Haiti Online Community

By now many of you have heard of the earthquake that has ravaged the
capital of Haiti yesterday just before sundown. It’s predicted that
thousands will be found dead, or injured. At this time I would just
like to encourage those of you who have thought about donating not to
hesitate but to do so as soon as possible. Please find a charity you
are comfortable donating to and help the people of Haiti with however
much you can afford, even if it’s just $1.

Here is a list of charitable organizations active in Haiti:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34835478/ns/world_news-americas/?gt1=43001

Wyclef Jean also has an organization called Yele that takes donations by phone.
Text Yele to 501 501 to donate $5 via your cell phone

Your help is much appreciated. Even if you can’t help with a donation,
please keep the people and families of Haiti in your thoughts and
prayers. Do your part to help spread awareness of what’s going on in
Haiti so we can all do our part to chip in and help.

By Ansel Herz

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Nov 20 (IPS) – Under a beating sun in the grassy field where two U.N. helicopters landed in Grand Goave last week, 19-year-old Benson Blanc moved his hands as if rapid-firing a gun into the ground in front of him and made a “tok-tok-tok-tok” sound. This is how the soldiers opened fire, he said.

Residents of this quiet seaside town an hour west of Port-Au-Prince were awoken at about 1 a.m. on Nov. 10 by the sound of helicopters flying low overhead. A curious crowd amassed around the aircrafts.

One of the helicopters had mechanical trouble and had to make an emergency landing, said U.N. spokesperson Sophie Boutaud de la Combe. To lighten the load on the damaged helicopter, the Chilean crew moved white boxes of supplies into the other helicopter for several hours.

She also said, in a radio interview broadcast here in the capital city, that troops only fired once into the air in attempt to disperse the crowd. They had called for backup from the local platoon of Sri Lankan U.N. troops.

“When the backup came they started shooting, the population ran away and hid behind the bushes,” Blanc said. “Their chief, Mr. Rodriguez, said that he is not playing with nobody’s ass. He said if anybody wants to cross the field they need to tell him first or he’ll shoot them.”

Over a week later, Rinvil Jean Weldy, 50, is still nursing a bulging wound on his right shoulder. He can’t use his right arm much because of the pain, as he tends to his family’s small beachside home. He said he’s a health worker who has worked for the Haitian government and the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF.

“I was home then I heard a strange noise and I saw people running,” Weldy told IPS. “I wanted to give my help in case something bad happened. The crowd was too close to the helicopters so I wanted to move away. That’s when they opened fire and hurt me. I want justice and reparations.”

Haitians interviewed Sunday in Grand Goave said U.N. troops, known by their acronym MINUSTAH, fired several rounds into the ground at around 5 a.m. They said the soldiers would not let anyone, including farmers who wanted to reach the beach to go fishing, cross the field. A piece of a bullet struck Weldy, who was rushed to the hospital by Haitian police.

“When they saw the crowd getting big, they shot on the field,” said Louis Natacha, a woman who lives nearby. “There would have been more victims if we didn’t run away. Anybody could be a victim. Weldy was there like everybody, he wasn’t doing anything wrong. We want MINUSTAH to leave.”

Boutaud de la Combe, the U.N. spokesperson, told IPS there is an ongoing internal investigation into the incident. She said if troops fired into the ground, not in the air, that was a mistake. If Weldy wants reparations for his injury, she said, he needs to file an official complaint. Guatemalan U.N. military police visited him Monday, but Weldy said he did not feel comfortable speaking with them.

International officials and the Haitian government credit MINUSTAH with improving security in Haiti. But some Haitians see the foreign troops as prone to using reckless force with impunity.

When last summer massive crowds attended the Port-Au-Prince funeral of Father Gerard Jean-Juste, a popular priest, U.N. troops were seen on state television opening fire. A 22-year-old man was killed. MINUSTAH claimed he died from a thrown rock.

Brazilian U.N. troops arrested Franki Maze, a social leader in the Port-Au-Prince slum of Bel-Air, on the night of Sep. 9. While a medical exam from that night did not validate Maze’s claim that he was sodomised, it found bruising and inflammation on his face and body. He was released later that day.

The U.N.’s internal investigation cleared the troops of any wrongdoing and charged Maze with fabricating parts of his story. It said he was caught in possession of marijuana and tried to run away.

Mario Joseph, a human rights lawyer with Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, is frustrated with how the peacekeeping force handles accusations of abuse. “It’s their tactic: ‘All people in Haiti are liars for MINUSTAH’,” he said. “I filed two complaints in Cite Soleil cases. All the time they make their own inquires. We need to have independent inquires.”

The U.N. Security Council extended MINUSTAH’s mandate another year last month, marking its fifth year in Haiti. The Brazilian military commander, Gen. Floriano Peixoto Vieira Neto, told Reuters in a recent interview that the force is not likely to leave anytime soon.

“The strides we’ve made in security haven’t been matched by the socioeconomic gains we hoped for, and so that’s why we say that the status in Haiti is extremely fragile,” he said.

On Wednesday, the 206th anniversary of Haitian general Jean-Jacques Dessalines’ crushing victory over French colonial troops in the Battle of Vertières, two university professors and twelve students were arrested by Haitian police after protesting the presence of foreign troops on Haiti’s soil, according to the Haitian news agency AlterPresse. It is not clear why they were taken into custody.

*Ansel Herz can be contacted at ansel.herz@gmail.com. (END/2009)

Source: http://www.haitianalysis.com

by Kim Ives

Slowed by political wrangling and mysterious bureaucratic deliberations, Haiti’s elections have historically taken months and even years to organize. Suddenly, the electoral schedule, announced on Nov. 11, just two days after the new prime minister’s record-fast ratification, is moving at warp speed.

The new Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), reconstituted in October, has set nationwide elections for 99 deputies and 11 senators for Feb. 28, 2010. (The Center Department, where voting was cancelled in April due to violence, will hold its elections three days after everywhere else, on Mar. 3, 2010).

Parties have to register for the election this week, in a short five-day period from Nov. 16 to 20. One of those days, Nov. 18, is a national holiday commemorating the 1803 Battle of Vertieres. Politicians across the political spectrum are denouncing the curtailed and rushed schedule as impossible to meet and “suspicious,” including Chavannes Jeune of the Union party and Clark Parent of the Konbit to Remake Haiti.

“It takes time for the parties to collect the 100,000 gourdes [$249] to register a Senate candidate,” Parent said.

In addition to the relatively hefty fees, registering parties have to submit a pile of paperwork, including a notarized founding charter, state approval papers, the party’s emblem on an 8 ½ by 11 inch sheet, and a national identification card. It takes time to get some of the necessary documents from Haiti’s incredibly-slow state agencies, and “this might cause the deadline to be missed,” Jeune complained.

