Neptune Crisis Update/Siege of Port-au-Prince

"LA SCIERIE" PRISONERS DRAGGED BEFORE ST. MARC KANGAROO COURT

Haiti's constitutional Prime Minister Yvon Neptune was taken to Saint Marc on Friday, April 22, to appear before examining magistrate Clunie Pierre Jules on charges that he ordered an alleged massacre in La Scierie, a suburb of that city (see HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 22, No. 16, 6/30/2004). Two other Lavalas government officials are accused of
involvement in this supposed massacre, the disputed existence of which is championed primarily by the Haiti branch of the National Coalition
for Haitian Rights (NCHR), a pro-coup "human rights" group.

One day earlier, Neptune had been transferred from the hospital of the Argentinian military base on the Airport Road to a private house in Pacot, which officials of the United Nations Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH) describe as an annex of the National Penitentiary.

The de facto authorities then woke up the ailing PM in the middle of the night and transported him to St. Marc at 4:00 a.m.. But the trip was in vain because the examining judge was not in her chambers to carry out his hearing, even if Neptune had wanted to answer her questions. In fact, Judge Pierre Jules did not even know that Neptune was being transported to Saint Marc.

The de facto authorities unilaterally organized the would-be hearing as
a media show, in which the Haitian National Police (PNH) and MINUSTAH
played prominent roles. The basic rights of the prisoner were trampled
since, among other things, his lawyer was not even advised.

In the course of the night-time transfer, Neptune was severely beaten.
Roused in the dead of night, Neptune "resisted and apparently even bit
someone who hit him, and that's when they

tortured him," explained journalist Jean Jean-Pierre on Pacifica Radio's
Democracy Now on April 25. "They beat him up simply because that is
traditionally the reaction of Haitian police."

After being hospitalized by the UN last month, Neptune began a second
hunger strike to protest his illegal incarceration and to demand his
immediate release. "I will take neither food nor liquid, and I will
continue the strike until the de facto authorities and UN
unconditionally release me or take part directly in my death," Neptune
warned in an April 20 statement.

Samuel Madistin, the lawyer of the victims of the alleged La Scierie
"massacre," deplored that Neptune was transported to Saint Marc without
the examining magistrate being informed beforehand. Madistin said the de
facto authorities were trying to prove to the public that Neptune was
under their control, not the MINUSTAH's.

Constitutional Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert and Deputy Amanus
Mayette were also taken to Saint Marc to go before Judge Pierre Jules,
under the same illegal conditions. But both said they had nothing to say
to the examining magistrate. "I answered no question concerning
Scierie," Mayette declared in a statement from the National Penitentiary
where he is imprisoned. "I simply said that I did not have a lawyer...
Wanting to lynch me in the media will not have any effect on me, but
will be only used to make you servants of shame and lowness and to
reduce to you to a sub-human state."

Privert's wife said that her husband, who was taken to St. Marc very
early in the morning of Monday, April 18, only made a statement asking
the judge to take note that he was brought to Saint Marc in an illegal
manner and without the presence of his lawyer. Privert was then taken
back to his Canape-Vert hospital room in Port-with-Prince, where he
receives medical care following the deterioration of his health due to
his justice-seeking hunger strike.

In reviewing the facts of La Scierie, the United Nations independent
expert on human rights in Haiti, Louis Joinet, recently said that deaths
resulted not from a massacre, but a confrontation between rival armed
bands in Saint Marc on the eve of President Aristide's kidnapping in
February 2004.



THE UN STRANGLING CITÉ SOLEIL

For the past two weeks, the UN has treated Cité Soleil like a
"Bantustan" in apartheid South Africa or a refugee camp in occupied
Palestine. The inhabitants of the giant shanty town no longer can freely
travel to and from their homes. To leave or enter the slum, they undergo
humiliating body searches by UN blue-helmeted troops under the gaze of
the Haitian police officers who surround the area as a part of the huge
joint operation to supposedly thwart "bandits."

This "operation" produces new victims every day. Occupying soldiers have
coldly gunned down children and old men. These victims, too, are counted
as "bandits." The death toll since the beginning of the operation is
approaching 100.

On just one day, Friday, April 15, twenty people died according to René
Monplaisir, spokesman for the Lavalas militants of Cité Soleil. "The UN
soldiers, locked up in their armored tanks, shoot on all those who
naively venture too close to their vehicles, regarding them as bandits,"
he explained.

Elouafi Boulbars, a MINUSTAH spokesman, warned the residents of Cité
Soleil to basically clear out of their homes. "I advise the inhabitants
of Port-with-Prince and Cité Soleil in particular to move out of the hot
zones during the exchanges of fire and to keep children from approaching
these places," he said. "This will greatly facilitate the our task."

UN sources said that on April 15 approximately ten "members of armed
bands" were killed and a score of others wounded during confrontations
with UN troops and the PNH. A MINUSTAH officer told Agence France Presse
that "all hell broke loose when a joint force of Minustah and Haitian police entered this shanty town to establish security there. We were received with gunfire." He said that 160 Jordanian soldiers and 60 Haitian police officers were deployed that day and that two police officers were wounded.

The UN awarded a medal to the Brazilian MINUSTAH this week. Their "good work" was particularly appreciated by neo-Duvalierist Hubert Deronceray, leader of the Large Center-Right Front (GFCD), who was openly delighted by the U.N. deadly forays into Cité Soleil.

"Fanmi Lavalas denounces all discriminatory measures aiming to encircle Cité Soleil with containers with the aim of isolating the area from the rest of the country," declared former Lavalas deputy James Desrosin. "This practice resembles the apartheid which prevailed in South Africa (...) Fanmi Lavalas notes that in recent days an arsenal of the most atrocious repression has been mobilized against the country's largest shanty town. We denounce these acts the only objective of which is the elimination of the partisans and sympathizers of Fanmi Lavalas. Such intrigues have confirmed the unceasingly growing rumors circulating for several days that the MINUSTAH and PNH are planning a huge campaign aimed at wiping out Cité Soleil and other popular neighborhoods."

Meanwhile, from South Africa, President Aristide issued a statement on April 19, denouncing the repression being carried out in Haiti as a "black holocaust."

Samba Boukman, the spokesman for the Lavalas militants of Bel-Air, said he was astonished that Ronaldo Mota Sardenberg, the Brazilian head of the UN Security Council delegation which visited for four-day last week, did not whisper a word about the crimes and massacres being carried out against Lavalas partisans, but only called for elections later this year. "Terrible crimes are being committed against the residents of Cité Soleil on the pretext of a campaign against bandits," he said. "But it is a campaign against the masses and against people's basic rights such as access to education, health, drinking water, work, and housing."

On April 20, in a dramatic display of solidarity, some 10,000
demonstrators marched from Bel-Air to Cité Soleil, passing through the neighborhoods of Tokyo and La Saline. The demonstrators denounced the de facto authorities and called for the return of constitutional order.

MINUSTAH soldiers escorting the demonstration tried to prevent marchers from entering Cité Soleil, and partially dispersed the demonstrators with shots in the air.

But many marchers reassembled and made it into Cité Soleil, where they gave its besieged residents bags of food: "We are making this gesture to express our solidarity for our brothers and sisters in Cité Soleil who are presently undergoing such difficult trials," one demonstrator said.

A Cité Soleil resident was moved. "They sympathize with our plight while bringing food to us and by linking their voices with ours to demand an end of exclusion and suffering," he said.


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