Posted at 8:10 p.m., Wednesday, July 30, 2002

We understand that the Gov't. of Haiti has presented a draft resolution to the Permanent Council of the Org. of American States (OAS). The Gov't. of Haiti believes that it has done all that has been asked of it by the OAS. Accordingly, the Gov't. of Haiti (GoH) & its paid registered foreign agents seek the support of the US to release loans to the GoH that are now pending at the Inter-American Development Bank.

It is, in our view, not in the interests of the US or of democracy in Haiti to accept such a resolution. The GoH has not, in fact, done all that was asked of it by the OAS. On Jan. 5, '02, the OAS Permanent Council, on which Haiti sits, adopted Resolution 806 in response to violence against opposition leaders orchestrated by the Gov't & the ruling Lavalas Family party. The GoH has yet to fully comply w/ the provisions of Resolution 806.

The GoH is apparently being credited w/ cooperating w/ the OAS team that drafted the July 1 "Report of the Commission of inquiry into the events of Dec. 17, '01, in Haiti." This report concludes, however, that the GoH was not truthful in its assertations to the OAS that the Dec. 17 attack on the Nat'l Palace was an attempted coup d'etat. Furthermore, the OAS report concludes that, the persons who subsequently launched attacks: ..."on the headquarters of the Opposition political parties & the residences of the leaders of Convergence Democratique acted w/ impunity. These individuals continue to enjoy immunity from the judicial & investigative institutions of Haiti. The ransacking & burning of houses was premeditated. Arms were distributed by some (Haitian) Gov't. & (Lavalas) party officials. The attackers were transported in official vehicles & threatened to kill leaders of the poltical Opposition parties, all w/ the participation of members of Popular Organizations."

Just as the US & the OAS did not turn a blind eye to violent repression by the military regime led by Gen. Raoul Cedras, the US & the OAS cannot turn a blind eye to these & other gross abuses by the current GoH. Moreover, there is little incentive for the US to reward a gov't that tolerates - if not actively encourages - official complicity in narcotics trafficking into the US.

We understand that the Asst. Sec'y Gen. of the OAS has labored very long & hard to secure an accord between the GoH & the opposition Convergence Democratique. We hear, however, that there is a growing chorus w/i the OAS that wants to blame the democratic opposition for the continuing impasse in Haiti. There is little logic in blaming the victims of the vote fraud & the gross violations of human rights perpetrated against Haiti's democratic opposition, which have been amply documented by the OAS itself. It appears that the OAS has yet to secure sufficient concessions from the GoH, so as to ensure that an election process to correct that Government's manipulation of the May '00 parliamentary elections would have a chance of actually occurring in a free & fair manner. We urge you to ask the OAS's negotiators to re-examine their strategy to determine if there are additional steps that the GoH should take to redress its documented abuses.

Sincerely yours, -Benjamin A. Gilman Chair Emeritus, Hs. Cmte. on Int'l. Relations -Porter J. Goss Chair, Hs. Permanent Select Cmte. on Intelligence -Cass Ballenger Chair, Subcmte. on the Western Hemisphere Hs. Cmte. on Int'l. Relations.

TABARRE, Haiti, July 30 - For dozens of Haitian orphans, the S.O.S. Children's Village is a sanctuary where they are fed, housed and kept safe from street violence in a peaceful compound shaded by acacia and almond trees.

But for weeks, some 45 teenagers have been living in the dormitories without water or electricity, protesting a decision by the charity's managers in the Caribbean country to close three orphanages.

On Tuesday, they won a reprieve when the charity's regional representative, Walter Cadima, said the orphanages would remain open. The three compounds together normally house and provide schooling to more than 500 children and teenagers.

"What is important to us is the future, to save the institution," Cadima said. S.O.S. Children's Villages, based in Vienna, Austria, runs about 380 "villages" for orphans in 131 countries.

The orphans in Haiti, however, have complained for months of mismanagement and accused managers of siphoning off funds from donors, who sponsor individual children.

"We are going to look into the accusations," Cadima said. "We are going to take them seriously."

On July 8, the charity's board in Haiti announced the orphanages would close Wednesday after more than 22 years because of some "juvenile delinquents" among the orphans and "the anarchic situation due to acts of vandalism and physical aggression."

At the same time, managers halted meals and turned off water and electricity at the orphanages. The three compounds in the impoverished country are located in the northern town of Cap-Haitien and the Port-au-Prince suburbs of Tabarre and Santos.

"These kids aren't criminals. They may have been noisy, but they never were violent," said Sonya Severe, 57, one of 14 house mothers in Tabarre.

Following the board's announcement, many children and teenagers found shelter with distant relatives. Others remained, eating food brought by those who sympathized.

Haiti's government urged the charity to keep the orphanages open.

"This is my home," said l7-year-old Maudeline Macermond, who has been living in the orphanage since infancy. "We love the place."

Some youths, angry they would be forced out, spray-painted insults on the walls against managers.

The centers receive some dlrs 2.5 million annually, but managers haven't been submitting required financial records to the government, said Rose-Andree Bony, of the government's Social Well-being Institute.

"We want an audit of the books," said 21-year-old Meme Selvandieu, who lived in the orphanage for years. He said he visited his sponsor in Marseilles, France, in 1999 and learned money sent for him hadn't arrived.

The management has not responded publicly to the allegations, but on Tuesday an acting director, Maryse Sterlin, left her job because of the complaints.

Youths at the Tabarre orphanage also accused its former director, Wilder Boutin, of sexually abusing girls. Boutin was fired after the abuse accusations surfaced in November. He insists he is innocent and has not been charged by police.

Cadima, a representative based in La Paz, Bolivia, said he will stay in Haiti for four months to reopen the orphanages with a "new vision.

MIAMI -- A group of Haitian refugees who made a daring trip to South Florida have been sent back to their country.

A wooden boat carrying 166 people ran aground in Biscayne National Park last December. Twenty-one of the Haitians were deported on Monday along with four others, three of whom were deported because they had criminal records in their home country.

An immigration judge turned down their request for political asylum.

Immigration and Naturalization Service didn't give specifics about why the judge denied the asylum requests. The INS said the 21 Haitians were given "every opportunity" to prove they were escaping political persecution.

Of the 187 Haitians on the grounded boat, 20 jumped overboard and tried to swim ashore. Eighteen escaped and two are presumed drowned.

About 165 Haitians since had been held at Krome Detention Center and Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami. The INS adopted a policy in December requiring Haitian asylum seekers to be detained while an immigration judge decides their status.

Miami's Haitian-American community has protested that policy and the long detention of the asylum seekers, alleging racial prejudice. Asylum seekers from other countries are generally freed to family or friends while their appeals are heard.

Haitian-Americans are "very angry" about the deportation and several demonstrated Monday night in front of INS offices in Miami, Lafortune said.

Previous Stories: December 4, 2001: Advocates Rally For Haitian Refugees                                                                       December 4, 2001: Coast Guard Searches For Missing Haitian Refugees                                                                     December 3, 2001: Refugees Recovered From Packed Boat After Ten Days At Sea                                                     December 3, 2001: Coast Guard Helps Boat Overloaded With Refugees                                                                                                                                                                                        Copyright 2002 by Click10.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti ? Sonia Jean-Pierre's life is one of apocalyptic misery. With hardly any food or work, her only refuge is a concrete cell. The searing sun is blotted out by cardboard pasted over the windows. On the wall by her bed, she has scrawled, "Jesus Christ is coming soon," like a promise of salvation to greet her every morning.

Ms. Jean-Pierre and hundreds of neighbors live as squatters inside the old Fort Dimanche Prison, once the brutally efficient killing chamber of the Duvalier dictatorships. A prison no longer, it has been renamed, hopefully, Village Democratie.

The poor cram themselves into the dingy cells and even inside the old sentry towers that look out over the surrounding shanties, where 2,000 more souls live without water, schools or electricity. Some are so desperate they eat pancakelike disks of bouillon-flavored clay. Poverty is the only jailer.

