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On Feb. 29, 2004,
former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forcibly removed
from Haiti by the Bush administration. Several days later,
Gerard Latortue was airlifted into Haiti and named the prime
minister with barely a fig-leaf as a process. Latortue was a
radio announcer in Boca Raton.
His major qualification, as with many Iraqi advisors to the
Bush administration, was his strong ties to the U.S.
intelligence community and neoconservatives in the White
House. Having fed the administration what it wanted to hear
about how unpopular and dictatorial Aristide was in Haiti --
similar to the disinformation campaign waged by Ahmed
Chalabi regarding Iraq -- the unqualified Latortue was
rewarded by being anointed prime minister.
Brutal regime
The results of his tenure are now in. A study published this
week in The Lancet, the respected medical journal of the
United Kingdom, scientifically analyzed the brutality of the
regime. In the last two years, reports have documented the
gross human-rights violations in Haiti, but these abuses
were sadly ignored by most mainstream media. The University
of Miami School of Law's Center for Human Rights, led by the
prominent human-rights author and professor Irwin Stotzky,
Harvard University's Human Rights Clinic and the Institute
for Justice and Democracy in Haiti all detailed executions
and systematic human-rights violations after Aristide's
removal.
The Lancet report, however, confirms everyone's worst
suspicions. It concludes that in the 22 months after
Aristide's removal there were 8,000 murders and 35,000
sexual assaults in the greater Port-au-Prince area alone.
More than 50 percent of these murders were attributed to
anti-Aristide and anti-Lavalas factions including armed
anti-Lavalas groups, demobilized army members and government
security forces.
Gangs not guilty
Similarly, almost 30 percent of the sexual assaults were
attributed to anti-Lavalas and anti-Aristide forces. The
remaining murders and sexual assaults were due to common
criminals or of unknown origin. Although a sustained
disinformation campaign by Latortue and the Bush
Administration claimed that violence was due to Lavalas
''gangs'' -- the study finds just the opposite. No murders
or sexual assaults were attributed to Lavalas members or
partisans during the 22-month period of Latortue's regime.
As in Iraq, the other lasting legacy of the Bush
administration's policies in Haiti has been rampant
corruption. More than $900 million in aid was provided to
the Latortue regime at the request of the United States,
France and Canada. But no visible major projects warranting
such huge expenditures have been recorded. In a country
where the average annual income is less than $350 per year,
the newly elected legislature is investigating this rampant
corruption, including $6 million that disappeared from
Latortue's Foreign Ministry.
Luxury cars
Latortue also paid a U.S. law firm $250,000 a month retainer
solely to bring against Aristide a civil suit that was
ultimately dismissed. In a parting shot to the Haitian
people, Latortue awarded himself two new luxury automobiles,
which he took to Florida until the misappropriation was
discovered.
The Bush administration legacy of terminating democracy
under Aristide and allowing gross human-rights abuses and
corruption to fester during Latortue's regime will take many
decades to reverse. Nor was the administration successful in
terminating the Haitian people's desire for the return of
Aristide, who is as popular as ever in Haiti.
Ira Kurzban was the general counsel for Haiti for 13
years during the governments of René Préval and
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
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