New
Prime Minister, New OAS
Mission,
but Same Old Problem
After a week of rumors that it was coming, on Mar. 4, President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide nominated Yvon Neptune, the number two of his Lavalas Family party
(FL), to replace outgoing Prime Minister Jean-Marie Chérestal (see
Haïti
Progrès, Vol. 19, No. 49, 2/20/02).
Neptune, 55, is expected to breeze through his confirmation hearings,
as did his predecessor, since the FL dominates the parliament. As Senate
president and interim FL head since Aristide's Feb. 7, 2001 inauguration,
Neptune has generally imitated Aristide's vague and elliptical style in
his discourse, though he has sometimes made sharp denunciations of the
"laboratory" -- shorthand in Haiti for Washington's diplomatic-military-intelligence
complex. He will be the sixth prime minister in the six years that Aristide,
over two terms, has been Haiti's president.
Neptune was born on Nov. 8, 1946 in the southern town of Cavaillon and
attended school in the nearby city of Les Cayes. During the 1970s, he studied
architecture at colleges in New York and Paris. He worked for a New York
architectural firm and lived on Long Island in the 1980s and early 90s,
while participating in progressive community groups and radio programs.
Neptune is married and has three grown children.
With Aristide's post-coup return to Haiti, Neptune became presidential
spokesperson from Nov. 1, 1994 until Aristide left office on Feb. 7, 1996.
He then became deeply involved in building the FL, which was officially
launched as a party in Nov. 1996. He also taught English at the Aristide
Foundation for Democracy in the Tabarre suburb of Port-au-Prince.
Under the FL's banner, he was easily elected as a Senator for the Western
department in May 21, 2000.
Neptune told the Haitian Press Agency that he would "defend the interests
of the nation and not those of the Lavalas Family" and would call on
"all sectors of the country in the framework of forming the new team."
Despite such magnanimous posturing, Washington is taking no chances
and has had the Organization of American States (OAS) send a "Special
Mission for the Reinforcement of Democracy in Haiti." The mission is
nothing less than a state within a state. The agreement, which was signed
by Haiti's Foreign Minister Joseph Antonio and OAS Assistant Secretary
Luigi Einaudi on Mar. 1, devotes most of its eight pages to defining the
powers, privileges and immunities of the Mission's members, who have a
one-year mandate but whose number is open-ended.
The Mission's purposes are completely vague and number only two: "a)
to undertake investigations and evaluations that they judge necessary b)
to formulate the recommendations and furnish the aid which they judge pertinent."
To further this obscure agenda, the Haitian government agrees to allow
the Mission free access anywhere in Haiti, as well as "full access to
all the state apparatus, state bodies, and governmental entities and to
their archives and documents," while the government "will give the
Mission and its members all the facilities needed to carry out its functions"
as well as "any needed technical and administrative collaboration."
In other words, Haiti, you are going to pay for your own supervision. One
wonders how such permissive access will "reinforce democracy" in
Haiti and when Washington would ever allow such probing of its own state
apparatus.
The arrangement is very reminiscent of the United Nations weapons inspectors
to Iraq (to pick just one example), in that the mission provides Washington
with a win/win scenario. Either the target country fully cooperates in
its complete infiltration and x-ray analysis by foreign agents, or, if
it resists, there is a pretext for more coercive action to "correct"
its disobedient ways.
Already such disciplining has begun. Arch-reactionary Otto Reich has
been named U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere.
"He says that one of the administration's tools to fight [corruption]
will be a practice of the revoking of U.S. visas of government officials
who have stolen from the public purse," reports the Wall Street Journal's
conservative columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady on Mar. 1. Therefore it was
no surprise to learn on Mar. 4 that the U.S. government intends to yank
the U.S. visas of 60 Haitian government and police officials. The list
was not yet made public at press time, by either the Haitian or U.S. governments.
Meanwhile, Washington's low-intensity war to destabilize Haiti continues
apace. Suspicious gang strife has turned Cité Soleil, the capital's
largest slum, into an uninhabitable war zone over the past two months.
During that time, about 40 people have been killed, 100 wounded, several
hundred women raped, and over a thousand shacks destroyed, according to
the Collective of Notables of Cité Soleil (CONOC). Residents of
the area feel there is a hidden hand at work.
"I think that people see that this is something planned," one
Cité Soleil resident declared on Radio Kiskeya last month. "Since
Dec. 17 [when gunmen attempted to assassinate Aristide and took over the
National Palace for several hours], I've noticed gang members are wearing
bullet-proof vests, and worse still, they have guns and bullets. It's true
that they sometimes hold up people for money for ammunition, but where
can they buy ammunition? What store in Port-au-Prince sells it? For gangs
to be fighting for a month and six days, that takes a lot of bullets. Where
did they find that ammunition? Am I in Afghanistan?"
If Neptune thinks he is going to combat this degenerating situation
by integrating his sworn enemies into his administration, he will be committing
the same mistake as Chérestal, who put Duvalierists and putschists
in key posts. Washington and its servants in the Democratic Convergence
opposition front are not impressed or enticed by Neptune's overtures. They
are on an all-out offensive to overthrow Aristide. The next weeks will
tell whether Neptune realizes this or not.
