IPS article on Cite Soleil

Wadner Pierre and myself published a new article, Haiti: Poor Residents of Capital Describe a State of Siege, with the Inter Press Service (IPS). It is also up on CommonDreams.org.

Manipulating Death in Martissant and Gran Ravine

A freelance photojournalist Jean Rémy Badiau was killed on January 19 2007 in the Port-au-Prince district of Martissant. AHP interviewed family and friends that claimed his murder was connected to the vigilante group Lame Ti Manchet. The Haitian newspaper Nouvelliste made a similar report on February 13.

In an earlier report the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontières placed equal blame for violence in Martissant on another group known as Baz Gran Ravine. The report provided no proof to back up the statement. A recent article for AlterPresse by Michael Deibert states that Badio was "murdered in his home, evidently by gang-affiliated gunmen from the area, last month". The article made no mention of the widespread charges against Lame Ti Manchet for having involvement in the killing of Badio and scores of other people in Martissant.

A previous article (August 2 2006) by Deibert on the violence in Martissant also ignored the numerous documented attacks and killings carried out by the group, acknowledging only the charges that "a former police official" was accused of "financing and organizing a gang known as Lamè Ti Machet". He makes no mention of the numerous and well recorded Lame Ti Manchet attacks.
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According to human rights workers active consistently in Martissant, such as those within AUMOHD and the Community Human Rights Councils (CHRC), it is the Lame Ti Manchet that has been responsible for the vast amount of reported attacks over the last few years and is the driving force behind violence in the area. Also the Komisyon Episkopal Nasyonal Jistis ak Lapè has gathered statistics over the last few years that also show the Lame Ti Manchet was the main perpetrator of violence in the area. This does not mean that Baz Gran Ravine and armed groups committed no violence, but it does mean that according to human rights workers and community groups in Martissant the vigilante group known as Lame Ti Manchet conducted the huge majority of recorded violence and was really a driving force for killings in the area. Disturbingly Lame Ti Manchest was also documented to have had connections with the police force during the interim government.

AUMOHD observed that the 2006 massacre conducted by Lame Ti Manchèt "was meant as a smoke screen to provoke Baz Gran Ravine into a retaliation and thereby distract from the push to get police and civilians involved with Lame Ti Manchèt into jail. AUMOHD'S community human rights council (CHRC) coordinator, Esterne Bruner, was assassinated by Lame Ti Manchèt 9/21/06. But there has not been any retaliation reported. Instead the CHRC, non-violent and non-partisan, continues to prosecute all the killings".

Other attacks conducted by Lame Ti Manchet which is also ignored by Deibert include a massacre of 21 people, the burning down of 300 homes 7/9/06, and a massacre carried out jointly with the Haitian police at a USAID sponsored soccer tournament 8/20/05. The attempts at transference and manipulation are important to document because they show how scientific human rights studies (Lancet, Miami University Griffin report, etc) and testimony collected by human rights workers (AUMOHD, CHRC, IJDH) from poor victims of violence is ignored. Many of the same authors/groups that ignore the reports coming from Martissant also ignored the half dozen human rights reports that came out during the 04-06 period showing the interim government's role in violence against slum dwellers, such as the extrajudicial killing of young journalist Abdias Jean.

Human rights workers on the ground in Martissant now report that the wife of Rudy Kernizan has been apprehended. Rudy himself - chief of the vigilante Lame Ti Manchet - has escaped reportedly to the Dominican Republic. In early February human rights workers reported that several (3-4) Lame Ti Manchet people were arrested by MINUSTAH and the Haitian police. Another 31 individuals were arrested days ago in Martissant.

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Funeral of Jean Rémy Badiau
(Photo: Guyvard Alexis/APH)



Young victim of Lame Ti Manchet (Photo: AUMOHD)

Letter to Amnesty International

I recently sent this email to Amnesty International.

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Dear Amnesty International,

I am concerned that your recent public statement on Jean-Rémy Badio missed some important issues.