"We are free prisoners," said Ms. Jean-Pierre, who rested one recent afternoon on the cool concrete floor. "We are still living like prisoners."

Nearly eight years after the United States led an invasion of Haiti to oust a military junta and restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power, Village Democratie is just one measure of this country's despairing slide.

Increasingly exasperated with Mr. Aristide's government, which has yet to resolve a two-year-old deadlock with its opposition, the United States and European countries have blocked some $500 million in aid, hoping to encourage greater democracy. Critics say the decision has merely eroded the hopes and deepened the poverty of this country's seven million or so people.

For a nation as poor as Haiti, withholding the money has become both carrot and stick. Haiti still lingers near the bottom of the United Nations' annual survey of living conditions. Life expectancy is less than 53 years. Preventable diseases go untreated. The yearly income of the average family is less than is needed to sustain a single person.

Mr. Aristide calls the withholding of the aid an "embargo." His American supporters, including the Congressional Black Caucus and well-paid lobbyists, say it is immoral to withhold the aid and punish the Haitian people, as government agencies go without budgets, plans or projects to provide water, health care and schools. Some $150 million from the United States, they note, might not only improve roads, water and health but also create jobs.

Still, diplomats and aid officials say, Mr. Aristide's use of the term "embargo" reflects calculated rhetoric more than reality. Trade and travel continue, and relief, including contributions from the United States, flows into Haiti through nongovernmental groups.

Solving Haiti's problems, they argue, will take more than just an infusion of aid. Most important, they say, Mr. Aristide has yet to prove that his government has escaped the corruption and destructive self-interest of governments past.

Meanwhile, the political stalemate, which arose over a disputed election, and the international response to it, have stalled what little functioning government democracy might have brought.

"The situation is getting worse for the majority of the people," said the Rev. Jan Hanssens, a Roman Catholic priest who sits on the Justice and Peace Commission of the Bishops' Conference. "There is certainly no hope unless there is a drastic reassessment of Haitian society itself. If things simply go on as now, there is no chance."

Along the streets of Village Democratie, faith in politicians is as elusive as a decent job. Faded posters of Mr. Aristide, wearing the presidential sash and with his arms outstretched, are his only presence.

Laughing young men crouched at the entrance to the former prison and gambled a few wrinkled gourde notes, the country's currency. Inside, past corridors whose crumbled walls reveal a weed-choked courtyard, people walked home after church clutching hymnals titled "Songs of Hope."

Inside tiny rooms with cardboard walls, slim shafts of sunlight cut through the haze of charcoal smoke from braziers where pots of rice boiled. There are no sewers or running water anywhere in the neighborhood, and when the rains come, they leave fetid puddles where malaria-carrying mosquitoes breed.

"Aristide said here is the room of the people," said Dorlis Ephesans. "But he has never showed his face here."

Some of the residents had tried to leave Haiti during the 1991 coup that ousted Mr. Aristide. Some made it to Miami, some died and others, like Israel Arince, were caught at sea and returned.

The same America that sent him back to Haiti and restored Mr. Aristide to power in 1994, Mr. Arince said, now makes life impossible.

"They have blocked the country from getting aid," he said. "We are human beings and we do not like to live like this. Only animals should live here."

In La Saline slum, down a busy road near the prison that is often choked with carts and traffic, pigs waded through streams of human waste and poked their snouts into mountains of garbage in a drainage canal. Young women dropped plastic buckets into a sewer and hauled out a gray water they would use to wash their floors. Potable water is too expensive.

"There is no way to be healthy here," said Elisena Nicolas, who spends a third of her income on water. "But you have to keep the children clean."

As hard as it is to conceive, people come to La Saline to escape rural misery. In the Central Plateau town of Cange, doctors with the Zanmi Lasante clinic said children commonly died from malaria or diarrhea, while tuberculosis and AIDS killed their parents. Even polio, once thought to have been eradicated, has resurfaced recently.

Although the clinic receives no international aid, doctors said they worked with many Haitian government clinics in nearby villages where the frozen aid has left them unable to cope. In recent years, their volunteer clinic's patient load has tripled to 120,000, with patients sometimes walking five hours for free care.

Dr. Paul Farmer, an American who helped found the clinic in the 1980's, said he could not prove that the blocked aid resulted in more suffering, but the deteriorating conditions were evident. International aid, provided on an emergency basis to charitable groups, was no substitute for a working government, he said.

"One of the world's most powerful countries is taking on one of the most impoverished," he said of the United States decision to withhold aid. "I object to that on moral grounds. Anybody who presides over this blockade needs to know the impact here already."

But Haiti's record of official corruption and mismanagement, regardless of who was in power, has given pause to many international aid officials. A recent study by the World Bank concluded that 15 years of aid through 2001 had had no discernible impact in reducing poverty, since projects were carried out haphazardly and government officials did not sustain improvements.

Today, for instance, a maze of rat-infested pipes is all that is left of a potable water project after funds ran out before the pipes could be connected to the water main.

At the same time, political opponents and diplomats said, the government has money to provide cars for legislators or pay off neighborhood groups that are its foot soldiers and that, the opposition charges, have been used to intimidate government opponents.

As a result, diplomats and aid officials said Mr. Aristide must not only resolve his political crisis, he must also show that he will allow economic and administrative reforms to guarantee that any forthcoming aid will be honestly spent.

"We are saying we want to help you," said a European diplomat, who noted that the European Union was ready to provide $350 million. "But you must help us help you. You comply, I'll comply."

Absent any aid or a political pact, people scrape by as they have for years, sharing what little they have or sacrificing themselves for their children. In the neighborhood of Fort Sinclaire, a dilapidated maze of shacks, indigent teenagers with tuberculosis sleep on sheets spread out on hard concrete porches.

A soft carpet of soggy wood chips blankets the entrance to the neighborhood, as men carve wooden bowls to sell to tourists who have yet to return to Haiti. Lionel Agustain, a woodworker, sometimes earns two dollars a day, not enough to prevent him from losing his home a few years ago.

A friend lets him sleep on a rickety cot inside a gym where the weights are improvised from gears and other car parts. The walls are tauntingly decorated with wrinkled posters of bodybuilders with bulging chests and biceps. Mr. Agustain is thin, and he sometimes eats only a bowl of rice.

"We don't know when they are going to fix things," he said. "We suffer. And when you suffer enough, you die."

                                                                                                                                                                                      Posted at 1:59 p.m., Saturday, July 27, 2002

Haitian man killed over woman

By Yves A. Isidor, wehaitians.com executive editor                                                                                                                                                                                     Cambridge, MA, July 27 - What went wrong again at the Massachusetts City of Somerville housing project, but this time early this week?                                                                                                                                                                                               Just a few weeks after Stella Narrajo, 35, a resident of the Mystic avenue housing project, as that city's vast housing project is commonly known, and more than a decade ago reputable for violent racial conflicts, attempted to kill through strangulation her neighbor, a young Haitian girl, while screaming "I hate black people," a Haitian man, Oxon Cinterlin, was stabbed to death Monday, July 23, about 12:45 p.m., by a fellow compatriot, Fequiere Exilome, both natives of Desdunes, in the Artibonite Valley, Haiti, apparently over a woman named Martine, one of the victim's family members Thursday said.                                                                                                                                                                                                The parents of the victim are said to vow revenge, perhaps in a way reminiscent to the broad daylight brutal killing of a Haitian woman by her jealous Haitian husband just a few years ago, also in the working class city of Somerville.                                                                                                                                                                                        Somerville Police did not have to forcefully take the perpetrator of the crime out of the circulation as they did when the jealous husband who weeks later at the end of a trial by a jury a guilty verdict was returned against him thereafter prompting the presiding trial magistrate to sentence him to life without the possibility of parole in a state penitentiary after revising the state criminal codes. The allege killer, who many said was a friend of the victim and who he consumed spaghetti with the night before, went straight to the nearby police station, turning himself in, we learned.

