Haiti tribunal establishes
responsibilities for atrocities
By G. Dunkel
Montreal
Published May 30, 2006 10:12 PM
The Fourth International
Tribunal on Haiti, like the three before it, aimed at exposing
individual responsibility for the crimes committed in Haiti
after the United States, France and Canada collectively
coordinated the coup and kidnapping of President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide on Feb. 29, 2004.
The tribunal’s political
point about the role of the United Nations as a front, a tool
and a cover for these three big capitalist countries was
sharpened by the fact that newly elected Haitian President René
Préval has not been able to release the hundreds of political
prisoners, almost all Aristide supporters, that the de-facto
regime threw in jail. He hasn’t even been able to denounce
the agreement that Gérard Latortue, the president of Haiti
imposed by the UN, made giving the UN’s CIVPOL (Civilian
Police) control of Haiti’s national police (PNH) and prisons
for the next two- and-a-half years.
Held in Montreal May 27 at the
Université de Montréal, the tribunal was a success. Four
hundred people, a strong majority of them from the Haitian
community in Quebec, came, even though the Montreal cops had
blocked off the whole neighborhood because an international
bicycle race was using the roads. The tribunal had been widely
promoted on French and Creole radio shows. Parts of the
program were in French and Creole, but most was in English.
Simultaneous translation from English to French was available.
Anthony Fenton, a journalist
and researcher, presented Canada’s role in “subverting and
destroying democracy in Haiti and destabilizing its
government” both before and after the coup-knapping of
Aristide.
Ramsey Clark, former attorney
general of the United States who led the Tribunal’s
Commission of Inquiry in Haiti last year, put the videotaped
testimony into political and historical context. Clark pointed
out that in 1804, when Haiti won its independence from
France—at such a high cost that perhaps half the Haitian
people died in that struggle—the Haitian people only had to
confront one world power. “Now the Haitian people must
confront the whole world in the form of the United Nations,
which is subservient to the United States.”
Clark continued: “Unless
there is accountability now, the same forces that killed
Dessalines [the leader who declared Haiti independent] and
removed Aristide twice, unless their individual agents are
held responsible, Haiti will not obtain real independence and
it is unclear how long the government put into power by this
last election will last. Never doubt the importance of this
commission and its role in supporting the Haitian people.”
After Clark spoke some of the
videotaped testimony that the Commission of Inquiry had
gathered was presented.
A high point was the testimony
of an old woman who lived in one of the houses that attachés
burned in 2005 under the protection of CIVPOL. Attachés are
freelancers hired by members of the PNH to do their dirty
work—killing and mutilating people—and let the PNH
disclaim responsibility. When the attachés told her to lie
down on the floor, she explained, “I knew they were going to
disappear me. So I ran out the door and away.”
Her testimony and that of
others established that the UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti
protected the PNH and its
attachés when they attacked areas like Bel Air when people
were resisting. Two UN officers were directly responsible for
atrocities; their cases will be referred to the International
Court of Justice.
Brian Concannon, who was acting
as the tribunal’s juge d’instruction, a magistrate who
examines the evidence in a criminal case under Haitian law,
closed the session by examining the responsibility of Bernard
Gousse. Gousse was justice minister when these atrocities were
committed, and threw most of the political prisoners in jail.
While Gousse’s general
responsibility is clear, the only person in the United States
who could testify on the details of his illegal acts, the Rev.
Jean Juste, suffers from cancer and was not available. His
deeds will be examined at another tribunal.
The next International Tribunal
is scheduled for Port-au-Prince in September.
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