Faire vivre l’esprit du 7 février

Faire vivre l’esprit du 7 février: Communiqué du Collectif contre l’impunité

samedi 7 février 2015

Communiqué du Collectif contre l’impunité

Ce 7 février 2015 marque les 29 ans de la chute de la dictature duvaliériste. Autant d’années que la dictature elle-même. 29 ans depuis que des victimes survivantes, des familles de personnes disparues, des organisations de droits humains, des citoyennes et citoyens concernés, attendent que la vérité soit établie sur les crimes perpétrés par un régime qui se pensait « à vie ». 29 ans depuis que la justice est en veilleuse. 29 ans d’une difficile quête pour enraciner des acquis démocratiques.

La constitution du 29 mars 1987 s’est voulue un cadre antidictatorial, visant à favoriser l’avènement d’un État de droit démocratique. Le choix du 7 février comme date d’investiture à la présidence est hautement symbolique. Cependant, dès 1987 les détenteurs du pouvoir ont mis entre parenthèse cette date emblématique. Comme si le 7 février 1986 n’avait pas eu lieu. Comme si les libertés retrouvées, le renouvellement des équipes politiques n’étaient pas dus à cet évènement majeur de notre histoire contemporaine. Comme si la nouvelle architecture de l’État n’était pas l’antithèse de l’État duvaliérien. Comme si l’arbitraire, la tentation tyrannique et l’obscurantisme étaient définitivement écartés. Le Collectif contre l’impunité et d’autres organisations de la société civile s’attachent cependant à maintenir le souvenir du 7 février, à contrer le révisionnisme et la banalisation, comme c’est le cas pour tant d’autres dates marquantes de notre cheminement de peuple.

Les turpitudes politiques obscurcissent les horizons d’Haïti. Faire vivre l’esprit du 7 février peut contribuer à la percée des éclaircies. Maintenir l’exigence de justice et le refus de toute forme d’impunité ; Refuser les accommodements à l’inacceptable ; Contribuer à stopper le délabrement des institutions étatiques ; Participer à la construction d’une mémoire collective de la tyrannie ─à travers les témoignages, les recherches, l’enseignement de l’histoire, la création de lieux de mémoire, les commémorations─ ; Promouvoir et défendre le respect de tous les droits humains ; Ce sont des options citoyennes pour garder le cap sur les aspirations qui ont présidé à l’avènement du 7 février 1986.

Le combat pour que soient jugés les co-accusés de l’ex-dictateur Jean-Claude Duvalier, c’est aussi une manière citoyenne de garder vivace l’esprit du 7 février.

Port-au-Prince, le 7 février 2015

Danièle Magloire 
Coordonnatrice

Communiqué from the Collectif contre l’impunité on death of Jean-Claude Duvalier

Communiqué
 
Le décès de Jean-Claude Duvalier ne dispense pas l’État haïtien de ses obligations

Une crise cardiaque a terrassé à mort le dictateur Jean-Claude Duvalier le samedi 4 octobre 2014. S’il n’y avait pas eu le renversement du régime le 7 février 1986, Haïti serait encore aujourd’hui sous la férule de la dynastie Duvalier puisque, selon les constitutions duvaliériennes de 1971, 1983 et 1985, le pouvoir était « à vie » et héréditaire. 

Sans ce frein du 7 février 1986, Jean-Claude Duvalier aurait été le chef de l’État jusqu’à sa mort  et son fils, François-Nicolas Duvalier, qui revendique publiquement l’héritage de son grand-père François Duvalier, lui aurait succédé. Ce faisant, nulle autre personne ne pourrait prétendre occuper la fonction présidentielle. Cette donnée semble échapper au Président de la République, Monsieur Michel Martelly, qui s’empresse de rendre hommage au dictateur déchu, en le qualifiant « d’authentique fils d’Haïti », et d’exprimer ses sympathies à ses partisans qui sont légion dans son entourage. Ainsi, pour la énième fois, la présidence tente d’imposer le silence et l’oubli, en bafouant la mémoire des milliers de victimes des 29 ans de dictature, en niant le droit peuple du haïtien à la vérité et à la justice.   