                                                                                                                                                           A get-rich scheme collapses, leaving Haiti even poorer                                                                                                                                                                                               By David Gonzalez, The New York Times

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, July 20 - Intoxicated by the promise of easy money, thousands of Haitians here and abroad sold their cars, mortgaged their homes and emptied their savings accounts in recent months to invest in cooperatives that promised astonishing monthly returns of 10 percent.

Economists and bankers long warned government officials and the public that the unregulated cooperatives were little more than a pyramid scheme and possible money-laundering operation. But when President Jean-Bertrand Aristide hailed cooperatives as "the people's capitalism" that would drive economic development, many investors said their skepticism vanished.

Soon, too, did their money. More than $200 million has been lost in unsound or illegal cooperatives that took their investors' money and bought luxurious properties, fleets of buses or just spirited it abroad. Police officers have shown up in riot gear at some cooperatives, holding managers at gunpoint until they were repaid.

But with thousands of other people having lost their homes or savings and unsure how they will pay their rent or send their children to school in September, the collapse has presented Mr. Aristide with what could be the most serious challenge to his already bumpy tenure.

"I sold my house because the president encouraged us to do so," said Serge Décime, a bus driver from the southern coastal town of Jacmel who said he had invested $6,500 in a cooperative that failed. "Now, we live, but only a little bit. We cannot afford to live anymore."

Last Friday, the government promised a bailout, although no reputable economist can see how Mr. Aristide can hope to do so without giving rise to runaway inflation.

Apparently, the president hopes to avoid the kind of disorder that engulfed Albania, Europe's poorest country, after a similar, more costly pyramid scheme collapsed there in 1997. "He says everybody will be repaid," said Jacques Durocher, the director of Desjardins International Development, which advises legitimate cooperatives. "Everybody knows it is an old strategy to keep people quiet. Time will do the job."

Diplomats are especially galled by the promised bailout, considering that the government of the Western Hemisphere's poorest country has blamed its social and economic deterioration on the international community, which has frozen $500 million in aid until a political impasse over the legislative elections of May 2000 is resolved.

"It is an absurdity," said one diplomat who has tracked the cooperatives. "This is a government that doesn't have any money. That's bad enough, but there are schools, hospitals and 20,000 other priorities that would be more important than this from an economic and social standpoint. You're already broke and going to get even broker."

In an interview, Mr. Aristide said he had told people to be careful about investing, and that his government was placing all financial cooperatives under supervision of the banking authorities. "If I went too fast and too far, I would be creating and increasing the panic," he said.

Traditional cooperatives have long existed in Haiti, allowing farmers or small business owners who were unable to borrow from banks to pool their savings into revolving loan accounts. Savings accounts in the traditional cooperatives offered at most a 4 percent annual interest rate, similar to commercial banks.

The 10 percenters, as they are widely known, emerged about three years ago, mushrooming in the last year to more than 250. They competed for customers by offering cellphones and compact disk players to new depositors and an up-front payout of three months interest. Rates shot up to as high as 13 and 15 percent.

Guernélia Jeudi sold her home for $16,000 and invested it in a cooperative offering 12 percent a month, hoping to pay off her debts and build a nicer home for her and her five children. A few weeks ago, the cooperative disappeared overnight. "Now I work with my hands, begging for the charity of God," she said in the courtyard of a house she is renting. "We will have to move in December when the rent is due again. My son is sick with a cough, and I cannot even take him to the doctor. I have no money for anything."

The managers of the 10 percenters were vague about how they were able to offer such high rates. Many said the government had allowed them to import rice, sugar and consumer goods duty-free. Others also said they had invested heavily in profitable bus fleets.

Reputable financial experts noted that the numbers did not add up, but figured that the 10 percenters were pyramid schemes that would quickly implode as the pool of new depositors shrank. "Mathematically, it should have self-destructed earlier," one banker said. "Drug money definitely allowed them to last much longer."

Such rumors swirl around Coeurs-Unis, a new 10 percenter said to have close ties to Mr. Aristide's Lavalas Family political party. Coming from seemingly nowhere, it opened up across the country with large bus fleets before accepting a single deposit. The firm recently purchased a near-vacant resort hotel in Jacmel for nearly $4 million, about four times its actual value, bankers said.

Armed guards at Coeurs-Unis offices in Port-au-Prince rebuffed several attempts to interview David Chery, its head.

The crisis began in February when commercial banks feared they would be cut off from their United States counterparts if they were found to have accepted drug profits.

Sogebank, Haiti's largest locally owned bank, asked some 20 cooperatives that had deposits to show their books. None complied, and the bank returned $9 million.

There may be ripples through the legitimate cooperatives and commercial banks. At least one major traditional cooperative is believed to have invested its depositors' money in a 10 percenter. At some commercial banks, almost half of the employees took out unsecured loans to invest in cooperatives.

Bankers said the government repeatedly ignored their warnings about dangers to the financial system. Instead, the government continued to praise the cooperative movement, making no distinction between legitimate traditional cooperatives and the 10 percenters, who had unleashed a barrage of advertising.

Cooperative managers insist that the movement is still viable. Zachée Michel, who leads an association of cooperatives, said he had been negotiating with two financial firms in the United States to see if their assets can be purchased as part of a restructuring.

"We have consulted specialists from Wall Street, and what they offer by looking back over the last five years is 75 to 80 percent a year return," Mr. Michel said. "If they do that, we can safely offer 60 percent a year. The economy of Haiti is not good enough, but internationally it is good enough by investing in the New York stock market."

                                                                                                                                                  Suspects in gang war arrested as raiders use stun grenades

Some North Miami residents were startled awake by a string of explosions early Thursday -- the sound of agents hurling stun grenades inside homes and rounding up suspects in a Haitian gang war.

The raiders found more than half a dozen guns believed to have been used in a 4-month-old gang war that has claimed seven young victims.

Investigators are trying to match one assault rifle that was seized to the murder earlier this month of the seventh victim: 13-year-old Gregory Delphin.

The AK-47, TEC-9 machine pistol and handguns recovered Thursday were stolen from Martin's Gun & Pawn Shop in Broward County, law enforcement sources said.

Robbers plowed a truck into the front of the store last March and made off with 33 firearms -- including a machine gun with a scope.

''We think there's a very high probability that a lot of these guns will be linked to our cases,'' said one law enforcement source.

More than 60 members of the multi-agency task force also fanned out across North Miami on Thursday morning, picking up roughly a dozen men for questioning. They are believed to have been involved in some of the shootouts.

''We're getting somewhere, questioning them,'' said a law enforcement source. ``But the detectives will probably be at it until midnight.''

The North Miami police department remained tight-lipped about the arrests.

Assistant Chief Stephen Stepp would not discuss them, saying they were part of an ongoing investigation.

The raids began just before dawn.

Dozens of North Miami police detectives and other agents tore the steel gate off the front door of a modest house in the 1400 block of Northeast 137th Street.

They tossed concussion grenades inside and then swept through the house, slapping flex-cuffs onto sleeping residents and scouring the house for contraband. Police used the surprise tactics because they believed people in the house could easily arm themselves.

''We looked outside, and there were police everywhere,'' said neighbor Marlene Wood.

``They brought all of them out under the carport. Then one of [the agents] came out from the back, carrying a rifle.''

That rifle was an AK-47, a source said. They also found the TEC-9 and pistols inside, according to the source.

Agents arrested Edwin Toussaint, 20, on federal weapons charges. He has been arrested several times on charges of possession of marijuana and cocaine, loitering and trespassing.

Dozens of agents also knocked down the door of apartment C-6 at a complex in the 13600 block of NE Third Court. Again, they tossed in flash-bang grenades.