Even Steven Benoit, a deputy from President René Préval’s Lespwa (Hope) coalition, has called the proposed schedule a “hold up,” saying he might not run, or if he does, it will be as an independent.

But Gaillot Dorsainvil, the CEP’s new president, is adamant. “The dates will definitely be maintained,” he said on Nov. 16.

The same day, new Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive signed an accord with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to finance the elections with $25 million, only $7 million of which the Haitian government will provide.

After this week’s registrations, the CEP will publish its list of approved parties on Nov. 24. Candidates can then register from Nov. 25 to 30. There is then a 10 day period from Nov. 30 to Dec. 9 for parties and candidates to challenge their exclusion. Finally on Dec. 11, the CEP will publish its final list of approved candidates.

A civic education campaign about elections will be launched on Dec. 12, and the actual election campaign will last for one month from Jan. 27 to Feb. 26, 2010.

After the elections, preliminary results are to be released Mar. 8 with challenges sorted out from Mar. 11 to Mar. 22, when final first round results will be published. The CEP said it will not schedule run-offs until after the first round results are in, so as to preserve its “serenity.”

Many parties were invited to a meeting at the CEP’s headquarters on Nov. 13 for a sort of orientation. After the meeting, the CEP apologized for not inviting the Political Parties Convention (CPP), a new party born from Lespwa party dissidents and the Progressive Parliamentarians Concertation. The CEP claimed it was an oversight.

The question on everyone’s mind is whether former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas Family party (FL), Haiti’s largest, will try to participate, and if it does, whether the new CEP will try to exclude it on technicalities as the old CEP did last February (see Haiti Liberté, Vol. 2, No. 31, 2/18/2009). That exclusion provoked a massive nationwide boycott of partial Senate elections in April and June.

Aristide remains in exile in South Africa, almost six years after the Feb. 29, 2004 coup that ousted him.

Annette Auguste (So An), Dr. Maryse Narcisse, Lionel Etienne, and Jacques Mathelier, who make up the FL’s Executive Committee that runs the party in Aristide’s absence, attended the Nov. 13 meeting at the CEP, although the CEP’s Nov. 9 invitation asked for only “two duly mandated representatives.”

The FL leadership was split for many months between two factions, one led by Narcisse and the other by Auguste. But on Nov. 3, the party held its 13th anniversary congress at the Aristide Foundation for Democracy in Tabarre, where a new unity was forged. Narcisse and Auguste publicly embraced and held up each other’s hands in a victory clasp.

“We are going to register,” Maryse Narcisse told Haiti Liberté. “In fact, we are already registered. All our papers are already with the CEP. We just have to renew the registration.”

In the last election, however, the CEP raised questions about the validity of Aristide’s mandate to the party’s representative. Narcisse insists that the mandate question has been resolved.

“The last letter we received from the [last] CEP told us that there is no longer any problem of mandate,” Narcisse said. “Furthermore, we have built unity in the party. Of course, they might look for some other way to try to exclude us. Thus we are working in concert with President Aristide to anticipate problems.”

Wilfrid Lavaud, alias “Ti Do,” So An’s close companion and collaborator, also expressed apprehension about the “games” the CEP might play.

“Today, So An, Maryse Narcisse and Lionel Etienne met to weigh how we should go about registering before the Friday deadline,” Lavaud said on Nov. 17. “We have to be ready for tricks.”

The election’s fast-track certainly suggests that Préval’s Lespwa coalition, which dominates the parliament and the CEP, has an agenda it is trying to achieve.

“I think Préval’s main goal before he leaves office in Feb. 2011 is to change the 1987 Constitution,” said Haiti Liberté director Berthony Dupont. “According to the Constitution, changes are drawn up by one parliamentary session, and then ratified by the next. So the extended session of the 48th Legislature from January to May 2010 will make Constitutional changes, and the new congress that emanates from these elections that Lespwa is hoping to sweep, will ratify them. They have to ram things through fast to eliminate challengers and to keep a semblance of legality on an election which is basically undemocratic, just like the boycotted elections of April and June .”

ERRATA

In last week’s article, “Jean Max Bellerive Ratified as Haiti’s New Prime Minister,” we incorrectly stated that Promobank, an investment bank, was founded by Texas-based Haitian businessman and unsuccessful presidential candidate, Dumarsais Siméus. In fact, Promobank was founded in 1974 and functioned until June 1994 as the Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP) Haiti, a branch of the French bank. In 2004, PromoBank contributed to the development and launch of PromoCapital, an investment bank in which Siméus was a major partner.

Source: http://www.haitianalysis.com

By Wadner Pierre

In 2006 two struggles were going on in two different Catholic churches and in two different countries. At Saint Claire’s Parish, Tiplas Kazo, Delmas 33 (one part of Delmas County), Haitian parishioners, students, and community leaders stood up against the decision of the Archdiocese of Port-Au-Port to remove the late activist priest, Gerard Jean-Juste, who had been serving this parish for ten years. Simultaneously at Saint Augustine Church, in Tremé, New Orleans, a similar struggle was taking place. Students of different beliefs and backgrounds, civil right’s movement leaders and community leaders stood up against the unjustified decision of the New Orleans Archdiocese, to remove the elderly African-American priest, Father Jerome Ledoux, from the oldest African-American Catholic church in the United States. To explain the meaning of the people’s struggle at Saint Augustine Church, it is important to understand the history of this church and why it is so important for the African-American Catholic community to keep this church from closing after Hurricane Katrina.

The History of Saint Augustine Church

In 1842, Saint Augustine church was dedicated under Archbishop Antoine Blanc in Faubourg Tremé, 1210 Gov. Nicholls Street, a poor black neighborhood in New Orleans. It is the oldest African-American Catholic church in the United States. The church’s name is a reference to an African Bishop, Saint Augustine of Hippo. Across the street from the church, on St. Claude Ave, is the Backstreet Cultural Museum, and about one mile away is the historic Congo Square. From Saint Augustine Parish, a person can walk to the French Quarter and Saint Louis Cathedral, whose same architect designed St. Augustine Parish. So within a three-mile radius is profound culture and history.

Tremé is the oldest place in the nation where les gens de couleur libres (free people of color) could buy or own properties before the Civil War. Saint Augustine Parish was also the oldest African-American Catholic church in the United States where slaves and freed slaves could practice their Catholic faith traditions. It was also where Henriette Delille, a free woman of color, and Juliette Gaudin, a Cuban, began assisting slaves, orphan girls, the uneducated, the sick, and the elderly among people of color around 1823. Delille and Gaudin’s concern for the education and care of children aided greatly in the founding and administration of the city’s early private schools for people of color.

