Haiti forms commission to help solve journalist slayings
The Associated Press
Friday, August 10, 2007
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti: Haiti has created an independent commission to speed up stalled investigations into the slayings of journalists in the impoverished nation.
Eight journalists have been killed in the Caribbean country since 2000, and the notoriously weak and corrupt justice system has yet to convict anyone in the deaths.
The nine-member body, made up of Haitian journalists, will review each case and issue public reports on ways to move the investigations forward, commission president Guy Delva said Friday.
"We want to push the justice system to act. If there are obstacles to these cases, we want to know what they are, who is responsible and how to fix them," said Delva, a correspondent for the Reuters news agency and the head of a Haitian press freedom group.
President Rene Preval pledged full support to the commission, the first of its kind in Haiti.
"The state must make providing justice a priority," Preval said at a ceremony to introduce the commission. "I think the journalists, working together with justice officials, can help reinforce justice in the country."
Delva said the body's first task will be to revisit the murder of Haiti's most famous journalist, Jean Dominique, who was gunned down along with a bodyguard outside his radio station on April 3, 2000. Dominique's life was chronicled in the 2003 documentary "The Agronomist," directed by American filmmaker Jonathan Demme.
The probe into his killing has been plagued by delays, missing case files and the resignation of two investigating judges who received death threats. Three early suspects have been killed, including one under mysterious circumstances in police custody.
Dominique's widow, Michele Montas said revisiting his case offers hope after years of frustration.
"He was a symbol that gave a voice to the voiceless, and that voice was silenced," said Montas, who once fled the country because of death threats and now serves as spokeswoman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "So we're asking for justice for him and everyone else."
Showing posts with label Rene Preval. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rene Preval. Show all posts
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
Ballots instead of bullets
Editorial
Ballots instead of bullets
By Michael Deibert, Special Correspodent
Newsday
November 6, 2005
(Read the orginal here)
When Jacques Roche's body was found on a road in Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince in July -- his wrists handcuffed, his arms broken and the coup de grace having been administered with a bullet to the head -- one of that nation's best-known journalists had become only the most high-profile victim of a grinding march of violence that has claimed some 800 lives in the past year.
Roche, an editor at the newspaper Le Matin, had worked extensively to protest the brutal treatment of Haiti's peasants on the country's Maribahoux plain, who were evicted from some of the best farmland in the nation in 2002 to make way for a free-trade zone by the government of then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Following Aristide's ouster by formerly loyal street gangs and members of Haiti's disbanded military, Roche hosted a television program where members of political parties and civil society groups -- frequently including members of a civil coalition that helped drive Aristide from power -- would discuss the issues of the day. He was exactly the kind of well-meaning person, intent on furthering a peaceful civil society, that Haiti needs. Those needs will be further explored in presidential and legislative elections next month.
When accusations of blame for Roche's killing pointed to gangs from the capital's impoverished Bel Air district, a hotbed of support for the former president, and several defectors from Aristide's political party charged publicly that the former president is orchestrating the violence from exile in South Africa, a painful sense of the inevitable descended upon me.
When I had arrived in Haiti in 1997, I found a country midway through the presidency of Rene Preval, the only president in its history to serve out his full term in office and oversee the transfer of power to an elected successor. Given little respect by a recalcitrant parliamentary opposition, often treated with disdain by the international community and undermined by Aristide himself (who formed his Fanmi Lavalas political party the year I arrived), Preval looked moderate and progressive compared to what followed. The Preval administration worked well in tandem with international development organizations. Haiti began the process of integration into the regional Caribbean Community and Common Market, and huge strides were made in professionalizing a police force that had been merely another wing of repression during the tenure of Haiti's army, disbanded by Aristide in 1995.
All of that came to an end with Aristide's re-inauguration in 2001. The president, once a priest in a Port-au-Prince slum, had first been elected in 1990, only to be ousted in a coup seven months later. Returned by a force of international troops in 1994, Aristide seemed determined not to let history repeat itself. But he became a mirror of the dictators that many hoped his election would drive from office.
