US response to cholera in Haiti, fund exclusive elections

The absence of democratically elected successors could potentially plunge the country into chaos, adding a political crisis to the death and destruction caused by the January 12 earthquake. - Sen. Richard Lugar's (R-Indiana) report, "Haiti: No Leadership - No Elections," to fellow members of Committee on Foreign Relations.

By Keane Bhatt

In the face of a cholera epidemic that has claimed the lives of over 1000 people, infected many thousands and is feared to intensify due to widespread flooding in the wake of Hurricane Tomas, officials have stated that the elections scheduled for November 28 will go ahead as planned. While some candidates have questioned the wisdom of holding elections during such turmoil, a rising chorus of critics is disputing the elections' very legitimacy and is urging the US, a primary funder, to take responsibility in guaranteeing a truly democratic process.

 

In October, 120 Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), who recently served in the Dominican Republic, argued for the need to ensure free, fair and inclusive elections in neighboring Haiti in a joint letter addressed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Many of the petition's signers enjoyed close personal and working relationships with Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent during their service; some played an active role in coordinating medical attention and other relief services for Haitian survivors in the aftermath of January's earthquake.

The content of the petition, largely taken from an open letter sent to Clinton on behalf of over 20 NGOs in the US and Haiti in September, details the exclusionary nature of Haiti's upcoming elections and provides concrete recommendations for the US government, which has offered millions of dollars in funding and assistance for the Haitian elections. This letter was also signed by Kevin Quigley, president of the National Peace Corps Association, which is the leading organization of RPCVs and represents a network of 30,000 individuals. Quigley supports the former volunteers' petition, which urges that the US condition funding for the Haitian elections on the full participation of currently banned political parties and active engagement to ensure that voters among the 1.5 million internally displaced Haitians are not disenfranchised. RPCV Neil Ross ('62-'64), founding president of the NGO Friends of the Dominican Republic, an NPCA affiliate for the Dominican Republic, also signed the petition.

Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (Conseil Electoral Provisoire, or CEP) is the governing body whose members are selected by President Rene Préval and is tasked with carrying out the elections. For the upcoming November elections, it has banned 14 political parties arbitrarily, including Fanmi Lavalas (or FL), the largest party in the country. Created by Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former president who was deposed in a coup d'etat in 2004, FL has been banned since the April 2009 elections. According to lawyer Ira Kurzban, one-time legal counsel to both Aristide and Préval, the current situation is akin to a hypothetical scenario under which the US Federal Election Commission "disqualified the Democratic and Republican parties from the 2012 presidential election and declared that only candidates of minor parties could run."

The former volunteers' petition is the latest articulation of a growing wave of high-profile criticism over US funding for the compromised elections in Haiti. In a June report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, Senator Lugar urged that political parties like FL not be "excluded from the elections because of perceived technicalities." As was reported on October 8, 45 members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary Clinton that was similar to the RPCV petition. It warned that "allowing flawed elections now will come back to haunt the international community later ... Haiti's next government will be called upon to make difficult decisions ... such as land reform and allocation of reconstruction projects ... Conferring these decisions on a government perceived as illegitimate is a recipe for disaster."

Their warning appears particularly prescient, as internally displaced persons living in tents faced a dearth of adequate shelter and a continuation of forced evictions in the days preceding Hurricane Tomas. The residents of the camps in Port-au-Prince, who have lived in tents for ten months, were spared the worst of the storm, but the flooding has provoked fears of the more insidious impacts of possible flash floods, mudslides and the propagation of waterborne diseases such as cholera. The members of Congress stress that "Haiti's next government will also have to ask its citizens to make sacrifices, such as losing land through eminent domain, or take risks, such as relocating to a new displacement camp. Citizens are unlikely to sacrifice for or trust a government that obtained power through dishonest means."

The CEP, the Exclusion of FL and the International Community 

The CEP has been mired in controversy and its very authority questioned. As the Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy (IJDH) explains, "President Préval's system [of hand-picking its members] ensures that he retain control over all 9 members of the Council." In addition, the CEP has no basis in the Haitian Constitution, which requires the existence of an independent Permanent Electoral Council.

