Cambridge, MA - The violent demonstrations that immediately
succeeded the successful jailbreak after bandits and others crashed a stolen tractor
through a wall and illegally liberate Amiot "Cubain" Métayer from illegal
detention on August.6th after he was kidnapped by his senior chief bandit, Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, on July 2nd, in Gonaïves, a hotbed of insurrection against existing
governments, could have lasted more than just a few days, perhaps weeks, until tyrant
Aristide, not concerned at all with the plight of Haitians, was forced to permanently
distance himself from the office of the presidency he occupied, and illegally so, on
February 7th, 2001.
| But why the last week unpleasant events were short-lived,
even though public anger and general destation of monstrous dictator Aristide, even before
then, were so great? It is an open secret that in Haiti narco-money talks and, the
dictator, Aristide, who is not short of prominent drug dealer friends, in addition to
trafficking in narcotics himself, has plenty of it. |
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Warden Sony Marcellus, 37, stands in the rubble of a prison
wall knocked down by gunmen on a stolen tractor as he points to a now sealed-up hole where
the gunmen entered the prison in Gonaïves, Haiti, Tuesday, Aug. 6th, 2002. The gunmen
freed 159 prisoners last Friday in a jailbreak that left at least one dead and a town in
chaos. (AP Information and Photo/Daniel Morel) |
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A prison guard speaks to female inmates Tuesday,
Aug. 6th, 2002, at the prison in Gonaïves, Haiti. Heavily-armed gunmen stole a tractor,
crashed through the wall of the jail and free 159 prisoners last Friday in a jailbreak
that left at least one dead and a town in chaos. The inmates in the photo are some of
those who did not escape. (AP Information and Photo/ Daniel Morel) |
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| Through a third, but unidentified party, Métayer, who barely
spelled out the details of his pseudo-revolution and, at times seemed confused during
interviews with journalists, perhaps because of his rudimentary educational or
elementary-school background, received "narco-U.S.$60,000 and promises of jobs,"
according to a credible source, from radical leftist Aristide. |
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Narco-U.S. dollars |
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Aristide, the trafficker |
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"You," a reference to Métayer, who deeply believes
killing people, and brutally so, does not make him the alleged notorious criminal that
human rights groups say he is, "stop all demonstrations against me; I guarantee you
we will take care of everything; and, you my dear friend and little brother will not
return to jail," was the message from tyrant Aristide, who hours after the successful
jailbreak and the first unanticipated violent demonstration against him, when participants
repeatedly shouted "Down with Aristide! Aristide is a criminal! Aristide is a drug
dealer! and said they wanted the "thief out now," suffered a mild breakdown,
hand delivered to about ten heavily armed representatives - nearly enough to start a small
army - of Métayer by an Aristide's bagman seconds before they entered possession of the
precious cash sent by cruel and rapacious Aristide.
Serving, however, in the capacity of a bagman between two
notorious terrorist groups, Métayer and Aristide', can be a dangerous job. The bagman
eventually had guns pointed to his head while the narco-money (most of it large bills),
which was in several large brown paper bags before it was put on a dirty white blanket on
the floor of an undisclosed rundown safe house in the Gonaïves' section of Raboteau, or
squatter slums, was been counted.
Needless to say tyrant Aristide's days were numbered after Métayer told journalists
"I have put an end to my violent demonstrations and, effective now."