La mort de Jean-Claude Duvalier met certes un terme aux poursuites contre sa personne. Cependant, cela n’élimine en aucun cas la responsabilité des consorts, donc des individus qui ont contribué à ce que des crimes soient massivement perpétrés. Nombre de ces consorts sont vivants et sont nommément cités dans le réquisitoire du Ministère public, dans les dépositions des plaignantes et plaignants et dans celles de divers témoins. Le décès de Jean-Claude Duvalier ne peut servir de prétexte pour perpétuer l’impunité. L’État haïtien à toujours l’obligation d’enquêter et de sanctionner les coupables. Le gouvernement ne peut donc se borner à déclarer qu’il laisse la justice « suivre son cours », en ignorant délibérément le fait que les poursuites contre Jean-Claude Duvalier et consorts ont été initiées par l’État haïtien lui-même, pour crimes contre l’humanité et crimes financiers, et sans moindrement fournir au système judiciaire les moyens humains et matériels de réaliser les enquêtes. Le gouvernement ne peut non plus feindre d’ignorer l’impact des prises de position du Président de la République. L’affaire Jean-Claude Duvalier et consorts a été maintenue ouverte grâce à l’engagement des membres du Collectif contre l’impunité et d’autres plaignants représentés par le Bureau des avocats internationaux (BAI). 

 Une certaine rhétorique voudrait faire croire qu’une page est tournée avec le décès de l’ex tyran. Il n’en est rien, puisque les mécanismes de la dictature n’ont pas été mis en lumière, le bilan des exactions commises n’a pas été officiellement dressé, les responsabilités n’ont pas été dument établies, la vérité n’a pas éclaté au grand jour et le devoir de mémoire reste et demeure une absolue nécessité. C’est en continuant à livrer le difficile combat contre l’impunité que l’esprit de la constitution de 1987, fondée sur le refus de la dictature et le respect des droits humains, sera respecté et qu’Haïti pourra véritablement construire un État de droit démocratique.

Le combat continue!

5 octobre 2014

Danièle Magloire, Coordonnatrice



Collectif contre l’impunité

Regroupement de plaignants-es  -contre l’ex dictateur Jean-Claude Duvalier et consorts-  et d’organisations de droits humains

Centre œcuménique des droits humains (CEDH)   

Kay Fanm (Maison des femmes)   
 
Mouvement des femmes haïtiennes pour l’éducation et le développement (MOUFHED)  

Réseau national de défense des droits humains (RNDDH)
 
Point focal: Centre œcuménique des droits humains (CEDH)  -  cedh@cedh-haiti.org 


_________________________________
Visitez le site Haïti lute contre l’impunité: www.haitiluttecontre-impunite.org

"La mort d’un tigre au teint très pâle" - Haiti author Lyonel Trouillot on Duvalier

Décès de Baby Doc : "La mort d’un tigre au teint très pâle"

Par Lyonel Trouillot

Publié le dimanche 5 octobre 2014

(Read original article here)

Jean-Claude Duvalier est mort. Dans les rues et dans les foyers, la nouvelle n’a pas créé de grandes émotions. L’homme semblait à peine vivant. Et, depuis son retour, il s’était installé dans le paysage comme, déjà, un fantôme ou un anachronisme. Et, même si de nombreux citoyens haïtiens ont exprimé le regret que la mort, qui n’est pas une sentence, soit venue lui épargner la reddition de comptes pour des vies et des biens, nos vies, nos biens, nul ne s’acharne à vouloir jeter son cadavre aux chiens. Ce peuple qu’il a tant fait souffrir sait une chose que lui, et son père avant lui, avaient oublié : la mort devrait être naturelle et le repos paisible.

Les Duvalier tuaient les vivants et les morts, n’avaient « d’ennemis que ceux de la nation », traitaient leurs victimes « d’apatrides », leur interdisaient tombes et funérailles. La réception tranquille de la nouvelle de la mort de Jean-Claude Duvalier fait la preuve que les peuples sont meilleurs que leurs dirigeants : Duvalier est mort, paix à son âme.

Le problème avec l’âme, c’est que la preuve n’en est faite que pour ceux qui y croient. On pourrait remplacer le mot par « esprit » ou « motivation », ou encore « personnalité ». Si l’on tient à le garder, habitude oblige, en général on peut le faire suivre par des épithètes. De l’âme on peut dire par exemple que François d’Assise l’avait bonne et François Duvalier plutôt mauvaise, qu’il en est de pures et de sombres.

A côté des crimes de sang et de ses hautes œuvres de prévaricateur, Jean-Claude Duvalier ne nous a rien laissé qui nous permettrait, modeste soulagement, de lui prêter une âme. Ses phrases les plus célèbres tiennent du ridicule. Son "pitit tig se tig"et son "ke makak la la pi rèd" ne témoignent de rien qui renvoie à l’idée d’une personnalité. On dirait un mauvais élève contraint de réciter sa leçon en public.

