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Human
rights continue to suffer in Haiti
This
month is the one year anniversary of the
coup in Haiti, in which United States marines
were used to kidnap President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.
Reelected
in November of 2000, President Aristide
was the candidate of the poor. As a young
preacher in the 1980s Aristide worked tirelessly
against the U.S.-backed dictator Duvalier,
responsible for killing tens of thousands
of people. He preached for human dignity
and insisted that it was immoral for wealth
and land to be monopolized by a handful
of elite who had ruled Haiti for so long.
As
president, although handicapped by the Bush
Administration's policy of denying development
assistance from 2002-04, Aristide opened
schools, hospitals and funded the development
of much-needed social programs. He attempted
to raise the wages of sweatshop workers,
earning the ire of the Bush Administration.
At the same time, he asked for colonial
reparations from France, earning the ire
of President Jacque Chirac of France. Under
President Aristide, Haitians had for the
first time a democratically-elected government.
Now
one year after the U.S.-backed coup, supporters
of democracy and Aristide are assassinated
Online by the long-dreaded army now receiving
steady funding from the interim coup government.
While President Aristide lives in exile
in South Africa, the U.S.-backed interim
government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue
rules over a failed state. Recently the
University of Miami School of Law sent Human
Rights Investigators to Haiti. Their report
is accessible at http://www.law.miami.edu/news/cshr.pdf.
What they found was frightening.
Thomas
M. Griffin of the Miami School of Law, in
his executive summary in the investigation
wrote, "Gunfire crackles, once bustling
streets are abandoned to cadavers, and whole
neighborhoods are cut off from the outside
world."
Griffin
documents in his report a systematic effort
on the part of the U.S. backed Haitian interim
government in fueling a cycle of violence.
The brutal army, outlawed under Aristide,
has been reinstalled. Members of Haiti's
wealthy elite, such as the sweatshop magnet
Andy Apaid, are now paying gangs and the
military to kill supporters of Aristide.
The
human rights investigators met with businessmen,
grassroots leaders, gang members, victims
of human rights violations, lawyers, human
rights groups, police, government and UN
officials, and they even visited prisons
and morgues. They have done a great service
to the Haitian people in providing a detailed
documentation of the human rights violations
of the Latortue government. The Bush Administration
continues to support the Latortue government.
In her inauguration hearing when asked about
Haiti, Condoleezza Rice gave vocal support
to the Latortue government.
Luckily
we have a few independent media sources
that continue to report on the suffering
of the masses in Haiti. While the majority
of the foreign media in Haiti report from
behind the walls of protected compounds
and expensive Hotels- the Haiti Information
Project (HIP) lives and works in the slums
of Port-Au-Prince, the capital of Haiti.
And
it just so happens that on Feb. 16, 2005,
Kevin Pina, a documentarian and journalist
for the Haiti Information Project who broke
the story on the kidnapping and coup of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004,
will be visiting our campus at 6:30 p.m.
at the Carl Anatol Center in the East Library.
He will be showing his films "Haiti:
Betrayal of Democracy" and""Haiti:
Harvest of Hope" and speak on the ongoing
crisis in Haiti. Reiland Rabaka of the Black
Studies department will provide a short
background on the 200 years of Haitian independence.
Jeb
Sprague is a graduate student in history
and a member of the CSULB Campus Progressives.
He can be reached at Jebbathehut@hotmail.com.
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