On my frequent visits to the capital's sprawling Cité Soleil district, where more than 250,000 people exist in conditions of deprivation and squalor that can only be described as criminal, I watched as young men were armed by a now-politicized police force. Aristide had filled the force with cronies and some of the most notorious members of the military he had disbanded less than a decade earlier.
Helped to weapons and ammunition by individuals such as Hermione Leonard, then police director for the region around Haiti's capital, reporting to the president, these young men with names like Labanye (Banner), Kolobri (Hummingbird), Tupac and Billy -- who long had been excluded from Haiti's political process -- were given the honor of meeting with Aristide at Haiti's National Palace. They were promised that help would come to their community if they attacked opposition demonstrations.
I often asked why they would defend a government that seemed to have done so little. On the contrary, they often said, would any other government in Haiti have even acknowledged their existence, let alone invited them to the palace? But in darker moments, they would confess that they felt they would be killed by the police if they did not do the government's bidding.
With presidential and legislative elections now scheduled for mid-December following two postponements, the question of whether these gangs feel they have a stake in the process will determine how fairly voting in the capital will proceed. With the Lavalas movement split into two camps -- one backing Preval, who is running for re-election, and one backing former World Bank official Marc Bazin -- and thousands registering in Cité Soleil and Bel Air, the signs are guardedly hopeful.
Far from being the simple thugs they were often depicted as, these gunmen could have represented a youth movement to help turn the nation around. But their legions were blurred with those of hard-core criminals, and it was people like Jacques Roche who paid the price.
Ballots instead of bullets
By Michael Deibert, Special Correspodent
Newsday
November 6, 2005
(Read the orginal here)
When Jacques Roche's body was found on a road in Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince in July -- his wrists handcuffed, his arms broken and the coup de grace having been administered with a bullet to the head -- one of that nation's best-known journalists had become only the most high-profile victim of a grinding march of violence that has claimed some 800 lives in the past year.
Roche, an editor at the newspaper Le Matin, had worked extensively to protest the brutal treatment of Haiti's peasants on the country's Maribahoux plain, who were evicted from some of the best farmland in the nation in 2002 to make way for a free-trade zone by the government of then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Following Aristide's ouster by formerly loyal street gangs and members of Haiti's disbanded military, Roche hosted a television program where members of political parties and civil society groups -- frequently including members of a civil coalition that helped drive Aristide from power -- would discuss the issues of the day. He was exactly the kind of well-meaning person, intent on furthering a peaceful civil society, that Haiti needs. Those needs will be further explored in presidential and legislative elections next month.
When accusations of blame for Roche's killing pointed to gangs from the capital's impoverished Bel Air district, a hotbed of support for the former president, and several defectors from Aristide's political party charged publicly that the former president is orchestrating the violence from exile in South Africa, a painful sense of the inevitable descended upon me.
When I had arrived in Haiti in 1997, I found a country midway through the presidency of Rene Preval, the only president in its history to serve out his full term in office and oversee the transfer of power to an elected successor. Given little respect by a recalcitrant parliamentary opposition, often treated with disdain by the international community and undermined by Aristide himself (who formed his Fanmi Lavalas political party the year I arrived), Preval looked moderate and progressive compared to what followed. The Preval administration worked well in tandem with international development organizations. Haiti began the process of integration into the regional Caribbean Community and Common Market, and huge strides were made in professionalizing a police force that had been merely another wing of repression during the tenure of Haiti's army, disbanded by Aristide in 1995.
All of that came to an end with Aristide's re-inauguration in 2001. The president, once a priest in a Port-au-Prince slum, had first been elected in 1990, only to be ousted in a coup seven months later. Returned by a force of international troops in 1994, Aristide seemed determined not to let history repeat itself. But he became a mirror of the dictators that many hoped his election would drive from office.
On my frequent visits to the capital's sprawling Cité Soleil district, where more than 250,000 people exist in conditions of deprivation and squalor that can only be described as criminal, I watched as young men were armed by a now-politicized police force. Aristide had filled the force with cronies and some of the most notorious members of the military he had disbanded less than a decade earlier.