''Everybody was sleeping,'' said manager Victor Isaac. ``Then boom, boom, boom -- everybody came outside to see what happened.''

Agents arrested brothers Max Daniel, 19, and Richard Daniel, 18. They, too, face federal weapons charges.

The brothers have been arrested in the past on charges of burglary, possession of marijuana, resisting arrest and carrying a concealed firearm, state records show.

The stolen assault rifle recovered from behind Toussaint's house is the same make and caliber as the gun detectives believe may have been used to kill 13-year-old Gregory on the Fourth of July.

That rifle and the others have been sent to the Miami-Dade police crime lab for ballistics testing, the source said.

Gregory was gunned down as he rode his bike home from a friend's house. He had been playing video games and lighting firecrackers.

His murder galvanized community outrage and helped focus attention on the growing rash of gang shootings that had erupted across northern Miami-Dade county.

Before that, a 14-year-old boy was shot on a North Miami Beach playground. Two teenagers were shot dead as they walked home from a food store.

The same night that Gregory was murdered, a barrage of gunfire from a passing car struck seven teenagers as they stood in front of a North Miami Beach apartment building. All of them survived the attack.

Gregory's relatives said they hoped that this first wave of arrests would help solve his murder -- and the others.

''We're just hoping and praying that among the people they arrested, if not the killer, at least someone there has information about who killed Gregory,'' said his older sister, Gina Cricout.

``Because we have to catch them. My mom won't rest -- we won't rest -- until that happens.''

Website: www.moun.com • Email: info@moun.com © 2002 Moun, All Rights Reserved. Designed by Manster Web Services. Contact Webmaster.

                                                                                                                                                                                         Posted at 3:16 p.m., Friday, July 26, 2002

Letter of protest to Haitian brutal and de facto president Aristide

24 July 2002

His Excellency Jean Bertrand Aristide, President of the Republic of Haiti, Palais National, Champs de Mars, Port-au-Prince, Republic of Haiti, Fax number: ++ 509 298 3772/3.

Mr. President, The Independent and Self-governing Trade Union "Solidarnosc", which represents over 1 million workers in Poland, is writing to you again to express our deep concern at the treatment of nine people, including six trade unionists (see annexe), held illegally at the National Penitentiary and Fort National.

According to information we have received, the arrests took place in totally illegal circumstances on 27th May, following some extremely serious events in the commune of Saint-Raphaël. On the day in question, some trade unionists from the Batay Ouvriye union had come to demonstrate their support for the members of the Workers' Union of Guacimal Saint-Raphaël (SOGS) in their dispute with a plantation manager. Accordingly to our sources, the police did nothing to prevent the confrontation between the two parties to the dispute, although it had been foreseeable. This lax approach and complicity by the police effectively led to the deaths of two trade unionists (see annexe), whose bodies were brutally mutilated, and the injuries, some of which were serious, to many people. Many trade unionists, together with the public transport drivers who had driven them to the event and two journalists, were then imprisoned in various houses to which they had been forcibly moved by the police, ostensibly for their own protection. During these incidents, the houses of Sintès Estime, General Secretary of the SOGS, and Miralès Saint Fleur, a member of the union, were also set on fire.

A more detailed investigation has led the NSZZ "Solidarnosc" to make a very disturbing discovery concerning your government's role in this affair. It has transpired that the detained people were transferred totally illegally from the commune of Saint-Raphaël to Port-au-Prince, without any respect of their rights to defence. As we understand it, the transfer procedure was not respected and the authorities did not receive any detention order. The detention of the trade unionists has been prolonged with no justification, whereas the two journalists, arrested at the same time, were released following pressure from professional journalists' associations. What is more, the imprisoned people have not been allowed visitors, despite the fact that some are elderly. It would also seem that some have been ill-treated and that no medical care has been provided to the detained people, most of whom were seriously injured during the brawl. Indeed, two of the prisoners, Urbain Garçon, one of whose legs might be broken, and Jeremie Dorvil, who has continually being spitting blood after receiving blows to the chest, are in urgent need of care.

Lastly, the fact that Mario Dupuy, the Communications Minister, has labelled this group of workers as terrorists and looters, though they were simply calling for better working conditions and the honouring of oral commitments, is part of an misinformation campaign which, we are told, is aimed at showing investors that the government is determined to protect their interests at any cost, not least in the EPZs.

Mr President, NSZZ "Solidarnosc" condemns your government's attitude in this affair in the strongest possible terms. The government is not only flouting the country's own Constitution and laws but also the international conventions on human rights to which Haiti is a signatory. We must repeat that the institution of a repressive policy towards trade unionists will do nothing to improve the image of your government and attract investors. Only dialogue and respect for human rights can ensure the kind of harmonious situation that will promote sustainable and beneficial investment. Moreover, it is quite intolerable that people should be imprisoned without any charge being brought against them.

For all those reasons, we are calling for the immediate release of the imprisoned trade unionists and of the public transport drivers who are with them, and we would ask you to ensure that they receive medical care as soon as possible. We also demand that all violence by your government against trade unionists cease.

We would further ask you to provide for the safe return of the trade unionists to their homes and ensure that the trade activities provided for in ILO conventions 87 and 98 can be pursued once again in the Guacimal plantation.

We look forward to a positive reaction from your government and the immediate release of the illegally imprisoned trade unionists.

Yours sincerely, Marian Krzaklewski President

List of names of trade unionists killed and imprisoned:

Assassinated trade unionists: Francilien Exilien, Ipharès Guerrier

Imprisoned trade unionists: In National Penitentiary: Alexandre Tusson, Sénat Veruséus, Jérémie Dorvil, Urbain Garçon In Fort National: Mme Edouard Dambreville, Mme Lucienne Jean

Persons imprisoned in the National Penitentiary along with the trade unionists: Yvon Louis Jeune, driver, Destiné Décius, driver, Alix Roland, conductor of one of the vehicles

Copy: Mr. Guy Ryder, General Secretary, International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, Brussels

Solidarnose INDEPENDENT AND SELF-GOVERNING TRADE UNION National Commission address: ul. Waly Piiastowskie 24, 80-855 Gdansk, Poland; tel.: +48-58 308 4472 fax: 320 2688 President's Office tel.: +48-58 308 4332, 308 4353 International Department fax: +48-58 308 4482, 308 4495 International Department; e-mail: Tttnhm@aol.com  

                                                                                                                                                                                         Posted at 11:35 p.m., Thursday, July 25, 2002

LATAM-Caribbean: Human development backsliding, says UNPD                                                                                                                                                                                                 By Raul Pierri, Inter Press Service   

MONTEVIDEO, Jul 24 (IPS) - Nearly all countries of Latin America and the Caribbean suffered declines in the human development indicators established by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), even though the agency's annual report, released Wednesday, does not include the latest data on the crisis-ridden region.

Chile, ranked 38, and Bahamas, 41, were the only countries of Latin America and the Caribbean that improved their position on the list of 173 nations ranked by the UNDP based on the human development index (HDI) of each.

The UNDP report is based on data from 2000, and an update would likely change the position of several countries on the list.

Argentina, for example, comes in at a relatively healthy 34th place, but it is currently submerged in the economic, social and political crisis that exploded in December 2001, with the resignation of president Fernando de la Rúa and the accompanying halt in foreign debt payments, devaluation of the national currency, and sharp increases in poverty and unemployment.

Barbados, the country marking the best human development performance of the Latin American-Caribbean region, held on to its position at 31. All other countries dropped in the rankings with respect to the previous UNDP annual report.

The UN agency's HDI is based in a series of social indicators, including life expectancy at birth, literacy rates among adults, school attendance at all levels, and per capita income.

The top 10 in the UNDP's ranking this year are Norway, Sweden, Canada, Belgium, Australia, United States, Iceland, Netherlands, Japan and Finland. The last 10, the ones with the worst human development performance, are all African nations: Mali, Central African Republic, Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Ethiopia, Burkina Fasso, Mozambique, Burundi, Niger and Sierra Leone.

