30022: Luce (reply) Mr. Deibert:Stop Supporting The Proxy War (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tom Luce <hurah_inc@riseup.net>

*M. Deibert: Stop Supporting The Proxy War*

by Tom Luce, President, Human Rights Accompaniment In Haiti-Hurah, Inc.


      The so-called gang warfare which Michael Deibert has once again
featured in his latest AlterPresse article (Feb. 13) is a war by proxy
that should be stopped.  Whoever the people wreaking this slaughter are
aligned with must be convinced that it is not in their own best
interests to engage in this manner of deadly fighting for their rights.
Polemicist articles like Deibert's, though, only continue to play the
tit for tat song that contributes to the prolongation of this proxy war,
poor people killing poor people, as a way for the more affluent and
powerful to keep their hands clean and keep hold of their power.

    Notwithstanding Deibert's rallying cry at the end of his article
that */"the international community must demand human rights for all in
Haiti", /*I call upon him to stop contributing to the proxy war.
Militant polemicists never seem to be able to be involved in peaceful,
just undertakings to resolve the conflicts.  Instead of the ballot, they
support the bullet.  Instead of calling for reconciliation they promote
killing.  Only when one side is dead and gone will this kind of proxy
war end.  Muddying the waters over who killed free-lance journalist,
Jean-Remy Badiau, is a sickening example of the war by proxy.  The
weapons are words, innuendo, and rumors and the insinuation by Deibert
is that pro-Lavalas/Aristide forces were just as likely to have done
this as the other side. Conclusion: keep it up, poor people. Even the
score.  Killing is the way of life in Haiti.

      Hurah, Inc. is a US based human rights group that works with a
Haitian human rights group, AUMOHD.  Both groups follow a non-violent
and non-partisan philosophy in confronting conflicts that involve human
rights abuses among the poor. The fact that 99% of the poor we work with
are Lavalas or associated with Lavalas does not justify polemicists
labeling us as a "pro-Lavalas" organization.  AUMOHD was in court before
the coup against Aristide in 04, defending victims of human rights
abuse.  Since then the facts are that human rights abuses of the poor
are overwhelmingly against Lavalas.

    Deibert's attack on Sprague's attempts to get the facts straight
about Badiau's killers--objectively reported to be the Little Machete
Army-- particularly irked me because he zeroed in on territory I know
first-hand.  His invocation of the impressive name of the Catholic peace
and justice commission (CENJP) as the framework for his article as
somehow bolstering his story about violence in Martissant was
disingenuous.  As an ex-priest who studied in the 1960's with Haitian
human rights advocate, Fr. Max Dominique, SP,  I know something about
Haitian human rights and I know that the CENJP is for non-violent
reconciliation in these neighborhoods, a very hard mission that Deibert
doesn't mention at all, let alone promote.

     Let's just take the Martissant situation. I take issue with
Deibert's picture and analysis, not that I deny any violence on the part
of people either self-proclaimed Lavalas or accused of being such, but
because he is perpetuating a harangue of revenge that gets us nowhere in
2007.  He launches into his article's point that the */"terrible truth
about Martissant"/*is that it is a place*/"where citizens have been at
the mercy of warring gangs with varying political affiliations engaged
in sustained conflict since June 2006."//  /*"Since June 2006?" He gives
no detail of this wholesale inter gang warfare between 2006-07 leading
his readers--with no proof- to assume that the score is tied for this
period. He makes no mention of the July 7, 2006 massacre of 20 innocent
men, women and children plus 300+ torched homes in Grand Ravine--not
Martissant-- done by the Little Machete Army, an assault of major
proportions, nor does he try to assert any comparable assault by any
alleged Lavalas group in that time frame. He then begins quickly moving
back to 2005 and then to 2000 trying to prove that Lavalas--a gratuitous
identification--violence is equal to opposition violence giving us
footnotes as proof that the unsuspecting reader would feel obliged
either to accept or to stop and conduct his/her own research.  So
already he has obfuscated the truth of the 2006-7 period and quickly
drags us back into the past assuming that no one will notice the
difference and will think that the Little Machete Army is just one
insignificant perpetrator indistinguishable from others.

    Let's go further into the Martissant situation. Not that I deny any
violence on the part of alleged Lavalas people but because the demands
of the truth and reconciliation process must deal with facts, not
impressions.   Deiber says, */"since the August 2005 slaying of at least
a dozen people at a soccer match in the district, and indeed long
before, all armed groups in the neighborhood have been implicated in the
grossest human rights violations by residents fleeing attacks speaking
to Haitian and foreign journalists brave enough to venture there."  /*He
has just grossly misled us about 2006-7 and now he begins his blurring
of the past with the infamous, "soccer" massacre, wanting his readers to
believe that this is but one example of the "grossest human rights
violations" that have been regularly perpetrated on both sides in the
"neighborhood."  Whoa!  Let's be factual here.

