Convicts Rule Haiti Town, Executions Plague Another

[seemslikeadream]

By Michael Christie

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - The northeast Haitian town of Fort Liberte lives up to its name for 150 murderers, rapists and thieves freed from the local jail. They run the place.

Three weeks after a multinational force landed in Haiti to restore order after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was driven into exile by an armed revolt and U.S. pressure, lawlessness remains the rule in parts of the impoverished Caribbean nation.

Most of Fort Liberte, a small town on the pockmarked road to the Dominican Republic border from the northern port of Cap-Haitien, is in the hands of escaped convicts, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Stores are shuttered and the streets are empty.

"It's been three weeks since the Multinational Interim Force arrived in Haiti, but the rule of law has yet to be re-established in the north," Joanne Mariner, deputy director of the group's Americas Division, said in a report on Monday. (Additional reporting by Ibon Villelabeitia in Port-au-Prince)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4638215

[MrSoundAndVision]

1. That man...

looks like he hasn't slept in days. That man behind him isn't friendly I'm guessing. Is that a picture of a man just minutes before the lights are turned out on him for good?

Our government needs to be dealt with. These neo-conservative imperialists need not just be removed from power, they need to be tried and prosecuted for war crimes. Look at that poor man.

FUCK!

[MrSoundAndVision]

2. Oh and...

what's John Kerry got to say about this situation? I'm guessing jack shit.

[madrchsod]

4. he doesn`t want

to become involved ..it`s not our problem. he`s part of the club......

[w4rma]

5. Kerry supported Aristide and spoke out against Bush's coup here. (nt)

[cprise]

6. He didn't advocate the US supporting Aristide

...until after we had already deposed him.

That's always the case with Kerry. Country in turmoil, and he keeps his mouth shut until the Bushgang does their dirty work.

Or in the case of Venezuela, he openly smears their president as a despot.

[seemslikeadream]

7. Nobody did but these people

Rep. Elijah Cummins, D-Md., speaks with members of the Congressional Black Caucus outside the White House after meeting with President Bush, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell Wednesday, Feb.25, 2004. With him, left to right, are Reps. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Donald Payne, D-N.J., John Conyers, D-Mich., and Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. In a highly unusual move, the group demanded a meeting with Bush to express their concerns that the U.S. act to preserve the democracy in Haiti. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

[seemslikeadream]

3. In rebel-held Haiti, police outnumbered and outgunned by rebels who hold c

And the rebel leader serves as de facto judge. Louis-Jodel Chamblain sits cross-armed at a wooden desk beneath an almond tree at the police headquarters his fighters torched.

Chamblain was co-leader of a paramilitary death squad convicted in his absence to two life sentences in jail for his part in a 1994 massacre of Aristide supporters and the 1993 execution of Aristide financier Antoine Izmery.

Chamblain returned from exile in the neighboring Dominican Republic to lead a band of former soldiers and ragtag recruits who have jailed dozens of people accused of everything from petty thievery to fighting for Aristide.

Chamblain said he decides on minor offenses but is holding suspects for serious crimes until courts reopen – a promise met with skepticism by rights groups.

"You know what the sentence is for a thief?" Chamblain jokes to a terrified 15-year-old accused of stealing an empty oil drum. "Being shot down."

Looters emptied the World Food Program warehouse of 800 tons of food the day after the rebels took over, and there are fears that could happen again. Wednesday's scheduled shipment of 1,550 tons of food will be the largest to the north since the crisis began, World Food Program spokesman Alejandro Chicheri said.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20040323-1601-haiti.html





Louis Jodel Chamblain, right, is seen during a meeting on Nov. 23,1993 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Witnesses said about 50 rebels led by Chamblain descended Monday Feb. 16, 2004 on a police station in Hinche and killed three officers before police fled the city of 50,000, about 70 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince. Chamblain is a former soldier who once headed the feared paramilitary group FRAPH _ the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti _ which killed and maimed hundreds of Aristide supporters under military dictatorship between 1991 and 1994. (AP Photo/Daniel Morel)

[Judi Lynn]

8. Our right-wing has been so ignorant, so loathesome concerning Haiti

If you don't mind grinding your teeth, please see the following:Jesse Helms' Political Voodoo



Jessie Helms as a VOODOO Doll

The senator from North Carolina finds a way to attack Planned Parenthood while hiding his well-known penchant for pro-life politics.

By Mat Honan

March 23, 1999

Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) got his panties in a wad yet again last week. It seems that the good senator was incensed to discover that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is funding what Helms strongly suspects to be voodoo in Haiti. Since we have our own voodoo connection of sorts, the MoJo Wire decided to take a closer look at his suspicions.

Helms' alarm bells apparently started going off when, while perusing the 1996 International Planned Parenthood Foundation annual report, he read about "a campaign to reach voodoo followers with sexual and reproductive health information ... by performing short song-prayers about STDs and the benefits of family planning during voodoo ceremonies." As would any conscientious senator (especially one who uses prayer breakfasts with Jerry Falwell as political fundraisers), Helms fired off a letter to Secretary of State Madeline Albright, demanding that the funding be stopped. In doing so he made it clear that he is hiding his well-known penchant for pro-life politics behind a wall of voodoo (italics ours):

"On February 3, the wrote to the Committee requesting permission to proceed withy the obligation of funds for population control programs ... It is no secret that these programs are far too often wrongheaded and wasteful. Nevertheless, if the Administration insists on funding these programs I shall not stand in the way, so long as you agree to the following conditions: 1) that no funds be obligated to any affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Foundation (IPPF) in Haiti, including PROFAMIL; and 2) that no funds be provided directly or indirectly to any group whose programs include producing material intended to be used in a voodoo ceremony ... A.I.D. is funding programs that endorse or legitimize what amounts to witchcraft."
(snip)

Sources within the State Department, who asked not to be identified, told the MoJo Wire that funding for the IPPF in Haiti was discontinued, partially but not wholly, due to Helms' concerns. However, USAID claims that the eliminated funding was simply part of a larger family-planning program that had already run its course.
(snip/...)

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/1999/03/voodoo.html

(Note the article was published exactly 5 years ago. What hath God wrought?)

Note to seemslikeadream:

Your contribution on Haiti matters has been wonderful. There's no way people would ever have the time to find so many photos, conveying so much a sense of what is happening there. Louis Jodel Chamblain looks everybit as bad as one would expect for a man who plays for our right-wing interests. Obviously there's NOTHING he won't do to gain a sense of power. Living a good life, being a decent person flew out the window a lot time ago when he learned we have interests here who need someone in countries like Haiti to help them keep the citizens paralyzed with fear.

I hope he's enjoying the hell out of his life now, and that the people who employed him to kill, main, and terrorize his fellow Haitians will have to face some higher authority sometime, somewhere, if not here and now in our lifetimes.