 

C’est désormais dans tout  ce qui nous reste de toi : ton œuvre, qu’il nous faudra rechercher ce qui m’attirait le plus en toi :  ce sourire de triomphe ce sourire merveilleux que seuls arborent les vainqueurs que seuls  arborent les gagnants

Ton corps s’est peut  être éteint un triste 6 octobre, mais nous savons tous que ,  tant qu’il y  aura des âmes pour rêver et des cœurs pour contempler, subsistera quelque chose  qu’aucune hémorragie cérébrale ne saurait éteindre :

La palpitation immense de ton art et de ton génie

Ce 12 octobre 2012-

Dr Frantz Large

Membre de ‘association internationale des critiques d’art

Vice président de l’Association Haïtienne  en Histoire de l’Art et  en Esthétique.

A view on the Haiti protests

With dueling protests in favour and against the government of Haitian president Michel Martelly occurring in the historic city of Gonaïves and eslewhere, a few people have asked me what my take on Haiti's latest chapter of unrest is.

I haven't been on the ground in Haiti since last August (a state of affairs I am hoping to remedy in the near future if I can piece together funding for a trip) and, as such, I am hesitant to make pronouncements from afar. But it appears to me that the usual political actors are taking advantage of the Martelly government's missteps and the desperation of the population to attempt a lunge for power. 

Alas, Haiti continues to have the lowest level analysis of it by outsiders of any country I've ever reported on, so don't look to the international press or most academics focusing on the place to provide you with any clues as to what's happening. 

What we are witnessing is a dance that has been played out time and again in Haiti's history and one which unfortunately always seems to find willing dance partners both at home and abroad.

Aristide's Tinderbox

(Almost exactly 10 years ago, I wrote this article about the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Cité Soleil, which has since become a separate city. It proved to be sadly prescient. RIP James and all the others.  MD)

Aristide's Tinderbox

Haitian Militants Losing Faith in President’s Promise of Reform

By Michael Deibert

published: August 27, 2002

(Read the original article 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."

Thoughts on Haiti's National Palace

I have heard reports that they have started tearing down Haiti's quake-ravaged National Palace today. It was a powerful symbol for the country (not to mention an architectural gem). At the same time, I know a number of Haitians who have told me nothing good ever came out of there. For me, very mixed feelings. I remember walking past there for the first time in 1997, watching U.S. ambassador Brian Dean Curran present his credentials to René Préval there in 2000, watching Jean-Bertrand Aristide glower down at people from a golden chair with his white American bodyguards behind him from 2001 to 2004, saw Boniface Alexandre and Gérard Latortue there 2004-2006 and then Préval again 2006 to 2011. One of my most poignant memories was, after I watched Préval and Kofi Annan hold a press conference in 2006, walking to the front balcony as a band played a slightly off-key rendition of La Dessalinienne and gazing across the  Champs de Mars towards the slums of Bel Air rising just beyond, wondering when the day for those people would come.

Photo © Michael Deibert

Note on the passing of J. David Lyall

I was saddened to wake up this morning and learn from Thor Burnham of the passing of old Haiti hand and New Orleans acquaintance J. David Lyall. I was fortunate enough to chat with with David about Haiti-related matters in New Orleans from time to time. Having lived among the Haitian people in the manner in which he had, David had an impressive and lucid grasp of the political realities on the ground, and I always enjoyed the insight that he brought to our discussions. Many "experts" on Haiti could have learned a thing or two from him. Rest in peace, David, and I hope you are back
strolling the cool hills of Kenscoff in peace once more.

A new push for tourism in Haiti against the obstacles

A new push for tourism in Haiti against the obstacles

Entrepreneurs are trying to build a tourism sector. But political and social turmoil, which twice has smothered attempts in decades past, is a daunting impediment in post-quake Haiti.


By Allyn Gaestel, Los Angeles Times

June 10, 2012, 5:00 a.m.


(Read the original article here)

JACMEL, Haiti — "Vacation to Haiti/It nearly broke my heart."

So rapped Miami hip-hop heavyweight Rick Ross in 2009, but the lyric could be current: Haiti is better known for its natural disasters and political turmoil than for its tourists.

Now, however, a pioneering class of Haiti-loving entrepreneurs is investing time and money to change that.

"People just have no clue," said Michael Capponi, a Miami nightclub and real estate tycoon who has set his sights on Haiti. "They know that it's an island, but they don't even know that it's an island with beaches."