| Imagine a game of chess after the board has been overturned, and no one is sure where
to put the pieces. Thus lucid Haitian politicians |
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Children chant "Down with Aristide" during a
demonstration in the Raboteau neighborhood of Gonaïves, 60 miles (97 kilometers)
northwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, Aug. 8th, 2002. (AP Information and
Photo/Andres Leighton) |
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| and many academics, as well as foreign, both in Haiti and abroad, took
pains to describe the regrettable events of last week in Gonaïves. |
| But to most average Haitian citizens, both in Haiti and
the Haitian diaspora communities, by apparently turning, and violently so, against his
"fascist thug" boss, Aristide, a man who delivers speeches with considerable
theatrical power, Métayer had achieved a near-miracle. "I'm betting on
Métayer's ability and his willingness to topple Aristide," said one of the average
Haitians who, like virtually thousands of people like her, in Haiti and abroad, lost about
$40,000 in a $200 million-plus pyramid scheme that was used to launder drug money in Haiti
recently. He was commenting, too, on the U.S.$800 million, which a de facto government
spokesperson said Aristide earned through books' royalties, after many respectable news
media outlets, based in the trash-filled capital Port-au-Prince, said Aristide, according
to confidential sources, to be worth. |
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Amiot "Cubain" Métayer, left, and Jean "Jean
Tatoune" Pierre, both escapees, leading an anti- brutal dictator Jean-Bertrand
Aristide's violent demonstration in Gonaïves, Friday, Aug. 2nd, 2002. (Photo AP/Daniel
Morel) |
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| "Now, it's Métayer who rules, no more Aristide; he's finished; he
has disappointed many of us former supporters who used to burn used car tires on the
streets of Port-au-Prince for him, said another visibly angry and disappointed Haitian. The
disappointed Haitian's additional problems with dictator Aristide are "he has failed
to change our lamentable quality of life for the better while he himself and his American
wife, Mildred Trouillot-Aristide" (Mrs. Trouillot-Aristide, a light-skinned American
educated Attorney with hazel eyes born into the thicket of Haitian lower upper class
expectations, until twelve years ago or so was as socially distant from darked-skinned and
hideous Aristide, who is of peasant backgrounds, as United States' Senator Edward
Moore Kennedy is from the man of the ghetto. Many Haitians often consider Aristide's
marital contract with Mrs. Trouillot-Aristide a treason of his class and Mrs.
Trouillot-Aristide' a prostitution of her class), have millions of dollars to purchase
expensive suits and distinguished homes and estates, both in Haiti and in foreign
countries, for themselves and cronies."
Beside she "used to help finance Aristide's so-called liberation movement, in the
late 1980s," she said, and gave the impression that he would shoot the ingrate man if
he were somewhere to be found. Translation: The silver bullet that penetrates genocidal
monster Aristide's body, it appears, would cure all Haiti's ills.
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These were the unpleasant words, if they may be called so, uttered a friend of the
visibly angry and disappointed Haitian, whose uncle perished in a jail cell after he was
kidnapped by Aristide's thugs and aunt had to pay an exorbitant sum of money to the
dictator's bagmen, she said, before she could ultimately enter possession of his body on
the condition that no public funeral services were held.
"I'm impatient, I can't wait to see the crooked Aristide's administration or,
"criminal syndicate," consigned to the archives of history, and Aristide himself
and other criminals be put under secured lock and key for their innumerable number of
crimes."
What justification can there be for such a great confidence in Métayer, his
willingness and capacity, to topple lunatic Aristide or, his de facto government, which
today easily can even more and more be compared to a ship that will continue to go through
storms until it sinks? To many of the average Haitians, the answer is simple.
The first reason, the conflict between Métayer and Aristide, a man with a prehistoric
mentality - no running water, no paved roads, add electricity, for the Haitians - started
a few weeks ago, when the dictator had his thug kidnapped, while others of similar and
unquestionable reputation, for their innumerable number of odious crimes, who were known
to have participated in the killing of innocent citizens in Gonaïves, on December17th,
when Aristide staged a coup d'état in an attempt to eviscerate the democratic opposition,
known just about everywhere as the Convergence Démocratique, remained free.
The second reason why for such a great confidence in Métayer's willingness to write
the dictator's obituary, even though right before his kidnapping still he was doing the
dirty work, including killings, for his boss, in press conferences Métayer called for his
apparently former "fascist thug" boss, Aristide, including others, to be taken
out of the circulation after he is deposed to face the bar of justice (Haiti's judiciary
is rotten and inadequate - one that is always bullied or bribed while bullets in the head
from defendants and partners in crime are awaiting underpaid, grossly incompetent and
corrupt judges, just in case they fail to comply) for a large number of crimes, including
the early morning of April 3rd, 2000 brutal murder of Haiti's best known radio journalist
and commentator, Jean Léopold Dominique, that he and supporters alike accused the senior
henchman of having committed.
It might be said, too, that the average Haitians saw the primary reason for the
kidnapping of Métayer by tyrant Aristide was to prevent the Organization of American
States' (O.A.S.) largely unfavorable human rights report from weakening further his
"edifice" of crimes, and that the victim, Métayer, if he may be called so, was
right when he said "I have been betrayed by President Aristide." That is
especially true that even many politicians and academics who offered me professional
opinion of considerable value for this column shared such a contention.
| Still, turbulent times are awaiting tyrant Aristide who does
not hesitate to order journalists murdered for suggesting that "Mr. Aristide has a
brain disease,"for example |
The extreme conditions of poverty in Haiti, as the photograph,
below, may help the reader of this column visualize is to argue that Gonaïves,
including other Haitian cities and towns, still presents a threat to radical leftist
Aristide or, indeed to his totalitarian dictatorship as a whole. Discontent is smoldering
in Gonaïves, and most likely will continue to flare up in the weeks to come, thanks also
to ineffective politics, combined with endemic corruption.
