Posted Thursday at 12:45 a.m., October 25, 2001

Killings, Chaos and Thievery in Haiti                                                                                                                                                                                                 The three young men, including a 16-year-old boy, whose badly decomposed body was found on Oct.12, according to prominent Haitian radio journalist Michelle Montas (Montas' husband, Jean Leopold Dominique, was murdered in the early morning of April 3, 2000 in the courtyard of his radio Haiti Inter station), days after they were killed by Lavalas Police in the Port-au-Prince slum of crime-infested Cite Soleil, were buried Tuesday after a funeral mass attended by more 2,000 people.                                                                                                                                                                                             Many of the people who attended the funeral carried cardboard signs that read "Down with Aristide! Down with impunity!"                                                                                                                                                                                                   So the words "Down with Aristide" were later heard in Cite Soleil, only to be followed by "Long live the Haitian army! Long live Duvalier!"                                                                                                                                                                                              "We want justice," said many Cite Soleil residents who on Oct.18 interrupted a meeting at the Haitian Palais de Justice, or Palace of Justice, where de facto government prosecutor Josue Pierre-Louis was questioning Cite Soleil Police Inspector Yvrens Cesar and Delmas district Police Commissioner Marcellus Carmy.                                                                                                                                                                                         Marcellus and Carmy are accused of killing the three young men and severely beaten Radio Haiti Inter investigative journalist Jean-Robert Delcine, including threatening to shoot him to death, after he was repeatedly slapped in the face and kicked as he was being forced to the ground at gunpoint minutes after he started investigating the death of the three young men in Cite Soleil last week.                                                                                                                                                                                                 A warrant for the arrest of Carmy was issued after he failed to show up for subsequent questioning.                                                                                                                                                                                                For many Haitians the summary execution of the three young men was the result of a "zero-crime-tolerance policy," launched in June by radical leftist and de facto president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.                                                                                                                                                                                                 Aristide ordered Lavalas Police and civilians to execute suspects of crime on the spot. "Don't waste your time arresting someone who is about to rob someone else. He or she is guilty! He or she is guilty! You don't have to think twice. All you have to do is executing him or her right on the spot," said Aristide, who later was apparently chastised by the U.S. ambassador, Brian Dean Curran.                                                                                                                                                                                                        Aristide then said that his words were taken out of context, and that he did not order Lavalas Police and civilians to execute crime suspects on the spot. He blamed the country's democratic opposition, better known as the Convergence Democratique,  a 15-party coalition, which this week again accused him of completely ignoring the suffering of the Haitian people.                                                                                                                                                                                             Haiti's ongoing problems are not also limited to de facto Prime Minister Jean-Marie "Ponpon" Cherestal, however. His illegitimate government has been accused by de facto Senator Gerard Gilles as being extremely corrupt.                                                                                                                                                                                                 De facto Interior Minister Henri Claude Menard last week went to Haiti's Immigration and Naturalization Service Headquarters and fired many employees there. As a result, Cherestal has since been angry at Menard, who after firing the employees, forced the new employees to deposit all passport fees in his own personal bank account.                                                                                                                                                                                      Concerned about Haiti's interminable political problems, the country's Chamber of Commerce President, Rene Max Auguste, called for a referendum - just days after the Papal Nuncio said tyrant Aristide was the main cause of all of the Caribbean Island nation multitude of problems.                                                                                                                                                                                               One may not have to try hard to lend credence to the Papal Nuncio's contention. In a matter of months, Aristide paid U.S. lobbyists close to $4 million - all  in an effort to lobby members of U.S. Congress, according to the U.S. Justice Department, who have been very critical of the series of largely fraudulent elections held last year, including the presidential one, which the chief bandit claimed to overwhelmingly win.                                                                                                                                                                                               The announcement by the Justice Department of millions of dollars paid to lobbyists, including many $1-plus mansions that Aristide have been purchasing lately, caused many of the destitute Haitians to warn him and members of his de facto government to stop claiming that they all are members of a "government of the people."                                                                                                                                                                                                  "If the grand thieves continue to claim to be members of a 'government of the people' we will again take to the streets to deal with them, and we will use force to finally get rid of them," said thousands of Haitians Tuesday, when they attempted to assault Cherestal after he emerged from the Haitian Congress edifice, better known as the house of Satan, after a meeting with the de facto senators and deputies.                                                                                                                                                                                            

