A fellow I hadn't heard of before recently wrote to me in the wake of my highlighting some of the problems with the reportage of Wadner Pierre and Jeb Sprague for the Inter Press Service on the Ronald Dauphin case in Haiti, given the former's link with paid advocates of Haiti's former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the latter's rather loopy public declarations on subjects Haitian in the past. This commentary in turn had spurred a reply from the ever-opportunistic Kim Ives, late of the Brooklyn-based publication Haiti Progrès, currently of Haiti Liberté. A fellow describing himself as a "friend" of Ives then emailed me (in a thoroughly respectful manner, unlike the apparently unstable Sprague) to ask me a few questions, which I will re-rephrase slightly here, while preserving the correspondent's anonymity.
1) Whether Ronald Dauphin is guilty or not, is it not a violation of human rights to keep someone in prison indefinitely without being charged or put on trial?
2) The Bush Administration circumvented this issue by changing the description of suspected terrorists to detainees in order to rationalize indefinite imprisonment. The overwhelming, humane response has been to set them free or put them on trial. In Haiti, prisoners are simply left to rot. Do you - Michael Deibert - you support this?
3) Are you concerned that if set free until trial, Ronald Dauphin will disappear or commit more crimes? Do you think he is a danger to Haitian society?
My response, which may be of interest to readers as it addresses some important issues, ran as follows:
Hello, and thank you for your email. It addresses an important question, one which goes to the heart of what is happening in Haiti right now.
When I interviewed him in June regarding St. Marc case, Pierre Espérance, the director of the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH), made a very perceptive statement to the effect that, in Haiti’s broken justice system, the criminal becomes a victim because the system doesn't work.
This, in my view as someone who has spent a considerable amount of time in St. Marc, is what is happening in the case of Ronald Dauphin. I really defy anyone to spend a morning or afternoon talking with the many families associated with the Association des Victimes du Génocide de la Scierie (AVIGES), listen to their stories and not come away with the impression that the combined forces of the Police Nationale de Haiti, the Unité de Sécurité de la Garde du Palais National and especially Bale Wouze subjected them to something truly horrible during February 2004. Yet, strangely enough (to me at least), in the international Haiti solidarity network, nary a voice is raised to offer these people comfort, solace or support. I think this is something of which all us, as foreigners who claim to care for Haiti, should be ashamed.
According to my own interviews in St. Marc and the interviews of others, Ronald Dauphin, along with former Fanmi Lavalas Deputy Amanus Mayette (freed from prison in April 2007) and the deceased Bale Wouze leader Somoza were three of the most visible architects of the slaughter that took place in St. Marc that month, and the offenses such as the gang rape of women that took place then and afterwards.
Do I think that Ronald Dauphin is a danger to his fellow Haitians? Yes, but that is no excuse for holding him in jail indefinitely without trial. If I, as a journalist, can travel to St. Marc and find people virtually lining up around the block willing to share quite lucid and disturbing tales of the state-sponsored violence that they have been subjected to, then it seems not only possible or desirable but essential that the Haitian state find a way to address their demands for justice.
However grave his crimes, as a citizen Ronald Dauphin has his rights, as well. But what disturbs me most, perhaps, is the incredible arsenal of money and personnel arrayed to not only assure Mr. Dauphin of his rights but to discredit the victims of political violence in Haiti and to deny them their day in court. I thought that it was a national scandal, for example, when those convicted of participation in the April 1994 massacre of Aristide supporters in Gonaives had their sentences overturned by Haiti's supreme court in 2005, but at least the people of Gonaives got their day in court, however sullied it later became. What about the people of St. Marc?
The same actors who prosecuted the Gonaives case during the Préval government’s first mandate - the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) and (now) the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) - now work on behalf of the victimizers in the St. Marc case. It is a seriously complicated question, but I don’t think that the cause of justice in Haiti is served by having one standard of advocacy for former officials and partisans of the Fanmi Lavalas party and another for everyone else in Haiti.
If these groups are genuinely advocating for an equal measure of justice to be applied to all in Haiti, why were none of their voices raised during the 2001-2004 government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, when the prisons were equally swollen with (mostly unknown) defendants who had never seen a judge? Why were no voices raised against the corruption of the judicial process against former dictator Prosper Avril, no matter how distasteful he may be, or against the nakedly political detention of Coordination Nationale des Societaires Victimes spokesmen Rosemond Jean, or against the two-year detention-without-trial of Winston Jean-Bart, aka the famous Tupac of Cité Soleil? Where was their compassion following the horrific slaying of Haitian journalist and poet Jacques Roche? In my view, they were silent then as they are silent now because they see human rights only as an issue to be bandied about when it is politically expedient to do so for the political current they serve, not as a long-term commitment to build a better Haiti.