Saint Augustine Church means a lot for African-American Catholics and is essentially one of the leading marks in African-American Religious History; it is a heritage that people inherited from their ancestors. Upon my first visit to Saint Augustine, people explained that slaves’ bones were found in the place where the church stands. According to some historical sources, the place where Saint Augustine stands was a former plantation.

On the east side of the church on Gov. Nicholls there is a little place where nooses hang and a few little crosses with a big cross are planted in memory of the former slaves who died and were not given a proper burial ceremony. The former pastor of the church until 2006, Father Jerome Ledoux, was the architect of this memorial place. I have been visiting many Catholic churches across the United States, but I had never seen such a powerful and living parish as Saint Augustine. At Saint Augustine, Sunday is a gospel music feast. Parishoners bring various musical instruments to mass such as tambourine and shekere, a typical African percussion musical instrument that is played by striking it with one or two hands. While singing, people dance and clap their hands. You can see how proud people are of their parish. Although they are economically devastated, parishioners go before the altar to give the little they have to keep Saint Augustine alive. At Saint Augustine, visitors can expect to receive warm welcomes. Whether or not you are member of Saint Augustine, if you celebrate your birthday on that Sunday you are visiting the church, you have a special birthday song where all the people extend their hands to you; this is their way of asking God to abundantly bless you. Saint Augustine Church is a living memorial of the long and hard journey taken by former African slaves to America, and their struggle for freedom after they arrived in America.

Archbishop Hughes’ Decision to Remove Father Ledoux

With the devastation brought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the parish began to face some economic difficulties, but thanks to the support of its parishioners, Saint Augustine recovered. The church had to meet the Archdiocese’s requirements: its monthly contribution to the Archdiocese and increasing the number of its parishioners, and if not, the Archbishop reserved the right to close its doors. Father Ledoux was always there with his parishioners. He encouraged them to keep faith and to stay unified as God’s children. Unfortunately, in March 15, 2006, Archbishop Alfred S. Hughes sent Father Ledoux a letter in which he announced that his mission at Saint Augustine’s Parish was over, and he sent Father Jacques, a white pastor of the neighboring St. Peter Claver Catholic Church, as Father Ledoux’s successor. People resisted peacefully, yet firmly. Parishioners and students occupied the church for weeks and vowed to go to jail for the return of Father Ledoux. Leaders of the Tréme community and other civil rights movement leaders such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and former Black Panther leaders stood up to say “no,” to Archbishop Hughes’ unjustified decision to remove the elderly African-American priest, who had been serving the parish for fifteen years.

After a Sunday mass I read on the back of a woman’s t-shirt, “God is good. God is good all the time.” I asked my friend Alison McCrary, a five-year Saint Augustine’s parishioner what her thoughts were on this sentence. She said to me, “God is really good all the time because Saint Augustine could have closed if he wasn’t there with us.” Suddenly, I remembered watching a movie that Allison had given me. This movie retraces the struggle of Saint Augustine’s parishioners for the return of their priest, Father Ledoux, to the parish in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina. This t-shirt was made in 2006 during the struggle for the return of Father Ledoux to Saint Augustine.

The struggle was highlighted in the article “Protesters Still Occupying Historic New Orleans Church Rectory” in the March 29, 2006 issue of A Katrina Reader. CC Campbell-Rock interviewed a dozen people. “The protesters want LeDoux back. He should be allowed to stay until his death or until he decides to retire,” said Harris a member of Saint Augustine’s Parish,“Today is just another day in the civil rights struggle.” John Powell, a parishioner at Saint Augustine for the past 59 years, said, “My only statement is that if Hughes spends over $1 billion a year, he could surely give some of that money to St. Augustine Catholic Church.” However, Father Ledoux came back on Easter Sunday and celebrated mass with Archbishop Hughes, and afterward he left Saint Augustine, his home for fifteen years. This return was to fool people, and for Bishop Hughes to pretend that the problem between him and Father Ledoux was solved.

The Struggle Continues

In 2007 the Archdiocese of New Orleans assigned Father Quinton Moody, from Belize, as the priest at Saint Augustine Church. The church is still facing economic problems and is still under the Archdiocese’s threat. People are still frustrated, and are unhappy with the way that Father Quinton is leading their church. Since Father Quinton arrived, some memories and traditions of Saint Augustine are slowly disappearing: the chain in the memorial place has been taken down, a pink tub that Father Ledoux used to use to baptize people has already been removed, and the relationship between the church and the community does not seem the same as it was when Father Ledoux was ministering Saint Augustine’s Parish. For example, Father Ledoux used to open the doors of the church to community musicians and bless the Mardi Gras Indians. Some activities such as concerts that used to bring local musicians and church musicians together have discontinued. All of these traditions are now disappearing because Father Quinton does not seem willing to continue them.

I remember, the first time I went to Saint Augustine, I saw a few posters of Father Ledoux working with the people in Tremé community excavating for archeological remains of Native Americans, African slaves and free people of color. Upon my second return, these posters were no longer there. People continue praying for the return of Father Ledoux, and hoping the new Archbishop of New Orleans, Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond, will bring Father Ledoux back home. “I wish our new Archbishop Aymond could bring Father Ledoux back to us because we miss him a lot,” said an anonymous parishioner.

Conclusion

The struggle has lasted a year and is still going on. It might be the biggest African-American Catholic struggle in the nation to keep a church from closing its doors. Like the late activist priest, Father Jean-Juste, in Saint Claire’s Parish in Ti Plas Kazo, Father Ledoux remains a legend at Saint Augustine’s Parish in Tremé. The involvement of both priests, Father Jean-Juste and Father Ledoux in their communities did not only make them the pastors of their parishes, Saint Claire and Saint Augustine, but also fathers for people in their communities, Ti Plas Kazo and Treme.

Acknowledgments

I have written this article in memory of the people’s struggle at Saint Augustine Church in Tremé to keep their church alive. I also remember the struggle of my people at Saint Claire’s Parish in Haiti, Ti Plas Kazo on Delmas 33, to bring back the late activist priest and defender of human rights, Father Gerard Jean-Juste, priest of Saint Claire Church from 2004 to 2009. He was arrested twice by the Haitian de facto government for his political opinions from 2004 to 2006. Father Jean-Juste died in May 25, 2009 at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida. After Father Jean Juste’s passing, a new priest, Father Hilaire, was assigned to Saint Claire parish.

I also want to thank my friend, Alison McCrary who drove me back and forth to Saint Augustine Church and talked to me about her five-year experience there. She referred me to some sources, which helped me so much with this article.

