[Marxism] Instability of installed regime presses France-US to take over

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit

Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, July 10, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution
http://WW4Report.com

THE RE-OCCUPATION OF HAITI

"Lawlessness" Brings Call for New U.S. Military Role

by Kody Emmanuel

Since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown in March 2004,
Haiti has largely disappeared from the headlines. But the country
remains torn by violence and deep in political crisis. The United
Nations has now called on the United States to send more troops to Haiti
to support the 7,500-strong peacekeeping force, the United Nations
Stabilization Mission for Haiti (MINUSTAH), which one year ago formally
took over from the joint US-French force that occupied the nation upon
on the ouster of Aristide.

Haiti is currently experiencing a crime wave that is effecting all
segments of the population. Reports of kidnappings, reprisal killings
and robberies are becoming a normal part of Haitians' daily realities.
Behind these crimes are often semi-organized armed groups--former
members of the Tonton Macoutes, the fearsome paramilitary force of the
old Duvalier dictatorship; remnants of rebel forces that ousted
Aristide; gangs tied to Aristide's Lavalas party; and formerly
incarcerated deportees from the United States. But desperate
youth--often as young as sixteen--are also committing crimes at a
frequency that rival these groups. Many of these young people are not
from families with a history of crime--but simply from homes that are
despairingly impoverished. The high level of poverty and lack of any
economic alternatives is forcing young people into a life of crime.

One young Haitian asks us to imagine a life of bathing in
sewage-contaminated water, eating only one meal a day at best, growing
up angry, envious and desperate. "What do you expect him to do but
hustle, or if it's a young girl to sell her body? You now put a gun in
his hand and instantly he has the one thing that he's been lacking:
respect. I consider myself lucky; both of my parents are working, but
there are days when I eat only on one meal... This a vicious cycle that
we are living."

Felipe Donoso, former Haiti delegation chief for the International
Committee of the Red Cross, with years of experience in the
Port-au-Prince slum of Cite Soleil, says: "Gangs are not people that you
can just define as the bad guy. No, you have all kind of people in [the
gangs]... This is a product of a system that is not working."

The streets of Port-au-Prince are overcrowded with young street vendors.
Haiti's economy declined by 0.4% annually throughout the 1990s--largely
due to two decades of political upheaval, cuts in financial assistance
by the United States, mismanagement in agricultural production, and
trade barriers from rich countries for Haitian goods. It has never
recovered. This economic downturn impacted all of Haiti's economic
classes--but especially Haiti's street children and vendors, rural poor
and small-scale enterprises. Along with the country's economic malaise,
many of the youth programs started by President Aristide, such as Radyo
Timoun, Haiti's first youth-based radio station, were looted and burned
during the violence that ousted him last year--along with the Aristide
Foundation for Democracy, in which the station was located, and which
oversaw other community development programs.

Haiti's young people are increasingly the victims of random shootings by
neighborhood gangs, the Haitian police and even the UN peacekeeping
force--which has an official mandate to maintain law and order and aid
the government in demobilizing armed groups and protecting civilians
from violence. MINUSTAH--made up largely of Brazilians, with smaller
military detachments from several other countries--is also responsible
for helping the transitional government restructure the police and
organize fall elections.

Critics of MINUSTAH claim that it has failed to distinguish between the
general population and gang members, leading peacekeeping troops to kill
many innocent people. Evel Fanfan, president of the Association of
University Students Committed to a Haiti with Rights, has brought
charges against MINUSTAH soldiers, accusing the peace-keeping force of
killing 15-year-old Fedia Raphael of Cite Soleil. According to the
charges, Fedia was shot on the morning of April 9, 2004 by MINUSTAH
soldiers on patrol in the troubled neighborhood of Cite Soleil. The
shooting came at a time when the area was relatively calm; still,
emergency units only reached Fedia after she had died in a pool of her
own blood. According to Fanfan, numerous cases such as the shooting of
Fedia--along with those of thousands of young people held in abysmal
conditions in Haiti's National Penitentiary--have yet to be reviewed by
Haitian courts.