It is a very thorny problem: How does one give justice to victims while still insuring the rights of the accused? As you correctly point out, it is a debate that still goes on in the United States and in other countries with supposedly functioning judicial systems to this day.
The old adage of following the money is accurate up to a point. Some have pointed out RNDDH’s 2004 award of C$100,000 (US$85,382) from the Canadian International Development Agency, even though, as far as I can discern, most of the group’s funding comes from organizations such as Christian Aid, the Mennonite Central Committee and the Lutheran World Federation. Nevertheless, since that grant,RNDDH has consistently advocated for justice on behalf of a number of Fanmi Lavalas members, including Jean Maxon Guerrier, Yvon Feuille, Gerald Gilles, and Rudy Hériveaux. RNDDH, for me, has shown a commitment to a non-political defense of human rights that BAI/IJDH, linked monetarily and otherwise with Mr. Aristide’s attorney, have never shown.
Perhaps the best we can do as foreigners is to encourage a genuinely non-partisan, non-political development and reinforcement of the Haitian judicial system through institutions such as the newly re-opened magistrate’s school, so that justice can be given to the victims of the human rights abuses and the human rights of perpetrators, accused and otherwise, can also be safeguarded. Perhaps boring and not very sexy, but as a man once told me, the most revolutionary thing you can do in Haiti is to strengthen an institution. I still believe that is true.
I hope this has helped to answer your questions.
Best regards,
MD
Showing posts with label Kim Ives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kim Ives. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
A response to Kim Ives
It is good that Haiti Liberté editor Kim Ives has not forgotten me since our spirited debate at Sander Hicks’ excellent Vox Pop bookstore in Brooklyn a few years back.
Ives, who used to edit the Brooklyn-based Haiti Progrès before departing amid charges of financial irregularities and nepotism, appears not to have liked the criticism that I recently leveled at Jeb Sprague and Wadner Pierre. When the latter two wrote a recent article for the Inter Press Service seeking to deny the slaughter that the people of St. Marc had been subjected to at the hands of forces loyal to the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004, they apparently did so without having ever bothered to interview a single survivor or relative of a victim of the violence, a practice that struck me as rather curious. Incidentally, some good reporting from St. Marc at the time was written by Marika Lynch for the Miami Herald and can be read here.
When the story also consisted of points and passages regurgitated nearly wholly from the writings and positions of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), bodies linked at the hip with grotesquely (given Haiti’s poverty) overpaid advocates for the Aristide government, and an organization that Wadner Pierre is identified in various places as having worked for, it only seemed natural to point that out, as it would were a journalist working for USAID, for example, to simultaneously spit out State Department talking points in print. Though I know Kim Ives has never allowed the facts to get in the way of his own attempts at journalism, for me, at least, individuals advocating their full-throated support for any political current then attempting to pass themselves off as objective journalists, investigating and allowing the facts to fall where they may, is problematic. When his connections with the IJDH/BAI were exposed, Wadner Pierre would later whine that he was being "censored."
Likewise, the unsolicited email photo of blood-spattered corpses sent to me by Jeb Sprague, an individual with a long history of harassing people and making up wild, outlandish claims that are then proven false (such as his attacks against the UK-based Haiti Support Group) did strike me as an attempt to intimidate me into silence, one which didn’t work. The full text of Sprague’s email to me can be read as part of a broader discussion of press coverage of Haiti on my blog.
The attacks that Kim Ives repeats against me from academics like Peter Hallward and Justin Podur, andCenter for Economic and Policy Research co-director Mark Weisbrot, men ignorant of Haiti and its people and with only the most glancing knowledge of even the recent political history that they seek to fit into their unsophisticated binary worldview, were mostly responded to at the time, here, here and here. Likewise were the statements of Patrick Elie, a convicted perjurer with a long history of violent, erratic behaviour who somehow recently begged his way onto a presidential security commission, referred to by Ives as quoted by Justin Podur, a man one is to believe is so clueless about Haiti that while libeling me he confuses the Eglise Saint Pierre in Petionville with the National Cathedral, several miles away.