Source: http://www.haitianalysis.com

by Kim Ives

Haiti’s Senate dismissed Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis on Friday, Oct. 30, 2009 at half past midnight. The vote came after a raucous debate that began at about 1:00 p.m. the day before. Senators opposed to Pierre-Louis’ dismissal – Rudy Hériveaux, Youri Latortue, Evaliere Beauplan, Edmonde Supplice Beauzile and Andris Riché, among others – stormed out of the Senate chamber. The remaining senators voted to remove the Pierre-Louis’ government by a vote of 18 in favor with one abstention. Most of the remaining 10 senators claim that the vote was “illegal” and plagued by procedural irregularities.

The campaign to remove Pierre-Louis’ government was mounted quickly. Sen. Jean Hector Anacacis, a leader in President René Préval’s Lespwa coalition, told the Miami Herald that a group of senators held “three days of meetings at a hotel near the palace” and then decided to summon the Prime Minister for a no-confidence vote.

“We are the ones on the ground who hear the people’s cry, who hear them criticizing us, the government, saying nothing has been done,” Anacasis said. “We have to replace the woman.”

Most of the Senator’s leading the charge were from Lespwa, prompting suspicion that the move to oust Pierre-Louis originated with Préval himself.

After the Senate issued its summons and word of the impending ouster spread through alarmed diplomatic circles, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Préval on Oct. 23. A State Department spokeswoman would not give details of the call but told the Associated Press: “We have made it known to the Haitian government that the perception of instability could be very damaging to Haiti at this time.”

Clearly, the U.S. and Europe liked working with Pierre-Louis, formerly the head of a large NGO heavily funded by billionaire financier George Soros. “Clinton spoke of her concerns and reiterated U.S. support for Pierre-Louis, according to several sources privy to the conversation,” the Herald reported. “Préval, in turn, told Clinton that he was not behind the move to oust Pierre-Louis and has no control over the lawmakers.”

But many observers think that Préval feared Pierre-Louis was beginning to supplant him as the Haitian leader to whom the “international community” was turning to have their agenda carried out.

“Préval was threatened by the growing power and connections of Pierre-Louis, particularly after the visits of [U.N. Special Envoy] Bill Clinton,” said Mario Joseph, Haiti’s foremost human rights lawyer with the International Lawyers Office (BAI). “She was becoming the darling of the donors, who called her capable, and I think he felt she was getting too big for her britches.”

Furthermore, Pierre-Louis may have been an obstacle for the political agenda Préval is trying to push through Parliament and with elections before he leaves office in February 2011, Joseph speculated.

The ousting senators, including Anacacis, Yvon Buissereth, Wencesclass Lambert, and Joseph John Joel, played on popular anger over the lack of transparency in the spending of $197 million taken from Venezuela’s PetroCaribe fund for Haiti last autumn after four storms devastated the country.

“Prime Minister Pierre-Louis proved she did not have the capacity nor the leadership to meet the population’s expectations and satisfy its basic needs,” said Lespwa Sen. Joseph Lambert. “She doesn’t have social and economic policies. It’s the Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank that are making economic decisions.”

The Lespwa senators made it known before the Oct. 29 session that they would vote Pierre-Louis out. “She is like an animal being led to the slaughterhouse,” said Lambert, who also declared he would resign if she were not removed.

Pierre-Louis, however, did not attend the session, responding to the summons with an Oct. 28 letter to Senate president Kely Bastien. Saying the senators “lacked elegance,” she touted her government’s accomplishment in finding international funding during her 14 months in office and concluded that “my government decides not to participate in this hearing,” saying she would leave her post with her “head high.” She proposed two national and one international audit of her government’s books.

On Oct. 30, Préval nominated Pierre-Louis’ Planning Minister, Jean Max Bellerive, to be Prime Minister. He is a veteran of previous Préval governments and of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s second coup-shortened administration. Senate president Kely Bastien predicted that Bellerive, whom both houses of the Parliament must approve, would be installed in office before Nov. 18, the 206th anniversary of the Battle of Vertieres, where Haitians won their independence from France.

“The ouster of the Pierre-Louis government does not signify any change in political or economic policy,” writes Haiti Liberté political analyst Hervé Jean Michel. “The new government will be formed by the Lespwa majority and will pursue, without a doubt, a neoliberal line.”

Haiti’s masses greeted Pierre-Louis’ ouster with indifference. She was viewed as an Aristide opponent for signing a petition of the Collective Non! in 2003 which called for a boycott of Haiti’s bicentennial celebration, presided over by Aristide, on Jan. 1, 2004.

By Wadner Pierre

In 2006 two struggles were going on in two different Catholic churches and in two different countries. At Saint Claire’s Parish, Tiplas Kazo, Delmas 33 (one part of Delmas County), Haitian parishioners, students, and community leaders stood up against the decision of the Archdiocese of Port-Au-Port to remove the late activist priest, Gerard Jean-Juste, who had been serving this parish for ten years. Simultaneously at Saint Augustine Church, in Tremé, New Orleans, a similar struggle was taking place. Students of different beliefs and backgrounds, civil right’s movement leaders and community leaders stood up against the unjustified decision of the New Orleans Archdiocese, to remove the elderly African-American priest, Father Jerome Ledoux, from the oldest African-American Catholic church in the United States. To explain the meaning of the people’s struggle at Saint Augustine Church, it is important to understand the history of this church and why it is so important for the African-American Catholic community to keep this church from closing after Hurricane Katrina.

The History of Saint Augustine Church

In 1842, Saint Augustine church was dedicated under Archbishop Antoine Blanc in Faubourg Tremé, 1210 Gov. Nicholls Street, a poor black neighborhood in New Orleans. It is the oldest African-American Catholic church in the United States. The church’s name is a reference to an African Bishop, Saint Augustine of Hippo. Across the street from the church, on St. Claude Ave, is the Backstreet Cultural Museum, and about one mile away is the historic Congo Square. From Saint Augustine Parish, a person can walk to the French Quarter and Saint Louis Cathedral, whose same architect designed St. Augustine Parish. So within a three-mile radius is profound culture and history.

Tremé is the oldest place in the nation where les gens de couleur libres (free people of color) could buy or own properties before the Civil War. Saint Augustine Parish was also the oldest African-American Catholic church in the United States where slaves and freed slaves could practice their Catholic faith traditions. It was also where Henriette Delille, a free woman of color, and Juliette Gaudin, a Cuban, began assisting slaves, orphan girls, the uneducated, the sick, and the elderly among people of color around 1823. Delille and Gaudin’s concern for the education and care of children aided greatly in the founding and administration of the city’s early private schools for people of color.

Saint Augustine Church means a lot for African-American Catholics and is essentially one of the leading marks in African-American Religious History; it is a heritage that people inherited from their ancestors. Upon my first visit to Saint Augustine, people explained that slaves’ bones were found in the place where the church stands. According to some historical sources, the place where Saint Augustine stands was a former plantation.