| In fact, many of Métayer's former colleagues have since
their unanticipated divorce with him became a public affair felt betrayed, prompting them
to want his head and those of his paid remaining loyal supporters. Now, not only have they
formed rival gangs, but vow to take to the streets of Gonaïves in the days or weeks to
come until they oust dictator Aristide - former Métayer's colleagues have again accused
tyrant Aristide of trafficking by proxy in narcotics, causing many Haitians to die of
overdoses and many families, which before were considered role models, but now are so
dysfunctional to the point that they barely exist - from office.
The reason for toppling tyrant Aristide, who once was admitted to a psychiatric hospital,
in Montreal, and for a long time, is not without justification, as many Haitians have put
it, in |
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A flaming barricade in Gonaïves on Friday, Aug. 2, 2002.
(Photo AP/Daniel Morel) |
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| addition to those - victims and their accompanied painful testimonies -
first listed and reported, respectively, above. |
According to the United Nations (U.N.) report - 2002, or UNAIDS
2002 - report, more than 500,000 Haitians, out of an estimated population of 8.2 million
are HIV positive, while very little effort is been made, at least, to educate those not
yet infected with the deadly virus, reducing the unacceptable high rates of tuberculosis
cases and vaccinate children to prevent a recurrence of the outbreak of the
paralyzing disease, polio, which recently resulted among eight children and later killed
two of them.
| Patient care is rarely easy for anyone, but because of old
equipments, including x-ray, if any at all, it can be a special challenge and often death
is the ultimate and unacceptable choice in Haiti's Aristide. "We have examined the
patients. We know well what they have. Our concern we did not have the right
equipment," said doctor Neal Moosey, a member of the surgical mission team from
Indiana (U.S.A.) that visited the Haitian island of La Gonâve, about 20 miles from the |
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A young girl waiting for care at States University
Hospital, where patients must provide everything from medicine to surgical tools to,
hopefully, be treated, in Port-au-Prince on Wednesday, June 19th, 2002. Most of the
time, the illness of the sick or dead go unrecorded. (Photo AP/Daniel Morel) |
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A Haiti's tyrant Aristide hospital room. Gislene Privot, a
patient, waiting for attention at State University Hospital in Port-au-Prince on
Wednesday, June 19th, 2002. (Photo AP/Daniel Morel) |
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| capital Port-au-Prince --- annually for 12 years, reported
WRTVIndyChannel.com in a May 21st news article. |
| Complaints of a lot of starving children, which can cause
severe learning problems, among many others, all over the country have become part of
Haitian daily lexicon.
About 4,000
Haitian children are smuggled into the contiguous Dominican Republic each year to work as
manual laborers or beggars, said an August 10th UNICEFF (unicef
) and International Organization for Migration or, IOM (iom.int),
joint published report. It is not difficult at all for Haitians to find similar reasons
to further substantiate their shared contention that the dictator's "time is
up." Aristide's sponsored "grand thievery" has become the norm and honesty
and morality the exception.
"I sold my house because the president," a reference to tyrant Aristide,
"encouraged us to do so," said Serge Decimé, a bus driver in the touristry
coastal city of Jacmel said he had invested $6,500 in a co-operative that failed or,
became insolvent, just a few weeks after promising investors astonishing monthly returns
of 15 percent or more - only in the dirt poor nation of Haiti. "Now, we live, but
only a bit. We cannot afford to live anymore," reported David Gonzalez of the New
York Times in a July 20th news article. |
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Aristide, a "Super liar"or, by way of
alternative, a "thug", says abject poverty is good for our health. As a result
we are forced into slavery in the Dominican Republic by traffickers. (Photo Radio
Nederland) |
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The corruption has long become so endemic that dictator Aristide
considers the public treasury as his "piggy bank." A few facts that may attest
to this contention are: For the past six years or so, government agencies, in addition to
the national government, if the latter must be called so at all, given its de facto and
criminal nature, have gone without budgets, plans or projects to provide basic services,
water, health care and public education - as Abraham Maslow would have categorized them to
help give a meaning to human life.
| Democracy has yet to arrive ... It's stuck in the mud or sand,
like a car would |
Most of the problems analyzed above and below suggest, democracy
- that messy dogma "de la alternabilidad" (literally, alternate ability), as the
late little and Dominican Republic - Black-African and Spanish, sharing the island of
Hispaniola to the east - notorious racist medical doctor, President-for-life, author of
many books (poems, novels, nonfiction) and poet, Joaquin Balaguer Ricardo (Balaguer's
poetry, like him, was formal and old-fashioned. Orden y paz, or order and peace, were his
watchwords), once called it - lacks poetic grandeur and simplicity - has yet to arrive in
Haiti, despite of more than $3 billion spent by the United States (U.S.), most of that
large sum of money, in the first half of the1990s, to help pay for the accounting and
economic costs of Haiti (hopefully) entering the pantheon of democratic nations - and,
permanently so.