The UNDP Human Development Report, drawn up every year since 1990, divides the countries studied into three categories.

Countries of "high human development" include those of Western Europe and North America, the "medium human development" category covers nearly all Latin America and the Caribbean, while the countries of Africa and western Asia predominate in "low human development".

Although still included among the countries of high human development, Uruguay, fell three points with respect to 2001, to 40, while Costa Rica fell to 43 after having reached 41 last year, and Trinidad and Tobago slid one position to 50.

The region's countries in the medium category include Mexico, which worsened from 51 to 54 in the ranking, Panama (from 52 to 57), Belize (54 to 58), Colombia (62 to 68), Brazil (69 to 73), Suriname (64 to 74), Peru (73 to 82), Jamaica (78 to 86), Paraguay (80 to 90) and Ecuador (from 84 to 93).

Further down in the HDI ranking are the Dominican Republic (which dropped from 86 to 94), Guyana (93 to 103), El Salvador ( news - web sites) (95 to 104), Bolivia (104 to 114) and Nicaragua (106 to 118).

Guatemala returned to the 120 spot it held in 2000, falling from the 108 ranking it reached last year. Haiti, the country with the worst human development performance in the region, fell from 134 to 146.

Six Caribbean countries that were not included in the 2001 ranking because they did not provide the UNDP with the relevant data are found on this year's list: St. Kitts and Nevis (44), Antigua and Barbuda (52), Cuba (55), Dominica (61), Santa Lucia (66) and St. Vincent and the Grenadines (91).

The UNDP report also evaluates the possibilities that the countries -- based on the current trends in each -- will meet the goals set for 2015 at the Millennium Summit, held in September 2000 at the United Nations headquarters.

At the Millennium Summit, the world's leaders made a commitment to cut hunger and extreme poverty in half, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, reduce infant and maternal mortality, fight HIV/AIDS and defend the environment.

Only Chile, Uruguay and Peru are likely to meet the goal of halving the portion of the population suffering hunger, 10 countries will maintain similar levels, and Cuba, Venezuela, Guatemala will see their hungry populations grow, the UNDP estimates.

The report states that the portion of people living on less than a dollar a day in Latin America and the Caribbean remained practically unchanged between 1990 and 1999 - around 16 percent of the total population.

Argentina and Chile are poised to achieve universal education at the primary level, while Venezuela, Dominican Republic and Nicaragua could reach gender equality in primary school attendance by 2015.

The UNDP underscores the importance of increasing international aid so that developing countries might achieve their Millennium Summit targets.

"A key responsibility is finance. Aid from official and new sources is essential to kickstart the performance of countries failing to achieve the goals -- as well as to keep on track those doing well," states the annual report.

Official aid for development, which last year totaled 56 billion dollars, must reach 96 billion to 116 billion dollars in order to achieve the goals established at the Millennium Summit, says the UNDP.

Copyright © 2002 OneWorld.net.                                                                                                                                                                                 www.undp.org

                                                                                                                                                                                         Posted at 3:49 p.m., Thursday, July 18, 2002                                                                                                                                                  Retired diplomat says U.S. finds post-Sept. 11 cooperation                                                                                                                                                                                                 By B.J. Reyes, Associated Press Writer

HONOLULU, July 17 - Improved relations between the United States and countries including Russia and China are just one example of newfound cooperation forged in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a retired U.S. ambassador said.

"I think maybe September 11th provided an opportunity ... for China and the U.S. both to think beyond the Straits of Taiwan issue into that which we share in common, and it put a more positive light on our relations," said Alvin P. Adams, former ambassador to Peru, Haiti and Djibouti. "The same would be true of Russia." Improved cooperation among nations, including the sharing of intelligence, will be key to wiping out global terrorism, Adams said.

The diplomat was among speakers at Tuesday's opening of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies' biennial regional security conference.

Three days of meetings bring together more than 200 senior policy makers, academics, government officials, diplomats and military representatives from 40 countries throughout Asia and the Pacific to discuss such topics as weapons of mass destruction and information warfare

"The theme basically is enhanced regional security and the focus is on terrorism — that is one transnational issue," Adams said in an interview.

Although the conference focuses on the Asia-Pacific region, the conflict between Israel and Pakistan also is likely to be a hot topic of discussion, Adams said.

Chiang Sen, an officer from Taiwan's Foreign Ministry attending the conference, said he is looking forward to hearing other viewpoints on international security and the war on terrorism. "Some people say it's a clash of different civilizations because we have Islam and we have Christianity.

"Some people argue that, 'No, it's about U.S. policy toward someone else.' Some people say, 'No, it's an internal problem because some minorities in some countries are so frustrated they think that nobody represents them and they have no voice ... so they want to do something very radical to express their views.'

"So you have all kinds of reasons to explain why we have this kind of global terrorism," Chiang added. "I think it's good for us to understand (each other.)"

The Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, established in 1995, is a regional study and research facility that reports directly to the U.S. military's Pacific Command of. Its non-warfighting academic focus addresses regional security issues and concerns.

Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press.

                                                                                                                                                                                    Guilty verdict in perjury count in Louima case                                                                                                                                                                                                 By William Glaberson, The New York Times

New York City, July 17 - The partial verdict left open many questions in a case that revisited a chapter in the city's past that many had thought was closed.

The jury in Federal District Court in Brooklyn convicted Mr. Schwarz of lying when he said he did not lead Mr. Louima to the police station bathroom where he was attacked, but deadlocked on another perjury charge and on two civil rights charges after deliberating for six days.

Prosecutors said they were prepared to bring Mr. Schwarz back to court on the unresolved charges in what would be his fourth trial. Mr. Schwarz's two previous convictions were overturned in February, setting the stage for this trial.

Yesterday's verdict assured that the bitterness of the case would continue, with prosecutors committed to pursuing Mr. Schwarz, whom they see as a renegade former police officer who has largely eluded them, and Schwarz partisans claiming that the case against him is a miscarriage of justice.

In the days after the first reports of the assault of Mr. Louima on Aug. 9, 1997, police officers were accused not only of sodomizing a man with a broken broomstick, but also of closing in around the alleged attackers and protecting them with a wall of deceptions. Prosecutors said much of that deception was aimed at protecting Mr. Schwarz.

After what appeared to be sometimes agonizing deliberations, the jurors convicted Mr. Schwarz of lying when he denied leading Mr. Louima away from the front desk of the 70th Precinct station house in Flatbush and toward the station's bathroom, where Officer Justin A. Volpe committed the assault. Mr. Volpe pleaded guilty in 1999 and is serving a 30-year sentence.

But the jurors said they could not reach a unanimous verdict on charges that Mr. Schwarz also lied about being present in the station house bathroom, or on charges alleging that Mr. Schwarz conspired to deprive Mr. Louima of his civil rights and violated those rights by assaulting him.

Supporters of each side have long viewed the other as sinister, and yesterday's murky verdict, which expressly failed to resolve the prosecution's charges that Mr. Schwarz took part in the assault, gave each enough to claim victory and to pledge that the battle would continue.

"Today a federal jury has for the third time found Charles Schwarz guilty of serious federal crimes arising out of the horrific assault of Abner Louima," said the interim United States attorney in Brooklyn, Alan Vinegrad. He asserted that the jurors had seen through what he called "an extraordinary media campaign to promote a one-sided and slanted view" of the case by the defense.

In a telephone interview last night, Mr. Louima said: "Obviously, the jury realized Schwarz was not telling the truth about what he was doing when he led me away from the front desk, so I don't understand why they couldn't reach a verdict on the other counts. There has never been any doubt in my mind. I believe he's guilty."

Mr. Louima, who said he would cooperate if Mr. Schwarz is retried, declined to speculate on the jury's reasoning. But some of Mr. Louima's supporters blamed the racial makeup of the jury, which included two blacks, nine whites and one man of Middle Eastern descent.