Posted at 4:35 a.m, Friday, October 19, 2001

Radio journalist assaulted in Haiti                                                                                                                                                                                               It is not hard at all to define Haiti as the land where journalists are always assaulted by police officers. Also, you don't have to hold a doctorate in international affairs to define the dirt poor Caribbean country as the land where tyrant and chief bandit Jean-Bertrand Aristide burns his political opponents alive.                                                                                                                                                                                                     In a letter to Secretary of State for Public Security Jean Gerard Dubreuil, Reporters Without Borders protested the assault on Jean Robert Delcine, a Radio Haiti Inter journalist, by two police officers. The journalist's materials were also seized.                                                                                                                                                                                             RSF asked that an investigation be opened so that the authors of the assault are punished.                                                                                                                                                                                            "The violence of the assault, as well as the rank of the police officers involved must lead the government to punish them quickly," said RSF Secretary-General Robert Menard.                                                                                                                                                                                            Since 1 January 2001, a dozen journalists have been threatened or assaulted by police officers or supporters of the Fanmi Lavalas, the ruling party.                                                                                                                                                                                       According to information collected by RSF, on 12 October, Delcine was insulted and slapped across the face by Police Inspector Yvens Cesar just as the journalist was showing him his press card. The police officer then threatened him with a weapon and threw him to the ground. Cite Soleil Commissioner Marcellus Camy also hit Delcine. The two police officers confiscated his cassette recorder before letting him go.                                                                                                                                                                                           Delcine was assaulted in the Cite Soleil neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, just as he had unwittingly witnessed a violent police operation in the area. The journalist was sent to Cite Soleil in order to investigate the death of three youths attributed to the police.                                                                                                                                                                                                 On 20 June, two former police officers threatened to kill Fritson Orilus, another Radio Haiti Inter journalist                                                                                                                                                                                               The assault on Delcine by police officers is nothing new. In fact, he could have been murdered, as was Jean Leopold Dominique, Haiti's best known Haitian journalist and political analyst. He was killed in the early morning of April 3 2000 in the courtyard of his Radio Haiti Inter station.                                                                                                                                                                                                 Mr. Dominique, the the station's director until his brutal end, in a 19 October 1999 editorial had sharply called into question the ambitions of now Senator Dany Toussaint, a Fanmi Lavalas senior member and well known drug dealer who was fraudulently elected to the Senate in April 2000.                                                                                                                                                                                                 "I am the state, I am above the law," suggested Toussaint's behavior when he months ago held a press conference.                                                                                                                                                                                          Toussaint, who is said to have committed a multitude of crimes for tyrant Aristide, his parliamentary immunity has yet to be lifted so he can be taken out of the circulation in handcuffs. Claudy Gassant, the investigative judge in Dominique's murder case long ago sent a letter to de facto Senate President Yvon Neptune urging him and his colleagues to do so. Instead of complying to the contents of the letter the judge was himself by proxy threatened with arrest..                                                                                                                                                                                           

Posted at 7:31 a.m., Wednesday, October 17, 2001

Human Rights Watch Q&A on International Law                                                                                                                                                                                            (New York, October 16, 2001) - Human Rights Watch today issued a background paper on legal issues arising from the September 11 attacks, the war in Afghanistan and related anti-terrorism efforts. The paper discusses in everyday language some of the complex legal questions that states involved in the campaign against terrorism must address.                                                                                                                                                                                                  A copy of the Q&A can be found at: http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/september11/ihlqna.htm/                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Posted at 5:01 p.m., Monday, October 15, 2001