La tragédie de l’héritier : Élu par son père, il hérite d’un pouvoir et d’un peuple en cadeau. Il l’accepte et devient ainsi pleinement responsable devant l’Histoire. C’est un « Je » tout puissant qui ne sait pas dire « Je ». Un déficit de langage qui reste au pouvoir quatorze ans, se prolonge sur vingt-cinq ans d’exil. Ce n’est qu’à son retour - merci Préval et vive la France ! – qu’on entendra vraiment « sa voix » nous demander, candide : « Qu’avez-vous fait de mon pays ? » Si derrière la candeur pointait l’outrecuidance, l’une des rares sorties de son insignifiance de cet enfant de soixante ans consistait à nous reprocher d’avoir cassé son jouet.

Car, ne nous y trompons pas. Jouets, nous fûmes, et jeu fut son pouvoir. C’est ce que l’on a oublié de dire aux vrais enfants d’aujourd’hui, combien il était facile de mourir de cause pas naturelle, combien le luxe des uns s’étalait sans vergogne devant la misère des autres, combien l’Etat c’était « moi » et Mes supers ministres et Mes tontons macoutes au statut de mineurs, et Mon armée inféodée à Mon exécutif, combien Je pouvais tout prendre, tout requérir : voitures, femmes et guitares ; plages et immeubles, devises et biens publics…

Et le décès du prince déchu n’interdit en rien de continuer de demander des comptes au régime, à ceux qui restent de ses sbires et thuriféraires, et de penser, sans complaisance, sa place dans l’histoire. Le duvaliérisme a jeté du pire sur le pire, le jean-claudisme fut les restes de ce pire, un micmac vide de sens : tout ensemble noiriste et mulatriste, technocratique et obscurantiste, sur fond d’arbitraire et de folles jouissances. Le propre des héritiers, quand ils sont au pouvoir, ne se limite-t-il pas souvent à ne savoir qu’en jouir !

Mais l’homme est mort, ne le tuons pas. Reste à savoir comment le pouvoir actuel gèrera sa dépouille. Tel communiqué pleure un « haïtien authentique » et suggère une nostalgie irrespectueuse de la mémoire des victimes de la fureur duvaliériste, et un principe de ressemblance très inquiétant pour notre avenir. Jean-Claude Duvalier est mort. Nous n’avons pas obtenu justice, l’histoire est ainsi faite. Que ses proches et ses amis le pleurent. Il faut supposer que toute personne ayant vécu a suscité l’amour et l’amitié au moins de quelques uns.

Tout ce que nous demandons au pouvoir actuel, c’est de ne pas nous imposer sa dépouille et son passage comme ceux d’un héros, d’un homme de haute vertu. Ce sera mieux pour tous les morts. Pour lui que nous ne serons pas obligés de dénoncer à chaque acclamation, mais seulement à l’appel du devoir de mémoire. Pour Gasner Raymond, Auguste Thénor… les écoliers des Gonaïves… et tant de morts sans sépultures.

Que ses proches me pardonnent ce jugement lapidaire. L’idée n’est pas de leur faire offense. Leur histoire avec lui n’est pas celle du pays ni du citoyen ordinaire. On leur laisse la leur, qu’ils nous laissent la nôtre. Pour l’Histoire, la grande, vient de mourir un ancien dictateur au teint très pâle qui ne fut rien qu’un héritier : sans pour autant l’innocenter, laissons le reposer dans son insignifiance.

Lyonel Trouillot

Haiti: In the Kingdom of Impunity

Haiti: In the Kingdom of Impunity 

By Michael Deibert

There are many striking sights to be seen in Haiti today. In the north of the country, where over 200 years ago a revolt of slaves began that would eventually topple French rule, a 45-minute journey on a smooth road traverses the distance between the border with the Dominican Republic and Haiti's second largest city, Cap-Haïtien, replacing what used to be a multi-hour ordeal. From Cap-Haïtien itself, a city buzzing with economic activity, travel to Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital, could previously be a 10-hour odyssey, but is now accomplished in around 5 hours via a comfortable air-conditioned bus. Once the traveler arrives in Port-au-Prince itself - a city which, along with its environs, was largely devastated by a January 2010 earthquake - one finds, startlingly, functioning traffic lights, street lights powered by solar panels and armies of apron-clad workers diligently sweeping the sidewalks and gutters of what has historically been the filthy fiefdom of Haiti's myriad of warring political factions. To the south, in the colonial city of Jacmel, which sheltered the South American revolutionary Simón Bolívar at a critical time during his struggle to break South America free from the yoke of Spain, one of the most pleasant malecóns in the Caribbean has been built, facing the tumbling sea and mountains sloping dramatically in the distance.

But perhaps no scene in the new Haiti - governed since May 2011 by President Michel Martelly, now assisted by Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe, a former telecommunications mogul - was as striking as that which occurred in the northern city of Gonaives on January 1st of this year. There, at annual ceremony marking Haiti's independence, President Martelly, who in a previous incarnation was known as Sweet Micky and was perhaps the best-known purveyor of Haiti's sinuous konpa music, greeted on the official dais none other than Jean-Claude Duavlier, who ruled Haiti as a dictator from 1971 until 1986, and fled the country amid pillaging of the state and gross human rights abuses.