As to Amnesty International’s recent declaration regarding Ronald Dauphin, in my experience reporting from conflict areas around the globe, local groups such as RNDDH are almost always more reliable in their estimations and characterizations of violence than Amnesty International, which, unlike Human Rights Watch, does precious little on-the-ground research from conflict zones these days and instead is essentially run by bureaucrats filtering through press accounts and the emails they are flooded with by various advocacy groups.
Amnesty International has done almost no original research in Haiti since 2004. RNDDH, on the other hand, with its extensive research network in Haiti and defense of those regardless of political affiliation, seems to me to fit well into the proud tradition of such groups as the Centro para Acción Legal en Derechos Humanos in Guatemala, the Mouvement Ivoirien des Droits Humains in Cote d’Ivoire and the Ligue des Droits de la personne dans la région des Grands Lacs in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Whenever one goes and actually interviews the victims of human rights violations, as I did in St. Marc this summer, in Port-au-Prince in 2006, in the Democratic Republic of Congo or in Indian-controlled Kashmir, there will always be those who, speaking for one political current or another with their hands soaked in blood, will seek to cast doubt on the validity or the worth of that suffering. But if verbal and written attacks are the price one must pay to draw attention to the suffering of people like Amazil Jean-Baptiste and the other survivors of political violence worldwide, it is a tax so relatively minor as to hardly merit mention.
Happy Ramadan from the banlieues,
MD
Ives, who used to edit the Brooklyn-based Haiti Progrès before departing amid charges of financial irregularities and nepotism, appears not to have liked the criticism that I recently leveled at Jeb Sprague and Wadner Pierre. When the latter two wrote a recent article for the Inter Press Service seeking to deny the slaughter that the people of St. Marc had been subjected to at the hands of forces loyal to the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004, they apparently did so without having ever bothered to interview a single survivor or relative of a victim of the violence, a practice that struck me as rather curious. Incidentally, some good reporting from St. Marc at the time was written by Marika Lynch for the Miami Herald and can be read here.
When the story also consisted of points and passages regurgitated nearly wholly from the writings and positions of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), bodies linked at the hip with grotesquely (given Haiti’s poverty) overpaid advocates for the Aristide government, and an organization that Wadner Pierre is identified in various places as having worked for, it only seemed natural to point that out, as it would were a journalist working for USAID, for example, to simultaneously spit out State Department talking points in print. Though I know Kim Ives has never allowed the facts to get in the way of his own attempts at journalism, for me, at least, individuals advocating their full-throated support for any political current then attempting to pass themselves off as objective journalists, investigating and allowing the facts to fall where they may, is problematic. When his connections with the IJDH/BAI were exposed, Wadner Pierre would later whine that he was being "censored."
Likewise, the unsolicited email photo of blood-spattered corpses sent to me by Jeb Sprague, an individual with a long history of harassing people and making up wild, outlandish claims that are then proven false (such as his attacks against the UK-based Haiti Support Group) did strike me as an attempt to intimidate me into silence, one which didn’t work. The full text of Sprague’s email to me can be read as part of a broader discussion of press coverage of Haiti on my blog.
The attacks that Kim Ives repeats against me from academics like Peter Hallward and Justin Podur, andCenter for Economic and Policy Research co-director Mark Weisbrot, men ignorant of Haiti and its people and with only the most glancing knowledge of even the recent political history that they seek to fit into their unsophisticated binary worldview, were mostly responded to at the time, here, here and here. Likewise were the statements of Patrick Elie, a convicted perjurer with a long history of violent, erratic behaviour who somehow recently begged his way onto a presidential security commission, referred to by Ives as quoted by Justin Podur, a man one is to believe is so clueless about Haiti that while libeling me he confuses the Eglise Saint Pierre in Petionville with the National Cathedral, several miles away.
As to Amnesty International’s recent declaration regarding Ronald Dauphin, in my experience reporting from conflict areas around the globe, local groups such as RNDDH are almost always more reliable in their estimations and characterizations of violence than Amnesty International, which, unlike Human Rights Watch, does precious little on-the-ground research from conflict zones these days and instead is essentially run by bureaucrats filtering through press accounts and the emails they are flooded with by various advocacy groups.
