Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 2, 1993 TAG: 9309010287
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHLEEN KENNEY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
If they do not begin to see signs of a return to democracy, they will find their own solution and it will be bloody.
Since the coup, Haitians have chosen to work toward a negotiated settlement that would remove the de facto government. Perhaps their hopeful patience and basic nonviolent nature deceived the international community into thinking the Haitian people will compromise the democratic achievements reached prior to the coup. They want more than a reinstatement of President Aristide.
Although this was my first trip to Haiti, I have been in many Third World countries at critical junctures. In my experience, this is the most desperate, the most volatile situation. I was in Haiti as part of a Pax Christi USA human rights observer delegation. Pax Christi USA, the national Catholic peace movement, sends observer teams to Haiti every three months to gather information on abuses, to try to dissuade repression and to encourage broader space for free expression. The delegations also watchdog the U.N./OAS observer mission.
My delegation spoke with an OAS observer team in a major northern seaport, with the national OAS director, Colin Grandeson, and the new U.N. human rights director, Ian Martin. The OAS observer team, in Haiti since fall 1992, has the mandate to try to assure respect for human rights. It is a joint operation between the U.N. and OAS with 106 observers in 10 teams and plans to increase to 280 people in 40 offices. Their numbers and equipment, especially vehicles, are grossly inadequate. U.N./OAS offices need to move out from the cities to rural communities where gross human rights abuses go unchecked and undocumented.
At best, observers can reduce the number of incidents of abuse and intervene when they occur. While I was in Haiti, Grandeson, the OAS director, intervened after learning of the April 25 military arrest of three labor leaders involved in the call for a national strike on April 26. After long hours ofgetting the runaround from government and military officials, Grandeson finally was able to see the three men.They had been beaten so badly that one required surgery. He obtained the release of two and permission for surgery for the third, Cajuste Lexius.
At worst, the U.N./OAS presence deepens the Haitian perception that the de facto government is being legitimized by the international community. Because it is a diplomatic corps, observers must work with the illegal government at the national and local levels.In addition, it is taking months merely to professionalize the observer teams. For example, the local team with which I met was incompetent and was reckless with fundamental security guidelines. One made disparaging remarks to the Haitians in our group, a driver and a translator. This OAS team is an embarrassment to the international community.
Haitians see the observer teams gearing up for the long haul while their own situation is so desperate that it cries out for immediate and effective action.
A legitimately elected member of Parliament described a ``New Moment'' in Haitian history. ``The millions of people marginalized until now have become a grass-roots movement which must be allowed to participate in the political process. Any negotiated settlement which excludes this new political force is doomed.''
Pere Yvon Joseph, a Haitian Holy Cross priest, warned, ``The press focus on the return of Aristide to a status quo situation. The people will never accept Aristide without the removal of the corrupt military leaders. They will never accept amnesty for the thugs and criminals who now terrorize, torture, kill, rob and starve them with impunity.''
To Pere Joseph, ``it is a question of the future of the country, not of two small groups of people [military and wealthy]. ... The negotiators are starting from the side of the privileged. Those who have had the privilege for decades want to maintain their private sovereignty over the people.'' After the democratic election of President Aristide in 1991, the new government nonviolently worked to transform the corruption and crime that had flourished for decades. The Haitians assured us they will do that again. They want justice, not revenge.
But the people see international negotiators attempting to return Aristide as a mere figurehead, and they fear the presence of a foreign military force to maintain order. Their memory of U.S. military occupation from 1915 to 1934 is still raw. As one community leader said, ``It is a humiliating memory which we will not tolerate again.''
People continually expressed anger that there is no credible sign of a rejection of the de facto government. Father Antoine Adrien, head of the Presidential Commission, said ``a clear sign from the U.S., e.g., enforcing sanctions, would get rid of the army tomorrow.'' Those military officers and politicians profiting from drug trafficking will hold on until forced out. In the meantime, they keep depositing their profits in international banks.
Desperation can lead to desperate action. The repression and poverty are worse than under Duvalier. The 300,000 displaced are mostly men, now separated from families. ``They are the backbone of production in the country,'' said Father Adrien. ``Their displacement is hurting people and the economy much more than the embargo.''
Garbage fills the streets of the capital. Starving children pick through refuse in search of plastic bags to sell on the streets for a little food. During the rainy season, the miserable slums are mud holes with stagnant pools breeding mosquitos and disease. These same slums suffer the worst military repression. Every night I heard gunfire, sporadic and extended, from indiscriminate military attacks on homes and people.
No one is exempt from the arrogant military brutality. A medical doctor in a northern city got two flat tires on his way home one rainy night. As he walked home, he was attacked by policemen who beat him. He managed to escape, but then came upon more police. He escaped only because he said he was on his way to see a doctor for medical attention. They made sure he went straight to this doctor's house.
Both of these doctors function in a northern city hospital deplorably lacking in basic medical supplies for which there is no embargo. Patients must provide all their own medicines and food. If they need surgery, they must bring their own generator in case the power goes out, which it does regularly. There was no means to perform surgery on a woman who encountered complications during delivery. As the doctor said, the only thing to do was make an appointment at the morgue.There are endless examples of patronage, graft and common thievery. The national and local authorities appointed by the de facto government know they can act with impunity.
The Haitian people are a volcano ready to erupt. They are desperate and feel they can only gain from rioting. One member of my delegation met with local leaders in an attempt to dissuade them from rioting now.
As Father Adrien said, ``Clinton does not feel the hopelessness. For him [and other political entities], every question is a political one. Our mission is to make the question a moral one.'' The political and moral solution is to enforce the threatened sanctions immediately: Freeze assets; deny visas to the wealthy, businesses and military; enforce the embargo; stop the free flow of weapons to the military.
\ Kathleen Kenney, associate director of the Office of Justice and Peace for the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, was a member of a Pax Christi USA human rights observer team in Haiti earlier this year.
by CNB