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Concerns, Cases and Projects

See, The Seven "Men Anpil Chaj Pa Lou" Campaigns for the particulars on how you may help in the task to restore the Constitutional government and Haiti's independence. Below is our general call to action.

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Urgent Action Needed

From: The Haitian Lawyers Leadership
Date: March 19, 2004
Re: The post-February 29, 2004 bloodbath in Haiti and human rights violation

The situation is untenable in Haiti right now for the majority of Haitians. Since February 29, 2004, more Haitians have been killed than ever before, except under the first Coup D'etat against President Aristide. But CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC and the rest of the corporate media have yet to elevate the dialogue about Haiti beyond the "Let's hate Aristide" Roger Noreiga, Otto Reich, Bush State Department refrain. President Aristide is still the scapegoat blamed for every thing that ails Haiti.

Please consider this letter a call to the cavalry of truth. The fact is, grass roots women leaders and members of pro-democracy organizations in Haiti are being hunted down, rounded up, arbitrarily detained, held in illegal custody, disappeared and summarily executed, their bodies left to rot, be eaten by animals or dumped in mass graves. Most of Haiti's Black poor and unfunded-by-the-U.S./Euro-right-wing are subject to being victims of the anti-Aristide reprisal killings and political witch-hunts running rampant under this new U.S.-backed Haitian dictatorship in Haiti.

Before the U.S. forced the Constitutionally elected President Aristide out, this Haitian holocaust, mass murders, were not happening in Haiti.

As ugly as it is to face, the issue in Haiti is about Black resistance and U.S. Empire-sponsored Black genocide for resisting the imposed new Bush order. It is the Haitian people's success with democracy, not their failures, which brought down the fury of empire on their heads. The world must know this now before the mass murdering of Haitians are again systematized. In Guatemala 200,000 resisters where disappeared. In Rwanda, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the space of 100 days. We must not let this happen in Haiti.

The U.S./Euro destabilization campaign in Haiti started fourteen years ago with the first election of President Aristide. The U.S. orchestrated the 2004 Coup D'etat by stepping up its blatant military campaign of violence on February 5, 2004 with the unleashing, from the Dominican Republic, of U.S.-Special-Forces-trained Guy Philippe and his other ex-Haitian military and paramilitary mercenaries. The campaign of violence against the Haitian people and Haitian law enforcement in general has been spreading across Haiti since then, and was, criminally embolden by the U.S./France collaboration on the night of February 29, 2004 that forced the constitutional government from power. The U.S. media, along with U.S. installed puppet Haitian authorities, have simply glorified the killings of cops in Haiti by convicted assassins such as Philippe, Chamblain and Tatoune.

It is our mission to try and provide the Haitian activists and peoples, who are in hiding but still fighting the Empire's many firepowers, with access to U.S./Euro and Caribbean and African press, radio and media outlets. The mainstream corporate press and their Black bourgeois or mentally colonized sycophants have no interest in poor Black life and freedom in Haiti or anywhere else for that matter.

Sometimes the connections are bad. But HLL has gotten desperate calls for help in Haiti since President Bush's State Department, in collusion with the military-industrial complex, summarily disenfranchised a little less than 8.5 million Blacks in Haiti and began the imposition of its own dictatorship - its own illegitimate Eurocentric government on the Haitian people.

Currently the Haitian poor on the ground facing arbitrary arrest, rape, torture and slaughter have no radio or television stations to bring their stories to the world. The psychological attack is even worst as all traces of Aristide's heroic presence are being burned down, dismantled, destroyed. And, the only radio stations sending out "news" are the Empire's handiworks. All that the people in Haiti get to hear is how Aristide was cooking and eating babies at the National Palace! All the U.S. citizenry hear is how Aristide was corrupt and a drug dealer. No one talks about the real Aristide disbanded drugdealers and trained assassins the U.S. came to support and ground back into Haiti's soil on February 29, 2004.

In fact, to mentally break the still very politicized pro-Aristide peoples in Haiti and intensify their mental and physical sufferings, the first thing that happened, after President Aristide was flown out of Haiti, was for the Marines, charged to purportedly stop a bloodbath, to simply stand back and watch CIA assets, like Guy Phillip, Jean Tatoune, Louis Jodel Chamblain and other such terrorist death squad thugs and criminals, not only destroy Tele Timoun, the only children-run TV station in the world, but shut down the medical school in Haiti education 247 new Haitian doctors and shut down all but the U.S.-supported opposition's media outlets.

A more truthful dialogue of the real situation in Haiti is crucially needed. The corporate media are too entwined in government and with big-business interests to lead such a dialogue.

Thus, this call goes out to all progressive lawyers, human right organizations, activist, media, press and radio outlets.

Below is a note relayed to HLL.

HLL wishes to use its networks and contacts to help bring the true struggle of the Haitian people to light and to save some lives in Haiti if at all possible.

Haiti needs help. So HLL forwards the note below to all in our Network and all our friends and, decent people everywhere, especially to human rights organizations, Haitian activists not under direct fire living abroad, and the progressive media, press and radio outlets.

This is a call to all peoples, regardless of hue, class, ethnicity, culture or political affiliation. HLL intends to help set up a progressive human rights coalition with campaigns, action plans and media offensives that will help stop this U.S.-sponsored Black genocide, preserve Haitian life and what's left of Haiti's mobilized grassroots groups struggling for Haitian independence, democracy and progressive development.