Mr. Schwarz said he would fight through any new trial and was convinced he would prevail.

"I am innocent," he said, with an edge of anger in his voice. "They have used every resource they could, and they haven't convicted me yet."

Mr. Schwarz was convicted in 1999 on a charge of helping Mr. Volpe commit the assault. The next year, he and two other officers, Thomas Wiese and Thomas Bruder, were convicted of obstruction of justice.

All of those convictions were overturned in February by the federal appeals court in Manhattan, which ruled that Mr. Schwarz had been denied a fair trial because his lawyer, Stephen C. Worth, had conflicts of interest representing him, and because the jury was exposed to prejudicial information during deliberations.

At the time, Mr. Schwarz had served 33 months of a 15-year sentence. The perjury count on which he was convicted yesterday carries a possible prison term of five years. Judge Reena Raggi allowed Mr. Schwarz, now 36, to remain free on the $1 million bail she had set this spring after the appeals court ruling.

She set a sentencing date of Sept. 20. Mr. Schwarz's chief defense lawyer, Ronald P. Fischetti, said he would argue that Mr. Schwarz should receive credit for the prison time he had served.

But it is not clear whether the judge will agree, because Mr. Schwarz's prior sentence, imposed by a different judge, was for different crimes civil rights violations and obstruction of justice not for the perjury charge on which he was convicted yesterday.

Back in the early hours of that August morning in 1997, prosecutors say, Officer Schwarz and Officer Volpe were both under the mistaken belief that Mr. Louima had hit them during a melee outside a Flatbush nightclub, Club Rendez-Vous. Eventually, they say, Officer Schwarz led Mr. Louima away from the front desk of the station house and into the bathroom, then restrained him while Officer Volpe assaulted him.

But the web of accounts given by Mr. Louima himself, and by various officers who were in the precinct station house that morning, has made it difficult for prosecutors to incontrovertibly establish that sequence of events.

Mr. Louima has always said he was certain the officer who assisted Officer Volpe was "the driver" of the patrol car that took him to the station house from Club Rendez-Vous. Officer Schwarz was the driver. But Mr. Louima has not been able to identify Mr. Schwarz in court. That, together with the varied testimony of police officers, has helped foster something of a subculture surrounding the case among supporters of Mr. Schwarz who say they are convinced that he was not in the bathroom.

The jury verdict gave added vitality to that view. The jurors would have had to conclude that prosecutors proved Mr. Schwarz was in the bathroom during the assault to convict him of the second perjury count. In that count, he was charged with lying when he denied being in the bathroom during the assault. The jury would also have had to conclude that Mr. Schwarz was in the bathroom to convict him of the civil rights count that charged him with taking part in the assault.

The jurors, who were anonymous, left the courthouse in the company of United States marshals yesterday without commenting to reporters.

Yesterday, Mr. Fischetti immediately cited the verdict as evidence for the defense view of the case. "They were unable to prove that he was in that bathroom assaulting Abner Louima," he said of the prosecutors, "and we're pleased because he was never in that bathroom."

Mr. Fischetti said the prosecutors should not try Mr. Schwarz again because they would not be able to improve on their presentation.

But Mr. Vinegrad, the chief prosecutor, suggested that the United States attorney's office would not retreat, though his reference to the defense's public relations efforts indicated the prosecutors realized they were handicapped by the passage of time. In this trial, Mr. Louima seemed muted, far enough removed from the assault that his testimony lacked the emotional edge it gave jurors in past trials.

But yesterday, one of his lawyers, Barry Scheck, took issue with Mr. Schwarz's contention that he had been cleared of taking part in the assault by saying that Mr. Schwarz had never been acquitted.

Mr. Louima, he said, "is resolved to see this through to the end."

"Justice comes slowly," Mr. Scheck said. "But it will come."

On the other side of the case, as well, there were expressions of resolve.

"We are going to fight to clear his name," Mr. Schwarz's wife, Andra, told reporters outside the court building. "It's not over."

Copyright © 2002 The New York Times Company.

                                                                                                                                                                             Kidnapped journalist found beaten, vows to continue work on Haitian gangs                                                                                                                                                                                              By Michael Norton, Associated Press Writer

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, July 17 - A journalist known for his investigations of criminal gangs loyal to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was found tied up, stripped to his underwear and thrown into a mudhole one day after he was kidnapped.

Israel Jacky Cantave, 28, said Wednesday that his abduction — during which he was beaten and warned to stay away from the subject of gangland rivalries — would not deter him from his work.

"The kidnapping was a message to all journalists," Cantave said. "However, I will continue to do my job as before."

On Monday night, Cantave had finished his newscast at Radio Caraibes station and left with his friend Frantz Ambroise.

Near his home in suburban Delmas, another car cut off Cantave's car and four unknown men forced the two men at gunpoint into their car.

Blindfolded, they were driven to an unknown destination, beaten and interrogated, with the kidnappers asking Cantave if he was working for foreign governments or the political opposition.

"The kidnappers accused me of speaking too frankly on sensitive subjects. They said I was working to destroy the country," Cantave said in an interview.

At one point, the kidnappers discussed the pros and cons of killing them, Cantave said. But hearing radio newscasts about the strong public reaction and rapid mobilization of government and police, the abductors decided to release them.

"Their intention was to kill me, but they decided not to when they realized it was making such an uproar," he said.

Bruised and almost naked, Cantave and Ambroise were released about 8 p.m. Tuesday (0100 GMT Wednesday) in eastern Port-au-Prince, where residents found them and contacted police.

The government expressed satisfaction with their release.

"The government has sent a clear signal that it will not tolerate the intimidation of journalists," Information Undersecretary Mario Dupuy said.

Police are holding two people for questioning, he said.

Cantave was recently investigating the often bloody gang rivalries among Aristide partisans in the seaside slums of Cite Soleil and La Saline, which border the capital.

On Monday morning, he received the latest in a series of telephone death threats.

Radio Caraibes has been singled out before by Aristide partisans for political reasons.

On Dec. 17, when an armed commando attacked the National Palace in what Aristide called an attempt to assassinate him, rampaging Aristide partisans burned down opposition headquarters and threatened at least a dozen journalists. Fifteen journalists fled Haiti fearing for their lives, including four members of Radio Caraibes.

The opposition said the palace attack was staged as a pretext to clamp down on dissent. "To be a journalist in Haiti is extremely dangerous. The public uproar saved Cantave and his cousin, but it was a close call," said Guyler Delva, president of the Haitian Association of Journalists.

This year, about 20 incidents of government supporters harassing journalists have been reported. Cantave's was the first case of kidnapping. 

Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press.                                                                                                                                   

Balaguer's funeral draws hundreds                                                                                                                                                                                                By Andres Cala, Associated Press Writer

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP), July 17 - Hundreds of mourners walked hours under a glaring sun Wednesday to follow the flag-draped coffin of Joaquin Balaguer, the longtime leader whom many consider the father of modern Dominican politics.

Revered by some and reviled by others, Balaguer retained enormous sway even after leaving the presidency in 1996. He died of heart failure Sunday at 95.

"There has never existed in Dominican history a person with so much influence as this exceptional man," President Hipolito Mejia said in his eulogy.

"In this palace where he exercised his power for 22 years, at times with a strong hand and at times with gloves of silk, Joaquin Balaguer has no substitute in Dominican politics," he said.

Mejia's audience included officials from the United States, Haiti, Cuba and Puerto Rico.

Outside the palace, hundreds of people waved flags and posters with images of Balaguer, and followed his coffin to the Our Lady of Peace church after Mejia's eulogy. The coffin was covered in flowers atop an open trailer towed by a green Humvee. Mourners in the procession — some elderly and others barefoot — grew angry that the coffin was being towed too quickly and forced the driver to slow down after banging on the vehicle and shouting "Go slower!" At the church, about 50 people pushed through a police barricade to make their way inside.