Most damning, perhaps, have been its ongoing efforts to prevent the most popular political party in the country from participating - FL has won every election in which it has been allowed to contest. For the April 2009 elections, the CEP created a new requirement, demanding an original, nonfacsimiled signature from FL's leader Aristide, knowing this would be an impossible task. Aristide is currently exiled in South Africa under what Kurzban asserts to be "a tacit agreement between many governments [to keep] him there," while "the government of Haiti has refused to renew Aristide's passport to allow him to return to Haiti to register his party."

In response, the international community loudly denounced the summary exclusion of the 14 parties; the US embassy in Haiti voiced its view that "under the law, elections should involve all major parties and serve as a unifying force for democracy. An election based on the exclusion ... will inevitably question the credibility of elections in Haiti and among donors and friends of Haiti," and similar condemnations emanated from the OAS and Canada. However, when the CEP did not budge, the US along with other donor countries still went ahead and provided millions of dollars for the compromised elections, paying for 72 percent of the cost.

Following CEP's exclusion of the party for lack of Aristide's signature, FL initiated a boycott that contributed to an estimated voter turnout of between 3-10 percent in the April elections and again in the subsequent run-off round of June 2009. This consistently low turnout cast doubt on the legitimacy of the elections.

Then, according to the IJDH, on November 26, 2009, "the CEP announced that 14 political parties, including FL, would be excluded from elections scheduled for February," despite the feverish efforts of FL leadership to comply with election requirements. For example, Aristide authorized FL representative Dr. Maryse Narcisse to take charge of all issues of electoral registration in an original, notarized and signed letter sent to the CEP, but such measures were met with no success.

The February parliamentary elections were postponed until this November due to the earthquake and the CEP has simply extended the arbitrary ban on the 14 parties to the upcoming elections. The CEP also excluded FL from the presidential elections, also scheduled for November, based on a new requirement that the head of each party must now register presidential candidates in person. Again, as the CEP well knows, President Aristide has been kept out of Haiti since 2004 and cannot personally deliver the candidate list. It appears that crucial US and international promises to fund the elections have yet to be reconsidered or modified.

Worries of Excluding Voters

The RPCV petition also expresses concern over "the lack of effective measures underway to guarantee that the hundreds of thousands of eligible voters among the over 1.5 million people displaced by the earthquake are assured the identification cards (Cartes d'identité nationale - CINs) required for voting as well as reliable and uncomplicated access to the polls on election day." The letter argues for mobile teams to be dispatched to camps of the internally displaced and to remote rural areas to distribute the cards before the November elections, and the need for polling centers near camps and transportation for those who cannot easily access the centers.

Solutions, Democracy Promotion and Activism 

The RPCVs ended their petition with a short list of recommendations for the US: (1) withholding financial support for elections "until the CEP is replaced by a new Council chosen through a process that ensures neutrality, competence and credibility with Haiti's voters"; (2) the adoption of a "clear, firm position on the need for the upcoming elections to be free, fair and open to all of Haiti's political parties"; and (3) "adequate funding and technical assistance for a fairly-chosen CEP to prepare elections." This would include production and distribution of lost or destroyed CINs, the updating of the electoral list and ensuring that polling stations are accessible to internally displaced, poor and disabled Haitians. Extensive voter education was also suggested.

David Garfunkel, who served as a Peace Corps volunteer for three years ('07-'10), is one of the coordinators of this petition. Affected like many other volunteers by the devastation of the earthquake, he organized the collection and shipment of humanitarian supplies like food, water and tents from Santo Domingo. Now working for a microfinance NGO as a small loans coordinator for poor, rural women in Haiti, he reflects back on the effect the earthquake had on his subsequent decision to live and work on the other side of Hispaniola after Peace Corps and his current political activism: "I hated the helpless feeling I had. Day after day, just across the border, I sat and watched the terrible stories unfold on the news. Then, just as quickly as the stories arrived, Haiti completely disappeared from the mainstream media. I decided that I would try to do my part not to forget." He added that although he is still unsure about what kind of impact he is making while working in Port-au-Prince, he does believe that the influence he has as a US citizen is important. "After all of the harm that US policies have done to Haiti - supporting the Duvalier dictatorships, funding death squad leaders, destroying agricultural self-sufficiency andadvancing the 2004 coup d'etat, to name a few - the least we can do is come together to support its sovereignty and democracy. I talk to Haitians every day about the elections. They know that they are a sham and they'll show the world that when they don't show up to the polls in November."