Haiti's poor neighborhoods, such as Cite Soleil, have become virtual
prisons for their residents. UN peacekeepers stormed into Cite Soleil on
July 6, 2005, killing two supporters of former President Aristide.
According to Haiti Police Chief Leon Charles, longtime well-known
Aristide supporter and community activist Emmanuel Wilme, known as "Dred
Wilme," was killed during several hours of gunfights between the 350
peacekeepers and Aristide supporters.

Since the forced departure of Aristide from office last year, Dred Wilme
had repeatedly denounced the interim government of Prime Minister Gerard
Latortue for killing Aristide supporters. He also accused Andy Apaid, a
business leader who prominently supported the anti-Aristide rebels, of
hiring known criminals to murder residents of Cite Soleil. He has also
accused MINUSTAH of neglecting its peacekeeping mission and behaving
more like an occupation force.

Said Dred Wilme during a recent interview with the New York-based
Haitian community radio program Lakou New York: "They [MINUSTAH] shoot
people sitting and selling in the marketplace. MINUSTAH must understand
that the people in the streets are the masses of the people. They say
that these people are 'chime' [pro-Aristide militia] but they are not
'chime.' They are the masses of the people fighting for their rights and
demanding the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Haiti.
Inside Cite Soleil today we are facing a very serious climate of terror
where many people have been killed and many children have been shot. We
are asking for support because President Aristide must come back for
peace to reign in Haiti."

While Aristide's supporters continue to be the target of police raids,
random killings and arrests, members of the disbanded army and
well-known human rights abusers are beginning to seek positions in
mainstream politics.

Says Marguerite Laurent, founder of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership
Network: "Dred Wilme was announced dead on July 7, 2005, the same day
that US CIA asset and the real killer and Haitian bandit, Guy Phillipe,
announced his candidacy for president of Haiti. Guy Phillipe is a
terrorist to the majority of Haitians; thus, naturally he's a 'freedom
fighter' for [US assistant secretary of state] Roger Noreiga, [US
ambassador to Haiti] James Foley, Haiti Democracy Project, NED [National
Endowment for Democracy], IRI [International Republican Institute] and
their Group 184 lackeys." Group 184 is Andy Apaid's anti-Aristide
"pro-democracy" formation. Guy Phillipe was the most visible leader of
the armed rebellion against Aristide.

In a series of raids in early June, over 20 residents were killed and
their homes put to the torch by the Haitian National Police in the poor
Port-au-Prince district of Bel-Air, a stronghold of Aristide's Lavalas
movement. The attacks were officially part of an anti-crime sweep, but
residents accused the police of targeting Lavalas supporters. Nobody has
been held accountable for the killings. Meanwhile, Aristide's former
prime minister Yvon Neptune has been jailed since his government was
overthrown in March 2004, accused of overseeing a massacre of Aristide
opponents at the village of St. Marc three weeks earlier, during the
destabilization campaign. He was only formally charged this May, and he
rejects the accusations.

Many Haitians are increasingly skeptical of calls for MINUSTAH to take
more robust actions on handling gangs and crime, given the peacekeeping
force's own involvement in lawless violence. And many are more cynical
still about calls for a renewed US military role in Haiti.

The US and France, responsible for the military intervention that led to
the departure of President Aristide, appear to be gearing up for a
return to Haiti, with the rationale that MINUSTAH is not capable of
ensuring the degree of security required to hold elections in
October-December this year. But military action will not be enough to
contain the growing resentment and resistance against what majority of
Haitians view as the re-occupation of their country by France and
America, either directly or through their proxies: MINUSTAH member
countries and the interim government.

RESOURCES:

Lakou New York interview with Dred Wilme, April 4, 2005
http://www.williambowles.info/haiti-news/2005/wilme_interview.html

Global Security page on international military operations in Haiti
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/haiti-background.htm

Amnesty International 2005 report on Haiti
http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/hti-summary-eng

See also:

"Haiti's Silent Agony," WW4 REPORT #103
http://www.ww3report.com/haitigangs.html



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