Brignol Lindor, was a radio journalist in
the provincial city of Petit-Goâve, about 35 miles from the capital Port-au-Prince.
Aristide and Petit-Goâve's Deputy Mayor, Bony Dumé, assumed he harbored anti-tyrant
Aristide's sentiments and had to physically be eliminated. He was hacked to death in broad
daylight by members of a subsidized government gang called "Domi Nan Bwa" or,
"Sleeping in the Woods," on December 3rd, in the nearby district of
L'Acul.
As Lindor's relatives were still morning his death, most of them,
including his brothers, sisters, father and mother, were forced to emigrate to France
after they themselves received repeated death threats.
| Lindor's tragic death came nearly two years after Jean
Léopold Dominique's, a renowned Haitian radio journalist, commentator and assumed
presidential candidate, who was gunned down in the early morning of April 3rd, 2000,
in the courtyard of his radio Haiti-Inter station, and nearly six years after prominent
Haitian attorney, Mireille Durocher-Bertin, who vowed to have tyrant Aristide stand trial
for odious crimes committed |
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Brignol Lindor, a radio journalist, ordered hacked
to death by totalitarian dictator Aristide on December 3rd, 2001. (Photo/HNP) |
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| against the Haitian people, was assassinated in broad daylight on a
Port-au-Prince street (Ruelle Chrétien) on March 28th, 1995 - ironically, just three days
before former United States' President, William "Bill" Jefferson Clinton,
traveled there to drink champagne and celebrate with Aristide "the triumph of
democracy over tyranny," as he put after arriving at destination.. |
Many other Haitian freedom fighters, including the Reverend Antoine Leroy, and he, too,
after he was forced to kneel down in broad daylight on a Port-au-Prince street, have also
been murdered by brutal dictator Aristide. But, I would experience a great many
difficulties listing them all since the number of victims surpasses 1,000 - sure an
exorbitant number that would hardly help a man as brutal as Fidel Castro defines the true
meaning of "atrocity" when comparing the duration of their illegal tenures in
office.
| More than nine months after Lindor's brutal end none of the
criminals has yet to be arrested.
"Right after the killing, we went to
the homes of the suspects, we knocked on their doors, unfortunately no one was home,"
once again said Haitian National Police (HNP) when asked recently by journalists for a
third time "why none of the criminals has yet to be taken out of the circulation to
face the bar of justice? The HPN, long one of the most notorious "gangster
haven" in the Western Hemisphere, was featured in a June14th Wall Street Journal's
column (The
Wall Street Journal's column). Mario Andrésol, a former central director of the
supposedly law enforcement body judiciary told the Journal's Mary Anastacia O'Grady of
drugs and murder plots among his former colleagues. |
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Israel Jacky Cantave, 28, a radio journalist known for his
investigations of criminal gangs working for dictator Aristide always faces serious danger
of death. He was found tied up, stripped to his underwear and thrown in a mudhole after he
was kidnapped on July15th - two days after he finished his newscast at the Port-au-Prince
Radio Caraïbes station.
And on August 7th, many residents of the town of L'Estère, south
of Gonaïves, suffered lifetreatening injuries after they were arrested and then tortured
by about two dozen members of the national police that arrived from Port-au-Prince by
helicopter in the predawn hours for simply saying they "grew tired of broken promises
by the government to address their needs," while participating in a peaceful protest.
"The protesters, most of them beaten within an inch of their
lives, are right. In this town, we have no water, no communication, no hospital,"
said a passerby who refused to identify himself for fear of retribution by dictator
Aristide's thugs.
Alarmed by tyrant Aristide's gross human rights violations, human
rights groups, including trade unions, from the world over had been forced to call on the
tyrant to conform his behavior.