     I know something about the "neighborhood."  My on the ground (not
Stateside) involvement in this area began with the so-called "soccer"
massacre of Aug. 05.  This was indeed done in Martissant, but its
victims were innocent, non-combatant Lavalas residents of another
"neighborhood" called Grand Ravin miles away.  I walked every inch of
the soccer field, its stands and bathrooms, the surrounding streets
looking for victims in hiding, talking with neighbors, with UN
personnel, accompanying victims to the hospital.  At the time the
Haitian police were nowhere to be seen and were greatly feared because
they had been the planners as well as the executors of this slaughter. (
Even RNDDH in its report had to admit the police and the Little Machete
Army were the perpetrators, seeking vigilante/lynching style executions
of a list of people.) Deibert doesn't mention there were two massacres,
the first on Aug. 20 at the St. Bernadette soccer field in Martissant,
and the second on Aug. 21 accompanied by house torchings in Grand
Ravine, carried out again by the police and their civilian butchers with
machetes.  I would beg Mr. Deibert to find comparable gross human rights
violations in the 2005-2007 period just to get the statistics straight
as we head toward a just and enduring peace.

     Who killed Jean-Remy Badiau, one of the latest in this proxy war?
Objective reports (Le Nouvelliste, AHP) have consistently said that his
friends and family accuse the Little Machete Army.  But people like
Deibert and Reporters Without Borders want to keep stirring the pot and
throw into their apologias for the anti-Lavalas/Aristide side unfounded
rumors that Baz Grand Ravin could equally be responsible, a group he
wants us to believe is actually supported by Lavalas members and even
Aristide himself--another gross gratuitous allegation. What really
matters is that the people Deibert pretends to be reaching out to, those
who want the best for Haiti, or at the least, for basic human rights,
should be informed by him as well as others about the work--more
demanding than violent solutions--to bring the war by proxy to an end,
peacefully.

     AUMOHD immediately following the 05 massacres (#1 in Martissant, #2
in Grand Ravine) began working with leaders in the community, a
gathering now known as the Grand Ravine Community Human Rights Council
(GR-CHRC).  The purpose of the GR-CHRC was to work on the basis of
non-violence and non-partisanship to be accepted as credible tool to
begin sifting out the facts of grievances and violent acts, to identify
victims and their need for justice, and to find ways to reconcile toward
an enduring peace.  In the fall of 05 through March of 06, a dozen
meetings, facilitated by AUMOHD, were held involving hundreds of people
armed and unarmed from several "neighborhoods" including Martissant and
even representatives of the Little Machete Army.  By previous agreement
the Haitian National Police (HNP) and MINUSTAH did not get involved so
as to allow the community the opportunity to achieve an authentic peace
and to allay the  fears of further dreaded HNP and MINUSTAH
atrocities.   It was quickly agreed upon by all parties that the killing
of one another's neighbors was clearly an outsider-induced conflict that
made no sense.

    My personal contact with the GR-CHRC and other participants
convinced me that they and the majority of residents were non-violent,
were also Lavalas supporters, not to be lumped into one maligned group
of violent gangs.   These people had studied and practiced non-violence
from the beginning in spite of the violence heaped on them and their
forebears by the Duvalierists, the military juntas, and by Gen Raoul
Cedras and his paramilitary death squads in 91 and by the persecution of
the Feb. 04-Feb. 06 interim government.  They willingly admitted that
some Lavalas adherents did take up arms in defense of their lives and
property before and after the 04 coup. They readily admit to the
existence of individuals, self-proclaimed or alleged to be Lavalas who
practice criminal violence. But to lump them all into one violent
Lavalas encampment thus making them fair game for lynching is itself a
gross violation of human rights that has to stop.

     The GR-CHRC has continued on pursuing justice--non-violently.
Something--yet to be determined--happened to the peace agreement of
March 06 and tragically the July 7, 2006 massacre and massive house
burning--perpetrated solely by the Little Machete Army--happened.   In
the fall of 06 the GR-CHRC coordinator, Esterne Bruner a totally
non-violent practitioner, was brutally assassinated by the Little
Machete Army.  In December Mr. Jean Baptiste Hilaire, a staff person of
the Haitian Disarmament Commission (CNDDR), was brutally murdered as he
began setting up contacts with armed groups.  The "something" that
happened to the 06 peace agreement is what the war by proxy is all
about.  Some are continuing to use the poor to kill one another for
their own profit.  They don't want non-violent approaches like the
GR-CHRC or the government disarmament program.  Let's stop the
deplorable score-keeping game in the media and get down to the business
of lasting peace through truth-telling and genuine reconciliation.

--
Tom Luce, President
Hurah, Inc. - Human Rights Accompaniment In Haiti
In Partnership with AUMOHD, a Haitian Human Rights Advocacy Group
900 US Advocates
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Berkeley, California 94703-2317
E-mail: hurah_inc@riseup.net
Web: http://www.hurah.revolt.org
Tel: 510-428-1419
Skype Name: tomluce / Skypeln # (510) 342-5696

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