Amnesty International has done almost no original research in Haiti since 2004. RNDDH, on the other hand, with its extensive research network in Haiti and defense of those regardless of political affiliation, seems to me to fit well into the proud tradition of such groups as the Centro para Acción Legal en Derechos Humanos in Guatemala, the Mouvement Ivoirien des Droits Humains in Cote d’Ivoire and the Ligue des Droits de la personne dans la région des Grands Lacs in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Whenever one goes and actually interviews the victims of human rights violations, as I did in St. Marc this summer, in Port-au-Prince in 2006, in the Democratic Republic of Congo or in Indian-controlled Kashmir, there will always be those who, speaking for one political current or another with their hands soaked in blood, will seek to cast doubt on the validity or the worth of that suffering. But if verbal and written attacks are the price one must pay to draw attention to the suffering of people like Amazil Jean-Baptiste and the other survivors of political violence worldwide, it is a tax so relatively minor as to hardly merit mention.
Happy Ramadan from the banlieues,
MD
Ben Dupuy's 2006 note about Kim Ives
From: bdupuy@toast.net
To: haiti-tribunal@lists.mutualaid.org
Cc: haiti-tribunal-request@lists.mutualaid.org ;
bdupuy@toast.net
Subject: Letter to members of the International
Tribunal on Haiti.
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 03:56:34 -0400
7/20/2006
Dear members of the International Tribunal on Haiti,
Kim Ives the assistant prosecutor has called for a conference call for tomorrow the 20th of July at 11 AM. Kim Ives was appointed by me, the presiding judge, to moderate our conference calls. But, it has become clear that he has abused his role as adminitrator/moderator of the Tribunal list and the conference calls by inviting to participate whoever pleases him. The people concerned and authorized to organize and give directives for the different sessions of the Tribunal and therefore to participate in the conference calls are: the presiding judge,his two assistant judges, the chief prosecutor and her assistant, the investigating judge, and no one else. Any outside guest invited to participate in such conference calls should have the approbation of the presiding judge. On the other hand, all the records of the Tribunal are supposed to be deposited in the custody of the court, i.e.the three judges. So far, Kim Ives has retained all the audio-visual materials presented during the four sessions of the tribunal, apart from some overall sessions in Washington and Boston which the court has. It is becoming clear that Kim Ives thinks that he can manipulate the Tribunal for his personal ends.
By posing as the centuries-old "white do-gooder" and "benefactor" of poor underdeveloped Haitians, he hardly disguises his arrogance, hoping to relegate three Haitian presiding judges to mere figureheads (in the mode of Boniface and Latortue ). It is one thing to promote some interested, career-minded lobbyists and their own "expertise" on Haiti; it's another thing to use the victims of Empire for one's own unspoken ends. This Tribunal was originally conceived to bring its case to the International Criminal Court at the Hague, not to be a springboard to enhance one's notoriety or portfolio. As documented in the enclosed financial report, the three presiding judges and the chief prosecutor, Desiree Wayne, are the only ones who have not been reimbursed for their expenditures ( plane tickets, hotels, etc. ).
For a clear understanding on the part of the members of the Tribunal, it is necessary to know that financial contributions to the Tribunal have been solicited through Haiti Support Network (HSN), (see exhibit #1). HSN bank account was established about 10 years ago.The sole treasurer with signature on this account has been Kim Ives' wife, Elisa Chavez. Her interest in the work of HSN soon evaporated and all efforts during these years to have her relinquish her signature rights to Berthony Dupont, a member of HSN and presently the accountant and administrator of Haiti-Progres, have been in vain. Thus, contributions and expenditures for the Tribunal have been handled (de facto ) by Berthony Dupont ( see exhibit #2 ).Even though Berthony did not have signature rights on the account, he managed to deposit contributions and draw checks to pay expenses. (see exhibit #3) But after the 4th session of the Tribunal in Montreal, left unpaid were :1) Miami University Security : $ 240.00 and : 2) Dave Welsh expenses $ 733.74. But before Berthony had a chance to mail the two checks for paying those expenses, he was informed by Kim Ives that his wife, Elisa Chavez, had unilaterally withdrawn all the balance in HSN account ($2000.00). Curiously, the next day, Kim Ives, personally delivered to Berthony $2000.00 cash from an "anonymous" donor. This sum was not deposited in HSN account, including an other check made to the order of HSN. (see exhibit # 4) due to this ursurpation of HSN account.