Yet building a tourism sector won't be easy.

The earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010 destroyed much of the capital as well as this historic southern beach town, killing several hundred thousand people. Political stability and economic growth were hit as hard as Haiti's cinder block homes.

Post-quake Haiti was again synonymous with disaster. Helping Haiti became a popular humanitarian cause; mission groups and aid workers flocked to the country en masse. And therein came a twist.

When they arrived, many aid workers became smitten with Haitian culture, rhythms and art. They embraced the tropical climate and color.

"This catastrophe has helped people discover Haiti again," said Lorraine Silvera, owner of Lolo's, an upscale restaurant catering to foreigners on a picturesque beach outside Jacmel.

So far, the main visitors to Haiti's tourist spots are aid workers and members of the Haitian diaspora, but businesses are hoping to expand to draw traditional tourists.

Forty-five minutes north of Port-au-Prince, the capital, is the Cote-des-Arcadins, a stretch of white beaches nestled at the foot of steep mountains. There the traveler will find Wahoo Bay Beach, a family-owned resort with lush gardens and a wide view of the turquoise sea. The Lemke family has invested in extensive renovations at the resort since October 2010.

This year, Genevieve Lemke and her daughter, Jennifer, tried to promote a college "spring break" trip to Haiti, partnering with the nonprofit business marketing organization Brand Haiti. They had scheduled two trips for March but called them off when Prime Minister Garry Conille abruptly resigned in late February, spurring tension in the streets of Port-au-Prince and alarming would-be vacationers.

"People abroad are still a little bit nervous about Haiti," Genevieve Lemke said.

Instability, both political and social, is one of the central impediments to Haitian tourism. And it has smothered hopes of building a tourism sector twice before.

After an international exposition in Haiti in 1949, the country was termed the "pearl of the Antilles" through much of the 1950s. The brutal dictatorship of Francois Duvalier put an end to that.

Tourism began to rebound under the loosened tyranny of the dictator's son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, in the 1970s, only to be crushed again with the onset of AIDS in the 1980s.

Some believe that Haiti may now have another chance.

Paul Clammer is writing the "Bradt Travel Guide for Haiti," due in November. It will be the first stand-alone, English-language guidebook to Haiti published since the 1980s. Clammer thinks the expressed interest in the book speaks to a potential "third big tourism wave."

Entrepreneurs and investors are literally banking on it.

For instance, the budget for Capponi's project in Jacmel, including a boutique hotel, has ballooned from $700,000 to $2.5 million.

Since his family founded Tour Haiti in 2004 in Jacmel, Jean Cyril Pressoir has worked for free. But he has his fingers crossed that the company will make a profit next year.

The Lemkes, meanwhile, don't know when they'll pay off their renovations at Wahoo Bay, but they still invest in upgrades every month.

All this optimism is not without its challenges.

Infrastructure for tourism remains minimal. International visitors must fly into Port-au-Prince's muggy airport and brave frenzied, cutthroat competition among porters vying to carry their luggage. Hotel prices are inflated because hoteliers have to cover the costs of private water sources, electrical generators to augment irregular power, and even private trash incineration.

The service sector needs kick-starting. A hospitality training school in the Cote-des-Arcadins, funded by the Brazilian aid group Viva Rio, has yet to open, but it is already receiving urgent inquiries from hoteliers across the country frustrated by incompetent workers.

To top it off, Haiti's business climate is notoriously lethargic. Capponi's boutique hotel, Le Village de Port de Jacmel, was scheduled to open in March. In May, the building stood half refurbished, inhabited by squatters, as Capponi struggled to get the government and skittish private investors to simultaneously commit to the project. Each group wants the other to go first.

The humanitarian disaster after the 2010 earthquake also created a dilemma for travelers: Who wants to sip a rum cocktail knowing that, just down the road, malnourished children are languishing in tents?

To address this situation, "voluntourists" are being encouraged to take trips that divide time between helping Haitians and enjoying the island. But even this has its problems. Critics say a couple of days of volunteering has minimal effect on needy communities, not to mention the fact that volunteers performing manual labor undermines the local labor market.

Yet visitors are still wanted, and needed.

"The way to help the poverty in Haiti is to come to Haiti, eat Haitian food, drink Haitian rum," Pressoir said.

Gaestel is a special correspondent.

