Persecution in Haiti
Scherr, Judith
By Judith Scherr Illustration by Caitlin Kuhwald Persecution in Haiti Dressed in a clean white long-sleeved shirt and dark pants, his salt-and-pepper beard neatly trimmed, Father G?rard...
...military has been criticized "for its lack of strong action to prevent human rights abuses, principally those perpetrated by Haitian police officers," says Amnesty International, further noting the dilemma that the U.N...
...I know that," Carneiro replies, underscoring that police under his supervision act professionally...
...contingent has been implicated in the repression...
...He says that since his transfer from the National Penitentiary to this annex about a month after his July 21 arrest, he has received medical care for the swelling and for injuries inflicted by anti-Lavalas partisans at the funeral where he was detained...
...Young protesters respond to U.N...
...A short distance from the plaza, sporting a T-shirt with Jean-Juste's image on it, Bel Air leader Samba Boukman tries to talk with U.N...
...I ask if they will be safe, given that the Haitian National Police often beat and even murder their prisoners...
...If you operate under international law and under the mandate of the Security Council, this cannot be considered an occupation...
...One thing is clear, if I could vote for someone, it would be for Jean-Juste-when he's released from jail...
...The vast majority are being held without charge...
...is not an occupier...
...Jean-Juste's first arrest was in October 2004...
...force finds itself in, since it is "mandated to assist the national police, which continues to commit widespread abuses...
...But one seventeen-year-old was questioned more intently by Carneiro's men...
...While a handful of high-profile prisoners, including Yvon Neptune, Aristide's prime minister, are incarcerated in relatively humane conditions at the annex, most are locked up in the putrid, sweltering, overcrowded National Penitentiary...
...soldiers tell Boukman the march is illegal and they do not have enough troops to protect a large demonstration...
...The Latortue government was also guilty of gunning down pro-Aristide protesters without even the pretense of professional restraint," write Birns and Leight...
...On the morning of September 13, I watch a festive crowd gather in the plaza in front of Bel Air's Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help...
...Persecution of Lavalas members is commonplace in Haiti today...
...The crowd marches anyway, accompanied by heavily armed U.N...
...Demonstrators went back three different ways," trying to leave the Bel Air district...
...soldiers, reminding them of Haitians' constitutional right to march and promising a peaceful demonstration...
...Soleil, says the U.N...
...spokesperson Damian Onses-Cardona argues that the U.N...
...They wanted to know where he also got a T-shirt with Jean-Juste's picture on it and whether he knew certain Bel Air gang members...
...we voted in one Jean and they kidnapped him, so we'll vote in another," they chant, as some two dozen armed U.N...
...And that's when, according to demonstrators interviewed in Bel Air the next day, gunfire erupts and the crowd scatters...
...It now appears that elections, postponed three times, will be held early in 2006...
...The U.N...
...In the end, Jean-Juste allowed his name to be submitted, but the government-appointed elections commission rejected it, insisting that all candidates present their papers in person...
...We voted in one priest and they kidnapped him, so we'll vote in another...
...The soldiers permit the march, but prevent demonstrators from leaving...
...troops stormed the pro-Aristide Cit...
...No formal charges have been lodged against the fifty-nine-year-old priest...
...We are under the mandate of the Security Council," he says...
...Birns is the director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, D.C., where Leight is a fellow...
...troops turned the juvenile over to the Haitian police, who hit him with a rifle butt in his stomach during questioning, he says...
...Carneiro denies a request by a Haitian radio journalist and me to interview those under arrest...
...But U.N...
...troops detained "the guys with stones in their hands," then searched for and arrested the person they thought had the pistol...
...By Judith Scherr Illustration by Caitlin Kuhwald Persecution in Haiti Dressed in a clean white long-sleeved shirt and dark pants, his salt-and-pepper beard neatly trimmed, Father G?rard Jean-Juste warmly welcomes me in the living-room-like setting where inmates at the National Penitentiary Annex in Portau-Prince receive visitors...
...Carneiro says his troops and the police are holding the prisoners for questioning...
...Pr?val's candidacy, according to the Haiti Press Agency...
...Freelance reporter Daniel Tillas, based in Port-au-Prince, contributed to this article...
...We only shot at the guy with a gun and shot to protect people and ourselves," Carneiro says...
...According to Amnesty International, there are 1,632 prisoners in the National Penitentiary, which was built to hold 800...
...troops in Bel Air, says: "We had orders [from the Haitian National Police] not to let the demonstrators pass to the National Palace...
...Lavalas supporters have been targeted in police sweeps across poor neighborhoods of the capital where support for their party is strong," Amnesty International notes in a July 28 study entitled "Haiti: Disarmament Delayed, Justice Denied...
...presence looks increasingly like "an occupying force...
...troops blocking exitsbythrowing stones at the soldiers...
...Although the police accused him of plotting against the security of the state, no formal charges were pressed...