He added that while concerns over democracy in China and Iran are pervasive among leaders in Washington, DC, at present, he believed that the US should focus its efforts on promoting human rights and democracy in places like Haiti, Honduras and Colombia, where the US wields enormous leverage. RPCV and signatory Neal Riemer ('06-'10) agrees. "Aside from the theater of shrill posturing, talk about Iran's democratic deficit doesn't accomplish much. In fact, American reprimands of such countries are sometimes accompanied by bellicose threats. When taking into account the use of blunt tools like economic sanctions and the unpredictable reactions from those governments, there can be unintended negative impacts for the citizens of those countries." Riemer called for a simpler and more principled stance: "If we care about promoting democracy, it's just much easier and more practical to not financially and logistically support fraudulent elections with our tax dollars," and "demand real democratic features in exchange for funding." This, in and of itself, would help "empower democratic governance in Haiti and set a precedent internationally," according to Riemer. Remarking on the fact that as UN Special Envoy, former President Bill Clinton plays a key role in formulating policy in Haiti, Riemer asserted, "we are especially obligated to promote American values like free elections in countries squarely within our sphere of influence."

RPCV Joanna Carman ('07-'09), one of the signers of the petition, noted that as a current student in New York, she had had the opportunity to attend a UN Security Council meeting on Haiti. "Throughout the proceedings there was a prevailing sentiment: the need for free, fair and inclusive elections," she said. "The necessity of re-registering over a million people was also mentioned frequently. The whole time, I kept thinking about the email I had received just the day before and what the petition is working towards - promoting meaningful democracy in Haiti - and I'm proud to be one of the signers of this document."

The 120 RPCVs from the Dominican Republic are hosting a modified version of the letter that anyone can sign online, with the aim of urging more members of Congress to endorse the Congressional letter to Clinton. In particular, they hope to encourage participation from RPCVs who have served throughout the world.

For concerned citizens seeking another outlet, Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy provides one in a recent opinion piece  in The Huffington Post. He asks, "Shouldn't it be a no-brainer to say that the US shouldn't pay for elections in Haiti from which the largest political party is excluded? If you agree, ask your Representative to sign the Waters letter for fair elections in Haiti. You can reach the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121; ask to be transferred to your Representative's office."

Keane Bhatt is a contributor to HIP and one of the signers of the RPCV petition.

HAITI: TOMAS, CHOLERA and ELECTIONS

FLASHPOINTS ON PACIFICA RADIO - November 8, 2010

In this program we interview independent journalist Ansel Herz about the situation on the ground following Hurricane Tomas and widening fears of a cholera epidemic in Haiti. We also speak with Ira Kurzban, former Counsel General to the Republic of Haiti, about elections in the current context and attacks against Congresswoman Maxine Waters for criticizing the exclusion of Lavalas. Flashpoints Special Correspondent Kevin Pina wraps up the segment with an analysis.

Controversy over Haitian teacher's union leader

Josué Mérilien lors de la conference de presse à l' ENS (Le Nouvelliste)

On October 15, Anthony O'Brien the Secretary of the PSC-CUNY International Committee sent out the following message asking US labor unions to support a tour of Josué Mérilien, a leader of the Haitian teacher's union the National Union of Haitians (UNNOH) :

Dear friends,

Please sign and circulate as widely as possible, especially to organization lists. The Haitian teachers & students under violent attack are drawing solidarity from teachers' and public employees' unions in France, Canada, the U.S., and beyond, but there is also special value in rank-and-file signatures en masse. There is some momentum behind this protest now! The Haitian teacher union leader Josué Mérilien has sent us warm thanks for this solidarity, and will be speaking at campuses in NYC and Boston the last week of October.

