Haiti's Disappeared - super article

"Returning to Haiti last month, I found a US. occupation not unlike that in Iraq, but one of which very few Americans are aware. A month after I returned from Haiti, and two months after the U.S. forced out the elected President and a so-called "multinational force" occupied the country, Haiti is in worse turmoil, with far more political repression than it has seen since the junta of 1991-1994."

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"A violent repression is going on that approaches the level of the last coup - 3000-5000 over three years. Several delegations of U.S. solidarity leaders and human rights lawyers have documented and denounced this on-going repression - among them the Quixote Emergency Observer Delegation of which I was part, the EPICA (Ecumenical Program in Central America and the Caribbean) delegation, the National Lawyers' Guild delegation, the Black Lawyers' Association delegation, and the first Amnesty International delegation since the coup. These are the first serious attempts to investigate and document human rights violations in Haiti since Feb. 29. (See Let Haiti Live "Human Rights Report," May 1, 2004 - www.haitireborn.org) Their indictment of the "de facto" government for its failure to investigate such cases and its apparent complicity with the perpetrators is scathing."

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The George W. Bush regime has learned to do "coups right," or as some have parodied, "coup lite." CIA support for the FRAPH and training for the Haitian military junta have been well-documented under the first George Bush (see Alan Nairn, The Nation, April 24, 1994). But the U.S. under Clinton was divided about a coup clearly approved by his predecessor. When Clinton inherited this policy, his liberal allies became squeamish about swaggering tyrants who terrorized the poor and profited from the drug trade and elite payoffs. The U.S. did not manage that coup very well. The results went out of control.

This time around, the U.S. has learned many lessons. U.S. handlers micro-manage every facet of the "new reality" in Haiti - including massive sweeps of Lavalas neighborhoods on the one hand, and the Hollywood style "surrender" of the fascist, Jodel Chamblain, on the other. Chamblain was cheered by his supporters, as he tearfully surrendered - shedding his camouflage flak jacket for a neat gray suit - in the presence of U.S. military and the interim justice minister. Prime Minister Latortue called him and other FRAPH members "freedom fighters" while visiting Gonaives (site of the first atrocities by the self-styled rebels). Now Chamblain is promised a new trial - despite two internationally acclaimed convictions for murder and massacre. The interim government also raised the likelihood that Chamblain and others will be pardoned, because of their "contributions" to democracy recently! Bush and his minions are talented in Orwell's "double-speak: war is peace; justice is impunity for the guys on our side."

"Haiti should be a learning zone for all Americans who would understand and counter an imperial U.S. policy of intervention world-wide. If the U.S. can get away with covert and overt support for a "rebellion" in Haiti led by former military and para-military, many of whom have been convicted of murders and other human rights violations dating to the last coup, it will be psyched for similar operations in Venezuela and perhaps even in Cuba. "