The Polish independent and self-governing trade union,
Solidarunosc, which represents over 1 million workers in Poland, recently (July 24th)
wrote a letter to Aristide, of which copies were distributed to news media and human
rights groups the world over, protesting the mistreatment of six trade unionists at the
Port-au-Prince national penitentiary after they were illegally arrested in the town of
Saint-Raphael on May 27th.
| Recent events in Haiti once again suggest foreign aid money to
that nation will be wasted |
| Weeks before and during the violent protests in Gonaïves (OASpage/Haiti_situation)
tyrant Aristide's bandits set on fire, following threats to have government buildings
consumed by flames, the city of 200,000 inhabitants' customs house, detritus trucks and
many government offices, including the courthouse. Once again, all of these Osama bin
Laden like terrorist acts offer a lot in the way of explanation: The industrialized
nations, including the United States, should refrain themselves from using their citizens'
hard earned taxpayers' moneys to pay for the accounting or economic cost of baby-sitting
chief bandit Aristide, whose sole goal is burning to the ground every single building in
the poorest Caribbean nation (per capita income less than U.S.$400), as the events of
December 17th, when he staged a coup d'état, thereafter prompting his bandits, including
Métayer, to have the remains of many citizens after they were hacked to death and doused
with gasoline consumed by flames, too, suggest. |
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Gonaïves' courthouse, one of the government buildings burned.
(Photo The Hartford Currant/Enrique Valentin) |
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So, too, did they burn to the ground the offices and houses,
including a French-owned library, of democratic opposition leaders.
"Aristide sent messengers at midnight December16th to order
us to defend him against the coup d'état," Siméon, a 54-year-old carpenter said.
"We were told to crush the opposition," reported the Associated Press in an
August.6th news article.
More, foreign aid money to the
troubled Caribbean nation will certainly be stolen, too. In turn, part of the stolen aid
will be used to help pay for the accounting or economic cost of devastating (killing,
burning, importing more narcotics from the South American nation of Colombia and others to
be resold at a retail price) further Haiti, which according to a recent United nations'
published report, is the third hungriest nation in the world, after Afghanistan and
Somalia (why subsidize the rampant
corruption and gross incompetence of Third World nations' totalitarian dictators by giving
them more foreign aid?). Overall, aid money will be wasted.
| Transforming a dream into reality |
Given Haiti's plight, one can think of worse. Still, don't rule
out a better Haiti, not yet this week anyway. Let's hope that over the next few months,
instead, before the next spell of deadly hunger and diseases arrive, the present
conditions of anarchy and dehumanizing poverty, to name only these ones, since it would be
extremely difficult, if not impossible, to name all of the unfortunate Caribbean nation's
alarming problems that the little 'red' man and former priest of the shantytowns,
Aristide, who since the regrettable events of last week seems afraid to sneak his head
out, has long forced Haitians to subject themselves to and endure, respectively, help
decide the fortunes of his de facto government or, "criminal syndicate."
| Dr. Moffitt and colleagues' prospective Haitian
subjects |
In the meantime, Dr. Terrie Moffitt, of the Institute of
Psychology at King's College, London, and her colleagues who, for a recent study of
genetic determinists and social determinists of behavior published in the journal Science
entitled: "The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study," picked
MAOA, the gene for a protein called monoamine oxidase-A (an enzyme that breaks down
members of an important group of neurotransmitters, the molecules that carry signals
between nerve cells), deserve to be known to Haitians - and not because they may be
favorites of Haiti's totalitarian dictator Aristide and his students of violent
crimes (Famously, Aristide teaches that knowledge of murdering even assumed political
opponents is not a collection of propositions to be passed on from teacher to pupil, but a
manner of being, a way of life - a phrase that even his least notorious bandits use with
approbation.), who do the dirty work, including killings, for him. They should consider
strongman and the equally anti-United States Aristide, including his partners in violent
crimes, as their next subjects of study.
Dr. Moffitt and his colleagues would, hypothetically, find that
there is abundant evidence Aristide and partners in violent crimes have a reduced level of
monoamine oxidase-A, which results in violent behavior. That would make sense in
evolutionary terms, since they all came to power through violent acts and continue to
employ violence to keep the majority of so poor a people like the Haitians hostage, while
happily watching them divided by fanaticism and run the tyranny - and, not too adroitly
so.
Yves A. Isidor, an economics faculty member at the University of
Massachusetts-Dartmouth, is spokesperson for "We Haitians United We Stand For
Democracy," a Cambridge, MA-nonpartisan political pressure group and, executive
editor of Wehaitians.com, an online scholarly journal of democracy and human rights.
This column was also supplemented by information from The
Economist.
More relevant photos
| Wehaitians.com, the scholarly journal of
democracy and human rights |