Mourners threw flowers and a choir sang as the coffin was carried down the aisle. More than 1,000 people attended the Mass, with most crowded outside.

Santo Domingo's Christ the Redeemer Cemetery was the burial site.

Balaguer held the presidency from 1966-1978 and 1986-1996, and was a staunch anti-communist ally of the United States.

The conservative leader largely escaped blame for atrocities committed early in his rule and under his mentor, military dictator Rafael Trujillo, who was assassinated in 1961.

After he assumed power, hundreds of people were kidnapped or disappeared. Later, his human rights record improved.

One of Latin America's last "caudillos," or strongmen, Balaguer presented more the image of kindly country doctor than a stern ruler. He was little more than 5 feet tall, lame and squinted from behind thick-framed glasses.

After winning 1994 elections marred by fraud charges, Balaguer reluctantly stepped down under domestic and U.S. pressure in 1996.

He was the last of a trio of political leaders who vied for power for 40 years, along with Juan Bosch and Jose Francisco Pena Gomez. Pena Gomez died in 1998, and Bosch died last year.

Despite widespread respect for their leadership, none was able to alleviate the poverty that afflicts many of the country's 8 million people.

Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press.                                                                                                                                                            

Cooperative banks go burst, losing life savings for thousands and adding to despair in Haiti                                                                                                                                                                                                By Michael Norton, Associated Press Writer

JACMEL, Haiti, July 16 - Nicolas Greffin lost his life savings and property to a cooperative banking scheme that has left him and untold thousands across Haiti in despair.

Without notice, government-endorsed cooperative banks are folding, raising questions about the high interest they paid and allegations they were used to launder drug money.

Their demise has brought new desperation and provoked violent protests in a country mired in poverty and a 2-year-old political impasse that has blocked international aid.

"I lost everything, for six days of illusion," Greffin said, with tears in his eyes.

Caught up in a wave of enthusiasm that began last year, the 54-year old veterinarian's assistant sold two small houses and a plot of land, withdrew his savings from the bank and deposited the lot — 222,400 gourdes (dlrs 8,900) — in two of the 10 cooperatives in Jacmel, a seaside tourist town in southern Haiti.

That was May 25. On June 1, many co-ops shut down and the owners vanished with the depositors' savings.

Greffin blames President Jean-Bertrand Aristide because, "He encouraged us to join the cooperative movement and never warned us these banks were not part of it."

Members of legitimate cooperatives, which have existed in Haiti since 1937, pool their resources and invest in farming, fishing, groceries, housing.

As the cooperative banks began operating last year, government advertisements began appearing endorsing the cooperative movement, and officials including Aristide did the same. Though they never tied the movement to the banks, the timing led people to believe their government was endorsing the banks.

Aristide, who some Haitians consider the savior who delivered them from the dictatorship of the Duvalier family, appeared to be endorsing another form of salvation.

"Haiti can only succeed through the cooperative movement," Henriot Petiotte, director of the state National Cooperative Council, said in an interview July 2 on Radio Metropole.

But he also said that "if it's true the president encouraged people to join the cooperative movement," Aristide "referred to traditional cooperatives — not 'new wave' ones."

The co-op banks offered up to 15 percent monthly interest on term accounts, compared to commercial banks' 2 to 7 percent annual interest. The commercial banks held deposits totaling about 25 billion gourdes (dlrs 1 billion) while the cooperative banks, economists estimate, gathered 2-3.75 billion gourdes (dlrs 80-150 million).

In December, commercial bank customers began moving savings to cooperatives in alarming numbers.

In January, Sogebank, Haiti's largest bank, returned deposits to a dozen or so cooperatives. An economist who spoke on condition of anonymity said correspondent U.S. banks expressed fears the cooperatives were depositing drug money in Sogebank.

Depositing money with legitimate banks could have "washed" the money for drug dealers.

It is no coincidence, economists and analysts say, that the cooperatives shifted into high gear in mid-2001, shortly after passage of a law requiring banks to notify authorities of deposits exceeding dlrs 10,000. The law didn't apply to the co-ops.

Haitians became fearful. Doubt waxed and confidence waned; the number of new investors shrank. Old investors tried to withdraw money too late. Dozens of co-ops have closed since April, provoking sometimes violent demonstrations.

In Jacmel, more than 5,000 of the 150,000 people had invested in the co-ops. But since one wage earner supports about 10 people in Haiti, some 50,000 people — a third of the population — are directly affected.

Jackson Alexandre, a 29-year old accountant, transferred his savings of 187,650 gourdes (dlrs 7,500) to three co-ops. Now he is penniless and out of work. His boss was forced into bankruptcy because of his own co-op investment.

"What happened to Jacmel was worse than a hurricane," Alexandre said.

Mystery still shrouds their ability to pay such high interest rates.

"Do new deposits pay interest on old deposits?" former Planning Minister Marc Bazin asked, alluding to pyramid schemes that, in countries like Albania, led to disaster as money owed to initial investors exceeded funds deposited by those who followed.

In February, Haiti had about 300 co-op banks, with about 185,000 members. It's unclear how many remain.

In Jacmel, only two are left. One, called Coeurs Unis, or United Hearts, has purchased fleets of taxis and buses, gas stations, schools, and real estate since it opened in October.

In May it bought a 28-room beach hotel outside Jacmel for a reported dlrs 3.4 million. With its 40 employees and low room-occupancy rate, it's doubtful the Mirage Hotel is a money-making proposition.

But it is located on a newly tarred 30-kilometer (18-mile) road nicknamed Cocaine Alley. It lies along beaches where boats from Colombia often drop bundles of drugs.

This month, Coeurs Unis lowered its monthly interest rate from 12 to 5 percent.

Days earlier, Aristide announced that "There is no crisis of the cooperative movement" and pledged "the state will abandon nobody who deposited money in a cooperative and was victimized."

But it's doubtful the cash-strapped government can reimburse victims by October, as it has promised.

Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. 

                                                                                                                                                                                         Posted at 6:01 p.m., Tuesday, July 16, 2002                                                                                                                                             Investigative journalist missing after receiving death threats in Haiti                                                                                                                                                                                                 By Michael Norton, Associated Press Writer

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, July 16 - A journalist known for his investigations into gangland supporters of Haiti's President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was reported missing Tuesday after receiving a series of threats on his life, a media group official said.

Israel Jacky Cantave, 28, finished his evening newscast at 10 p.m. Monday (0300 GMT Tuesday), telephoned his wife to say he was on the way home and left the Radio Caraibes station with his cousin Frantz Ambroise, said Guyler Delva, president of the Haitian Association of Journalists. Both men have disappeared.

Radio Caraibes reported Tuesday morning that Cantave's car was found near his home in suburban Delmas. His cellular phone was in the car; the door on the driver's side was dented, causing speculation he had been pursued and bumped by another vehicle. Cantave told colleagues Monday morning he had received another in a long series of telephone death threats. "You're going to lose your life over this," the voice said.

Cantave, who has a law degree, was recently investigating the often bloody gang rivalries among Aristide partisans in the seaside slums of Cite Soleil and La Saline, which border the capital.

The government is investigating Cantave's disappearance, said Information Under-Secretary Mario Dupuy.

"We have mobilized the police and judicial system and will do everything we can to get to the bottom of Cantave's disappearance," he said.

Radio Caraibes has been singled out before by Aristide partisans for political reasons.

On Dec. 17, when an armed commando attacked the National Palace in what Aristide called an attempt to assassinate him, rampaging Aristide partisans burned down opposition headquarters and threatened at least a dozen journalists. The opposition said the attack was staged as a pretext to clamp down on dissent.

After the attack, 15 journalists fled Haiti fearing for their lives. They included four members of Radio Caraibes.

"Freedom of the press is under fire in Haiti," Delva said.

This year, about 20 incidents of government supporters harassing journalists have been reported, he said.