"WE DEMAND AN END TO THE VIOLENCE AGAINST TEACHERS AND STUDENTS IN HAITI!"
http://www.petitions.com/petition/haitisolidarity/

in the struggle

Anthony O'Brien
Secretary, PSC-CUNY International Committee

Since then, it has come to light that Merilien is not the supporter of the rights of education and students in Haiti he has made himself out to be. Dave Welsh, a member of the San Francisco Labor Council and the Haiti Action Committee sent the following response that explains:  

A Heads-up and a Word of Caution

Dear Friends in the New York and Boston areas,

I am writing about an email appeal that I received, which originated apparently with the international committee of the Professional Staff Congress-CUNY, a teacher's union at the City University of NY, in New York City, and is being forwarded around, seeking petition signatures and support for a teachers' union in Haiti and its leader, Josué Mérilien. According to the PSC email, Mérilien will come to the U.S. this month on a speaking tour. [The email is reproduced at the end of this letter.]

 Although we certainly oppose violence against teachers and students in Haiti - including in this particular case - things are not always entirely what they seem to be. Let me share with you some information made available from the files of the Haiti Action Committee.

The Haitian teachers' union leader who is getting mileage out of this, Josué Mérilien, was associated during 2003-04 with the Group 184, which orchestrated (along with their US, French and Canadian co-conspirators) the coup d'etat against the majority Lavalas political movement and President Aristide on Feb. 29, 2004. The Group 184 was led by sweatshop owners like Andy Apaid and other members of the Haitian elite, although they had some allies including Mérilien and a handful of other trade union leaders.  

Mérilien and the Group 184 were deeply involved in the destabilization campaign against the Lavalas government in 2003-04 which beat the drums for the removal of Aristide. They supported the 2004 coup that did remove Aristide from office. The coup also removed from office 5,000 pro-Lavalas officials at all levels of government in every part of the country -- as well as pro-Lavalas union leaders -- who were killed, exiled, jailed, disappeared, had their homes burned out and families terrorized, and hounded out of office by the US-supported coup regime and their death squads.  

Let us examine some of the history of Mérilien's role during the pre-coup period:  

*** As head of the Haitian National Teachers Union (UNNOH), Mérilien was an outspoken critic of President Aristide, in particular from 2003 up until the Feb. 29th 2004 coup d'etat -- frequently mobilizing teachers and students in street protests demanding Aristide's removal from office. Remember that Aristide had been elected President in 2000 with over 80 per cent of the vote in a heavy-turnout election. And Aristide's policies of raising the minimum wage, expanding schools, and in many ways mobilizing the people to rebuild Haitian society -- these policies had broad popular support.  

*** But Aristide's populist, egalitarian message incurred the wrath of the Bush Administration and its allies in the "international community" who immediately began a systematic campaign to destabilize and overthrow the Aristide government. They arranged to cut off all aid to the Haitian government. U.S. operatives arranged to organize and arm bands of paramilitary mercenaries to terrorize pro-Lavalas communities from bases in the Dominican Republic. The Group 184 business elite -- outraged by the hike in the minimum wage, the promise of land reform, and the threat that they might actually be forced to pay their business taxes -- organized all manner of economic and political sabotage, including use of agents provocateurs. And Josué Mérilien had a role to play in this many-pronged campaign to destabilize and overthrow the Lavalas government, and usher in a brutal death-squad regime.  

*** The strategy of the Group 184-led opposition was to cause chaos in Haiti and make the country ungovernable - including by launching a violent campaign to close down the schools, a campaign in which Josué Mérilien was intimately involved. Read this January 19, 2004 report by the Haitian Press Agency (AHP) -- five weeks before the coup -- under the headline: "Opposition Protest Closes Schools."  

"Supporters of the opposition coalition stoned the facilities of the College Saint-Francois d'Assise and the College Gerard Gourgue on 1/19 to prevent the schools from functioning," according to the AHP report. "Several students were struck by rocks thrown by demonstrators who said they wanted to utilize all available means to prevent students from attending school until the government is ousted.  