Haitian parties fail to solve political crisis; tyrant Aristide says "I am president-for-life, and I will continue to burn my opponents alive"                                                                                                                                                                                                  As anticipated by many Haitians and others, talks between the Haitian democratic opposition and Haiti's de facto government of tyrant Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in an effort to find a permanent solution to the 16-month political crisis, which started in April 2000, after a series of largely fraudulent elections were held, collapsed Sunday, less than 24 hours after they started, suggesting that extreme poverty and political killings by Aristide will remain the norms in the dirt poor Caribbean country.                                                                                                                                                                                                "We did not obtain a concrete result that will permit the signature of an initial agreement," Luigi Einaudi, assistant secretary-general of the Organization of the American States, who could barely enumerate the number of times he had traveled to Haiti, and this in an effort to help the opposing parties write the obituary of the long political crisis.                                                                                                                                                                                                "We cannot accept the unacceptable," said Osner Fevry, a Convergence Democratic prominent lawyer. Fevry's statement was in response to the April 2000 elections, which he termed: "Electoral coup d'etat."                                                                                                                                                                                                   Though Einaudi had indicated that he will return to the poorest country of the Americas, hoping that his next visit will prove beneficial to the opposing parties, especially the citizens of Haiti, who continue to endure abject poverty while chief bandit Aristide continues to purchase $1 million-plus mansions for his cabinet ministers, but many Haitians do not think that he will be capable of forcing the Hitler type Aristide, the Stalinist type Aristide to become a democrat overnight. What does this means? He will also continue to threat the United States. For more information, read our latest column: U.S. Must Wipe Out The Terrorists And their Sponsors.                                                                                                                                                                                                In another development, many notorious bandits - Ronald Cadaver, Paul Raymond, and Rene Civil - have yet to be taken out of the circulation despite warrants have been issued for their arrest. They have threatened to assassinate Claudy Gassant, the judge who has issued the arrest warrants, and continued to meet regularly with tyrant Aristide.                                                                                                                                                                                             

Posted at 2:59 a.m., Saturday, October 6, 2001

U.S. urges opposing parties to finnd a solution to Haiti's long political crisis                                                                                                                                                                                              The United States in a Thursday press release urged the opposing Haitian political parties, including radical leftist Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the country's democratic opposition, better known as the Convergence Democratique, to find a solution to the long Haitian political crisis, which started in May 2000 after Aristide held largely fraudulent elections the month before, claiming that only his Lavalas Family Party candidates won all of the Senate seats and most of the seats in the House of Deputies.                                                                                                                                                                                                "It is time to find a solution to the long political crisis so Haiti may address other issues that concern its citizens, such as achieving democracy, economic development, and respect for human rights," United States Department of State spokesperson Richard Boucher said.                                                                                                                                                                                            Boucher, who also said that a solution to the country's political crisis can only be found through dialogue and reconciliation told the opposing parties that "As long as there is no formal accord between themselves, indicating that a solution to the political problem is or about to be found, Haiti cannot have normal relations with the international community, especially the ones that the Caribbean Republic greatly depends on for aid.                                                                                                                                                                                            Contrary to Jiluis Caesar who declined attempts by his constituents to have him wear a crown, explaining, "Non rex sum sed Caesar" - "I am not a king but Caesar," many believe that tyrant and little red Aristide will attempt not to give in to the U.S.' suggestion that he negotiates with the democratic opposition so he may proceed with his plan to become a new Central African Jean Bedel Bokassa-type emperor in the Caribbean, only to be later stabbed by his closest advisers, as was Caesar.                                                                                                                                                                                                            In another development, as citizens of the country continue to experience abject poverty while the facto government of Aristide seems to be more interested in purchasing $2-plus million mansions for its cabinets ministers and expensive four-wheel drive automobiles tropical storm Iris formed in the Caribbean yesterday afternoon with 60 mile per hour wind, threatening to severely Haiti.