Court
Rescues Three Convicted Louima Cops
On Feb. 28, three judges of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals overturned the verdicts delivered against former police officers
Charles Schwarz, Thomas Wiese and Thomas Bruder for conspiring to obstruct
justice in the investigation of the 1997 torture of Abner Louima (see Haïti
Progrès, Vol. 15, No. 22, 8/20/1997). The appellate court also
wiped away Schwarz's conviction for assisting Justin Volpe on the grounds
that his defense was shoddy and the jury influenced.
The unusual ruling reversing one of the most important police brutality
trials in U.S. history has outraged the Haitian community, human rights
activists, and legal experts. "I have not reviewed all the finer points
of the decision, but my gut feeling is that these results can only occur
if the defendant is a police officer," remarked Dave Blackstone, a
New York State Deputy Capital Defender,
The Rev. Al Sharpton and Jonas Louima, Abner's brother, went to Washington,
D.C. on Mar. 5 to lobby for federal intervention following the court decision.
However, with John Ashcroft as Attorney General, this prospect is dim.
Sharp protests have also met reports that Bruder and Wiese may seek
reinstatement on the New York City police force, since some argue that
they cannot be prosecuted again under double-jeopardy safeguards.
But Peter Neufeld, one of Louima's lawyers, is optimistic this won't
happen. "There is no way in the world that [Police] Commissioner [Raymond]
Kelly will ever let them back on the force," he told Haïti
Progrès. "There are cases far less serious than this, where
the police officer has been actually acquitted, and they still don't let
them back on the force."
Neufeld reported that his client was "very disturbed and terribly
disappointed" by the appellate decision but was ready to meet the legal
challenges ahead.
Outcry has erupted from many quarters. "You have a criminal justice
system that will not sleep as long as a white male is in jail for killing
or harming a black male," said Lt. Eric Adams, president of 100 Blacks
in Law Enforcement Who Care. Answering the call of the Rev. Herbert Daughtry,
demonstrators marched through Brooklyn on Mar. 3 to voice their anger.
The shocking news comes just two weeks before the second anniversary
of the Mar. 16 fatal police shooting of Haitian-American Patrick Dorismond
(see Haïti Progrès,
Vol. 18, No. 1, 3/22/00). Also, on Jan. 16, police gunned down
another unarmed Haitian, Georgy Louisgène, in Brooklyn as he beseeched
them for help (see Haïti
Progrès,
Vol. 19, No. 45, 1/23/02).
The Haiti Support Network, a New York-based community solidarity
group in the forefront of the fight against police brutality in recent
years, issued the following statement in the wake of the appellate court's
decision:
The
Subversion of Justice
Cannot
Be Tolerated
By overturning the convictions of three police officers for
stonewalling justice in the torture of Abner Louima, the U.S. criminal
justice system has once again proven its complicity with police brutality,
obstruction, and criminality, which is obvious and well documented in this
case.
It was apparent to the Haitian community and the world -- as well as
a jury of their peers -- that Charles Schwarz, Thomas Bruder, and Thomas
Wiese, along with many of their colleagues, worked diligently to block
the truth from coming out about that fateful night of Aug. 9, 1997 when
they mercilessly beat up Abner Louima on the way to Brooklyn's 70th
Precinct house and once there, either Schwarz or Wiese assisted Justin
Volpe in torturing the victim.
Did any one of them come forward to volunteer what happened that night?
Did any one of them ever denounce the beatings and torture, or attempt
to stop it? No. Instead, once discovered, they floated flabbergasting lies
that Louima had ripped his colon during rough sex at the Rendezvous Night
Club before his arrest, even though he was supposedly strong enough to
knock down Volpe with a single punch.
The three-member appellate court, which overturned the convictions,
had to admit that the officers "agreed generally to impede investigators
by putting forth and corroborating a false version of what occurred."
Then the judges used the oldest trick in the book: a technicality. They
ruled that there was "no evidence" that the three cops "specifically"
intended to obstruct the federal grand jury looking into the case.
The appeals court also overturned Charles Schwarz's conviction for assisting
Volpe in the torture, claiming that his lawyer had a conflict of interest
and didn't do a good job and that the jury was prejudiced. During the trial,
Schwarz waived his option to change his lawyer, who also represents the
police union, when the possible conflict of interest was raised. What's
the point of a waiver if an appellate court can recue everything?
Volpe said that Wiese was the cop who helped him. All the cops have
lied so much, it is hard to know what to believe. But their finger-pointing
looks like a tactic to confuse the public and thwart justice. There is
good reason for people to worry whether Volpe's accomplice will ever be
brought to justice, whoever he is.
Ironically, a lacking lawyer and a predisposed jury are two of the reasons
that U.S. political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal has repeatedly raised in an
attempt to gain a new trial. His appeals, however, have all been snubbed,
and he remains in jail 21 years later.
The Haiti Support Network (HSN) condemns with all its force this
transparent maneuver to roll back one of the exceptional cases where policemen
have been brought to justice for brutality against the people they are
supposed to serve. The HSN will work with the Haitian community and others
in the weeks and months ahead to denounce and foil this attempt to plug
the hole that was finally punctured in the "blue wall of silence" and police
brutality.
On Saturday, Mar. 16 at 5:30 p.m.,
the parents of Patrick Dorismond will hold
a memorial mass for their son at St. Francis Church, at the corner of Nostrand
Ave. and Maple St. in Brooklyn.
The entire community and friends are encouraged
to attend. |
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