Helped to weapons and ammunition by individuals such as Hermione Leonard, then police director for the region around Haiti's capital, reporting to the president, these young men with names like Labanye (Banner), Kolobri (Hummingbird), Tupac and Billy -- who long had been excluded from Haiti's political process -- were given the honor of meeting with Aristide at Haiti's National Palace. They were promised that help would come to their community if they attacked opposition demonstrations.
I often asked why they would defend a government that seemed to have done so little. On the contrary, they often said, would any other government in Haiti have even acknowledged their existence, let alone invited them to the palace? But in darker moments, they would confess that they felt they would be killed by the police if they did not do the government's bidding.
With presidential and legislative elections now scheduled for mid-December following two postponements, the question of whether these gangs feel they have a stake in the process will determine how fairly voting in the capital will proceed. With the Lavalas movement split into two camps -- one backing Preval, who is running for re-election, and one backing former World Bank official Marc Bazin -- and thousands registering in Cité Soleil and Bel Air, the signs are guardedly hopeful.
Far from being the simple thugs they were often depicted as, these gunmen could have represented a youth movement to help turn the nation around. But their legions were blurred with those of hard-core criminals, and it was people like Jacques Roche who paid the price.
Reclaiming the streets
Reclaiming the streets
JANE'S DEFENCE WEEKLY - JUNE 15, 2005
By Michael Deibert, JDW Special Correspondent
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
The UN mission in Haiti faces a daunting task in reforming Haiti's police force. Michael Deibert reports
It was then that, seven months after the resignation and flight into exile of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, street gangs allied with the former president (who are known as 'chimeres') launched in Haiti's capital what came to be known as 'Operation Baghdad': a series of violent attacks against police (often ending in gruesome public murders), civilians and officials of the interim government of President Boniface Alexandre and Prime Minister Gerard Latortue.
The attacks abated somewhat at the beginning of 2005, but have recently shown signs of flaring up again.
After the killings in May, the PNH's Interim Police Chief, Leon Charles, denounced on Haitian radio what he called "the hypocrisy" of the international community's continued embargo on arms to Haiti - put in place during a military regime that ousted Aristide for three years in the 1990s.
The Bel Air episode, coming in an impoverished neighborhood where allegations of police brutality have been rife, only underlined the daunting task faced by the Civilian Police (CIVPOL) forces, part of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) force attempting to lay the groundwork for legislative and presidential elections in Haiti later in 2005.
The force - numbering 620 CIVPOL personnel and 750 members of foreign police units - was put in place in Haiti after Aristide's flight and is charged with reforming a battered force that many hoped would be the humane, professional successor to Haiti's violent military, disbanded after Aristide's return in 1994.
"There was huge progress in the 1990s, that stemmed from ... some stability in a three- to five-year period [during the presidency of Rene Preval, who ruled Haiti from 1996-2001]," according to CIVPOL commissioner David Beer.
"A large number of the people in executive positions remained in place; there was some continuity in the organization. Upon the election of the Aristide government, virtually the entire executive of the organization was wiped out - either fired or quit. With the destruction of the senior management of the organization, parallel entry without proper qualifications and politicization was the start of big problems with criminality, all of which have, recently, anyway, served to demoralize the organization," Beer said.
The stories of how Aristide nearly destroyed the PNH as an institution, replacing competent and dedicated police officials with loyalists and activists of his Fanmi Lavalas political party - in a country where strengthening institutions often takes a back seat to clinging to political power - are legion, many of them revolving around the PNH's feared riot police, the Corps d'intervention et de Maintien de l'ordre (CIMO).
According to several former PNH officials, as well as the gang leaders themselves, shortly after Aristide's return to office in 2001 the PNH began regular contacts with street gangs in the capital's urban centers. Their purpose was to distribute ammunition and occasionally money on behalf of the government in a move brought on in part, some said, by Aristide's fear of another coup, such as the one that ousted him in 1991.
In addition to using their newfound firepower to attack demonstrations and opposition protests, the gangs often turned their guns on each other.