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

Mario Dupuy: Unfit to serve as Haiti’s Minister of Culture

It is disgusting that a country that continually produces some of the greatest novelists, poets, filmmakers, painters, musicians and other artists in the world should have as the lead representative of its culture a discredited political apparatchik and quisling of authoritarian rule such as the man proposed yesterday by Haiti's new Prime Minister, Laurent Lamothe.

Mario Dupuy, as the Secretary of State for Communications during the second term of Haitian President Jean-Betrand Aristide - a man branded by the press-freedom organization Reporters Sans Frontières as a predator of press freedom in May 2002 - served as one of the most public faces of a regime dedicated to strangling, rather than encouraging freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

“Impunity has been at the root of the authorities' strategy of cowing the media,” Reporters Sans Frontières said in its press release at the time, directly referring to the Aristide government’s active blocking of the investigation into the 3 April 2000 murder of Radio Haiti Inter journalist Jean Dominique and the 3 December 2001 murder by a pro-government mob of Radio Echo 2000 reporter Brignol Lindor in the town of Petit-Goâve.

“At best, [Aristide] is protecting the killers, at worst he is involved in the murder himself,” RSF continued in its statement.

On a 3 March 2002 radio broadcast, Dominique's widow, the journalist Michèle Montas, said that “all the resources, i.e. logistical, technical, and financial made available in this judicial case by the preceding government have been cancelled.”

Such was the commitment to freedom of expression of the government that Haiti’s newly proposed Minister of Culture served.

And yet there is more.

How can those of us who were present in Haiti from 2001 until 2004 forget the role that Mario Dupuy played in legitimizing violence against demonstrators and the press?

To recall but a few examples:

On 3 December 2002, the first anniversary of the murder of the journalist Brignol Lindor,  after several thousand Aristide supporters had chased away anti-Aristide demonstrators with stones and bottles and hit them with metal bars and whips in Place d’Italie in the heart of Port-au-Prince, when asked about the violence Dupuy breezily concluded that "this is democracy. People, including government supporters, may take part in any march they want to.”

In September 2003, Dupuy was one of numerous Aristide government officials who, during simultaneous television and radio interviews, announced that the regime they served would  move to revive a presidential decree passed by dictator  Jean-Claude Duvalier on 17 October 1977, which stated that “broadcast information must be precise, objective and impartial, and must come from authorized sources which are to be mentioned when broadcasting. Those who are responsible for the broadcasts have to control the programs to ensure that the information—even when it is correct—cannot harm or alarm the population by its form, presentation or timing. The broadcast stations will provide a channel for the broadcasting of official programs, if so required by the public powers....” This was a naked assault on articles 28-1, 28-2 and 245 of Haiti’s 1987 constitution, which forbids censorship and protects free speech and journalistic practices.

On 10 February 2004, as the Aristide government was teetering amid massive street protests against its rule and a rebellion initiated by a formerly loyal street gang in the northern city of Gonaives, Dupuy said he was “saddened by the behavior of certain journalists who he claimed are working as press attachés for the terrorists, blindly relaying the false information that they give them in an attempt to psychologically destabilize the police and the general population.”

In the weeks that followed before Aristide’s 29 February flight into exile, journalists, both foreign and Haitian, were routinely attacked and robbed by armed government partisans. I personally had a 9 millimeter pistol pointed at my head and a shotgun trained on me by armed government supporters. A number journalists suffered much worse fates.

This is the person that Haiti’s President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe  think is the man to represent Haitian culture to the nation and the world? This in a country whose writers from Jacques Roumain to Lyonel Trouillot, whose musicians from Nicolas Geffrard to the band Boukman Eksperyans and whose artists from Edouard Duval-Carrié to Stevenson Magloire have always most eloquently expressed themselves in the key of opposition to tyranny?

Amnesia may be the politically correct posture to adopt in Haiti today, to pretend that all of the country’s history began with the devastating earthquake of 12 January 2010. But as someone who came into office as a political novice promising a break from Haiti’s traditionally corrupt political class, President Martelly and Prime Minister Lamothe owe the Haitian people better than the attempted recycling of one of the tainted elements of Haiti’s painful past.

After Charles Taylor, Justice for Haiti?

26 April 2012

After Charles Taylor, Justice for Haiti?

The Huffington Post

(Read the original article here)

The conviction today by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of former Liberian president Charles Taylor for aiding and abetting war crimes committed in neighboring Sierra Leone -- the first such conviction of a former head of state -- is a welcome development for those seeking to hold politicians accountable for their crimes.

