[R-G] Return to Port-au-Prince

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.counterpunch.org/terrall08282008.html
Counterpunch.com
August 28, 2008

Return to Port-au-Prince

"All the Time We are Hungry and Now We Have No One"
By BEN TERRALL

As I flew from JFK to Port-au-Prince Airport on August 11, a fellow  
journalist handed me the front section of that day’s New York Times  
with a laugh.  My friend pointed to a passage in an article  
aboutRussia’s war with Georgia that had prompted her bitter chuckling.

The piece quoted Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad of the United States, who  
charged that the Russian foreign minister had told Secretary of State  
Condoleeza Rice “that the democratically elected president of Georgia  
‘must go.’” Khalizad described the Russian’s comment as “completely  
unacceptable.”

Of course, Washington’s posturing as a beacon of peace and freedom has  
become increasingly more ludicrous as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan  
continue with no end in sight and Bush explains that we do not torture  
while testimony to the contrary accumulates around the globe.  But the  
U.S. role in supporting the February 29, 2004 rightist coup in Haiti  
makes the hypocrisy of Khalizad’s statement especially galling.

The Bush Administration made it clear that Haiti’s democratically- 
elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide had to go, then flew him to  
the Central African Republic under U.S. Marine Guard (as detailed in  
Randall Robinson’s excellent book An Unbroken Agony) as a brutal right- 
wing military takeover seized Aristide’s homeland. The coup  
government, UN forces, and anti-Aristide paramilitaries killed around  
4,000 people in the next two years, according to a study published in  
the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet.

Among the many pro-Aristide activists who were forced into exile was  
the grassroots leader Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine.  Lovinsky, a key figure  
in the Port-au-Prince base of Aristide’s Lavalas movement, returned to  
Haiti during the apparent democratic opening after the 2006 election  
of President Rene Preval.

I saw Lovinsky speak in July 2007 at a demonstration across from the  
headquarters of MINUSTAH, the UN mission in Haiti.  The occasion was  
the anniversary of the 1915 U.S. marine takeover of the island  
nation.  Lovinsky led a spirited crowd of around 50 Haitians, many  
elderly.  The psychologist-turned-activist forcefully read out a bill  
of indictment against the UN:  MINUSTAH’s legitimizing the 2004 coup  
by replacing the initial wave of U.S., French, and Canadian troops,  
and propping up an illegal government; UN troops engaging in massacres  
of unarmed civilians; and carrying out a modern-day colonial  
occupation  of Haiti.  As a few reporters and activists taped audio or  
shot video of this fiery speech, across Ave. John Brown at the UN  
entrance a mix of uniformed and plainclothes military representing a  
handful of the countries participating in MINUSTAH clicked away on  
digital cameras pointed at Lovinsky.  This seemed a tactic of  
intimidation, given the close operations the UN has conducted with the  
notoriously brutal Haitian police (as documented in reports from  
Harvard Law Schooland the University of Miami Law School).  A few  
weeks later, Lovinsky was abducted after meeting with a human rights  
delegation from the U.S.  He hasn’t been heard from since.

August 12 was the one year anniversary of Lovinsky’s disappearance.  I  
walked with a sinking feeling to the demonstration commemorating the  
sad day.  It was hard to believe such an impressive, committed figure  
had been missing for an entire year.  Between 150 and 200  
demonstrators, many wearing t-shirts bearing Lovinsky’s likeness,  
marched in a circle around the statue of a man holding aloft a dove in  
the center of the Plaza of the Martyrs.  Aristide built the monument  
in memory of the thousands killed in the first (U.S.-backed) coup  
against him of 1991-1994.

Lavalas activist Rene Civil, imprisoned on trumped-up charges in 2006  
but freed under a conditional release after an international campaign  
on his behalf, addressed the crowd.  He said that Lovinsky’s  
disappearance was a threat to Lavalas supporters, intended to stop  
them from struggling for Aristide’s return.

As the demonstration wound through downtown Port-au-Prince, several  
police vehicles followed.  Police had already blocked off streets near  
the Plaza of Martyrs, which protest organizers claimed was done to  
discourage more people from participating.   The police presence as  
the march ended in front of theNational Palace was low-key, but  a  
jeep with six heavily armed Brazilian troops was a bit more hostile.   
I took photos of them as one of them photographed me.