No journalists, however, have been kidnapped.

In May, the France-based media freedom group Reporters Without Borders put Aristide on its blacklist of media predators, charging he had blocked the investigation of the April 3, 2000, murder of journalist Jean Dominique.

Dupuy denied that the government was persecuting journalists. 

Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press.

                                                                                                                                                                                       Posted at 8:51 p.m., Monday, July 15, 2002  

Immigration and Naturalization Service's top commissioner James Ziglar and a group of lawmakers were in South Florida to deal with ongoing questions raised about the detainment policy for Haitian refugees.

The officials met with women who were desperate to leave Haiti and now are desperate to leave jail.

More than 200 Haitians reached Florida last December. The men are still being held at Krome Detention Center. The women moved from Krome because of abuse complaints, but they are still being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.

Their well-being is the immediate concern of visiting officials, but in the long term, many activists and local politicians are calling for scrutiny of a refugee policy some call racist.

In the correctional center, a maximum-security jail, 24 Haitian women waiting for political asylum are begging to be let out.

Ziglar came at Florida Sen. Bill Nelson's request. Nelson is critical of current immigration policy regarding Haitians. He said, "There is a difference in how the Haitian detainees are treated from other nationalities and that's a wrong policy -- that has to stop."

The Immigration and Naturalization Service says the policy to hold all Haitians during the asylum process deters a dangerous mass exodus.

Joe Celestin, mayor of North Miami said, "Where in the world does the United States incarcerate people without being charged with anything since Dec. 2 until now."

Correctional center officials wanted to address concerns about the treatment of detainees and let Channel 10 cameras inside.

The conditions were clean and orderly, but typical of a jail. There is little privacy, and those critical of the detention say no matter the conditions, the mental stress of indefinite incarceration takes its toll.

Marlene Bastien, a Haitian activist said, "You see everyone comes in and everyone goes out but you -- just think about the desperation and hopelessness." Ziglar, the INS commissioner, left without making a comment.

Copyright © 2002 WPLG Click10.com.                                                                                                                                                                      

Tyrant Aristide burns man alive                                                                                                                                                                                               By Yves A. Isidor, wehaitians.com executive editor

Cambridge, MA - Less than three weeks after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a wing of the Organization of the American States or OAS, submitted a human rights report extremely critical of the de facto government of tyrant Jean-Bertrand Aristide his bandits burned alive Lionel Delfleur, a Haitian Port Authority employee, today.                                                                                                                                                                                         Delfleur's brutal death came less than two years after totalitarian dictator Aristide publicly ordered his bandits to burn alive even his assumed political opponents, and since then hundreds of Haitians have suffered the same fate.

                                                                                                                                                                                         Posted at 5:55 p.m., Monday, July 15, 2002

Hundreds make pilgrimage to mourn longtime leader Joaquin Balaguer                                                                                                                                                                                                By Andres Cala, Associated Press Writer

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic, July 15 - Hundreds of elderly people braved a glaring sun and 100-degree heat to line up for hours Monday to pay a final tribute to Joaquin Balaguer, the longtime leader and patriarch of Dominican politics.

Many had driven for hours across the Caribbean country after the 95-year-old former president died in his sleep of heart failure on Sunday.

"I came to say my final goodbye to my father because he was like a preacher to us," said 70-year-old Angel Bolivar, who took a bus to Santo Domingo from Duverge, 245 kilometers (155 miles) west near the border with Haiti.

The queue of mourners extended more than 200 meters (yards) from the modest home where Balaguer's body was displayed on his bed, dressed in a dark suit with a presidential sash.

"Let us in to see our leader!" mourners chanted from the slow-moving line. People struggled with police in the entrance, but were pushed back. At least one woman sustained minor injuries when crowds pushed her into an air conditioner.

Paramedics treated dozens of people Sunday for dehydration and fatigue. Balaguer's body is to remain at his home until a state funeral on Wednesday. He died at Santo Domingo's Abreu Clinic, where he had been treated for a bleeding ulcer since July 4.

Balaguer, who ruled for 22 years, was revered by many and reviled by others. He largely escaped blame for atrocities committed under his mentor, military dictator Rafael Trujillo, and under his own stewardship. "Balaguer is the father of democracy and he didn't do anything bad. Those are all lies they invented because they envied him," said Trinidad Tejada, a 54-year-old mourner who came from Bonao, 85 kilometers (55 miles) away. Many of the 400 people who waited to bid farewell to Balaguer were elderly. "All of us who supported Trujillo followed Balaguer because we like a rigid order," Bolivar said.

Balaguer first came to power in 1961 when Trujillo, who had ruled from 1930, was assassinated. But he was ousted by a leftist army coup and fled to New York City.

Returned to power after a U.S. invasion, Balaguer held the presidency from 1966-1978 and 1986-1996.

After 1990 and 1994 elections marred by fraud accusations, Balaguer reluctantly stepped down to allow a new vote in 1996.

But he retained enormous influence and helped engineer the elections of both his successors.

Hours before Balaguer died, legislators approved constitutional changes allowing presidents to serve two consecutive terms. Balaguer had backed the change.

A final debate on another measure to allow a candidate to win with 45 percent of votes was postponed from Monday to Thursday since the government declared three days of national mourning.

Balaguer opposed that measure and legislators of his party said they would honor his memory by voting against it, which would defeat the motion.

Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press.

                                                                                                                                                                                         Posted at 2:29 a.m., Sunday, July 13, 2002                                                                                                                                                           In tough times, a company finds profits in terror war                                                                                                                                                                                               By Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr, The New York Times

Washington, July 12 - The Halliburton Company, the Dallas oil services company bedeviled lately by an array of accounting and business issues, is benefiting very directly from the United States efforts to combat terrorism.

From building cells for detainees at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba to feeding American troops in Uzbekistan, the Pentagon is increasingly relying on a unit of Halliburton called KBR, sometimes referred to as Kellogg Brown & Root.

Although the unit has been building projects all over the world for the federal government for decades, the attacks of Sept. 11 have led to significant additional business. KBR is the exclusive logistics supplier for both the Navy and the Army, providing services like cooking, construction, power generation and fuel transportation. The contract recently won from the Army is for 10 years and has no lid on costs, the only logistical arrangement by the Army without an estimated cost.

The government business has been well timed for Halliburton, whose stock price has tumbled almost two-thirds in the last year because of concerns about its asbestos liabilities, sagging profits in its energy business and an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into its accounting practices back when Vice President Dick Cheney ran the company. The government contracts, which the company said Mr. Cheney played no role in helping Halliburton win, either while he led the company or after he left, offer the prospect of a long and steady cash flow that impresses financial analysts.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress has appropriated $30 billion in emergency money to support the campaign against terrorism. About half has gone to the Pentagon, much of it to buy weapons, supplies, and services. Although KBR is probably not the largest recipient of all the government contracts related to terror efforts, few companies have longer or deeper ties to the Pentagon. And no company is better positioned to capitalize on this trend.

The value of the contracts to Halliburton is hard to quantify, but the company said government work generated less than 10 percent of its $13 billion in revenue last year.

The government business is "very good, a relatively stable source of cash flow," said Alexandra S. Parker, senior vice president of Moody's Investors Service. "We view it positively."

By hiring an outside company to handle much of its logistics, the Pentagon may wind up spending more taxpayer money than if it did the work itself.

Under the new Army contract, KBR's work in Central Asia, at least for the next year, will cost 10 percent to 20 percent more than if military personnel were used, according to Army contract managers. In Uzbekistan, the Army failed to ascertain, as regulations require, whether its own units, which handled logistics there for the first six months, were available to work when it brought in the contractor, according to Army spokesmen.

The costs for KBR's current work in Central Asia could "dramatically escalate" without proper monitoring, but adequate cost control measures are in place, according to Lt. Col. Clay Cole, who oversees the contract.

The Army contract is a cost-plu