On the east side of the church on Gov. Nicholls there is a little place where nooses hang and a few little crosses with a big cross are planted in memory of the former slaves who died and were not given a proper burial ceremony. The former pastor of the church until 2006, Father Jerome Ledoux, was the architect of this memorial place. I have been visiting many Catholic churches across the United States, but I had never seen such a powerful and living parish as Saint Augustine. At Saint Augustine, Sunday is a gospel music feast. Parishoners bring various musical instruments to mass such as tambourine and shekere, a typical African percussion musical instrument that is played by striking it with one or two hands. While singing, people dance and clap their hands. You can see how proud people are of their parish. Although they are economically devastated, parishioners go before the altar to give the little they have to keep Saint Augustine alive. At Saint Augustine, visitors can expect to receive warm welcomes. Whether or not you are member of Saint Augustine, if you celebrate your birthday on that Sunday you are visiting the church, you have a special birthday song where all the people extend their hands to you; this is their way of asking God to abundantly bless you. Saint Augustine Church is a living memorial of the long and hard journey taken by former African slaves to America, and their struggle for freedom after they arrived in America.

Archbishop Hughes’ Decision to Remove Father Ledoux

With the devastation brought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the parish began to face some economic difficulties, but thanks to the support of its parishioners, Saint Augustine recovered. The church had to meet the Archdiocese’s requirements: its monthly contribution to the Archdiocese and increasing the number of its parishioners, and if not, the Archbishop reserved the right to close its doors. Father Ledoux was always there with his parishioners. He encouraged them to keep faith and to stay unified as God’s children. Unfortunately, in March 15, 2006, Archbishop Alfred S. Hughes sent Father Ledoux a letter in which he announced that his mission at Saint Augustine’s Parish was over, and he sent Father Jacques, a white pastor of the neighboring St. Peter Claver Catholic Church, as Father Ledoux’s successor. People resisted peacefully, yet firmly. Parishioners and students occupied the church for weeks and vowed to go to jail for the return of Father Ledoux. Leaders of the Tréme community and other civil rights movement leaders such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and former Black Panther leaders stood up to say “no,” to Archbishop Hughes’ unjustified decision to remove the elderly African-American priest, who had been serving the parish for fifteen years.

After a Sunday mass I read on the back of a woman’s t-shirt, “God is good. God is good all the time.” I asked my friend Alison McCrary, a five-year Saint Augustine’s parishioner what her thoughts were on this sentence. She said to me, “God is really good all the time because Saint Augustine could have closed if he wasn’t there with us.” Suddenly, I remembered watching a movie that Allison had given me. This movie retraces the struggle of Saint Augustine’s parishioners for the return of their priest, Father Ledoux, to the parish in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina. This t-shirt was made in 2006 during the struggle for the return of Father Ledoux to Saint Augustine.

The struggle was highlighted in the article “Protesters Still Occupying Historic New Orleans Church Rectory” in the March 29, 2006 issue of A Katrina Reader. CC Campbell-Rock interviewed a dozen people. “The protesters want LeDoux back. He should be allowed to stay until his death or until he decides to retire,” said Harris a member of Saint Augustine’s Parish,“Today is just another day in the civil rights struggle.” John Powell, a parishioner at Saint Augustine for the past 59 years, said, “My only statement is that if Hughes spends over $1 billion a year, he could surely give some of that money to St. Augustine Catholic Church.” However, Father Ledoux came back on Easter Sunday and celebrated mass with Archbishop Hughes, and afterward he left Saint Augustine, his home for fifteen years. This return was to fool people, and for Bishop Hughes to pretend that the problem between him and Father Ledoux was solved.

The Struggle Continues

In 2007 the Archdiocese of New Orleans assigned Father Quinton Moody, from Belize, as the priest at Saint Augustine Church. The church is still facing economic problems and is still under the Archdiocese’s threat. People are still frustrated, and are unhappy with the way that Father Quinton is leading their church. Since Father Quinton arrived, some memories and traditions of Saint Augustine are slowly disappearing: the chain in the memorial place has been taken down, a pink tub that Father Ledoux used to use to baptize people has already been removed, and the relationship between the church and the community does not seem the same as it was when Father Ledoux was ministering Saint Augustine’s Parish. For example, Father Ledoux used to open the doors of the church to community musicians and bless the Mardi Gras Indians. Some activities such as concerts that used to bring local musicians and church musicians together have discontinued. All of these traditions are now disappearing because Father Quinton does not seem willing to continue them.

I remember, the first time I went to Saint Augustine, I saw a few posters of Father Ledoux working with the people in Tremé community excavating for archeological remains of Native Americans, African slaves and free people of color. Upon my second return, these posters were no longer there. People continue praying for the return of Father Ledoux, and hoping the new Archbishop of New Orleans, Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond, will bring Father Ledoux back home. “I wish our new Archbishop Aymond could bring Father Ledoux back to us because we miss him a lot,” said an anonymous parishioner.

Conclusion

The struggle has lasted a year and is still going on. It might be the biggest African-American Catholic struggle in the nation to keep a church from closing its doors. Like the late activist priest, Father Jean-Juste, in Saint Claire’s Parish in Ti Plas Kazo, Father Ledoux remains a legend at Saint Augustine’s Parish in Tremé. The involvement of both priests, Father Jean-Juste and Father Ledoux in their communities did not only make them the pastors of their parishes, Saint Claire and Saint Augustine, but also fathers for people in their communities, Ti Plas Kazo and Treme.

Acknowledgments

I have written this article in memory of the people’s struggle at Saint Augustine Church in Tremé to keep their church alive. I also remember the struggle of my people at Saint Claire’s Parish in Haiti, Ti Plas Kazo on Delmas 33, to bring back the late activist priest and defender of human rights, Father Gerard Jean-Juste, priest of Saint Claire Church from 2004 to 2009. He was arrested twice by the Haitian de facto government for his political opinions from 2004 to 2006. Father Jean-Juste died in May 25, 2009 at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida. After Father Jean Juste’s passing, a new priest, Father Hilaire, was assigned to Saint Claire parish.

I also want to thank my friend, Alison McCrary who drove me back and forth to Saint Augustine Church and talked to me about her five-year experience there. She referred me to some sources, which helped me so much with this article.

Source: http://www.haitianalysis.com

By: Kim Ives

About a week ago, an IPS story reported that Amnesty International called for the release of Ronald Dauphin and described his continued detention as “politically motivated”.

In response, Elizabeth Roebling accused IPS of becoming an “outlet for spin” and directed members of the corbett list to a bitter response on Michael Deibert’s blog. Deibert is the author of “Notes from the Last Testament,” an account of President Aristide’s second term, which was cut short by the February 29, 2004 coup.

Normally, I wouldn’t bother responding to a mere political difference. But Deibert makes several personal attacks on the IPS piece’s authors Wadner Pierre and Jeb Sprague that warrant correction.