"Despite everything that has happened in the last 30 years, it is as if they want us to return to the situation that existed before February 7, 1986," says Laënnec Hurbon, Haiti's most well-known sociologist, referring to the date of Duvalier's departure.

Duvalier had taken over from his dictator-father, François Duvalier, a psychopath who lorded over a terrifying police state since 1957, and had created the infamous Tontons Macoutes, denim-clad paramilitary henchmen.

The younger Duvalier was only 19 when he ascended to office, but he grew into the role soon enough. In a speech in October 1977 - the 20th anniversary of his father's assumption of the presidency - the 24 year-old Jean-Claude Duvalier gave a speech in which he heralded the advent of "Jean-Claudism," supposedly a liberalizing trend in Duvalierism that would foster economic development. The near-fatal beating of a prominent government critic, Pastor Luc Nerée, only weeks later gave a flavour for how limited that liberalization would be. Fort Dimanche, a Port-au-Prince prison, during the Duvaliers' reign became known as the Dungeon of Death for the thousands of government opponents and other unfortunate souls who perished there.

In a landmark decision last month, a Haitian court ruled that Duvalier could be tried for crimes against humanity and for abuses committed by security forces during his rule, but deferred a decision as to whether he could be tried on various corruption charges.

"The Duvalier decision is a little victory against impunity and corruption," says Pierre Espérance, director of the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH), Haiti's most well-known human rights organization. "But we still have a lot of work to do."

Along with several other organizations, RNDDH is a member of the Collectif contre l'impunité, a coalition of groups advocating for legal action against Duvalier.

Duvalier is far from the only Haitian politician with a trial potentially in his future. The former boy dictator, now grown gray and sallow in old age, returned to Haiti in January 2011 in the midst of the contentious vote that saw Martelly elected. He was followed by another former president, and arch-rival, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

During his 2001 to 2004 second turn in office and immediately preceding it, Aristide was accused of, among other misdeeds, arming and organizing paramilitary youth groups known as chimeres, presiding over brutal collective reprisals by his security forces against the rebellious city of Gonaives, and a ghastly massacre in the town of Saint-Marc in February 2004, the latter killings by a combination of police, security personnel from Aristide's National Palace and allied street gangs having claimed at least 27 lives. In recent testimony presented in a Haitian court, Aristide was also accused of orchestrating the April 2000 murder of Jean Dominique, the country's most well-known journalist. Two separate bodies - the Unite Centrale de Renseignements Financiers (UCREF) and the Commission d'Enquete Administrative - that examined financial irregularities from Aristide's time as Haiti's president found that "Aristide's government illegally pumped at least $21 million of his country's meager public funds into private firms that existed only on paper and into his charities."

Nor can those tasked with checking the power of the executive branch be viewed with great confidence, with Haiti's legislative branch of government often resembling a prison more than a parliament.

Two members of Haiti's lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, Rodriguez Séjour and  N'Zounaya Bellange Jean-Baptiste (who as parliamentarians enjoy immunity from prosecution), have been credibly accused of involvement of the April 2012 murder of Haitian police officer Walky Calixte, but both men remain free with apparent little fear of trial or even arrest. In the slain policeman's Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Carrefour, mournful graffiti still reads Adieu, Walky. Another deputy, fierce Martelly critic Arnel Belizaire, is alleged by the government to have managed to get himself elected despite the fact that he was a fugitive who had broken out of jail a few years before [What is beyond debate is that Belizaire is prone to bouts of physical violence in the parliament itself].

One of President Martelly's chief advisors, Calixte Valentin, was identified as being responsible for the killing of a merchant named Octanol Dérissaint in the town of Fonds-Parisien, near the border with the Dominican Republic, in April 2012. Valentin was never tried for the crime and remains a free man to this day.

It is amid such a discordant background - foreign investment flooding into the country as never before in terms of tourist initiatives and industrial parks even as Haiti's politic milieu remains deeply dysfunctional - that long-delayed legislative elections for two-thirds of the country's senate, the entire chamber of deputies, and local and municipal officials such as mayors are scheduled to take place in October. Several political parties have not as-yet signed on to the electoral plan.

"There are a few parties who chose not to participate, but it was an open process," says Carl Alexandre, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti, known by its acronym MINUSTAH. "It is our hope that those who didn't participate initially will want to join as the process unfolds, because the alternative is unthinkable. If the elections are not held this year, in January there will not be a functioning parliament. There will be no one there."