Following a fierce gang war in the capital's Cité Soleil slum in 2002, Hermione Leonard, then PNH director for the region around Haiti's capital, staged a weapons search in the zone. This was farcical, as Leonard and PNH officers had previously driven to collect and safely stash 'their' weapons from the militants, and two of the local gang leaders going by the noms de guerres Labanye and Kolobri (now both dead) were given masks and CIMO outfits so as to 'participate' in the search.
When the Aristide government was facing the threat of an armed rebellion in February 2004, a notorious gang leader and ex-Haitian Army officer (called Jeudi) from the area around the capital's port was given a CIMO uniform and sent to the northern city of Saint Marc. There he and other armed government partisans acted in concert with PNH forces and a local street gang called Bale Wouze (Clean Sweep) to lay siege to the neighborhood of La Scierie, an attack during which over 20 people, most of them civilians, were killed.
Given such a pedigree and the prevailing climate of graft - a senior CIVPOL official recently estimated that, for some 8,000 PNH cheques issued every month, there are in fact only 4,500 PNH employees - it is easy to appreciate the challenges faced by the recent graduating class of the PNH academy, which included 368 new police officers, as well as 39 commissioners and 49 inspectors. The institution has also been bedeviled by a weak and ineffectual judicial system. A February report by the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH) human rights group noted that only 5 per cent of the incarcerated population in Haiti had ever been tried and sentenced. In poor neighborhoods, many people say that any young man caught by the police is charged with being an Aristide gang member and liable to be summarily executed by the police.
"If you ask me if the police are still involved in human rights violations, I would say, yes, a lot," said Pierre Esperance, RNDDH's executive director.
"The change we have right now is that this government doesn't use gangs or civilians to persecute those who criticize it, but that's all. When police are involved in human rights violations, there is no effort by the government to punish them."
In addition to its institutional weakness, many observers point to the painfully slow roll-out of the UN mission in Haiti as part of the problem; as of March only $220 million of some $1.08 billion pledged to rebuild the country had been disbursed. It appears the outside world, following Aristide's return with the help of a US-led multinational force, seemed to largely lose interest in the nuts-and-bolts of building Haiti's democracy.
However, the CIVPOL in Haiti has not yet despaired, and it looks at the base of the new police force - those officers being closely vetted before being integrated into the organization - as the potential future of Haiti's law enforcement.
"There is a core of people in the organization that are extremely committed to their job," Beer said. "They work 12 hours a day, six days a week; they travel in by camionette [van] to start their week; they find places to sleep here; they don't make a whole lot of money. We, the international community, have to be prepared to be here with the resources necessary to get that done and stay here long enough to make sure it's a sustainable programme, unlike last time."
JANE'S DEFENCE WEEKLY - JUNE 15, 2005
By Michael Deibert, JDW Special Correspondent
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
The UN mission in Haiti faces a daunting task in reforming Haiti's police force. Michael Deibert reports
(Read the orginal here)
When two Haitian policemen were killed in battle with an armed gang in the desperately poor Bel Air section of Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince on 22 May, they were the latest fatalities in a troubling cycle of violence that has seen an average of one Police Nationale d'Haïti (PNH) officer killed every five days since the end of September 2004.It was then that, seven months after the resignation and flight into exile of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, street gangs allied with the former president (who are known as 'chimeres') launched in Haiti's capital what came to be known as 'Operation Baghdad': a series of violent attacks against police (often ending in gruesome public murders), civilians and officials of the interim government of President Boniface Alexandre and Prime Minister Gerard Latortue.
The attacks abated somewhat at the beginning of 2005, but have recently shown signs of flaring up again.
After the killings in May, the PNH's Interim Police Chief, Leon Charles, denounced on Haitian radio what he called "the hypocrisy" of the international community's continued embargo on arms to Haiti - put in place during a military regime that ousted Aristide for three years in the 1990s.
The Bel Air episode, coming in an impoverished neighborhood where allegations of police brutality have been rife, only underlined the daunting task faced by the Civilian Police (CIVPOL) forces, part of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) force attempting to lay the groundwork for legislative and presidential elections in Haiti later in 2005.
The force - numbering 620 CIVPOL personnel and 750 members of foreign police units - was put in place in Haiti after Aristide's flight and is charged with reforming a battered force that many hoped would be the humane, professional successor to Haiti's violent military, disbanded after Aristide's return in 1994.