Coming as it does on the heels of the conviction earlier this year of former Democratic Republic of Congo militia leader Thomas Lubanga for war crimes, the Taylor conviction represents a welcome completion of one of the ICC's missions.

To those of us who have seen the political convulsions of the Caribbean nation of Haiti first-hand over the years, the country makes a compelling case for attention by the ICC as perpetrators of human rights abuses often go unpunished or are even rehabilitated in subsequent governments.

Two of Haiti's former rulers, Jean-Claude Duvalier and Jean-Bertrand Aristide, returned to the country from exile early last year, and both stand accused of gross human rights abuses.

Duvalier, who took the helm of Haiti in 1971 as a rotund teenager following the death of his father, the dictator François Duvalier, presided over a police state where the national treasury was viewed as little more than a personal checking account and all political dissent was ruthlessly crushed. Perhaps the best symbol of his reign, which ended in 1986 amid a popular uprising, was a prison on the outskirts of the Haitian capital called Fort Dimanche, where thousands of enemies of the state were sent to die by execution, torture or to simply waste away amidst conditions that were an affront to humanity.

Mr. Aristide, one of the driving forces behind the movement that ousted Mr. Duvalier, is a former Catholic priest who twice served as Haiti's president and was twice ousted, once by a military coup and once by a popular uprising and armed rebellion. It was the abuses of Mr. Aristide's government that I witnessed first-hand.

In February 2004, in the midst of the chaotic second rebellion against Mr. Aristide's rule, the photojournalist Alex Smailes and I found ourselves in the central Haitian city of Saint Marc, at the time the last barrier between Aristide and a motley collection of once-loyal street gangs and former soldiers who were sweeping down from the country's north seeking to overthrow him.

Several days earlier, on Feb. 7, an armed anti-Aristide group, the Rassemblement des militants conséquents de Saint Marc (Ramicos), based in the neighborhood of La Scierie, had attempted to drive government forces from the town, seizing the local police station, which they set on fire.
On Feb. 9, the combined forces of the Police Nationale d'Haiti (PNH), the Unité de Sécurité de la Garde du Palais National (USGPN) -- a unit directly responsible for the president's personal security -- and a local paramilitary organization named Bale Wouze (Clean Sweep) retook much of the city.

By Feb. 11, a few days before our arrival, Bale Wouze -- headed by a former parliamentary representative of Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas political party named Amanus Mayette -- had commenced the battle to retake La Scierie. Often at Mayette's side was a government employee named Ronald Dauphin, known to residents as "Black Ronald," often garbed in a police uniform even though he was in no way officially employed by the police.

When Alex and I arrived in the town, we found the USGPN and Bale Wouze patrolling Saint Marc as a single armed unit. Speaking to residents there -- amidst a surreal backdrop of burned buildings, the stench of human decay, drunken gang members threatening our lives with firearms and a terrified population -- we soon realized that something awful had happened in Saint Marc.

According to multiple residents interviewed during that visit and a subsequent visit that I made to the town in June 2009, after government forces retook the town -- and after a press conference there by Yvon Neptune, at the time Aristide's Prime Minister and also the head of the Conseil Superieur de la Police Nationale d'Haiti -- a textbook series of war crimes took place.

Residents spoke of how Kenol St. Gilles, a carpenter with no political affiliation, was shot in each thigh, beaten unconscious by Bale Wouze members and thrown into a burning cement depot, where he died. Unarmed Ramicos member Leroy Joseph was decapitated, while Ramicos second-in-command Nixon François was simply shot. In the ruins of the burned-out commissariat, Bale Wouze members gang raped a 21-year-old woman, while other residents were gunned down by police firing from a helicopter as they tried to flee over a nearby mountain. A local priest told me matter-of-factly at the time of Bale Wouze that "these people don't make arrests, they kill."

According to a member of a Human Rights Watch delegation that visited Saint Marc a month after the killings, at least 27 people were murdered there between Feb. 11 and Aristide's flight into exile at the end of the month. Her conclusion was supported by the research of the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, a Haitian human rights organization.

Following Aristide's overthrow, several members of Bale Wouze were lynched, while Yvon Neptune turned himself over to the interim government that ruled Haiti from March 2004 until the inauguration of President René Préval in May 2006.

Held in prison without trial until his May 2006 release on humanitarian grounds, a May 2008 decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found the Haitian state had violated the American Convention on Human Rights in its detention of Neptune, though stressed that it was "not a criminal court in which the criminal responsibility of an individual can be examined." Neptune ran unsuccessfully for president in Haiti's 2010 elections.