Deibert’s allegations are irrelevant to the accuracy of the IPS article. Readers can check the facts reported (most importantly, Amnesty’s appeal on Dauphin’s behalf ). Good journalism, like good scholarship, relies to the greatest extent possible on sources that readers can check.

Deibert wrote that Sprague “…works as a teaching assistant at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Sociology Department, focusing on crime and delinquency, subjects with which his past behavior [sic] no doubt gives him a close familiarity.”

This is a baseless ad hominem attack. Sprague’s PhD studies are not focused on crime and delinquency, and, if they were, would not justify Deibert’s nasty insinuation.[1] Furthermore, teaching assistant duties are not the same thing as a graduate student’s area of study, and, much less, evidence of a criminal background.

Deibert also claims that Sprague sent him an email containing “intimations of violence against my person”. I asked Sprague to forward me the email from 2005. In it, Sprague merely questions the accuracy of Deibert’s writings. Observing that thousands of people were being killed in post-coup Haiti, Sprague attached what he called a “photo of the suffering,” which showed victims of one UN-PNH raid [2]. To say that the e-mail “intimated” a threat against Deibert is absurd.

Deibert then accuses Haitian journalist Wadner Pierre of having a “stark conflict of interest” and that “when writing about the IJDH [The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti], Wadner Pierre is quoting his former employer without acknowledging it.”

Pierre has never worked for IJDH. Pierre has provided IJDH and many other organizations in Haiti and around the world with photos taken during his time living in and visiting some of the poorest and most victimized Haitian communities. He has often done so for free or for sums barely adequate to live on in Haiti. Providing freelance photographic evidence of human rights abuses to organizations does not make him an employee or former employee.

Moreover, the ideal of an “objective” reporter or source for news does not and cannot exist. Journalism is not science. It is permeated with value judgments.

Pierre and Sprague have both been open about their sympathy for the poor’s mobilization for democracy in Haiti. The IPS article cites a number of sources, such as AUMOHD, IJDH and also well-known Lavalas opponents such as RNDDH and Haiti’s Ambassador to the US, Raymond Joseph. Moreover, the article was not “about” IJDH. It highlighted Amnesty International’s appeal on behalf of Dauphin and reported facts that are mentioned in that appeal. In contrast, Deibert’s recent IPS article on the case does not cite a single source critical of his viewpoint. [3]

Revealingly, Deibert makes no mention of Amnesty’s appeal for Ronald Dauphin, one of the most balanced accounts of the alleged “massacre” in St. Marc. Does Deibert wish to bury the Amnesty report under his spurious allegations against Pierre and Sprague? Does he wish that IPS had buried it as well?

To close, I direct readers to a few critiques of Deibert’s bias in recent years.

a) Justin Podur. 2006. “Kofi Annan’s Haiti”. New Left Review.

b) ___________. 2006. “A Dishonest Case for a Coup”. Znet.

c) Patrick Elie. 2006. “A Few Notes about ‘Notes from the Last Testament’”.

d) Mark Weisbrot. 2006. “Response to Michael Deibert”. The Nation.

e) Diana Barahona. 2007. “U.S. Reporting on the Coup in Haiti: How to Turn a Priest into a Cannibal”. Counterpunch.

f) Tom Luce. 2007. “The Proxy War in Martisant and Gran Ravine”. HaitiAnalysis.

g) Peter Hallward. 2008. “Response to Michael Deibert’s Review of Damming the Flood”. Monthly Review.

Readers can weigh the bias of all sources and draw their conclusions about the facts.

Notes:

[1] Jeb Sprague University Website.

[2] The photo that Sprague attached to the e-mail had been taken by grassroots photojournalist Jean Ristil who lives in Cite Soleil and has himself been harassed and jailed illegally in the past (for taking photographs) by Haiti’s UN-trained police. See Eric Feise, Jeb Sprague. 2006. “Persecuted Haitian Photojournalist Speaks Out: Jean Ristil & Cite Solely”.

[3] Michael Deibert. 2009. “Haiti: ‘We have Never had Justice’”. IPS.

For further reading:

Hallward, Peter. 2008. Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment. Verso.

Macdonld, Isabel. 2007. “The Freedom of the Press Barons”. The Dominion. http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/976

Sprague, Jeb. 2006. “Invisible Violence: Ignoring murder in post-coup Haiti”. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.

Griffin, Thomas M. 2004. “Haiti: Human Rights Investigation: November 11-21, 2004″ University of Miami School of Law.

By: Kevin Pina – Haiti Liberte

Without question, the Lavalas political movement opposed the neo-liberal economic model of development that is unfolding in Haiti today. Lavalas militants and spokespersons called International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank dictated structural adjustment the “death plan.” It included eliminating tariffs, selling off State-owned enterprises, keeping the minimum wage low, and relying on the private sector as the motor for economic development.

The major obstacle to the plan of the international financial institutions (IFIs) for Haiti was democracy itself. It took the form of the Lavalas movement, representing the poor majority’s interests, and the president they twice elected, Jean Bertrand Aristide. His government refused to privatize key industries like TELECO, the state telephone company, and EDH, the electricity company. While the IFIs insisted that social programs be cut, Aristide’s government took profits from these State-owned companies to invest in a universal literacy program and to provide millions of subsidized meals for the poor. For the first time in history, Haiti had the beginnings of a safety net in place to insure against widespread hunger and malnutrition. Over the objections of the IFIs and Haiti’s predatory economic elite, the minimum wage for the lowest paid work force in the hemisphere was doubled twice during Aristide’s first and second terms. Not so coincidentally, both of Aristide’s terms were cut short by coups.

This challenge to the IFI program was a major factor in the Feb. 2004 coup that not only ousted the democratically elected president but also drove out more than 7,400 elected officials from municipal and parliamentary posts throughout Haiti. It was an attempt to destroy the movement of Haiti’s poor majority and their right through elections to establish their own priorities for economic development based on the pillars of national sovereignty and social justice. The Bush administration and the Republican Party backed Haiti’s elite in overthrowing the constitutional government and orchestrating the “transition.”

Far from the “popular rebellion” concocted by the corporate media’s well-paid reporters, Haitian democracy’s overthrow in 2004 was a violent affair perpetrated by former military and death-squad commanders on a killing spree. The wealthy elite’s paid minions took to the streets to give the illusion of a “popular rebellion” but they could not take down the government, so the vile dogs of war were unleashed after being nurtured in the neighboring Dominican Republic. Not unlike recent events in Honduras, this coordinated campaign resulted in a president being taken from his home against his will under the cloak of darkness and forced onto a plane as the killing began in earnest to insure the success of the plotters.