In my capacity as presiding judge of the International Tribunal on Haiti, I will moderate the next conference call set up by Kim Ives for tomorrow, the 20th of July.Last week conference call was postponed unilaterally by Kim Ives, under the pretext of "conflicts of schedule." He was to have reported on the status of the audio-visual records of the court that he is still holding, and to have presented a financial report on the Tribunal's four sessions
The proposed agenda for tomorrow is :
1) : Financial report Prepared by Berthony Dupont for
the Tribunal.
2) : Review of the status of the audio-visual records
of the Tribunal.
3) : Review of a so-called request for a Tribunal
session in Haiti.
To: haiti-tribunal@lists.mutualaid.org
Cc: haiti-tribunal-request@lists.mutualaid.org ;
bdupuy@toast.net
Subject: Letter to members of the International
Tribunal on Haiti.
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 03:56:34 -0400
7/20/2006
Dear members of the International Tribunal on Haiti,
Kim Ives the assistant prosecutor has called for a conference call for tomorrow the 20th of July at 11 AM. Kim Ives was appointed by me, the presiding judge, to moderate our conference calls. But, it has become clear that he has abused his role as adminitrator/moderator of the Tribunal list and the conference calls by inviting to participate whoever pleases him. The people concerned and authorized to organize and give directives for the different sessions of the Tribunal and therefore to participate in the conference calls are: the presiding judge,his two assistant judges, the chief prosecutor and her assistant, the investigating judge, and no one else. Any outside guest invited to participate in such conference calls should have the approbation of the presiding judge. On the other hand, all the records of the Tribunal are supposed to be deposited in the custody of the court, i.e.the three judges. So far, Kim Ives has retained all the audio-visual materials presented during the four sessions of the tribunal, apart from some overall sessions in Washington and Boston which the court has. It is becoming clear that Kim Ives thinks that he can manipulate the Tribunal for his personal ends.
By posing as the centuries-old "white do-gooder" and "benefactor" of poor underdeveloped Haitians, he hardly disguises his arrogance, hoping to relegate three Haitian presiding judges to mere figureheads (in the mode of Boniface and Latortue ). It is one thing to promote some interested, career-minded lobbyists and their own "expertise" on Haiti; it's another thing to use the victims of Empire for one's own unspoken ends. This Tribunal was originally conceived to bring its case to the International Criminal Court at the Hague, not to be a springboard to enhance one's notoriety or portfolio. As documented in the enclosed financial report, the three presiding judges and the chief prosecutor, Desiree Wayne, are the only ones who have not been reimbursed for their expenditures ( plane tickets, hotels, etc. ).
For a clear understanding on the part of the members of the Tribunal, it is necessary to know that financial contributions to the Tribunal have been solicited through Haiti Support Network (HSN), (see exhibit #1). HSN bank account was established about 10 years ago.The sole treasurer with signature on this account has been Kim Ives' wife, Elisa Chavez. Her interest in the work of HSN soon evaporated and all efforts during these years to have her relinquish her signature rights to Berthony Dupont, a member of HSN and presently the accountant and administrator of Haiti-Progres, have been in vain. Thus, contributions and expenditures for the Tribunal have been handled (de facto ) by Berthony Dupont ( see exhibit #2 ).Even though Berthony did not have signature rights on the account, he managed to deposit contributions and draw checks to pay expenses. (see exhibit #3) But after the 4th session of the Tribunal in Montreal, left unpaid were :1) Miami University Security : $ 240.00 and : 2) Dave Welsh expenses $ 733.74. But before Berthony had a chance to mail the two checks for paying those expenses, he was informed by Kim Ives that his wife, Elisa Chavez, had unilaterally withdrawn all the balance in HSN account ($2000.00). Curiously, the next day, Kim Ives, personally delivered to Berthony $2000.00 cash from an "anonymous" donor. This sum was not deposited in HSN account, including an other check made to the order of HSN. (see exhibit # 4) due to this ursurpation of HSN account.
In my capacity as presiding judge of the International Tribunal on Haiti, I will moderate the next conference call set up by Kim Ives for tomorrow, the 20th of July.Last week conference call was postponed unilaterally by Kim Ives, under the pretext of "conflicts of schedule." He was to have reported on the status of the audio-visual records of the court that he is still holding, and to have presented a financial report on the Tribunal's four sessions
The proposed agenda for tomorrow is :
1) : Financial report Prepared by Berthony Dupont for
the Tribunal.
2) : Review of the status of the audio-visual records
of the Tribunal.
3) : Review of a so-called request for a Tribunal
session in Haiti.
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
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