After being jailed for three years without trial, Amanus Mayette was freed from prison in April 2007. Arrested in 2004, Ronald Dauphin subsequently escaped from jail, and was re-arrested during the course of an anti-kidnapping raid in Haiti's capital in July 2006. Despite several chaotic public hearings, to date, none of the accused for the killings in La Scierie has ever gone to trial.
Frustratingly for the people of St. Marc, far from being supported in their calls for justice, the events they experienced have become a political football among international political actors.

The United Nations independent expert on human rights in Haiti, Louis Joinet, in a 2005 statement dismissed allegations of a massacre and described what occurred as "a clash", a characterization that seemed unaware of the fact that not all among those victimized had any affiliation with Haiti's political opposition.

The Institute for Justice and Democracy (IJDH), a U.S.-based organization, has lauded Mr. Dauphin as "a Haitian grassroots activist." The IJDH itself maintains close links with Mr. Aristide's U.S. attorney, Ira Kurzban, who is listed as one of the group's founders, has served as the chairman of its board of directors and whose law firm, according to U.S. Department of Justice filings, earned nearly $5 million for its lobbying work alone representing the Aristide government during the era of its worst excesses. By comparison, the firm of former U.S. congressmen Ron Dellums received the relatively modest sum of $989,323 over the same period.

When I returned to St. Marc in June of 2009, I found its residents still wondering when someone would be held accountable for the terrible crimes they had been subjected to. Amazil Jean-Baptiste, the mother of Kenol St. Gilles, said simply, "I just want justice for my son." A local victim's rights group of survivors of the pogrom, the Association des Victimes du Génocide de la Scierie (AVIGES), formed to help advocate on residents' behalf, but have had precious little success in what passes for Haiti's justice system, broken and dysfunctional long before January 2010's devastating earthquake.
Though Mr. Aristide remains something of a fading star for a handful of commentators outside of Haiti -- most of whom have not spent significant time in the country, cannot speak its language and have never bothered to sit down with the victims of the Aristide government's crimes there -- to those of us who have seen a bit of its recent history firsthand, the words of veteran Trinidadian diplomat Reginald Dumas -- a man who does know Haiti -- seem apt, that Mr. Aristide "[acquired] for himself a reputation at home which did not match the great respect with which he was held abroad.''

The ICC has sometimes been criticized for acting as if war crimes and crimes against humanity are simply African problems, taking place in distant lands. The people of St. Marc, only a 90 minute flight from Miami, and the survivors of Forth Dimanche, know differently. Though Mr. Duvalier sadly cannot be tried by the ICC as the court only has jurisdiction with respect to crimes committed after the entry into force of Rome Statute, no such restrictions apply to Mr. Aristide.

It is time that the government of Haitian president Michel Martelly and Haiti's parliament ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and give the victims of Haiti the justice that they have so long been denied.

Jilap records 190 deaths by firearms in Port-au-Prince area from January to March 2012.

Haïti-Sécurité : Cent quatre-vingt dix tués par balles, de janvier à mars 2012, selon Jilap

jeudi 19 avril 2012

(Read the original article here)

P-au-P, 19 avril 2012 [AlterPresse] --- La commission épiscopale nationale justice et paix (sigle créole Jilap) enregistre au total 190 décès par balles de Janvier à Mars 2012 dans son 42e rapport sur la violence dans la zone métropolitaine de Port-au-Prince, publié en avril 2012.

La commission dit observer une légère diminution des cas de morts par balles au cours de ce trimestre (janvier à mars 2012), comparé au trimestre précédent (octobre à décembre 2011) au cours duquel 203 morts par balles ont été enregistrés.

Le nombre de décès par balles a connu une légère baisse au mois de janvier 2012 (41 cas), pour remonter en force en février et mars, respectivement 78 et 71 cas, indique le document.

Précédemment, en octobre, novembre et décembre 2011, le nombre s’élevait respectivement à 62, 77, 64 morts par balles.

Selon la commission, la plupart des personnes sont victimes de la violence armée dans la capitale. D’autres formes de violence répandues sont les braquages, holdups et vols à main armée, souligne le rapport de Jilap.

Les crimes commis à partir de motocyclettes atteignent un record au mois de février 2012 avec 16 cas contre 4 en janvier et 12 en mars, selon les chiffres fournis.

Quatre policiers sont assassinés au cours du dernier trimestre, contre 6 pour le trimestre précédent.

