Posted at 9:20 p.m., Wednesday, December 19, 2001

In Haiti, coup stages by tyrant Aristide fails to pass for real; freedom fighters vow to continue to help dirt poor Haiti achieves democracy 

Vilified by the international press for his brutal rule and largely fraudulent elections. Condemned by the Haitian newsmedia for assassinating a great many journalists. Often heard Haitians shouting "Down with Aristide" after taking to the streets to protest the abject poverty he has long forced them to endure while he himself continues to purchase $1.5-plus million mansions for his partners in crime, and which he blames the democratic opposition and newsmedia for. Repeatedly called a "Grand thief" by Haitians protesting dehumanizing poverty in Haiti.  

And most importantly, long regarded by the democratic opposition, better known as the Convergence Democratique - a 15-party coalition - as a de facto president after holding a series of largely fraudulent elections.

Haiti's tyrant, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, staged a coup d'etat on Dec. 17 in an effort to portray himself and his de facto government before the international community, including the United States, which has long suspended its financial assistance to the Caribbean country and not long ago accused of practicing economic terrorism against Haiti, as the victims of   anti-democratic forces, and that it is now time for his government to be recognized as a duly elected one and then receive the long awaited financial aid.

So much that it was a staged coup that orders were given hours before to supporters of the totalitarian dictator to be prepared to take to the streets, setting flammable barricades, hacking people to death and then burn their remains, attacking radio stations and journalists, including burning to the ground freedom fighters' homes and their political parties' headquaters.

"Something is going to happen and that you must organize," radical leftist Aristide's organizers told many of his loyalists, reported the Associated Press Tuesday.

Certainly, no leaders of the Convergence Democratique were burned alive while the staged coup was in progress, and even after it was said to be thwarted, as the tyrant put it in message Monday, but the homes and political parties' headquarters of a great many of them, including those of said supporters, were consumed by flames after his bandits set them on fire.

More than 17 people in the trash-filled capital Port-au-Prince and provincial cities, said to be supporters of the Convergence Democratique, were burned alive. More than 30 others were wounded, and some of them may later succumb to their wounds.

While Aristide's bandits continue to threatening to burn to the ground many radio stations, after causing a great many of them to collectively suffer millions of dollars in damage, an exorbitant number of journalists accused of being unfavorable in their reporting to the tyrant's de facto government remain in foreign  embassies.

To many foreign diplomats stationed in Haiti, including the international press, it was a   staged coup, and that the de facto government will have a hard time proving there was in fact a coup d'etat.

Evans Paul, a leader of the Convergence Democratique, and whose political party's headquarters was burned to the ground, called the coup "a masquerade," a view shared by Reynold Georges and Victor Benoit, two other prominent members of the Convergence Democratique, whose political parties' offices were also burned to the ground.  

Gerard Pierre-Charles, Deus Jean-Francois and Luc Mesadieu - all senior members of the Convergence Democratique - fortunately were not at home when tyrant Aristide's torched their private residences. But, more than two of Mesadieu's security guards, in the provincial city of Gonaives, were shot to death, and then their remains were burned beyond recognition after bandits poured gasoline on their hacked bodies.

After a visit to the site of what used to be the Convergence Democratique headquarters, in the Port-au-Prince section of Pon-Morin, burned to the ground by tyrant Aristide's bandits, by the American Ambassador, Brian Dean Curan Wednesday, in a sign of sympathy, Convergence Democratique officials said they will continue to gather as much evidence as possible from the burned building, and they urged other victims to come forward so they may commence legal proceedings against tyrant Aristide for terrorist acts committed, which also include the burning alive of citizens, in addition to private properties, in the International War-crimes tribunal, in the Hague.

"Again, another piece of theater that resembles the police station's assaults on Jul. 28," Micha Gaillard, a prominent member of Convergence Democratique said. The aims of the staged coup were to attack human rights activists, the opposition and media so he, Aristide, could create an uncorrectable situation of anarchy in the country and ultimately further consolidate his dictatorial rule.   