As of February 29, 2004, structural democracy was flown out of Haiti by U.S. and French soldiers.

Today, democracy lives only in the Haitian people's hearts- even formal electoral democracy was too much for Haitians to dream about, desire and die for!

Please circulate this call to action and contact the Haitian Lawyers Leadership if your organization wishes to participate in our campaigns to stop the wholesale slaughter and bloodbath being supervised, in the name of democracy, by the Internationals - U.S, Canada, France - running Haiti in accordance with their Ottawa Plan to kill as many Haitians as possible before the world awakens to the story hidden behind the headlines.

For, contrary to the major media's slants, half-truths and fabrications, this is not about Aristide "so-called" corruption. Aristide is as much a drugdealer as Saddam was a harborer of weapons of mass destruction. That is just the big lie and pretext for destroying Haitian democracy, for justifying the occupation, and, now the mass murder of innocent Haitians. President Aristide is no longer in Haiti. All should be well. But the current killing of Haiti's poor reminds us that the de-sensitizing began with the demonization of Aristide supporters as "chimeres" (thugs) and was reflected in the most popular U.S. chidren video game - Grand Theft Auto: Vice City- in which the point was simply to target and "kill all the Haitians."

But what's happening is no video game. It is real. The U.S., Canada and France are killing or supervising the killing of thousands of Haitian men, women and children, many of whom end up in the morgue with their hands still tied behind their backs. Some say this is deliberately population control intended to cut down and "thin" out the largest Black population resisting U.S. financial and cultural imperialism in the Western Hemisphere. This U.S.-sponsored Haitian holocaust must be stopped. Haitians with U.S. passports and concern humanitarians in general are encouraged to go witness and report on the slaughter, arbitrary jailings, political repression or disappearance, in ambulances, brought into Belair, Cite Soleil and other poor Haitian neighborhoods, by the foreign soldiers. HLL is calling for organizations with resources to organize a human rights presence in Haiti to network with the victims of this new U.S.-backed Haitian dictatorship and, stop, counter the bloodbath, burnings and mass destruction of all the edifices of Haitian development and democracy the poor in Haiti have built, despite having no resources and faced with incessant U.S./Euro obstructions, these last ten years. Help HLL curtail and stop the killings of pro-Aristide supporters and all Haitians in Haiti, regardless of political affiliation.

Marguerite Laurent, JD
Chair, Haitian Lawyers Leadership
Dedicated to protecting the civil, human and cultural rights of Haitians at home and abroad.

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Haitian journalist and activist, Jafrikayiti (www.jafrikayiti.com) writes: "Below is the English translation of yet another desperate cry for immediate human rights monitoring in Haiti. It was launched by Haitian activists who claim being actively hunted down by the current de facto rulers in Haiti (including foreign military personnel).

Can NCHR (National Coalition for Haitian Rights), Amnesty International, Haiti Support Group please confirm, verify or deny these grave allegations sent by someone who claims to be on the ground in Port-au-Prince. (see also Ann Pale forum of www.haitiforerver.com)".

Jafrikayiti writes: "There must be witnesses to what is really happening in Haiti today. We can't afford to simply let things go and feign surprise months later when the first stories will undoubtedly begin to surface.

I cannot verify the veracity of the claims made above but surely, a human rights organization present on the ground can only help truth, justice and peace. And unless the occupying forces have something to hide, they should be willing and able to cooperate with human rights organizations seeking to elucidate such matters."

Here is the text...

"On Thursday (March 11) they shot at the demonstration we organized in front of the national palace.

Friday evening (March 12) the "whites" went up to the Bèlè neighborhood where they killed more than 16 people. They arrested a whole bunch of others whose whereabouts remain unknown to this very moment.

Today, Sunday (March 14) , from what I have learned, these folks picked up several young men who belonged to "Rene Civil's group". They got hold of them in Dèlma 75, St-Martin Street, Tiremasse St. and in Bèlè. Right then and there, they placed a black bag on their heads and up to this moment no one knows what has become of these young men.

Please, what is the most important priority at this juncture of the struggle is to have a human rights organization present to help protect the activists and to find out where they are taken after arrest. Especially in situations where no trace of their whereabouts can be found. It is too ugly to observe how the (Haitian) people have now begun to drop and lose their lives. Do all that is in your power to do in order to establish contact with a human rights organization to come defend people engaged in the struggle. For now, that¹s what activists need the most in order to maintain the struggle alive. If every time they take two or three among us, we are not even able to find out what they have become, the struggle will get even more difficult. What we need is a strong organization so that that, when we do not manage to find the arrested activists, we can inform that organization so they can seek to uncover what has become of the arrested activists.

If we have strong people in a human rights organization, it will become easier for the struggle to continue. We have nowhere to address complaints against those who are now running things in the country.

Please comrade, do this as soon as possible so that we do not lose this fight.

Please, we need an organization to inform the people about what they are doing to so many good people and, in particular if they are jailed, to ensure they are defended so the struggle might continue.

Friday (March 12) they shot at us. They killed more than 16 people. Those they have arrested, no one knows what they had done (to) with them.

Please do not sit on this request. Many thanks comrade."

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