a1493: This Week in Haiti 20:2 3/27/2002 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
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                           HAITI PROGRES
              "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

                      * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                     March 27 - April 2, 2002
                          Vol. 20, No. 2

FROM LOW-INTENSITY WARFARE TO LOW-INTENSITY OCCUPATION

Some time before Mar. 31, a new mission of the Organization of
American States (OAS) to "reinforce democracy in Haiti" is due to
arrive in Haiti (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 19, No. 51, 3/6/2002).

This mission, agreed to Mar. 1 by Foreign Minister Joseph Antonio
(but never ratified by the Parliament as constitutionally
required), is being sold to the public as an effort to
investigate the events of Dec. 17, 2001, when a 30-man armed
commando seized the National Palace for several hours in an ill-
timed assassination attempt against President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, killing two policemen and sparking pro-government mobs
to ransack and burn several opposition headquarters and homes
(see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 19 No. 40, 12/19/2001).

In reality, the accord governing this mission "sanctifies putting
Haiti under the trusteeship of the OAS, which we know is the
Ministry of Colonial Affairs of the United States," warned Ben
Dupuy, secretary general of the National Popular Party (PPN) in a
Mar. 25 press conference in Port-au-Prince.

The accord gives the OAS mission the right to enter any premises,
private or governmental, anywhere in the country, to scrutinize
and copy any archive or database, and to establish its own radio
network to maintain "permanent contact" with its Washington, DC
headquarters. Meanwhile, the mission's property and documents
remain "inviolable" and its members "immune to any judicial
proceeding." In short, the accord gives the OAS "supreme
authority" in the country, Dupuy noted.

Willy Romélus, the archbishop of Jérémie, also warned that the
mission "should stay within its limits, not overstep its limits."
Unfortunately, the accord does not really set any limits on the
mission, either in terms of functioning, size, or objective.

The mission is eagerly awaited by the Democratic Convergence
(CD), the Washington-backed front of 15 tiny opposition parties.
In preparation for its arrival, the CD held a show of force on
Mar. 22 at its headquarters at Pont Morin in the capital. For the
epithet-laden rally (one speaker called Aristide's new ministers
"18 rolls of toilet paper"), the CD mustered less than 500
participants, despite media fanfare, the attendance of several
foreign diplomats, and a huge police deployment to guard the
event. Aristide even convinced the Sept. 30 Foundation to cancel
its counter-demonstration outside the meeting, according to that
group's spokesman, Pierre Lovinsky.

Signs are that the Haitian government is also trying to put its
house in order to receive its OAS "guests." On Mar. 23, Haitian
police arrested Ronald Camille, known ominously as Ronald
Cadavre, the notorious leader of a popular organization based in
the capital's La Saline slum. A warrant for Cadavre's arrest had
been issued after he publicly shot to death another pro-Lavalas
popular organization activist, Fritzner "Bobo" Jean, in front of
the Parliament on Sep. 10, 2001. But the police had never acted
on it, and Cadavre brazenly circulated around town. Police picked
up Cadavre near the airport where he had gone to see Aristide
depart for the UN Conference in Monterrey, Mexico. Several
opposition leaders called his arrest "a good sign."

New Justice Minister Jean Baptiste Brown also said that he would
lobby Aristide to reinstall Judge Claudy Gassant, the recently
deposed magistrate who for 18 months was investigating the Apr.
3, 2000 murder of journalist Jean Dominique and his guardian
Jean-Claude Louissaint. "The police force is sick, the justice
system is sick," Brown said in an interview with Radio Haïti
Inter, the station Dominique founded.  "While respecting the law,
we will do what has to be done for things to advance." The words
are nice but have been heard from Brown's predecessors in recent
years.

New Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, the number two of Aristide's
Lavalas Family party (FL), is continuing neoliberal measures set
in place and in motion by his predecessor and Aristide. Last week
he convened a meeting of the Council for the Modernization of the
Public Enterprises (CMEP), the body charged with privatizing
Haiti's state enterprises. The CMEP has already sold off Haiti's
cement factory and flour mill and has its sights set on the
electric utility and telephone company.

Meanwhile in the Northeast, peasant organizations report that the
Haitian government has begun surveying 50 to 80 hectares of land
for "free trade zones" near the Dominican border on the Maribaou
plain, which comprises 80% of the irrigated land in that barren
region, according to the Alterpresse press service. Agronomists
and peasants protest the "free trade zone" plan and their lack of
consultation, and argue that the region would be better used to
grow food for hungry Haiti. "When the moment comes for the
assembly factories to migrate to a more favorable climate, what
will we be able to do with all that concrete, the peasants ask,"
reads the Alterpresse report.

"All this is being done without ever consulting the people, in
violation of the supposedly Lavalas  principles of transparency
and of defending national resources," Ben Dupuy said. He noted
that the CD leaders, like their FL counterparts, have no problem
with Washington's neoliberal plan and have never denounced the
"free trade zones" project which Aristide agreed to when visiting
the Dominican Republic late last year. "Now we are suddenly
hearing about free trade zones and a Hispaniola Project, which is
just a scheme of the Dominican government to reduce the Dominican
Republic's astronomical debt of almost $7 billion" by investing
debt interest payments into building 14 free trade zones along
the Haitian/Dominican border for U.S. businesses to use cheap
Haitian labor. The arrangement has been strongly pushed by the
U.S. State Department in recent years. Dupuy chastised Aristide
for "running over to the Dominican Republic to sign the
Hispaniola Project, which is the opposite of everything he used
to say to mobilize the people."



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