And a Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Dec. 17 letter reads: "Government supporters attack the press after coup." RSF denounced the attacks against journalists and media outlets by tyrant Aristide's bandits, who burned a total of 16 houses, according to Dec. 17 Mobilisation Pour le Developpement National (MDN), a political party headed by Dr. Hubert de Ronceray, also a leading official of the Convergence.  

From Haiti to the many Haitian diasporas, civilized Haitians vow to continue the struggle for a democratic Haiti, but so after consigning totalitarian dictator Aristide to the archives of history.  

Read, too, our latest column, Haiti's Radical Leftist And Totalitarian Dictator Aristide Says 'The Graves Are Not Yet Full

                                                                                                                                                                                       Posted at 3:11 p.m., Friday, December 14, 2001  

In Haiti, police officer says tyrant Aristide orders the execution of about 50 men in two months  

As far back of late last year, Haiti's radical leftist and totalitarian dictator, Jean-Betrand Aristide, rehearsed all of his familiar comedian-like speeches: "Never will the Tonton Macoutes," a reference to the late Haitian dictator, Francois Duvalier's henchmen, "be again allowed to murder the Haitian people."  

"The tyrant, who often takes a great pleasure in burning political opponents alive, had a few more words for the Haitians.

"Oh, yes! Haiti will be a nice country, in fact nicer than the United States, after I change the quality of citizens' lives for the better - at least 500,000 jobs will be created, and I mean over the next five years."

But if there is a chief bandit in Haiti, a notorious murderer in the dirt poor Caribbean nation, according to an unidentified police officer, who has witnessed the execution of at least 50 Haitian young men over the past two months, it is Aristide, reported Le Monde in a December 13 article.  

"For the past two days, I have been able to take a deep breath ... We have not killed anyone in Port-au-Prince. I am a police officer. I saw everything with my own eyes," the officer said.  

The concerned officer, who joined the Haitian National Police, or PNH, as it is known by its French acronym, in 1995, in his heart did not want to be an accomplice to crimes after he started to have nightmare. A friend he told about the fifty or so summary executions then communicated it all to an unidentified foreign diplomat stationed in the trash-filled capital city of Port-au-Prince.  

The officer, whose testimony was ultimately forwarded to Robert Ménard, the Secretary-General of Reporters Without Borders, who during his November 20-24 visit in Port-au-Prince, in a press conference accused tyrant Aristide of obstructing justice in the investigation of prominent Haitian radio journalist, Jean Leopold Dominique, who was brutally killed in the courtyard of his Radio Haiti Inter station on April 3, 2000, and called him a "hoodlum," said  "I am no longer proud to be a police officer."  

To further appreciate the officer's testimony is to know that he himself has never pulled the trigger in the middle of the night, and has never been constraint to do so. 

The officer, who said that he felt trapped and could not quit the Haitian National Police for fear of being killed by colleagues and civilian bandits who knew him, too, still kept asking himself, "Do I now belong to the Haitian National Police, or criminal syndicate?"  He chastised tyrant Aristide for the growing mass brutal killings, which he said caused him to vomit.  

"If you see someone trying to rob someone else, all you the police officers have to do is killed him right on the spot," said dictator Aristide when he not long ago launched his so-called crime fighting operation, "Operation Zero Tolerance."  

"Since that night," the officer said, my life has changed." That was when three young men who were in handcuffs were shot death after his colleagues covered the heads of each of the victims with a black plastic bag.

"Often, people arrested for no valid reasons whatsoever are kept in solitary confinement. At night, they are taken to an isolated section of the capital Port-au-Prince. Upon arriving at destination, within seconds they are all shot to death in the head," the officer said.  

"The officers are killers, judges and everything else you can imagine. Aristide has given the green light to officers to kill as they wish. Every night, after they are through shooting to death innocent people in the head they quietly return to their police precincts. There are no witnesses." the officer said.  

What happens to the bodies of the victims? According to the officer, often an ambulance accompanies the officers to the killing field and then after the young men are shot to death their bodies are taken to the city's morgue.