The two years following the 2004 coup in Haiti would make the intentions of the Organization of American States, the United Nations and the so-called “international community” clear as glass. They all gave their blessings to the US-installed regime that took power even as it unleashed an unprecedented campaign of summary executions, the gunning down unarmed protesters, and arbitrary arrests. All of this was done in the name of “restoring democracy.” It was a period of gross human rights violations committed under UN aegis that remains successfully cloaked and obscured to this day.

Faced with thousands killed, jailed and forced into exile, the Lavalas movement elected René Préval their new president in 2006. People hoped he would stop the repression, free the political prisoners, and allow Aristide to return to Haiti. What they could not know was that he had already signed onto the cynical project to destroy the poor’s popular movement as preparation for bringing Haiti back into the camp of neo-liberal economic development and the “death plan” they had fought so hard against.

Despite more than $4 billion of international assistance since the 2004 coup, life has only become worse for most Haitians as the predatory elite squeezes as much profit as they can out of a desperate population. With little business investment to speak of, this elite has used their monopoly on the importation of food staples to steal away the more than $1.5 billion in remittances sent annually by thousands of families and friends to their loved ones in Haiti in an effort to keep them alive. These monopolists kept filling their pockets even as protests broke out against the growing misery and hunger in April 2008.

Throughout, the Lavalas movement and the poor kept demonstrating against the coup, demanding justice and that Aristide be allowed to return to Haiti. Their leaders were disappeared as in the case of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine on August 12, 2007, forced to rot away in prison like the still-imprisoned Ronald Dauphin, or eventually succumbed to the ravages of harsh treatment as happened to Father Gérard Jean-Juste on May 27, 2009. Still others were courted by Préval and offered well-paid positions of authority within his government if they would turn their backs on their own history and the Lavalas movement.

Then came the much-delayed senatorial elections in April and June 2009, where the final blow was to be delivered to Lavalas. The Fanmi Lavalas party was excluded from participating on a cooked-up technicality. But the Lavalas waged a massively successful boycott of both rounds of the elections, a clear and collective rebuff of Préval and the international community.

Kill, imprison, exile, divide, exclude, and buy-off as many as you can: this became the strategy to destroy Lavalas and pave the way for Haiti’s re-emergence as a neo-liberal success story in the Caribbean. Still, Haiti’s poor majority are a resilient and hopeful force. They hoped that the election of Barack Obama, the first US president with African blood coursing through his veins, would change the trajectory of US-foreign policy in Haiti since 2004. It did not. They hoped that Hillary Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State would make a difference until she visited the sweatshop of coup-backer Andy Apaid to tout the neo-liberal model in June. They hoped that Bill Clinton’s appointment as UN Special Envoy to Haiti would signal a change, but he ignored their pleas at every turn during his two brief visits over the last two months. Instead he spoke of coordinating NGO aid in preparation for instituting the new “death plan” as postulated by UN economic advisor Paul Collier, which is really the same old neo-liberal “death plan” first rolled out under Reagan’s Caribbean Basin Initiative in the 1980s.

The IFIs announced in late June that they had forgiven $1.2 billion of Haiti’s debt, most of which was racked up by former US-sponsored dictatorships.

Finally, last week, the Haitian parliament voted in closed session to double the minimum wage to a whopping $3.75 a day or about $0.46 per hour for an 8-hour day. Haiti still has the cheapest labor in the hemisphere off which US manufacturers and their Haitian elite partners can still turn a handsome profit.

This past weekend in Miami Beach we saw Haiti’s former mistress of the NGO sector and current Prime Minister, Michele Duvivier Pierre-Louis, take the stage with Bill Clinton to formally announce that the new-old “death plan” has given birth to renewed hope in Haiti. The corpses have been buried and the blood has been washed away so now Haiti can turn the page on the Lavalas movement and those upstarts in the poor majority who had the audacity to think that elections meant they could choose an alternative. Still, this struggle for Haiti’s future is not over, not by a long shot.

It’s only fitting to give Aristide, who remains in exile in South Africa, a few words here. “Pep pa achte libete ak demokrasi nan mache,” he once said. “The people do not buy liberty and democracy at the market.” Some feel that anything is possible with Democrats controlling the White House and Congress. They succeeded on a platform of “Change we can believe in.” The lesson for the world’s poor remains the same: when it comes to the Democratic Party, don’t confuse hope with change, especially if $3.75 is all you’re going to be paid for an 8-hour day.

By: Wadner Pierre – HaitiAnalysis

It was 7:00 am on the 18th of June. Mourners filled the cathedral of Port-Au-Prince to honor the late priest, Gerard Jean-Juste. Most likely, none foresaw that the UN would bring its violent campaign against the Lavalas movement to the cathedral just after the service ended.

A contingent of UN troops arrived outside the church to arrest one of the mourners. As they sped away with their suspect, one of troops shot into the crowd. A man known as Kenel Pascal, of Delmas, was killed. The incident was captured on film.

Jean-Juste was an outspoken critic of the UN presence in Haiti and a prominent supporter of Jean Bertrand Aristide, whose democratic government was ousted in a coup of February 2004. Under the UN backed dictatorship of Gerard Latortue, Jean-Juste became Haiti’s most famous political prisoner.

More than 20 priests along with Bishop Andre Pierre and the Archbishop of Port-Au-Prince, Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot were in attendance. Bishop Andre Pierre spoke glowing of Gerard Jean-Juste at the funeral. However, many of the mourners recalled Jean-Juste’s stormy relationship with the church hierarchy in Haiti. While an international campaign, assisted by Amnesty International, was underway to release Jean-Juste from prison, the Catholic Church opted to deal Jean-Juste another blow by suspending him from church as punishment for his political activism.

People were at the service from all over the world – France, Canada, United States, and various Caribbean countries. Key leaders of the Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas party were there – Marise Narcisse, Rene Civil, Annette Auguste (Son An). Mario Joseph, a human rights lawyer who has worked tirelessly on behalf of Haiti’s political prisoners was also there. Also present were members of Veye Yo, a Miami-based group founded by Jean-Juste during the 1970s to defend the rights of Haitian immigrants.

After the shooting, some of the mourners held President Rene Preval directly responsible. He was carried to the presidency in 2006 by Aristide supporters. With Jean-Juste in prison at the time (therefore legally barred from running) Rene Preval, a former Aristide protégé, was by far the most attractive candidate to the Lavalas movement, especially after Gerard Jean-Juste endorsed him. Preval was untainted by any role in the 2004 coup and had always been publicly loyal to Aristide. However, Preval’s elite friendly economic policies and failure to secure Aristide’s return to Haiti have alienated him from the Lavalas movement.