[The UN mission in Haiti has had its own issues with impunity. A cholera epidemic, all-but-certainly introduced by Nepalese peacekeepers, has killed over 8,000 people in the country, but the UN has claimed immunity from any damages.]

Around the country, the Martelly-Lamothe government seems to remain broadly popular, with one moto taxi driver plying Port-au-Prince's dusty Route de Freres telling me "they are working well for Haiti," a sentiment I heard often in my travels around the country. This despite the fact that  - from the crowds in Gonaives chanting "Martelly for 50 years!" to the huge billboards around the country bearing Martelly's image (in violation of Article 7 of Haiti's constitution, which bans "effigies and names of living personages" from "currency, stamps, seals, public buildings, streets or works of art") -  the government seems to have by no means entirely abandoned the realpolitik of Haiti's past. As they once did for Aristide, graffiti slogans around Port-au-Prince laud the bèl ekip (beautiful team) of Martelly-Lamothe.

Haiti's economy is indeed moving - even roaring - forward, but the old need for a mechanism for crime and punishment of the country's powerful keeps knocking on Haiti's door, unbidden, perhaps unwanted, but there nonetheless. In a marriage of impunity and economy, perhaps the echoes of Jean-Claudism do not appear so distant after all.

"We are talking about the situation of impunity that has been the rule since François Duvalier came to power in 1957, and something has to be done to stop that," says Sylvie Bajeux, director of the Centre Œcuménique des droits humains (CEDH), who also served as one of the officials who investigated Aristide's alleged financial misdeeds. Like RNDDH, the CEDH is a member of the Collectif contre l'impunité. "If we don't, we are going nowhere, we cannot talk about reconstruction."

"Jean-Claude Duvalier's case has become the symbol for the need to put an end to impunity," Bajeux  says. "He's being charged with monstrous deeds. So what is going to happen? What happens with Duvalier's case is something that will affect the whole future of this country, one way or another."

Michael Deibert is the author of In the Shadow of Saint Death: The Gulf Cartel and the Price of America's Drug War in Mexico (Lyons Press, 2014), The Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair (Zed Books, 2013) and Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press, 2005).

February 7: A symbol of the rejection of dictatorship

Press release

February 7: A symbol of the rejection of dictatorship


Collectif contre l’impunité/Collective against impunity 

Platform for legal action against ex dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier et al with support from human rights organizations: 

Ecumenical center for human rights (CEDH) 

Kay Fanm (Women’s house)    

Haitian women’s movement for education and development (MOUFHED) 

National human rights network (RNDDH) 

Communication: Centre œcuménique des droits humains (CEDH)

February 7, 1986, when the Duvalier dynasty is overthrown, is the end result of many long and terrible years of struggle that cost the lives of thousands of Haitians.

After the brutal repression of November 28, 1980, which had particularly targeted the press, the population is once more excluded. The flame of resistance is revived in 1984 by young people, in particular those of the city of Gonaïves, who express their rejection of the hereditary presidency and the absolute power that it entails: «Down with poverty for life! Down with unemployment for life ! Down with torture! Down with dictatorship!» It is the outrage of wounded young people that brings the last blows to a regime which still dares to transform the only library in a city into barracks for the Tonton macoutes. 

The rejection of impunity, for the crimes perpetrated against three schoolboys, Jean-Robert Cius, Makenson Michel, and Daniel Israël, shot down during the November 28 1985 demonstrations in Gonaives, spearheads riots throughout the country. «The criminals who murdered the three boys should be arrested, tried and condemned as well as those who ordered to open fire on the population, even if it is one of the highest authorities of the State.»

These young people aspired to finally «see duvalierism uprooted forever.»

28 years after this victory over terror and obscurantism, it is again necessary to confront and stop the official return of duvalierism. It is again necessary to fight the will to ensure impunity for those who imposed silence and fear on our land, for those who systematically put in place that diabolical machine to  degrade, torture, assassinate, violate, exile, dispossess, and make so many disappear. They want to make today’s young people believe that the so called «Duvalierist revolution» was carrying ideals of freedom, fulfillment and progress. They want to disguise history in claiming that the regime ─anchored in the arbitrary, in savage brutality, oppression, the cult of personality, the domestication of the institutions and terror─ was no different than any government. 

The Collective and others, here in Haiti and elsewhere, are determined to continue to reject the unacceptable. In the name of truth and justice; in memory of our innumerable victims; in homage to the resistance of all the young people who, throughout these 29 years of dictatorship, went to the frontline to defend our right to freedom. To reject the unacceptable is to keep alive the spirit of February 7. 

Duvalierism was a tragedy for Haiti!  Impunity cannot be the destiny of Haiti!