Dans le rapport, Jilap signale un ensemble d’actes de violence commis sur plusieurs individus dont l’assassinat du directeur de radio Boukman, Nelson Jean Liphaite, et celui du peintre Burton Chenet.

Jilap dit constater que les déclarations et promesses des autorités sur la situation d’insécurité qui prévaut dans la zone métropolitaine n’aboutissent pas à un redressement de la situation.

« Définir une politique de sécurité est et demeure l’œuvre de l’Etat et doit s’articuler à travers une volonté d’agir pour le bien être de la population », fait savoir Jilap.

L’organisme de droits humains estime que la prévention en matière de sécurité de façon permanente, les poursuites en justice des bandits ainsi que les enquêtes ne se réalisent pas.

Ceci démontre le degré d’impunité dont jouissent des malfaiteurs laissant le champ libre à n’importe quelle initiative criminelle qui peut être perpétrée en toute quiétude, indique t-il.

« La lutte pour instaurer un climat de sécurité nécessite justice et vérité dans les tribunaux, en plus, il faut un climat de justice sociale entre les citoyens et citoyennes », soutient la commission.

Jilap préconise « la création d’un cadre sécuritaire pour les petits marchands, leur permettant d’avoir une assurance sociale les protégeant contre des actes de banditisme et des accidents comme des incendies ».

Des travaux d’entretien, la mise en application de règlements du trafic routier, un contrôle plus strict sur la vente des cartes de téléphone cellulaire, la réparation des pylônes électriques en mauvais état sont des mesures pouvant assurer plus de sécurité dans la zone métropolitaine, croit Jilap.

Face au grand nombre de morts par balles, la Commission insiste sur un contrôle effectif et efficace de la circulation et du port d’armes à feu dans le pays. [emb kft gp apr 18/04/2012 16 :20]

Dominican journalist Nuria Piera responds to Haiti President Michel Martelly

Aristide accused of taking bribes from Miami businesses

4 March 2012

Aristide accused of taking bribes from Miami businesses

By Jacqueline Charles and Jay Weaver, The Miami Herald

(Read the original article here)

Former Haiti President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is once again in the crosshairs of the U.S. government, this time for allegedly pocketing millions of dollars in bribes from Miami businesses that brokered long-distance phone deals with Haiti's government-owned telecommunications company, according to court records and legal sources.

Aristide is not identified by name in a recent federal indictment charging four South Florida business people and two former Haitian government officials. But defense attorneys say "Official B" referenced in the corruption- and money-laundering indictment is indeed the ex-president.

According to the indictment, Official B and senior officials of Haiti Teleco, the telecommunications company owned by Haiti's Central Bank, allegedly received payments totaling about $2.3 million from Miami businesses Cinergy Telecommunications and Uniplex Telecom Technologies. The businesses are accused of using "shell" companies to kick back the money to those officials.

Aristide's lawyer, Ira Kurzban, declined to comment about the Justice Department's investigation because the ex-president hasn't been charged with any crime. But, Kurzban said: "I view this as part of the same smear campaign that the United States has orchestrated against Aristide since he was first elected in 1990."

The indictment alleges that the bribes were passed to Aristide via "Company A," a reference to Digitek, a suspected front owned by Aristide's brother-in-law, Lesly Lavelanet. He could not be reached for comment at his Coral Springs home.

Since an earlier related indictment was returned by a federal grand jury in 2009, a dozen South Florida business people and Haitian officials have been charged in the high-profile case, alleging the payment of kickbacks in exchange for discounted long-distance phone rates. Profits from those lower rates were pocketed by the Haitian officials — not the government's phone company. So far, seven of those defendants have been convicted of corruption or money laundering, including Patrick Joseph, who pleaded guilty in February to accepting bribes. Joseph is cooperating with Justice Department lawyers and is a crucial witness in the investigation of Aristide, according to sources familiar with the case.

Joseph, who served as Aristide's director general of Haiti Teleco in March 2001 to June 2003, has told U.S. authorities that he shared some of those kickbacks with the former president, the sources said.

Joseph's father, Venel Joseph, appointed by Aristide, was the governor of the Bank of Haiti, the central bank, during that period and is referenced in the indictment as "Official A.''

The Central Bank was used to distribute the kickbacks paid by the Miami businesses, the indictment says.

Patrick Joseph's Miami attorneys, Guy Lewis and Richard Dansoh, declined to comment. Justice Department officials also would not comment.