On many occasions, said the officer, bodies are left on the streets until the early morning to be then taken to the city's morgue by the next sift patrolling officers.  

"Sadly, it is a shame. The international community, which includes the United States, France and Canada, spent millions of dollars and invested an extraordinary amount of time so Haiti could have a professional police force. This is not a police force, but a monumental failure, a gang," the officer said.  

What did the officer himself think of the killings of the 50 or so Haitian young men? His thoughts were: "Yes, I am afraid, but things cannot continue, things must change. If not, how do you expect me to teach my daughter about being a moral person, but not a criminal."

To read Le Monde's article in French, click: "En deux mois, j'ai assisté a l'exécution d'environ cinquante personnes"    

                                                                                                                                                                                       Posted at 1:31 a.m., Thursday, December 13, 2001

U.S. tells Aristide 'no money for a dictator, a tyrant and radical leftist like you'  

See Miami Herald article: Violence eroding Aristide's rule ...Crisis keeps aid, loans from reaching Haiti '

                                                                                                                                                                                        Posted at 8:45 p.m., Tuesday, December 11, 2001  

More than 4,000 civilized Haitians say a final 'adieu' to journalist hacked to death by tyrant Aristide  

Eight days after he was hacked to death by Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide's bandits, not far from the provincial city of Petit-Goave, 56 miles southwest of the trash-filled capital city of Port-au-Prince, radio journalist and Atty. Bignol Lindor, aged 32, was laid to rest today in his native city of Petit-Goave after a funeral mass attended by more than four thousands civilized Haitians.  

However, before the funeral mourners marched through the provincial city, where support for the democratic opposition, better known as the Convergence Democratique, runs high, bearing Lindor's coffin and chanting "Down with assassin Aristide! Down with criminal Aristide! Down with drug dealer Aristide! We are not afraid of chief bandit Aristide!  

The funeral was also attended by journalists from across Haiti, and messages of condolences, which also chastised tyrant Aristide for the brutal end of Lindor, from Haitian journalists leaving in foreign countries, were read aloud.

After Lindor's interment, anti-leftist dictator Aristide' protesters, preferably freedom fighters, took to the streets hurling stones at riot Lavalas police, or riot Aristide's police. Officers, many of them drug dealers, promptly responded with tear gas and shots, causing an infant, an elderly woman and many others to receive medical treatment, many eyewitnesses said.

"Given the savagery of Lavalas police, it was like Lindor was hacked to death a second time," a man in his early thirty said.

Dictator Aristide, who attempted to attend the funeral, was forced to return the the Haitian national palace in Port-au-Prince he has long illegally occupied after his car stoned near Petit-Goave.  

Last week after Lindor was brutally murdered de facto Aristide's Minister of Communications said in an interview that the journalist was murdered because he was a member of the opposition. And the police themselves, who have yet to take out of the circulation the bandits, two days after the murder said they went to some homes in attempt to question the suspects, but all doors were closed.   

                                                                                                                                                                                          Posted at 2:19 p.m., Monday, December 10, 2001  

U.S. sends Haitian boat people home  

The United States today repatriates about 130 Haitian boat people to Haiti, eight days after they were picked at sea by U.S. Coast Guard.

200 other Haitian boat people who were trying to reach Florida about two weeks ago, fleeing Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide's dictatorship of the proletariat, disappeared at sea, and many now assume that their remains were consumed by shacks shortly after their flimsy boat submerged.  

                                                                                                                                                                                         Posted at 4:59 a.m., Saturday, December 8, 2001

Two children kidnapped in troubled Haiti  

Two children, Kipler Dimanche, 9, and Anderson Dimanche, 7, were kidnapped Friday in Port-au-Prince by armed men who identified themselves as Lavalas police officers, or Aristide's police officers, after they gained access into the home of Jean Astrelle Dimanche, their father.

The elder Dimanche himself, who owns a chain of lottery outles, was kidnapped in April only to be later regained his liberty after paying an undisclosed amount of money as ransom to the bandits.  

