[Mb-civic] Haiti's Torment

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Here's "exhibit A" in demonstrating how dedicated America is to spreading 
democracy...


Distibuted by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services
Published on Tuesday, March 8, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Haiti's Torment Ignored

In Haiti, 'hunger in dark places' is real ... and ignored U.S. media, 
rights groups silent on country's torment
by Mark Weisbrot
 
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0308-25.htm

President Bush's State of the Union speech was long on "the force of human 
freedom," which he called "the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark 
places, the longing of the soul." Yet just 600 miles from Florida, that hunger 
and longing is being met every day with bullets, beatings, arrests and rape by 
the unelected, unconstitutional government in Haiti. That government's biggest 
supporter is the administration of George W. Bush.

One year ago, Washington helped depose the elected government of Haiti. 
The populist ex-priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's president, became the 
first elected leader to be overthrown twice by armed thugs supported by the 
United States.

The first time was in 1991, after he had served only seven months as the 
country's first democratically elected president. At the time, the evidence of 
Washington's culpability was circumstantial: The leaders of the coup were on 
the CIA payroll. A death squad organization that killed thousands of Aristide's 
supporters during the 1991-1994 dictatorship was headed by Emanuel 
Constant, who told the world on CBS' 60 Minutes that the CIA hired him for the 
job.

This time, our government's role in the coup was more overt. "This is a case 
where the United States turned off the tap," said economist Jeffrey Sachs, 
director of the Earth Institute at Colombia University. "I believe they did that 
deliberately to bring down Aristide." Sachs was referring to the cut off of 
funding from the Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank from 
2001-2003. It was an unusually cruel thing to do: Haiti is desperately poor, with 
the worst incidence of malnutrition and disease in the hemisphere.

But it worked, in that it made people's lives more miserable in Haiti. The 
economy shrank, and Washington poured in tens of millions of dollars through 
USAID, the International Republican Institute and other organizations to forge 
a political opposition. It was a movement that could never win an election, but 
it controlled the media and had some heavily armed former military personnel - 
including convicted murderers - who wanted to get back in power.

On Feb. 29 of last year they got their wish. As their insurrection closed in on 
Port-au-Prince, U.S. officials told Aristide they could not guarantee his safety - 
despite the fact that they managed to secure the airport with just a handful of 
U.S. Marines. According to U.S. press reports, they told Aristide he was going 
to a news conference. They took him instead to the airport where he boarded a 
plane to an unknown location, which turned out to be the Central African 
Republic.

The Bush administration's major allegation against Aristide was that he allowed 
armed gangs, called "Chimeres," to attack his political opponents. Whatever 
the truth to these charges, they cannot match the hell on Earth that is now 
Haiti's existence.

The Center for the Study of Human Rights at the University of Miami Law 
School conducted an investigation in Haiti last November. Among the findings: 
"summary executions are a police tactic," and the jails are filled with political 
prisoners "including the ousted constitutional government's Prime Minister 
Yvon Neptune and Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert." Many of these 
prisoners are held without charge, beaten and denied medical help.

Cite Soleil, a horribly poor slum of 250,000 people, is under virtual lockdown, 
cut off from commercial traffic. Young men cannot leave for fear of arrest, since 
the neighborhood is known to support Aristide. People who are shot by police, 
army or pro-government thugs treat their injuries at home because anyone who 
shows up at a hospital with a bullet wound can be arrested. Bodies of victims 
can be seen in the streets, being devoured by dogs and pigs.

The goal of the present government seems to be to use violence and fear to 
intimidate the pro-Aristide population, which appears still to be the majority and 
who continue to demand the return of their elected president. It is eerily similar 
to the 1991-1994 dictatorship in both its objectives and methods.

But they are making sure that, unlike last time, Haitians do not escape the 
island to embarrass the U.S. government by washing up - alive or dead - on 
the shores of Florida. The silence here regarding Haiti's torment, in the media 
and among major U.S. human rights organizations, is deafening and shameful.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, 
in Washington, D.C. (www.cepr.net).

###

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   ---   George Orwell


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