[R-G] Haiti: Leading Human Rights Activist Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine Missing for Four Months

[Anthony Fenton]

Haiti: Leading Human Rights Activist Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine Missing  
for Four Months
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Remain Silent

By Joe Emersberger
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com/Issue48/article2935.html

December 13, 2007

Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, a prominent Haitian human rights activist,  
disappeared on the evening of 12 August, 2007. He is co-founder of  
the Trant Septanm (“September 30”) Foundation, an organization  
originally formed to help the victims of the 1991 coup in Haiti.

For over a decade groups organized by Pierre-Antoine have provided  
medical and psychological assistance to the victims of violence in  
some of Haiti’s poorest slums. The groups he helped to found also  
assisted migrants deported from abroad to resettle in Haiti, and he  
played a leading role in the successful campaign to disband the  
Haitian army.

Trant Septanm has been a concerted voice in calling for the arrest of  
US-trained military men in the hemisphere, including the terrorist  
Luis Posada Carriles.  Pierre-Antoine was abducted shortly after he  
had announced his intention to run as a Fanmi Lavalas candidate, the  
party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in the upcoming  
round of parliamentary elections in Haiti.

As a leading human rights activist for the poor, he was outspoken in  
denouncing human rights abuses under the UN and US-backed  
dictatorship of Gerard Latortue, which governed for two years  
following the coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in  
February of 2004.

Under the Latortue regime an estimated 4,000 political murders were  
perpetrated in the greater Port-au-Prince area alone (overwhelmingly  
of Lavalas activists and supporters) according to one scientific  
survey published in the Lancet medical journal.

Pierre-Antoine’s wife, Michele, says she has received no help from  
the Haitian government, and that she continues to call the Haitian  
police weekly, but that they don’t seem eager to help. According to  
Michele, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti told her that they didn’t have  
time to look for her husband.

In October 2005 at the first “International Tribunal on Haiti” that  
investigated the 2004 coup, Pierre-Antoine explained to an audience  
of hundreds in Washington how he had been arrested, assaulted and  
expelled from the country by authorities at the U.S. embassy in Port- 
au-Prince.

Since his kidnapping the U.S. and Canadian Embassies in Port-au- 
Prince have been totally silent. Soon after his kidnapping Canadian  
Embassy officials brushed off Canadian activists seeking assistance  
with Pierre-Antoine’s case.

But the kidnapping has rallied organizers in Haiti as well as  
solidarity activists abroad. In November, actor Danny Glover and  
other activists organized a 24-hour fast to call attention to Pierre  
Antoine’s disappearance. Conspicuously absent from the public  
campaign to keep Pierre Antoine’s case visible have been Amnesty  
International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW). (See two previous  
articles by this author for detail on the very uninspiring track  
record of both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in  
Haiti.) Supporters in Haiti have held numerous demonstrations  
including in front of the Port-au-Prince National Palace.

A former member of Amnesty’s U.S. national board, Mike Levy, recently  
observed “I am disappointed that AI has failed to respond to Mr.  
Pierre-Antoine’s abduction. AI is clearly aware of his high profile  
as one of Haiti’s leading human rights activists and that he has  
received threats in the past in connection with his work.”

An AI official in the USA told the website HaitiAnalysis that only  
Amnesty’s UK office can issue a statement of concern about Lovinsky  
Pierre Antoine’s case. In early November Amnesty’s UK office said it  
was considering making a public statement about Pierre Antoine’s  
disappearance but the group has yet to issue any public statement.

Meanwhile, HRW, while having found time and energy over the past two  
years to defend Venezuelans from legal reprisals for participating in  
the coup d’état that briefly ousted their country’s elected president  
Hugo Chávez in April of 2002, has had nothing to say about the  
disappearance of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine.

(HRW spoke out forcibly against the Venezuelan government’s non- 
renewal of license for RCTV, a broadcaster that played a pivotal role  
in the 2002 coup which resulted in the deaths of numerous civilians  
and a brief overthrow of Venezuela’s elected government. RCTV  
continues to broadcast through cable and satellite, but not on public  
airwaves; HRW insisted that the Venezuelan government not prosecute  
María Corina Machado, a signatory to the infamous Carmona Decree, for  
using funds supplied by US government through NED to fund her  
political work.)

Numerous calls and emails to Human Rights Watch questioning their  
work in Haiti have gone unanswered.

HRW’s reports following the 2004 coup in Haiti were sparse as  
thousands of supporters of the ousted government were killed, raped,  
fired from jobs and thrown into jail and exile. A month after the  
coup HRW made no mention of the United States’ role in the 2004  
ouster, nor any distinction between Aristide’s elected government and  
the death squads that had invaded the country:

“U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell should press the interim  
Haitian government to pursue justice for abusive rebel leaders as  
well as members of the deposed government”

     Joe Emersberger contributes to HaitiAnalysis.com and to The  
Narco News Bulletin. Read his last article, “The Council on  
Hemispheric Affairs Deserves an F for Article on Haiti.”

     Emersberger adds: Interested readers can email AI’s Haiti  
Representative Gerardo Ducos at GDucos at amnesty.org and call the UK  
office at +44-20-74135500 to ask why they have not issued a statement  
in regards to the kidnapping of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine.

     They can contact HRW’s Americas Deputy Director, Daniel  
Wilkinson, at WilkinD at HRW.org and at HRW Washington DC office number  
1-(202) 612-4321.

     For more information also view the petition for the freedom of  
Pierre-Antoine Lovinsky and the Institute for Justice and Democracy  
in Haiti.