The kidnapped children will only regain their liberty, according to a telephone call made by the bandits to the home of the elder Dimanche after the kidnapping, only after if he pays $1 million in ransom.

In the dirt poor Haiti, it is widely believed that the bandits are all senior members of tyrant Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the terrorist who continues to call himself president.  

                                                                                                                                                                                         Posted at 2:30 p.m., Wednesday, December 5, 2001

Haiti: RSF urges parliamentary commission to decide in favour of lifting Dany Toussaint's parliamentary immunity

In a letter to the seven members of the Senate commission responsible for studying the examining judge's request for the lifting of Senator Dany Toussaint's parliamentary immunity, RSF urged them to declare the judge's request as admissible. The organization warned the senators against the temptation "to hide behind procedural issues or legal quibbles" in order to avoid submitting the judge's request to a vote by elected representatives of the Upper Chamber. RSF Secretary-General Robert Menard asked them to set aside one judge's decision which, raising doubts concerning judge Gassant's impartiality, demanded a stay of the execution of his request. RSF recalled that this judge's decision was based on the illegal questioning of defendants.  

The organization also asked the seven commission members to recommend that senators vote in favour of lifting Toussaint's immunity. "By doing so, you will demonstrate that senators are not above the law and you will give Mr. Toussaint, who is currently the principal suspect in journalist Jean Dominique's assassination, an opportunity to defend himself against the accusations weighing against him," underlined Menard. "Because this is such an important case for Haitian society, we also ask the parliamentary commission to decide that this vote will be put on the Senate's agenda as soon as possible," concluded Menard.  

According to information collected by RSF, on 26 November 2001, the parliamentary commission responsible for studying the request for the lifting of Senator Toussaint's immunity announced that it would be making its report public on 4 December. At a 23 November press conference in Port-au-Prince, Menard had stated that, "the fact that Dany Toussaint has yet to have his parliamentary immunity lifted is a clear attack on and obstacle to seeing justice served. If [his immunity] is not lifted, it would be a tough blow for democracy." He also expressed concern that the Senate commission would conclude that the issue does not fall within its jurisdiction.

On 10 August, Minister of Justice Gary Lissade sent a request from Examining Judge Claudy Gassant to the Senate, seeking the lifting of Senator Toussaint's parliamentary immunity. Toussaint has been implicated in the investigation into the assassination of journalist Dominique, director of Radio Haiti Inter, and Jean-Claude Louissaint, a security guard at the radio station. The minister also passed on a judge's decision to the senators which, questioning Judge Gassant's impartiality in the handling of the investigation, demanded a stay of the execution of his request. The judge has been approached by Toussaint's lawyers on the basis of interrogations of several persons who were detained in the context of the case. These interrogations have since been declared illegal, and the person who carried them out, Judge Jean Gabriel Ambroise, was penalized by the minister of justice, Ambroise had acted on a request by the senator's lawyers.  

Invoking other priorities, the Senate has yet to take a decision. The parliamentary commission charged with examining the request only met for the first time on 17 September, five weeks after the request was sent. The members of the commission are Madames Bazile, Forte, Liberus and Misters Celestin, Desir and Magloire. It is presided by Yvon Neptune, who is also Senate speaker.

On 3 April 2000, Dominique, Haiti's most renowned journalist and political analyst, was killed in the courtyard of his radio station, Radio Haiti Inter. Well known for his independent voice, Dominique was critical of former Duvalier officials and soldiers, as well as the bourgeoisie. More recently, he criticized those he suspected within Fanmi Lavalas (President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's party) of seeking to "divert the movement from its principles." In his 19 October 1999 editorial, the journalist had sharply criticized Toussaint, who was indicted at the end of May 2001.

<italic> Reporters Sans Frontieres defends jailed journalists and press freedom throughout the world, that is, the right to inform and be informed, in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Reporters Sans Frontieres has nine sections (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland and United Kingdom), representatives in Abidjan, Bangkok, Montreal, Tokyo and Washington, and about a hundred correspondents worldwide.