Port-au-Prince, February 7, 2014

Daniele Magloire

Coordinator

Déclaration conjointe contre la présence de l’inculpé Jean-Claude Duvalier aux cérémonies officielles du jour de l’indépendance d’Haïti

Des organisations s’expriment contre la banalisation de l’impunité et le révisionnisme

Déclaration conjointe contre la présence de l’inculpé Jean-Claude Duvalier aux cérémonies officielles du jour de l’indépendance d’Haïti

Document soumis à AlterPresse le 7 janvier 2014

Nous signataires de cette déclaration, issus de la société civile haïtienne organisée, sommes profondément indignés par la présence du dictateur déchu Jean-Claude Duvalier et de l’ex militaire putschiste Prosper Avril, sur invitation du Président en exercice Michel Martelly, aux cérémonies officielles du jour de l’indépendance d’Haïti, le 1er janvier 2014 aux Gonaïves. Cette présence des anciens tortionnaires est une provocation et une insulte inqualifiable à la nation. Elle est également un affront à la mémoire des milliers de victimes de la dictature duvaliériste.    

Jean-Claude Duvalier est aujourd’hui inculpé, par devant la justice haïtienne, pour crimes financiers et crimes contre l’humanité. Les victimes, ayant engagées des poursuites contre l’ex-dictateur, attendent encore une décision de la Cour d’appel par rapport aux crimes contre l’humanité ; crimes imprescriptibles et non amnistiables.    

La justice ne saurait être confondue avec la vengeance. Ce sont les duvaliéristes et leurs tontons macoutes qui ont eu le monopole de la violence d’État, avec tout ce que cela implique. Ils sont jusqu’à présent protégés par l’impunité systémique qui prévaut dans le pays. Les victimes de la dictature et les défenseurs des droits humains, qui ne confondent pas réconciliation et déni de justice, s’insurgent contre la banalisation de l’impunité, le révisionnisme historique et exigent que la Cour d’appel rende enfin sa décision, conformément à son mandat et par respect pour les victimes qui ont courageusement porté plainte contre Duvalier.    

Nous appelons les différents secteurs de la société à refuser la réhabilitation du duvaliérisme et la banalisation de l’impunité.    

Port-au-Prince, le 7 janvier 2014.    

Organisations signataires 

1. Collectif contre l’impunité  2. CEDH (Centre œcuménique des droits humains) 

3. Centre Pétion Bolivar 

4. CRESFED (Centre de recherche et de formation économique et sociale pour le développement) 

5. GARR (Groupe d’appui aux rapatriés et réfugiés) 

6. Kay Fanm (Maison des femmes) 

7. JILAP (Commission épiscopale Justice et Paix) 

8. MOUFHED (Mouvement des femmes haïtiennes pour l’éducation et le développement) 

9. POHDH (Plateforme des organisations haïtiennes de défense des droits humains) 

10. RNDDH (Réseau national de défense des droits humains) 

11. SOFA (Solidarité des femmes haïtiennes)    

Pour les organisations signataires et authentification 

Sylvie W. Bajeux, Directrice exécutive CEDH 
Pierre Espérance, Directeur exécutif RNDDH

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.

Rencontre President Michel Martelly & Jean-Claude Duvalier

Impunity or Justice – what will exiled leaders find returning to Haiti?

Impunity or Justice – what will exiled leaders find returning to Haiti?

Friday, 21. January 2011

Transparency International

(Read the original article here)

Marilyn Allien, head of La Fondation Heritage pour Haiti (LFHH), the Transparency International chapter in Haiti, reflects on what the return of former president Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier after 25 years in exile means for Haiti.

Truly, we in Haiti are having a very hard time digesting this event and what it means for governance and the rule of law in Haiti. At LFHH, we are in shock – it’s almost like another earthquake in terms of its implications, particularly for the victims and their family members who suffered under the Duvalier regime.

The local media are reporting that some people who were tortured more than 25 years ago are now compiling documents to lodge complaints. It is a pity that this was not done before. We know that the statute of limitations has run out on crimes of corruption – a case in point is the alleged stolen assets that are now frozen in Switzerland – but there are no statutes of limitations for crimes against humanity. However, at the hearing at the Prosecutor’s office on January 18, Duvalier was not charged with crimes against humanity.

After his hearing, Duvalier was allowed to return to his hotel but asked “to remain at the disposition of Haitian justice.”

What, we are asking ourselves, is Haitian justice today? In 2009 we at LFHH have looked at the Haitian pillars of justice as part of a National Integrity System review of governance systems and found them sorely lacking. Haiti’s Superior Council of Judiciary Power created by a law voted in 2009 and responsible for ensuring the integrity of magistrates and judges is yet to be operational as it is supposed to be headed by the President of the Supreme Court. This post has been vacant since 2004 and Haiti’s president has failed to nominate a new President of the Supreme Court. All these failings date to before the earthquake and its devastation and before the latest round of elections which have further weakened the system.