At Joseph's plea hearing last month, a prosecutor said "half" — or $1 million — of the alleged kickbacks were "intended" for "Official B, an official in the executive branch of the Haitian government."

"In exchange for these bribes, Official B and Joseph provided Uniplex and Cinergy with various business advantages, including an exclusive agreement to market certain calling cards at a favorable rate,"

Justice Department lawyer James Koukios said in court.

"In addition, Joseph was aware of and agreed that additional bribe payments to Official B would be laundered through Company A," Koukios said, without mentioning Digitek by name.

The revelation that federal officials are still pursuing Aristide, years after a U.S. grand jury investigation failed to nab him on drug-trafficking and money-laundering allegations, comes at a politically charged time in Haiti.

Haitian media reported last week that President Michel Martelly's government had indicted Aristide for corruption and drug trafficking during his rule, immediately triggering anger among his supporters.

Haiti's justice minister told The Miami Herald the reports were false.

Still, thousands marched through the streets of Haiti's capital Wednesday, singing pro-Aristide slogans while bashing Martelly, to mark the eighth anniversary of Aristide's ouster from power on Feb.29, 2004.

The demonstration — the biggest anti-Martelly protest since he came to power in May — showed that Aristide still enjoys a measure of popularity. He returned to Haiti from South Africa last March over the strong objections of the Obama administration.

Before it was privatized last year at the behest of the U.S. government, Haiti Teleco was a corruption-plagued, money-losing company that fueled the bank accounts of its executives. Fewer than 2 percent of Haitians had service from its landline monopoly, but it had a lucrative long-distance business. After the January 2010 earthquake, the company finally got a lifeline when a firm named Viettel, run by Vietnam's military, bought a major stake in the entity, reducing Haiti's shares to 40 percent.

The controversy over Haiti Teleco's corrupt past will play out again Monday, when a former senior executive, Jean René Duperval, faces trial on money-laundering charges in Miami federal court as part of the initial indictment. He is accused of receiving bribes from the same Miami businesses.

The trial of Duperval, Haiti Teleco's former director of international relations, highlights the Justice Department's persistence in pursuing the bribery case and Aristide.

Some question the zeal. But Alex Dupuy, a sociology professor at Wesleyan University who has written about the two-time ex-president, said "if they have solid evidence of his involvement in bribery or other criminal activities, they should indict him and bring him to justice."

The U.S. government may be sending a signal to Aristide, called Titid by his admirers, to think twice about trying to re-enter the political scene, observers said.

"The display of popular support for Aristide is very worrisome to the U.S., so indicting Titid before a potential comeback makes perfect sense," said Robert Fatton, a Haiti expert at the University of Virginia.

Still, unless the Justice Department has an air-tight case, arresting Aristide could have volatile consequences, observers said.

Corruption and drug-trafficking charges have long dogged Aristide.

Haiti's interim government produced four blistering reports from two government investigative commissions, alleging he had embezzled more than $20 million of his country's meager public funds.

But the Haitian government's financial watchdog agency could not prove the allegations. Also, a civil lawsuit filed in Miami by the interim government, gained no traction.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors investigated Aristide for allegedly accepting bribes from drug traffickers. But they could not make their case because of a lack of financial documents to back up convicted cocaine kingpin Jacques Ketant's accusations, according to sources familiar with that probe.

Now, the mere mention of Aristide as Official B in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act indictment filed by the Justice Department in January marks the first time he has been implicated in the U.S. bribery investigation into Haiti's state-owned telecommunications company.

From 2001 to 2004, "Official B was an official in the executive branch of the Haitian government," says the indictment, describing the exact period of Aristide's second term as president."I am led to believe that Official B is the former president of Haiti, Aristide," said veteran Miami criminal defense attorney Joel Hirschhorn, who represents Cinergy and two of its executives in the case.

"There is no doubt that Official B is Aristide based on the language in the indictment," said Miami lawyer David Weinstein, who was the chief of narcotics in the U.S. Attorney's Office during the past decade. He and other prosecutors won convictions against several Haitian government and police officials for accepting payoffs from drug traffickers, who used the country to ship cocaine to the United States.

But Weinstein cautioned that the Justice Department will face daunting challenges in making a money-laundering case against Aristide, even if the cooperating witness, Joseph, points investigators in the right direction.

There is a looming deadline in the probe because of the statute of limitations. Also crucial: Internal Revenue Service agents must find bank or financial records to show that Aristide received payments, if he did.