...The U.N...
...At one point, there was a "rain of stones" and the soldiers heard two shots...
...The U.N...
...He spent seven days in custody without being charged with a crime...
...And in a May 16 letter urging the Security Council to strengthen the U.N...
...Says Amnesty International: "Armed gangs allegedly supporting JeanBertrand Aristide . . . are said to be responsible for numerous killings, including of policemen...
...Pr?val, an Aristide ally, was president from 1996 to 2001, between Aristide's two terms...
...The demonstration, however, is illegal: The police announced a ban on protests from September 9 to 16 "to provide security for the return to school...
...military role in Haiti, Human Rights Watch says it has "documented daily acts of violence in Port-au-Prince [and] found that much of the violence is perpetrated by armed gangs claiming affiliation with former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide...
...I'm learning not to be afraid," the teenager tells me...
...Interviewed at his Fort National headquarters after the demonstration, Captain Leonidas Carneiro, commander of the Brazilian U.N...
...Haitian police often snatch up rank-and-file Lavalas and their neighbors in a wide net...
...The priest looks thinner than he had last January when I interviewed him in Berkeley, California...
...Reports suggest that when police carry out operations in [poor] areas, they target young males as potential criminals (bandits), and many are killed as a result of excessive use of force by the police," the study says, concluding that the accounts of deadly force are consistent with "a pattern of unlawful killings or extrajudicial executions...
...The government has been "incarcerating a wide swath of distinguished Aristide leaders and supporters, usually on trumped-up charges, or none at all...
...The same report condemns "the former members of the Haitian military [who] commit rampant abuses, including kidnappings, illegal detentions, and extortion...
...Ren...
...forces even joined with the local regime's uniformed brigands in military operations that cost the lives of innocent Aristide supporters," according to Birns and Leight...
...Soleil, resulting in the deaths of some fifty residents, according to a July 25 report by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs...
...The poorest communities- those that overwhelmingly supported Aristide, then Jean-Juste-have recently held demonstrations of as many as 20,000 people in favor of Ren...
...As we settle into the worn but comfortable chairs, I notice the priest rubbing his neck, which appears swollen...
...Based in Berkeley, California, Judith Scherr has written on Haiti for the San Francisco Chronicle, Counterpunch, Z Magazine, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the San Francisco BayView Newspaper, and the Berkeley Daily Planet, among others...
...They saw a man with a pistol, wearing a blue shirt marked with the number 57...
...Even the U.N...
...It's wrong for the government to abuse its power, to set its machinery against one innocent person...
...This "shows you the immensity of the plot against the enjoyment of rights of the Haitian people," Jean-Juste tells me the day after his candidacy is disallowed...
...A band accompanies demonstrators who dance and sing, preparing to join Lavalas supporters from Cit...
...Monplaisir, Lavalas spokesperson in Cit...
...The targeting is sometimes lethal...
...Asserting that the priest was arrested on "apparently trumped-up charges," Amnesty International on July 25 called Jean-Juste a "prisoner of conscience, detained solely because he has peacefully exercised his right to freedom of expression...
...Jean-Juste begins by expressing concern for the victims of Hurricane Katrina...
...He had just finished a cell phone conversation with his friend and political ally Aristide, exiled in South Africa, and was serving food to needy children at his church, when black-masked police arrested him and locked him up for fifty days...
...Representative Maxine Waters sent a letter of protest to President Bush on August 5. Noting the priest "was in Miami at the time of the murder," Waters urged the President to obtain his release...
...All of these detainees except one were released the next day, without being charged with a crime...
...That may not be until after the elections...
...But despite his second incarceration in two years, his eyes retain their intensity...
...Soleil on a march to deposit Jean-Juste's candidacy papers at the elections office...
...Beginning with Latortue's earliest days in office, members of Aristide's Lavalas Party . . . became his principal target," write Larry Birns and Jessica Leight in the afterword to the new edition of Paul Farmer's The Uses of Haiti...
...Lavalas supporters are also accused of unlawful and violent acts...
...He then talks about the dilemma he's facing: While Lavalas leadership is calling for an election boycott, grassroots leaders in the poorest districts are urging him to run for the presidency...
...He was arrested after attending the funeral of a kidnapped journalist, where thugs beat him and accused him of the journalist's murder...
...U.S...
...troops observe...
...soldiers and tanks...
...Not only are people calling for my release, they're drafting me to become a candidate," he says...
...On July 6, 350 heavily armed U.N...
...No injuries were reported at this demonstration...
...I'm at the prison annex on September 7 to talk to the priest about the upcoming elections...
...On several occasions, U.N...
...A voice for the poor and disempowered in Haiti, Father Jean-Juste has spoken out courageously against the human rights abuses that the U.S.-backed government of G?rard Latortue has been committing since the overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Lavalas Party on February 29, 2004...
Vol. 70 • January 2006 • No. 1
