a1335: Haitian rights group concerned over threats (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Stanley Lucas <slucas@iri.org>

Haitian rights group concerned over threats
March 13, 2002

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 13 (Reuters) - A Haitian rights group said on Wednesday two staff members had received death threats and one of them had been shot and injured after the group published a report highly critical of supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's ruling Lavalas Party.

International rights group Amnesty International also issued a statement on Wednesday expressing concern over threats against the two staff members of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights and the shooting of one of them, saying it feared ``both men and their colleagues are in grave danger.''

The denunciation came just a week after Haiti was criticized in the U.S. State Department's annual report on human rights, with Washington saying Haiti's government continued to commit serious abuses of rights during 2001 and that ``its generally poor human rights record worsened.''

Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, has been struggling to establish democracy in the Caribbean nation of eight million people after decades of dictatorship.

But Aristide's second term has been marked by a long-running controversy over parliamentary elections in 2000 in which Lavalas won an overwhelming victory, and by allegations that supporters of the ruling party are heavy-handed and repressive against political opponents.

``We are working to establish law and justice in Haiti, but for weeks now, there has been a campaign against our organization both at the street and the official level,'' said NCHR director Pierre Esperance. The group has offices in New York and Port-au-Prince.

A rights monitor for the group in Haiti's southern province, Patrick Merisier, was shot and wounded in the capital on Feb. 22 by unknown assailants on motorcycles.

The shooting came after death threats in the form of anonymous leaflets left at his home and community radio station, pressuring him to cease broadcasting and monitoring human rights, Esperance said.

He said Berthony Philippe, another employee in Ennery, a town north of Port-au-Prince, went into hiding after getting similar death threats.

Esperance said the trouble began after the NCHR published a report in February highly critical of the rights situation in Haiti at the one-year anniversary of Aristide's inauguration.

The report alleged that Lavalas supporters were involved in gang violence in La Saline slum of Port-au-Prince but escaped prosecution because of their links to the ruling party. Earlier this month, the NCHR condemned in a news conference the failure of authorities to find and bring to justice the killers of prominent journalist Jean Dominique, gunned down in 2000.

Last week, state-funded L'Union newspaper published a press release from a prominent Lavalas supporter, accusing NCHR staff of defamation, and threatening to have them arrested.

A spokesman for Aristide said on Wednesday that the government supported the work of rights groups.

``The president has made it plain that everyone in Haiti has the full right to express themselves in the spirit of diversity,'' said spokesman Luc Especa.

``This is pure exaggeration on the part of the human rights organizations as they know this government supports their work and there is no systematic pressure against them.''