                                                                                                                                                                                          Posted at 2:50 a.m., Wednesday, December 5, 2001

Farah Jeudy, a Haitian-American victim of the Sept. 11 attack at the World Trade Center  

A FOCUS ON RELIGION AND FUN - Her religion was the most important thing in Farah Jeudy's life. "Everything revolved around that," said her sister-in-law, Suzette Jeudy. Three times a week, Ms. Jeudy, who lived with her parents in Spring Valley, N.Y., attended a Jehovah's Witnesses meeting with her mother.  

But while she was religious, she was far from somber. She loved traveling in the Bahamas and being with friends. "Anyone who ever heard Farah relate a story may not remember the story," according to a tribute read at her memorial service, "but they can remember laughing."

Born in Haiti, Ms. Jeudy, 32, came to this country as a child and later graduated from Baruch College. For eight years, she left home at 6:00 a.m. to commute to her job as an administrative assistant at the Aon Corporation. But if one of her nephews was taking part in Jehovah's Witnesses meeting, Ms. Jeudy would always be there, not caring that her trip home would be even longer."  

Source: The New York Times, "A National Challenge," of Monday December 3, 2001

                                                                                                                                                                                         Posted at 1:19 a.m., Tuesday, December 4, 2001

Totalitarian dictator Aristide burns journalist alive

He only hosted a radio show called "Dialogue" on November 28 in the provincial city of Petit-Goave, 40 miles west of the capital, Port-au-Prince.  

But Brignol Lindor, the news director of Radio Eco 2000, whose then guests included: Panosky Roger, Frantz Fontenel, Frantz Sagaille, Gary Guillot and former Congressman Deus Jean-Francois, was ferociously pulled out of his car while en route to another job after leaving the station Monday, though he first tried to flee, only to be then stoned and hacked to death by Haiti's tyrant Jean-Bertrand Aristide's bandits.

Using used car tires and gasoline, the bandits later burned his remains and chanted "Long Live Aristide! Down with the U.S.! His friend, Emmanuel Cledanor, managed to flee the bandits after he was severely beaten.  

The tragic end of Lindor came after a November 28 press conference held by de facto mayors, Emmanuel Antoine and Bonny Dumay, ordering their bandits to necklace journalists.   

"As President Aristide said, you must necklace all journalists, they are all bastards," they told participants.

The necklacing of Lindor, according to many civilized Haitians, is nothing more than a way to send a message, such as "We can burn you too alive," to Robert Menard, the Secretary-General of Reporters Without Borders," who in a November 23 press conference held in the trash-filled capital Port-au-Prince told participants that tyrant Aristide was obstructing justice in the investigation of radio journalist, Jean Leopold Dominique. Dominique, 69, was brutally murdered in the early morning of April 3, 2000 in the courtyard of his Radio Haiti Inter station.  

Dany Toussaint, a tyrant Aristide's de facto Senator and well known drug dealer, has long been named in an indictment by investigative judge Claude Gassant for the Dominique's murder. Still, he has yet to be taken out of the circulation in handcuffs because the Haitian de facto Senate has refused to lift his parliamentary immunity.  

None of the bandits who assassinated Lindor has yet to be arrested. Responding to a journalist's question, "when will the bandits be taken into custody," Jean Day Simeon, a Lavalas Police, or Tyrant Aristide's police spokesman, said: "we went to some people's homes to question them but all doors were closed."  

                                                                                                                                                                                          Posted at 6:01 p.m., Monday, December 3, 2001  

180 more Haitian boat people for Miami   

With more than180 Haitians as its human cargo, a 30-foot (9-metre) wooden sailboat ran aground in Biscayne National Park in southeast Florida early Monday, park rangers and the U.S. Coast Guard said.

Some of the passengers of fortune attempted to swim to swore but were rounded up by police and Border Patrol agents.     

Many others are still missing. The Coast Guard continues to search the water hoping that some of the boat people will be found alive.  

More than 200 Haitians, whose flimsy boats ran aground in the Bahamas on Nov.1, are now presumed to have perished.

Last year, the Coast Guard repatriated more than 1,400 Haitian boat people to Haiti.