"Without someone producing a picture of him taking the money or agents uncovering a bank account directly linking him to payments, they are going to have a hard time building a case to win a conviction,"

Weinstein said.

Last week, Hirschhorn succeeded in getting Cinergy dismissed as a defendant before Monday's trial.

"My clients' dealings with Haiti Teleco were perfectly legitimate,"

said Hirschhorn, who added that Cinergy's top executives, now fugitives in Brazil, only met Aristide once for a brief moment. "They helped Haiti Teleco get through some very difficult and trying times."

Note de Presse de LFHH relative la Déclaration de Montrouis

Note de Presse de LFHH relative la Déclaration de Montrouis

Port-au-Prince, Haïti, le 15 mars 2012. -- La Fondation Héritage pour Haïti (LFHH) salue l’engagement pris par un groupe de 31 Parlementaires (Sénateurs et Députés de la 49ème Législature) pour enclencher le processus législatif devant aboutir à l’adoption de la Loi sur la prévention et la répression de la corruption à la clôture de la retraite parlementaire organisée à Montrouis du 9 au 11 mars 2012 par l’Unité de Lutte Contre la Corruption (ULCC).

LFHH rappelle que le projet de loi sur la prévention et la répression de la corruption a été adopté par le gouvernement haïtien en date du 30 décembre 2009 et soumis à la sanction du parlement. L’adoption de ce projet de loi vise à renforcer la lutte contre la corruption en Haïti.

LFHH encourage les parlementaires à accélérer le processus législatif en vue de le conduire au vote de ladite loi par les deux branches du Parlement. Cette initiative rentre dans le cadre de la stratégie nationale de lutte contre la corruption adoptée par le gouvernement de la République en date du 16 mars 2009 et permettra à Haïti d’harmoniser sa législation avec les prescrits de la Convention des Nations Unies Contre la Corruption (CNUCC) et de combattre l’impunité en matière de corruption.

LFHH exhorte l’Unité de Lutte Contre la Corruption (ULCC), à poursuivre son plaidoyer auprès des parlementaires en vue de les sensibiliser sur l’importance du vote dudit projet de loi dans le meilleur délai. La Déclaration de Montrouis signée par 31 Sénateurs et Députés présents à la retraite parlementaire du 9 au 11 mars 2012 constitue un pas significatif dans la bonne direction.

En voici un extrait :

« Nous, Sénateurs et Députés de la 49ème Législature, ayant participé à la retraite parlementaire organisée du 9 au 11 mars 2012 sur le projet de loi portant prévention et répression de la corruption, nous engageons à enclencher le processus législatif et le conduire à son terme en adoptant une législation appropriée pour renforcer la lutte contre la corruption en Haïti. Fait à Moulin-sur- Mer, Montrouis, le dimanche 11 mars 2012. »


A propos de Transparency International (TI) :

Transparency International (TI), la plus grande organisation de la société civile de lutte contre la corruption dans le monde, a été créée en 1993, à l'initiative de Monsieur Peter Eigen et a établi son siège à Berlin. Monsieur Eigen, Président de l’organisation de 1993 à 2005, est de nationalité allemande, juriste, ancien cadre supérieur de la Banque Mondiale, membre du Conseil Consultatif du Centre pour le Développement International de Harvard University et professeur de Sciences Politiques au Freie Universität de Berlin. Elue Présidente durant l’Assemblée annuelle des sections de TI à Berlin en novembre 2005, Madame Huguette Labelle remplace depuis lors Monsieur Eigen à la tête de l’organisation

TI a depuis 1993 catalysé la constitution d’un partenariat de plus de 100 sections nationales, y inclus LFHH, à travers le monde.

La Fondation Héritage pour Haïti (LFHH) en quelques lignes :

Créée en 1998 par un groupe de citoyens haïtiens, La Fondation Héritage pour Haïti (LFHH) est une fondation privée, non partisane, à but non-lucratif. Depuis mai 2003, LFHH est la représentante officielle de Transparency International (TI) en Haïti.

La vision de LFHH est celle-ci : une nation où le gouvernement, la politique, les affaires, la société civile et la vie de la population est libre de corruption et où le comportement intègre, éthique, responsable et discipliné est valorisé par la société.

La mission de LFHH est de combattre la corruption, d’oeuvrer à la promotion des valeurs d’éthique, d’intégrité et de probité dans les sphères publique et privée de la société haïtienne et d’encourager le respect des normes d’une société moral