"The violence is part of a campaign against the schools that has been launched by senior leadership of the political coalition directed by [Groupe 184]business leader Andre Apaid, Jr. Evans Paul, Secretary General of the [opposition] Democratic Unity Convention, reaffirmed on 1/18 that the [opposition] political platform is determined to bring school activities, and even hospitals to a standstill across the country. The important thing, he said, is to oust President Aristide.  

"In this context, threats of arson attacks were made against several private and parochial schools that had been open to receive students," the AHP report continued. "The entrances to the College Marie-Anne of the Sisters of St. Anne as well as the entrances of two other schools were set on fire the morning of 1/19 in the Christ Roi area by supporters of the opposition. Two schools have been set on fire in Leogane.  

"Josué Mérilien, the Secretary General of the National Union of Haitian Teachers in Training, read a list of schools on 1/19 that must close their doors or else face reprisals. The schools are the College Canado-Haitian, the College Saint-Louis de Gonzague, the College Saint Francois d'Assise, the Lycee Francais and the Union School. (Agence Haitienne de Presse, or AHP, 19 January 2004, emphasis added.)  

*** On another occasion, on December 5, 2003, as part of the campaign to destabilize and overthrow the Lavalas government, Group 184 organized a student rally at the University demanding Aristide's ouster [although many of the demonstrators were reportedly paid to be there and quite a few were not even students]. The demonstration soon escalated into violence. An AHP reporter described the scene:

"The confrontation started when [Group 184 supporters] began to throw volleys of stones on OP members [members of pro-Aristide popular organizations]...to demand the resignation of governmental authorities....Violent blows with sticks and stones were exchanged....That's when an OP member named Harold was shot from the roof where the [Group 184 supporters] were. Shooting continued to try to stop the police from evacuating the wounded OP member....In this confusion, one student, Carlo Jean, was shot and wounded, according to a Justice of the Peace....Members of the G184 and the Haitian trade union who were inside the university office, notably Josué Mérilien and Montes Joseph, are accused of encouraging students to commit violent acts." (Agence Haitienne de Presse, quoted in Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood. Emphasis added.) The pro-Group 184 media seized on the December 5th incident to launch frenzied calls for Aristide's ouster. Once again, Josué Mérilien was acting, together with Group 184, to provoke and destabilize the democratically elected Aristide government.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Josué Mérilien, according to the PSC-CUNY email, will be on a campus speaking tour in New York and Boston the last week of October. Undoubtedly people are unfamiliar with the treacherous role he has played in the past.  

Thank you for taking this information into consideration.

 In solidarity,

Dave Welsh

Welsh's arguments are convincing and it will be interesting to see the response from progressive labor leaders and organizations as word gets out about Merilien's past role in threatening violent reprisals against schools in Haiti in early 2004.

UN accused of hiding evidence in murder of priest in Haiti

Haitian Senator Youri Latortue

  Haiti Information Project (HIP) - The United Nations has been sitting on evidence that implicates a powerful Haitian senator in the assassination of a popular priest in 1994. The only known video testimony of an eyewitness to the brutal killing of Father Jean-Marie Vincent was recorded by a UN official in 2005 and has not seen the light of day since. HIP recently received a copy of the video in an anonymous package that included a note stating, “The UN has no interest in pursuing this case or revealing this evidence despite the statements of this eyewitness that Youri Latortue was the triggerman that shot and killed Father Jean-Marie Vincent on August 28, 1994.” The note concluded, “It is a travesty of justice that the UN has been withholding this testimony from the public. They are supposed to be impartial but Latortue has powerful friends in the US Embassy who view him as an asset since his role following the ouster of Aristide in 2004.”
 

In the video testimony the eyewitness is interrogated by a UN official and explains why she was falsely arrested in 2004 and shuttled from prison to prison until discovered by the same official. The witness also explains that she lived in the United States on and off for several years which is why she preferred to provide the testimony in English.
 

The witness tells how the Haitian police were holding her for Latortue until he could figure how to “get rid me.” When asked why she feared Latortue she responds, “Because the 28th of August 1994 I witnessed Youri Latortue murder the priest by the name of Jean-Marie Vincent.” She follows with a recounting of the incident and details of the murder. The Haiti Information Project (HIP) has released an excerpt from the video testimony where the image and voice have been digitally altered to protect the identity of the witness.
 

