| The impoverished [Central African Republic] held a news conference attended by Mildred Aristide to try to quash reports her husband has been a virtual prisoner since arriving here from Haiti last Monday.
But the event became a public relations nightmare, with armed men ordering photographers about and heated arguments erupted between officials and journalists. Foreign minister Charles Wenezoui then read a terse statement from the ex-president thanking the country for its hospitality but refused repeated requests to let Mildred Aristide, looking uncomfortable at his side, talk. |
| The military coup in Haiti by the United States and France, aided and supported by Canada did not come as a last minute decision to prevent a bloodbath. Rather, it was carefully planned more than a year in advance at a meeting held in Ottawa at the initiative of the Canadian government and at the insistence of the United States.
...The Ottawa Initiative on Haiti, which took place without the knowledge and participation of the Haitian government, covered its plans of aggression under the mantle of the Organization of American States and a United Nations clause on "the responsibility to protect a population that suffers from the consequences of a civil war, an insurrection, state repression or failure of its policies, and when the state in question is not willing or capable of putting an end to these sufferings or to avoid them, international responsibility to protect takes precedence over the principle of non-intervention". This clause, however well intended it may be, opens the door to mischief by greater powers to, when it suits them, support and foment opposition to a legitimate democratic government, cut aid and assistance and then, when thing go badly for the government, act to remove them from power. That is what appears to have taken place in Haiti. |
| According to Brian Concannon Jr., a human rights lawyer with the International Lawyers' Office, "Guy Philippe, the U.S.-trained self-proclaimed new army chief, (has been) implicated in running drugs, executing suspected gang members, attacking the National Palace and trying to blow up a hydro dam, even before he started killing his former police colleagues."
Then there's Louis Jodel Chamblain, co-founder of Haiti's brutal FRAPH death squad who was convicted for atrocities committed during Haiti's last dictatorship (1991-1994). Both are now living up to their reputations as world-class thugs, hunting down and executing government supporters, emptying the jails, and spraying whole neighborhoods with gunfire." These are the democracy-loving folks we are now doing business with, while trying to persuade the rest of the world that American intervention is really all about extending democracy and human rights. ...Investigative reporter Wayne Madsen also points to something studiously ignored in the "liberal" media; namely the policymakers behind the scenes. "They include the State Department's Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega (a one-time staffer for Sen. Jesse Helms and promoter of El Salvador death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson), U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Negroponte (a promoter of Honduran death squads while he was ambassador to Honduras), Iran-contra felon Elliott Abrams (who is now at the National Security Council), and Otto Reich, Noriega's predecessor who was not confirmed by the Senate and who organized a similar coup in April 2002 against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias." And finally, Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, reminds us: "Aristide is still lawfully the president of Haiti. International law does not recognize governments imposed by coup." |
Thanks to TJ at POAC for the links.
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