[Building up Justice: Haiti's Palace of Justice in ruins after the 2010 earthquake]

It would be optimistic to predict that justice will be done in the case of Jean-Claude Duvalier – who misruled Haiti for 15 years (François Duvalier, the father, was President for life during a period of 14 years) –but as we struggle to reconstruct our devastated island, it is this kind of optimism that keeps us going.

A good friend of mine, journalist Michael Deibert, wrote an article for CNN that encapsulates what many of us feel as we wait to see what will happen next. The return of Duvalier, he said is “a sharp reminder of how impunity remains a significant stumbling block as Haitians try to construct a more just and equitable society.”

And if that were not enough, news is now spreading through Haiti that

Jean-Bertrand Aristide, another former corrupt and murderous misruler of Haiti, is also trying to return to the island.

Haitians are still waiting to see if any of the perpetrators of crimes under the Duvalier and Aristide regimes will ever be brought to justice. This would be a big step forward for a nation struggling to build accountability and integrity into a new governance regime.

I whole-heartedly concur with what Michael Deibert wrote: “Frustratingly for the people of Haiti, far from being supported in their calls for justice, the abuses they have experienced have more often than not become a political football among international actors.”

What we are fighting for and advocating is a strong judicial system where impunity has no place. The shock of Duvalier’s return makes this all the more urgent.

A monster returns to Haiti

19 January 2011

A monster returns to Haiti

By Michael Deibert, Special to CNN

(Read the original article here)

Editor's note: Michael Deibert is a visiting fellow at the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University and the author of "Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti" (Seven Stories Press).

(CNN) -- The return to Haiti this week of Jean-Claude Duvalier, the scion of a family dictatorship that misruled that Caribbean nation for 29 years, is a sharp reminder of how impunity remains a significant stumbling block as Haitians try to construct a more just and equitable society.

Returning to the same airport from which he fled in 1986, Duvalier (popularly known as "Baby Doc" to distinguish him from his more unhinged dictator father, François "Papa Doc" Duvalier), looked stunned and confused, as if the Port-au-Prince to which he returned -- still leveled from a 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people -- had changed beyond recognition.

Unfortunately for Haiti's people, however, some things about the nation -- which produces sinuous music, acidly brilliant novelists and stunning art, along with grinding poverty and political unrest -- have yet to change.

Though Duvalier presided over his sputtering police state without the gleeful ruthlessness of his father, his tenure in Haiti's presidential palace was nevertheless perhaps best summed up by a prison on the outskirts of the Haitian capital called Fort Dimanche, where enemies of the state were sent to die by execution, torture or to simply waste away amidst conditions that were an affront to humanity.

The figure of the rotund Duvalier -- who was questioned yesterday by a Haitian judge about a few of his government's many transgressions -- and his spendthrift wife presiding over such a desperately poor country might have been farcical were the results not so grim.

Haitians' great hopes after Duvalier's flight were sobered considerably amidst ever-greater bloodletting, as pressure groups such as the Duvalier's former paramilitary henchmen, the army, the country's rapacious elite and others vied for the spoils of power.

The election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide at the head of a broad-based coalition in 1990 was followed by a coup only seven months after his inauguration. Three long years of paramilitary terror followed before Aristide was returned by a U.S.-led military mission to Haiti in 1994. The leaders of the regime that oversaw the terror, again, fled to their comfortable repasts abroad.

But happy endings are hard to come by in Haiti. As Duvalier whiled away his time, using his ill-gotten fortune in Europe, the newly returned Aristide set about creating a thuggish style of governance that the younger Duvalier's father would have found very familiar.

Corrupted elections in 1997 and 2000 favored Aristide's loyalists, and important statutes of Haiti's 1987 constitution -- such as those forbidding the cult of personality and protecting the independence of the judiciary -- were trampled.

By the time Aristide returned to Haiti's national palace in 2001, a network of armed partisans reminded many Haitians of the ruthless methods of rulers past. Then, 18 years after Duvalier's flight, Aristide followed him into exile in February 2004, amid street protests and a rebellion spearhead by formerly loyal gang members.

The grotesque excesses of Duvalier are perhaps the most well known, but to date, none of these men have seen the inside of a prison cell for the actions of their respective regimes. Victims of the Duvaliers' network of enforcers -- the Tontons Macoutes -- have waited in vain for justice and even seen former Duvalierist officials recycled in succeeding, supposedly "democratic," governments.

Nor has anyone yet been held accountable for several large-scale killings by government security forces -- or the slaying of at least 27 people in the town of St. Marc in February 2004 that occurred as the Aristide government drew to its inevitable denouement .