In Cavaillon, Jean-Juste’s hometown, banners paying tribute to “Father Gerry” were everywhere. “You’re struggle will continue” read many of them. One the streets, and at the church where Jean-Juste was ordained, people spoke of the “great man” who devoted his life to the poor.

The troops who stormed the funeral have given Haitians yet another reason to remember Father Gerard Jean-Juste, and another way to contrast his kindness with the UN’s brutality.

By: Wadner Pierre and Jeb Sprague – Inter Press Service

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Aug 20 (IPS) – Government authorities in Haiti face recent criticism over allegations that they continue to jail political dissidents.

On Aug. 7, Amnesty International called for the release of Ronald Dauphin, a Haitian political prisoner. Dauphin is an activist with the Fanmi Lavalas movement of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He was seized by armed paramilitaries on Mar. 1, 2004 – the day after Aristide’s government was ousted in a coup d’état.

According to Amnesty, “the delay in bringing Ronald Dauphin to trial is unjustifiable and is politically motivated”. The organisation “opposes Ronald Dauphin’s continued detention without trial, which is in violation of his rights, and urges the Haitian authorities to release him pending trial.”

Amnesty noted that Dauphin’s health has deteriorated severely in Haiti’s National Penitentiary, which is notorious for the appalling conditions to which it subjects inmates. One of Dauphin’s co-defendants, Wantales Lormejuste, died in prison from untreated tuberculosis in April 2007.

In May 2009, doctors examined Dauphin and called on the authorities to immediately transfer him to a hospital. But today, nearly five and half years since his original arrest, he has not seen his day in court and remains locked up.

Demonstrations in downtown Port-au-Prince, with hundreds of supporters, occur here on a weekly basis, calling for the release of political prisoners. They are organised by local grassroots groups such as the Kolektif Fanmiy Prizonye Politk Yo, Fondasyon 30 Septanm, Organizasyon AbaSatan, and the Group Defans Prizonye Politik Yo.

At one protest, Rospide Pétion a former political prisoner and Lavalas supporter, told IPS, “It is unjust to keep Dauphin in prison while criminals are on the street working without prosecution. We ask for justice for Ronald and all the unknown political prisoners from the slums.”

Last year, the Inter American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) ordered the Haitian government to immediately improve prison conditions. That ruling also ordered the Haitian government to pay 95,000 dollars in damages to Yvon Neptune, one of Ronald Dauphins co-defendants, for numerous violations of his legal rights.

The Haitian government has disregarded the ruling to date. Neptune received a “provisional release” in 2006 after spending two years in prison but the case against him has yet to be dismissed, despite an appeals court order in his favour.

Ronald Dauphin is the last of 16 Fanmi Lavalas members and supporters imprisoned based on allegations made by the organisation Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH), as well as some relatives of the victims, that a massacre was perpetrated between Feb. 9 and 11, 2004 in St. Marc, 100 kms north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.

RNDDH received funding from the Canadian government for the prosecution of the supposed perpetrators of the massacre. However, U.N. investigators – despite U.N. hostility to Fanmi Lavalas and support for the coup-installed government that ruled Haiti until 2006 – have not backed the accusations made by RNDDH.

In 2005, the U.N. Human Rights Commission’s independent expert on human rights in Haiti, Louis Joinet, concluded that what happened at St. Marc was that armed groups -supporters and opponents of the Aristide government – clashed and that there were casualties on both sides.

In 2006, Thierry Fagart, head of the Human Rights department of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, rebuked RNDDH for never substantiating its allegations by even providing a list of the names of the victims.

Amnesty International’s appeal on behalf of Ronald Dauphin also called for an impartial and thorough investigation into the events that took place in St. Marc, and it observed that “The investigating magistrate has only focused on the alleged crimes committed by the group supporting former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and failed to identify the victims among the former president supporters and their alleged perpetrators.”

In July, the director of RNDDH, Pierre Esperance, told IPS, “In our system, the criminal becomes a victim because the system doesn’t work.”

Brian Concannon of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) agreed that the shortcomings of Haiti’s legal and prison system punish the innocent and guilty alike.

However, Concannon noted that the coup-installed government of 2004-2006 “arrested hundreds of political opponents, some at the insistence of RNDDH. Over five years after the arrests began, not a single political prisoner has been convicted of any crime.”

“Some were acquitted at trial, like folk singer Annette Auguste ‘So Ann’, or cleared by an appeals court, like activist priest Rev. Gérard Jean-Juste, when the prosecution was not able to submit a shred of evidence. Many more remain in prison, or in legal limbo like Yvon Neptune.”

On Aug. 9, former President Bill Clinton, now a U.N. envoy to Haiti, addressed influential Haitian émigrés gathered at a luxury resort in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida.

Working class Haitian activist groups like Veye-yo, which is based in Miami, have been calling on Clinton to work on behalf of Ronald Dauphin as he recently did on behalf of U.S. journalists imprisoned in North Korea. A group of Veye-yo activists assembled just outside the resort calling for such action.

Momentum has been growing for Dauphin’s release. Evel Fanfan, a Haitian attorney for the Association des Universitaires Motivés pour une Haiti de Droits (AUMOHD), also speaking at the recent gathering in Florida, expressed firm solidarity with the campaign to end illegal detentions such as that of Dauphin.

The Haitian government denies that it holds political prisoners. Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, Raymond Joseph, denying that he has even heard of Dauphin, says, “There are no political prisoners in Haiti. The fact that Neptune and the others are out of jail and they were the most prominent and that this person… is still in jail, to me underscores… some people are in jail but not for political reasons, but since they belong to a certain party they are shopping this around and saying ‘its because I belong to this party that I’m in jail’”.

Others argue this is part of a pattern, part of a concerted campaign to silence Haiti’s poor that continues today with the blocking by the government’s Conseil électoral provisoire (CEP) of Fanmi Lavalas from taking party in recent elections.

Speaking last Wednesday on Free Speech Radio News, Pierre LaBossiere, a founding member of a North American-Haiti solidarity organisation, the Haiti Action Committee, said, “We have petitions to President René Préval to free the political prisoners. People shouldn’t be in jail because of their political beliefs.”

“Because of their strong feelings that President Aristide is the true spokesman for their aspirations they were put in jail on trumped up charges, never a day in court and they are sitting there for years,” he said.

In May, U.S. Representative Maxine Waters wrote to Haitian Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, warning that the failure to provide adequate medical treatment to Dauphin could “cause the injustice [of illegal imprisonment] to become a death sentence.”

Dauphin learned about Amnesty’s statement on his behalf while listening to a radio interview that his attorney, Mario Joseph (of the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux), was giving about his case.

Dauphin’s wife told IPS, “Ronald was pleased when he heard the news on the radio”. However, she remains distraught over her husband’s situation. His ailing mother, Janne, who is 78, is also suffering immensely wondering what will become of her son.