"There was huge progress in the 1990s, that stemmed from ... some stability in a three- to five-year period [during the presidency of Rene Preval, who ruled Haiti from 1996-2001]," according to CIVPOL commissioner David Beer.
"A large number of the people in executive positions remained in place; there was some continuity in the organization. Upon the election of the Aristide government, virtually the entire executive of the organization was wiped out - either fired or quit. With the destruction of the senior management of the organization, parallel entry without proper qualifications and politicization was the start of big problems with criminality, all of which have, recently, anyway, served to demoralize the organization," Beer said.
The stories of how Aristide nearly destroyed the PNH as an institution, replacing competent and dedicated police officials with loyalists and activists of his Fanmi Lavalas political party - in a country where strengthening institutions often takes a back seat to clinging to political power - are legion, many of them revolving around the PNH's feared riot police, the Corps d'intervention et de Maintien de l'ordre (CIMO).
According to several former PNH officials, as well as the gang leaders themselves, shortly after Aristide's return to office in 2001 the PNH began regular contacts with street gangs in the capital's urban centers. Their purpose was to distribute ammunition and occasionally money on behalf of the government in a move brought on in part, some said, by Aristide's fear of another coup, such as the one that ousted him in 1991.
In addition to using their newfound firepower to attack demonstrations and opposition protests, the gangs often turned their guns on each other.
Following a fierce gang war in the capital's Cité Soleil slum in 2002, Hermione Leonard, then PNH director for the region around Haiti's capital, staged a weapons search in the zone. This was farcical, as Leonard and PNH officers had previously driven to collect and safely stash 'their' weapons from the militants, and two of the local gang leaders going by the noms de guerres Labanye and Kolobri (now both dead) were given masks and CIMO outfits so as to 'participate' in the search.
When the Aristide government was facing the threat of an armed rebellion in February 2004, a notorious gang leader and ex-Haitian Army officer (called Jeudi) from the area around the capital's port was given a CIMO uniform and sent to the northern city of Saint Marc. There he and other armed government partisans acted in concert with PNH forces and a local street gang called Bale Wouze (Clean Sweep) to lay siege to the neighborhood of La Scierie, an attack during which over 20 people, most of them civilians, were killed.
Given such a pedigree and the prevailing climate of graft - a senior CIVPOL official recently estimated that, for some 8,000 PNH cheques issued every month, there are in fact only 4,500 PNH employees - it is easy to appreciate the challenges faced by the recent graduating class of the PNH academy, which included 368 new police officers, as well as 39 commissioners and 49 inspectors. The institution has also been bedeviled by a weak and ineffectual judicial system. A February report by the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH) human rights group noted that only 5 per cent of the incarcerated population in Haiti had ever been tried and sentenced. In poor neighborhoods, many people say that any young man caught by the police is charged with being an Aristide gang member and liable to be summarily executed by the police.
"If you ask me if the police are still involved in human rights violations, I would say, yes, a lot," said Pierre Esperance, RNDDH's executive director.
"The change we have right now is that this government doesn't use gangs or civilians to persecute those who criticize it, but that's all. When police are involved in human rights violations, there is no effort by the government to punish them."
In addition to its institutional weakness, many observers point to the painfully slow roll-out of the UN mission in Haiti as part of the problem; as of March only $220 million of some $1.08 billion pledged to rebuild the country had been disbursed. It appears the outside world, following Aristide's return with the help of a US-led multinational force, seemed to largely lose interest in the nuts-and-bolts of building Haiti's democracy.
However, the CIVPOL in Haiti has not yet despaired, and it looks at the base of the new police force - those officers being closely vetted before being integrated into the organization - as the potential future of Haiti's law enforcement.
"There is a core of people in the organization that are extremely committed to their job," Beer said. "They work 12 hours a day, six days a week; they travel in by camionette [van] to start their week; they find places to sleep here; they don't make a whole lot of money. We, the international community, have to be prepared to be here with the resources necessary to get that done and stay here long enough to make sure it's a sustainable programme, unlike last time."
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