Youri Latortue is a blood relative and former security chief of the US-installed Prime Minister Gerard Latortue who took control of Haiti in 2004 following the coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Elected in 2006, Senator Latortue has most recently been serving as the powerful head of the Haitian parliament's Justice and Security Commission.
 

According to Haitian law, Senators enjoy immunity from prosecution for crimes and are not required to testify unless the Senator himself waives his immunity, or the Senate votes to lift it. Latortue’s parliamentary immunity is due to expire with the swearing in of the next parliament following elections scheduled for November 28 in Haiti.
 

Many Haitians suspected that Latortue ran for office in 2006 for the expressed purpose of claiming immunity from prosecution given previous allegations made against him of human right abuses following Aristide’s ouster. A Freedom House report on Haiti released May 3, 2010 stated, “A number of lawmakers elected in 2006 have reportedly been involved in criminal activities, and they sought parliament seats primarily to obtain immunity from prosecution.”
 

Father Jean-Marie Vincent was fatally shot at point-blank range in front of his rectory at Montfortain in the Port au Prince neighborhood of Christ-Roi on August 28, 1994. At the time of Vincent’s assassination, then Lt. Youri Latortue was a leading member of the Anti-Gang Unit of the Haitian army. Witnesses at the time described two vehicles carrying members of the unit as those responsible for opening fire on Vincent’s vehicle.
 

A report released by a delegation of the Center for the Study of Human Rights in 2004 stated, "A former high-ranking police official from the USGPN (palace security), Edouard Guerriere...claims that Youri Latortue participated in the 1994 murder of catholic priest Jean-Marie Vincent (as did eyewitnesses in 1995), and that he assisted in the 1993 murder of democracy activist Antoine Izmery. From 1991 to 1993, Latortue was an officer in FADH's [Haitian army] Anti-Gang Unit, the army's most notorious unit for human rights violations."
 

The video testimony reportedly suppressed by the UN would represent the first time an actual eyewitness to Vincent’s assassination has stepped forward to identify Senator Youri Latortue as the man that pulled the trigger.

ADDENDUM: The UN official, who originally sent this tape anonymously, has since identified himself and the witness. Their identities are being withheld upon his request until such time as revealing them may further the interests of justice in this case.

  AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:

Witness: Then, Richard (bleep) said, you know something, I'm gonna call a friend and they're gonna come and see you because from the information I've got they want to kill you.

But I saw Youri Latortue going back and forth on the staircase [at the police station]  in Petionville so that's when I said...it clicked. I said oh my God. I'm being set up.

UN Official: So while you were in Petionville you saw Youri walking around?

Witness: not walking around going up and down the staircase from the Commissioner's down to where I was. But he didn't come towards me. When I saw him that's when things clicked. I said okay that's it...I know why I am here.

UN Official:  Now let me ask you about that. Why would Youri have something against you. Why would you wanna be....

Witness: Because the 28th of August 1994, I witnessed Youri Latortue murder the priest by the name of Jean-Marie Vincent.

UN Official: Where did you see this?

Witness:  In Christ Roi by Turgeau.

UN Official: And was this on the side of the road? A restaurant?
 

Witness:: No. he was getting into the place where he lives. The priest was getting into the gate.

UN Official: What? He got out of vehicle to open to the gate?

Witness:: No, they were opening the gate for him

UN Official:: Uh huh.

Witness: That's when I saw a pickup....a double white pickup with a bunch of men in black. And uh...I saw Youri. The reason why I remember Youri....I don't remember the other ones. But the reason why I remember Youri because he used to come to (beep) house. And I saw him getting out of the car and shooting at the car. But at that time I didn't know he was a priest. The man they were shooting at. I didn't know he was a priest. And I didn't know the person who was in that car.

UN Official: Right

Witness: It's when I went back to my uncle's house and I was explaining what I witnessed. Then I found out when he said "you know (unintelligible) who they shot?" I said who they shot? He said Jean-Marie Vincent. I said who is Jean-Marie Vincent. He said it's a priest.