Haiti tribunal establishes responsibilities for atrocities

The Fourth International Tribunal on Haiti, like the three before it, aimed at exposing individual responsibility for the crimes committed in Haiti after the United States, France and Canada collectively coordinated the coup and kidnapping of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Feb. 29, 2004.

Ramsey Clark reports on last year’s Commission of Inquiry in Haiti. WW photo: G. Dunkel

The tribunal’s political point about the role of the United Nations as a front, a tool and a cover for these three big capitalist countries was sharpened by the fact that newly elected Haitian President René Préval has not been able to release the hundreds of political prisoners, almost all Aristide supporters, that the de-facto regime threw in jail. He hasn’t even been able to denounce the agreement that Gérard Latortue, the president of Haiti imposed by the UN, made giving the UN’s CIVPOL (Civilian Police) control of Haiti’s national police (PNH) and prisons for the next two-and-a-half years.

Held in Montreal May 27 at the Université de Montréal, the tribunal was a success. Four hundred people, a strong majority of them from the Haitian community in Quebec, came, even though the Montreal cops had blocked off the whole neighborhood because an international bicycle race was using the roads. The tribunal had been widely promoted on French and Creole radio shows. Parts of the program were in French and Creole, but most was in English. Simultaneous translation from English to French was available.

Anthony Fenton, a journalist and researcher, presented Canada’s role in “subverting and destroying democracy in Haiti and destabilizing its government” both before and after the coup-knapping of Aristide.

Ramsey Clark, former attorney general of the United States who led the Tribunal’s Commission of Inquiry in Haiti last year, put the videotaped testimony into political and historical context. Clark pointed out that in 1804, when Haiti won its independence from France—at such a high cost that perhaps half the Haitian people died in that struggle—the Haitian people only had to confront one world power. “Now the Haitian people must confront the whole world in the form of the United Nations, which is subservient to the United States.”

Clark continued: “Unless there is accountability now, the same forces that killed Dessalines [the leader who declared Haiti independent] and removed Aristide twice, unless their individual agents are held responsible, Haiti will not obtain real independence and it is unclear how long the government put into power by this last election will last. Never doubt the importance of this commission and its role in supporting the Haitian people.”

After Clark spoke some of the videotaped testimony that the Commission of Inquiry had gathered was presented.

A high point was the testimony of an old woman who lived in one of the houses that attachés burned in 2005 under the protection of CIVPOL. Attachés are freelancers hired by members of the PNH to do their dirty work—killing and mutilating people—and let the PNH disclaim responsibility. When the attachés told her to lie down on the floor, she explained, “I knew they were going to disappear me. So I ran out the door and away.”

Her testimony and that of others established that the UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti protected the PNH and its attachés when they attacked areas like Bel Air when people were resisting. Two UN officers were directly responsible for atrocities; their cases will be referred to the International Court of Justice.

Brian Concannon, who was acting as the tribunal’s juge d’instruction, a magistrate who examines the evidence in a criminal case under Haitian law, closed the session by examining the responsibility of Bernard Gousse. Gousse was justice minister when these atrocities were committed, and threw most of the political prisoners in jail.

While Gousse’s general responsibility is clear, the only person in the United States who could testify on the details of his illegal acts, the Rev. Jean Juste, suffers from cancer and was not available. His deeds will be examined at another tribunal.

The next International Tribunal is scheduled for Port-au-Prince in September.