Your post came soon after a statement by RSF and you stated "On 19 January, he was reportedly shot at his home in Martissant where gang warfare has been spiraling for more than two years."

This statement appears to agree with RSF’s Canadian Director Générale's recent statement that “Two armed gangs – Lame Ti Manchèt (Little Machete Army) and Baz Gran Ravin (Big Ravine Base) – have been fighting for the control of Martissant for the past two years.”

This assessment is far from the truth according to those living on the ground and human rights workers who are active daily in Martissant. I point you to an article I recently published at http://www.narconews.com/Issue44/article2517.html

Both family and friends of the victim, Jean-Rémy Badio, accuse lame Ti Manchèt of having a role in the killing. While RSF included Big Ravine Base in its press statement there has been no reports of any alleged involvement on their part. Press reports also indicate that it is the Lame Ti Manchèt and segments of the PNH that have done nearly all of the violence in Martissant.

Furthermore a human rights group that has focused its attention on Martissant, AUMOHD, states that the 2006 massacre conducted by Lame Ti Manchèt “was meant as a smoke screen to provoke Baz Gran Ravine into a retaliation and thereby distract from the push to get police and civilians involved with Lame Ti Manchèt into jail. AUMOHD’S community human rights council (CHRC) coordinator, Esterne Bruner, was assassinated by Lame Ti Manchèt 9/21/06."

AUMOHD reports that there has not been any reported retaliation on the part of the Baz Gran Ravine but that "Instead the CHRC, non-violent and non-partisan, continues to prosecute all the killings.”

I am concerned that your organization is being led away from the facts to appear to take a "neutral" position that is in fact a partisan position promoted by RSF that for them is politically expedient and exploitative. RSF helped propel a destabilization campaign against Haiti's elected government for example when its secretary general in 2002 called on the U.S. Congress and the EU to take "individual sanctions" against Aristide and Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, including "the refusal of entry and transit visas" and "the freezing of any foreign bank accounts they have". Following the illegal ouster of Haiti’s elected government RSF went silent on numerous abuses against the press and failed to denounce various assaults on journalists including the murder of grassroots journalist Abdias Jean.

I congratulate you on mentioning Abdias Jean in your recent report. I hope you will investigate the facts on the ground in Martissant. The voices of the family and friends of Badio should be heard.

Renew the Rice Fields

I have been receiving a number of comments and questions in regards to my Beri-beri story in HAITI: Mysterious Prison Ailment Traced to U.S. Rice
By Jeb Sprague and Eunida Alexandra*. The E-mails have topically discussed everything from the health problems caused by Beri-beri to disgust over the U.S. and multinational corporations’ role in blocking cheap generic drugs from wide-scale consumption to impoverished populations while forcing down tariffs. The study by Griffin and Dr. Morgan has numerous implications: for the prisoners, for U.S. rice/trade policies, and for Haiti. It exposes on a local level the murky underbelly of corporate globalization with deadly results for the most vulnerable.

One reader wrote that Beri-beri

is merely malnutrition at the metabolic level. It was once rampant in prisons with deplorable conditions. Give them whole brown rice and they will likely recover. ALL white rice is essentially poison. It is fortified in processing where they add vitamins. Why not just eat brown rice?



Chomsky's chapter "The Tragedy of Haiti" in Year 501: The Conquest Continues (1993) does an excellent job at discussing how the World Bank and other IFIs pressured Haiti to allow the cheap importation of rice in the early 1980's. This continued throughout that decade and with the resumption of post-de facto democracy in 1994, the US and IFIs once again pressured the lowering of tariffs but this time through the Paris Accords negotiated with a democratically elected government (although still dependent). The Accords also pressured privatization that Aristide opposed once he was returned. The founding of the Fanmi Lavalas (FL) grouping, if you read the few press reports from late 1996 that discuss it (available on LEXUS), was based on opposition to the foreign/elite pressured privatization. This made FL enemy number one for national and transnational elites operating in Haiti. Preval and the neo-liberal OPL privatized two civil enterprises but when OPL lost out in the 1997 elections to FL this ended the move towards privatizations.