The next day I returned to the Palace of the Martyrs, where the  
September 30th Foundation, a group co-founded by Lovinsky to support  
reparations and justice for victims of the 1991 coup, holds a protest  
at 11am every Wednesday.  Since their leader (one member told me, “we  
see Lovinsky as a father and a brother”) has been abducted the primary  
focus of the weekly action has been calling for the safe return of  
Lovinsky.

Edwidge (for her safety, a pseudonym), a woman participating in the  
protest, told me “Lovinsky used to help us.  All the time we’re  
hungry, now we have no one.” She continued, “Lovinsky was not a  
criminal.  We know when the wealthy are kidnapped the government does  
everything it can to recover the victim.  Lovinsky is not a dog, not  
an animal.  He deserves the same treatment as the wealthy people.   
Give us a report.  If he’s dead, give us the bones and we’ll bury him.”

Many of his supporters hold out hope that their sorely-missed friend  
is alive.  The forty present at the Wednesday protest sang political  
lyrics set to traditional evangelical tunes (and, in  at least one  
instance, a vodou song).  One roughly translated as “The victims are  
asking for the key/ give us the key so we can open the door of  
justice/ who are we asking for? Lovinsky!”

In an interview later that day, human rights lawyer Mario Joseph of  
the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) told me that in some ways  
the current Preval Administration is “worse than the interim [coup]  
government.”  Joseph said he told the Haitian ambassador in  
Washington, “your government needs to launch an investigation … [but]  
on Lovinsky, they don’t want to do anything.” Joseph argues, “The  
Preval government continues the policies of the Latortue [coup]  
government,” and says most of those now in power are holdovers from  
the illegal 2004-2006 government.

(A Lavalas activist who has worked with Aristide since 1984 and who  
was diplomatic about Preval, told me, “on the social and economic  
plane, we can work with him.” But this member of the National Cell for  
the Reflection of the Grassroots, who was beaten so badly he had to be  
hospitalized in prison under the 2004-2006 regime, said all  
“ministers, ambassadors, and delegates” left over from the coup period  
are “criminals” who should be fired.)

Joseph’s family has had to relocate to Miami because of death  
threats.  Noting that human rights abusers he helped put behind bars  
under Aristide had escaped prison after 2004, the lawyer said, “They  
need to arrest people escaped from jail.  My life is in danger.”

Meanwhile, Joseph remains extremely busy defending prisoners, some of  
whom have been moved to outlying regions he has a hard time getting  
to.  Of the political prisoners still behind bars, he said, “I have  
too much work to do, it’s hard to keep track,” but that there “were  
more than 100.”  Most high profile Lavalas figures have been freed but  
many less well-known progressive activists remain locked down.  Joseph  
explained, they “had contact with the Lavalas movement, that’s why  
they’re in jail.”  Some think the number of political prisoners is  
higher, given the many poor people picked up in sweeps of “popular,”  
or pro-Lavalas, neighborhoods.  (The majority of inmates in the  
country’s overcrowded prisons have still not seen a judge, though the  
Haitian constitution stipulates that all prisoners must have access to  
a judge within 48 hours of their arrest.)  Joseph stressed the “really  
vague” nature of charges made in such sweeps.  “They accused kids of  
being gang members, bandits, and of ‘association with malefactors,’  
the same techniques as under [former dictator] Duvalier.”

Joseph filed a rape complaint against Sri Lankan soldiers accused of  
sexually abusing Haitian girls, but there was no prosecution.  The Sri  
Lankans were shipped home.  To add insult to injury, the UN presence  
has had a harshly inflationary effect on rents and other basic  
expenses.  UN SUVs are in evidence throughout exclusive Port-au-Prince  
gated communities, but UN money doesn’t trickle down to many of the  
country’s poor majority, who are having a harder and harder time  
surviving.  Several street vendors perched in a heavily flooded corner  
of an outdoor market in the city’s Lasaline neighborhood told me the  
cost of a cup of rice had doubled since the capital’s food riots of  
April.  The vendors could no longer save anything, and had no idea how  
they were going to scrape together enough to pay school fees for their  
kids in September. In the stagnant water at their feet parasites were  
visible.  A health care worker later confirmed a huge number of kids  
have worms in their bodies.

Ben Terrall is a freelance writer living in San Francisco. He can be  
reached at: bterrall at gmail.com