19079: Esser: In Haiti, saviors are sinners (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com

Juan Gonzalez
In Haiti, saviors are sinners

Tuesday, February 24th, 2004

There has been a steady drumbeat of press reports the past few months
to the effect that Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has lost
popular support, quashed dissent and allowed corruption to flourish.

But we've heard very little about the rebels and key opposition
leaders seeking to oust him - or about Washington's often murky role
in Haitian politics.

Take Guy Philippe, for example. He is a former member of the
notorious Haitian Army that overthrew Aristide in 1991. Philippe was
sent to Ecuador during the coup years, where he and a dozen other
Haitian Army officers received training from U.S. Special Forces.

It was no secret during those years that while the Clinton
administration officially supported Aristide, the CIA and the
Pentagon regarded him as a dangerous radical and opposed his return
to power.

Clinton opted in 1994 to send in U.S. troops to reinstall Aristide,
the Haitian Army was disbanded and Washington created and trained a
new Haitian police force.

Philippe became part of that force and promptly was promoted to
police chief of Cap-Haitien, while several of his Ecuadoran-trained
comrades likewise were appointed to key police posts.

In 2001, shortly after Aristide's reelection, Philippe led an armed
attack on the presidential palace, then fled to the Dominican
Republic.

Another rebel leader is Louis Jodel Chamblain. He is a former head of
a paramilitary death squad called FRAPH, which murdered hundreds of
Haitians during the 1991-94 coup. FRAPH chief Emmanuel

(Toto) Constant, who now lives in Queens, claimed several years ago
that his group had the backing of the CIA.

Chamblain, who also was living in the Dominican Republic until
recently, was convicted in absentia in Haiti for the assassination of
human rights activist Antoine Izmery and for the 1994 Raboteau
massacre of several dozen civilians.

Andre Apaid, a rich Haitian businessman who holds U.S. citizenship,
is a leader of one of the main legal opposition groups that turned
down a political settlement yesterday that could have avoided further
violence.

The settlement was negotiated over the weekend by Roger Noriega, the
top U.S. envoy for the Western Hemisphere.

It would allow Aristide to complete his term but leave most
day-to-day power in the hands of a new coalition government.

Aristide accepted the compromise plan but the opposition will accept
nothing less than his resignation.

The U.S.-based National Labor Committee, which first revealed the
Kathie Lee Gifford sweat shop scandal, reported several years ago
that Apaid's factories in Haiti's free trade zone often pay below the
minimum wage and that his employees are forced to work 78-hour weeks.

With liberators like these, no wonder the poor of Port-au-Prince are
building barricades and sticking with Aristide.
.