In regards to Beri-beri. It has been researched in prison studies for many years now. A study that took place in the Dutch East Indies one hundred and ten years ago has fascinating similarities with the Griffin/Morgan study. See
Vandenbroucke JP. Adolphe Vorderman's 1897 study of beriberi among prison inmates in the Dutch East Indies: an exemplar of scrupulous efforts to avoid bias. Vorderman went personally to the food supply of prisons and collected samples, similar to Morgan/Griffin. The Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, was also a colonial outpost and throughout the history of Indonesia its people have struggled under the rigors of foreign and elite imposed systems.

But today Indonesia is one of the world's leading rice producers, "with paddy production in 2003 of more than 50 million tones and a cultivated area of more than 11.5 million ha" But in Haiti rice has grown in cost and farmers have been pushed out of business. National elites have gained a monopoly on the disbursement of rice imports. When the Aristide government distributed cheap imported rice to the most impoverished (which was only a temporary solution for starvation), the same national elites who profited from the trade imbalance saw the government as a threat (some financed X-FAdH rebels. Aristide's effort to provide affordable rice while it was a humanitarian gesture could not solve the problem. But Haitian elites denounced the program because it cut into their profits of selling highly priced foreign imported rice to the masses. We can be sure from that experience, that if rice tariffs were raised to renew Haitian domestic rice productivity this would insure a deadly response from elites who profit from the trade imbalance. So if small steps are attacked before they can become big steps, what is the solution?

A recent article False H.O.P.E. For Haiti, by Tom Ricter, criticizes the new HOPE legislation meant to promote more garment industry jobs for Haiti. It also brings up the issue of the rural economy, a discussion that is often lacking and underreported. Ricter writes:


The single greatest generator of unemployment in Haiti over the past twenty years has been the destruction of the rural economy. The loss of economic opportunity in the countryside has translated into a wholly unsustainable urban migration. Urban communities in Port-au-Prince, Gonaives, Port de Paix and elsewhere are straining unsuccessfully to absorb dislocated peasants and their families into the blossoming slums, that lack the housing, water, schools and jobs the migrants need...Another approach a new HOPE could take would be to shift funds for development away from project based grants and loans, delivered primarily through the non-governmental sector, to direct support for government ministries in Haiti.

He argues for an alternative H.O.P.E., one that would promote a rural economy and reinvestment in a public workforce (health, literacy, etc)- both which would work to build a sustainable economy. He argues the low tariffs encourage investment but in a vacuum where a country like Haiti serves as basically a quick stop over. Its schools run by foreign donations and NGOs, its government sector gutted, and its rural economy destroyed.

Peasant leaders in Haiti, such as Bolivar Romulus and Moise Jean-Charles, organized under the democratically elected Haitian governments to promote pro-agricultural policies. Both were targeted by the ex-military opposition for death and persecution following the events of February 2004. Others, such as Chavannes Jean Baptiste and his political party MPP, were essentially co-opted into the foreign financed plan for Haiti. In our new publication HaitiAnalysis (with writers in Haiti, Canada, and the US) we will make a real effort to cover organizing for expanded rice productivity over cheap US rice imports. Could a domestic based rice economy be the future for Haiti's rebound? How could it function? The Preval government’s national road construction plan is one promising sign, which could drastically lower transportation costs for country rice getting to urban markets.

Beri-beri

Medical examination charts for one of the investigations, carried out by the Lamp for Haiti Foundation's Philadelphia-based non-profit team (Staff attorney Thomas Griffin and staff physician James Morgan) show some startling results. According to new testimony Beri Beri has decreased recently at the prison but its prevalence is now increasing once again at the National Penitentiary. You can view the Beri-beri charts beneath the IPS article on
HaitiAnalysis