HUMAN
RIGHTS SITUATION IN HAITI STILL DETERIORATING
(The
following article is from
the February 1-15,
2008
issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles
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Members of the Canada Haiti Action Network
(CHAN) are concerned that a
deteriorating human rights situation in Haiti is being ignored in
Canada.
"There are a number of very disturbing events
in Haiti during the past five months that have gone totally ignored and
unreported in Canada," said Kevin Skerrett, a CHAN coordinator, on Jan.
17.
"On August 12 last year, one of Haiti's most
prominent political and human rights spokespeople, Lovinsky Pierre
Antoine, was kidnapped. He has not been heard from since," said
Skerrett. "In late October, journalist Guy Delva of Reuters was obliged
to flee the country with his family because of death threats he
received on his cell phone and threatening conduct by persons unknown.
He has since returned to Haiti, but now must depend on extensive
personal security.
"Most recently, Amnesty International has
issued three separate urgent action appeals on behalf of political
rights activists in Haiti - on December 18, January 9, and January 11.
They also issued a follow-up urgent action appeal on January 11
concerning the dire conditions of Haitians working in the agriculture
industry in neighbouring Dominican Republic."
Skerrett noted, "Considering that Canada
claims its extensive assistance of the police and justice agencies of
the Haiti government are a great success, we are entitled to ask how
`success' is measured."
Speaking in Vancouver, CHAN coordinator Roger
Annis expressed disappointment with Canadian politicians for their
silence on human rights in Haiti. "I was a member of a human rights
delegation that Lovinsky Pierre Antoine was accompanying when he
disappeared on August 12. Imagine our disappointment three days later
when I was told by the Canadian embassy in Port au Prince that they
were not concerned about his disappearance. Can you imagine Canada
making such a declaration if a prominent Burmese democracy activist
were to be kidnapped?"
The Haitian non-governmental organization,
Plateforme des organisations haitiennes des droits humains
(Coordinating Body of Haitian Human Rights Organisations), reported
last October that the number of prisoners in Haiti's jails has doubled
since the period preceding the foreign intervention that removed
Haiti's then-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, from office in
February 2004.
"No one in the Canadian government is paying
the slightest attention to the recent concerns expressed by Amnesty
International and other human rights organizations," said Annis. "As
our delegation observed, Haiti is living through an unprecedented
economic, social and political calamity. (We) want a serious inquiry
into the circumstances of Canada's involvement in Haitian affairs. We
want the spotlight placed on the failure of the agencies of the Haitian
government funded by Canada to protect human rights, notably the police
force and the justice ministry. We want the resources of the United
Nations and Canada to be made available for inquiry into the threats
and disappearances of human rights activists."
According to the September 2006 issue of the
UK medical journal The Lancet, there were four thousand political
killings in Haiti between February 2004 and late 2005 committed by the
Haitian National Police and the United Nations-sponsored military
occupation force. Although political repression on this scale has
eased, the latest threats to rights activists show that democracy as
Haitians knew it before February, 2004 has not been restored.
Found
at:
http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/articleprint11/12_HUMAN_RIGHTS_SITUATION_IN_HAITI_STILL_DETERIORATING.html