Frustratingly for the people of Haiti, far from being supported in their calls for justice, the abuses they have experienced have more often than not become a political football among international actors.

During the height of the excesses of Duvalier fils, Ron Brown, then acting as deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee and later serving as Bill Clinton's secretary of Commerce, lobbied the U.S. Congress on behalf of the dictator, pocketing more than half a million dollars for his efforts.

In the present day, a U.S.-based organization called the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, linked at the hip with Aristide's U.S. attorney, Ira Kurzban, has worked to discredit the calls for justice of the survivors of the massacre in St. Marc. Kurzban's law firm made millions representing the Aristide government.

Like Duvalier before him, Aristide continues to enjoy a gilded exile, this time in South Africa, where his comfortable lifestyle is bankrolled by South African taxpayers.

And now Duvalier, one of Haiti's waking nightmares, is back in his native land. Will he face justice? What will that justice look like in a place where recently political actors saw fit to rig an election amidst the ruins of a country that has yet to even begin to recover from last year's apocalyptic tremor?

The aforementioned great writers of Haiti no doubt find it all bitterly symbolic.

Out of the ruins of the Duvalier torture prison, Fort Dimanche, now abandoned, grew a slum. Its residents called it Village Demokrasi. Democracy Village.

It is here where, as Duvalier returns from 25 years of exile and Haiti marks as many years of the international community's questionable ministrations, that residents try to stave off hunger pangs with cakes made out of clay and seasoned with cubes of chicken or beef bouillon.

There is symbolism in that, too.

History lesson

Déclaration concernant les Fonds Duvalier

Déclaration concernant les Fonds Duvalier

Les organisations soussignées qui, depuis plusieurs années, ont accompagné le cheminement de la procédure concernant les fonds Duvalier existant encore dans les banques suisses, expriment ici leur position quant à « la remise » de ces fonds et leur « utilisation »

Premièrement --- La remise de ces fonds à l’Etat Haïtien ne saurait être accompagnée de conditions imposées de l’extérieur. Seul, l’Etat, en représentation du peuple Haïtien, doit assumer

la responsabilité de ces fonds qui lui sont remis et de veiller scrupuleusement à la gestion et l’utilisation qui en seront faites et en rendre compte devant la Nation.

Deuxièmement -- La dictature des Duvalier, reconnue comme l’une des plus brutales de la deuxième partie du XXème siècle, a systématiquement utilisé la détention dans des conditions abominables comme l’un des moyens les plus efficaces pour contrôler la population et se maintenir au pouvoir. Certaines prisons, comme le tristement célèbre « Fort-Dimanche », face à la Croix-des-Bossales, peuvent être sans réserve qualifiées de « camp d’extermination ».

Aujourd’hui, il faut constater, plus de 20 ans après le départ des Duvalier, que les efforts pour instaurer l’Etat de Droit, ne se sont pas portés, comme il aurait fallu, sur le système pénitentiaire qui accuse encore l’héritage légué par le régime précédent.

Les séquelles de ce dernier continuent à se faire sentir, en particulier dans les prisons et centres de détention dont les conditions inqualifiables ont été amplement documentées et dénoncées par des rapports officiels d’organisations locales ou de gouvernements et d’institutions internationales, comme le rapport de l’Institut Vera et celui, tout récent, du Département d’Etat des EUA, pour ne citer que ceux-là.

C’est pourquoi, selon les organisations soussignées, ce qui reste de l’argent provenant des détournements de fonds par la famille Duvalier, devrait servir, en priorité, à humaniser les conditions d’existence des personnes détenues actuellement dans les prisons du pays pour les amener au niveau requis par les normes internationales. Que les fonds Duvalier soient utilisés à ces fins manifesterait symboliquement, éthiquement, la volonté de rupture avec l’ héritage associé à ce nom et tout ce qui avait été conçu et utilisé pour violenter et anéantir la personne humaine.

Cette destination des fonds Duvalier pour la normalisation des conditions d’emprisonnement et de détention nous parait représenter un acte de profonde humanité qui serait soutenu par la nation tout entière.

Ainsi soit fait.

Ont signé, le 30 mars 2009

CENTRE ŒCUMENIQUE DES DROITS HUMAINS ( CEDH )
Jean-Claude Bajeux

COMMISSION EPISCOPALE NATIONALE JUSTICE ET PAIX (JILAP)
P. Jan Hanssens

LA FONDATION HÉRITAGE (FLHH) –Section haïtienne de Transparency International Marilyn Allien

GROUPE d’ APPUI AUX RAPATRIÉS ET RÉFUGIÉS ( GARR ) Serge Lamothe