Conclusive Evidence of U.S. Role in Kidnapping and Coup
PRESS ADVISORY
Monday, April 4, 2004
Media Contact: Dustin Langley 212-633-6646
As Bush Administration Scrambles to Shore Up Appointed Haitian Regime Commission to Present Conclusive Evidence of U.S. Role in Kidnapping and Coup
Date: Wednesday, April 7
Time: 6:30- 9:30 pm
Location: The Whitman Theatre at Brooklyn College
Panel to include: Rep. Maxine Waters, Rep. Major Owens, Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Ossie Davis, Gil Noble, Amy Goodman, Ron Daniels, and other prominent activists and journalists
The Bush Administration is facing a growing crisis over its role in the coup in Haiti and the kidnapping of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who continues to speak out about his abduction by the U.S. The 15-member organization of Caribbean nations, CARICOM, has refused to recognize the U.S.-installed regime and has called for an investigation, despite intense pressure and threats from the U.S. The 53-member African Union has raised the same demand.
On Wednesday, April 7, the Haiti Commission of Inquiry will initiate a public inquiry of the role of the Bush Administration in the crisis in Haiti. Delegations that visited both the Central African Republic and the Dominican Republic will present conclusive evidence that U.S. Special Forces armed, trained, and directed the "rebels" and engineered the abduction of President Aristide.
The preliminary report from the Commission states, "two hundred U.S. Special Forces soldiers came to the Dominican Republic as part of 'Operation Jaded Task,' with special authorization from President Hipólito Mejia. We have received many reports that this operation was used to train Haitian rebels. We have received many consistent reports of Haitian rebel training centers at or near Dominican military facilities. We have received many consistent reports of guns transported from the Dominican Republic to Haiti, some across the land border, and others shipped by sea."
Johnnie Stevens of the International Action Center, a member of the delegation to the Central African Republic, said, "The U.S.-installed Prime Minister, Gerard Latortue, has hailed the paid mercenaries as freedom fighters, and had thus discredited himself among the Caribbean nations."
Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a desperate bid to lend some credibility to the Latortue government, is now visiting Haiti for the first time. This attempt to put U. S. weight behind the isolated colonial-style regime is a response to its growing isolation. Sara Flounders, of the International Action Center, said, "This visit by Powell is a sign of the Bush Administration’s growing isolation and disarray. The U.S. is desperately trying to shore up a discredited regime in the face of international opposition to the appointed government of Haiti after the stinging rebuke directed at the U.S. by the recent CARICOM meeting." Flounders is a member of the Haiti Commission of Inquiry and was part of the delegation to the Central African Republic, where she visited with President Aristide shortly after his kidnapping.
Kim Ives from Haiti Progres, who was part of the delegation to the Dominican Republic, told the media, "In the course of our investigation here, we met with many Haitians who were forced to flee Haiti following the coup d'etat of Feb. 29. Their testimony gave very concrete names and faces to the stories of violence which we have heard that the so-called rebels, trained and assembled in the Dominican Republic, have carried out in Haiti over the past month. We were also touched by the tears of refugees who told us of how they are apprehensive over the fate of their loved ones left behind in Haiti."
For more information, or to schedule an interview with a member of the Commission, call Dustin Langley at 212-633-6646.
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http://www.peoplesrightsfund.org http://www.iacenter.org/haiti_0407press.htm Operation Jaded Task
Once again, Pravda had it first -- last year.
From 2/23/2003:
US Troopers Secretly Land in Dominican Republic
http://english.pravda.ru/world/2003/02/20/43514.html The military training operation nicknamed Jaded Task took by surprise Dominican Foreign Ministry.
The US Army started today a training operation in the Caribbean country as part of routine maneuvers of the Southern Command. The landing had been kept so secretly that Dominican Foreign Ministry Hugo Tolentino was reported... by the TV.
As per the first reports, the US troops are training Dominican soldiers on anti-terrorism operations in the north of the island. When the national media started announcing the landing, country's Foreign Minister was having a lunch. Tolentino said that, as chief of the Dominican diplomacy, he should have been formally advised, as personally requested to the Dominican Army and the US Embassy to Santo Domingo.
(snip)
However, the most interesting thing, here, is that the Communist Party of the Dominican Republic did know about the operations. This correspondent had access to two formal communications issued by the US Embassy including details of these activities, during the Communist summit held in Buenos Aires in January. There, the US ambassador to Santo Domingo reported about 10.000 soldiers coming to the Dominican Republic to take part of the training.
Moreover, the communists and other leftist forces in the country made know such documents to the local media in November. According to the denounce, US soldiers can freely enter and leave the country without any kind of permission. Also, they can do it through owned means of conveyance.
(more at link)
The Black Commentator had this story up right at the coup!
http://www.blackcommentator.com/80/80_cover_haiti.html and read this from the Boston Globe at
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/03/01/bush_administrat... Bill Fletcher Jr., head of the TransAfrica Forum, a policy group focusing on African and Caribbean issues, was particularly critical of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's role in pursuing the Bush administration's policy on Haiti. Fletcher said black officials should not have expected Powell to urge the administration to move more forcefully in Haiti simply because he is black.
"We have to stop believing," Fletcher said. "We have to stop thinking that Colin Powell wants to do the right thing. If the brother wanted to do the right thing, he would have resigned."
Randall Robinson, former head of TransAfrica, was even more critical of Powell, calling him "the most powerful and damaging black to rise to influence in the world in my lifetime."
700+ dead, thousands wounded--Thanks, Ralph!
please watch this video
http://www.ericblumrich.com/pax.html Haitian rebel leaders, Buteur Metayer, left, Guy Philippe, second from left, and T-Wil, right, along with an unidentified rebel, center, laugh during a rally in Gonaives, where the fighters announced a new name for their joint movement, the National Resistance Front To Liberate Haiti, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2004. An uprising aimed at ousting President Jean-Bertrand Aristide erupted in Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city, on Feb. 5 and has spread to more than a dozen towns. Philippe was Aristide's police chief in Cap-Haitien until he was accused of fomenting a coup and fled to the Dominican Republic in 2002. (AP Photo/Walter Astrada)
Haitian rebel leader Peter Metayer (C) and other rebels patrol the streets of Gonaives, Haiti, Friday, February 13, 2004. (Reuters/Daniel Aguilar)
Conclusive Evidence of U.S. Role in Kidnapping and Coup.
http://www.iacenter.org/haiti_0407press.htm April 7, Whitman Theater at Brooklyn College
The Fire This Time in Haiti was US-Fueled
The Bush Administration Appears to have Succeeded in its Long-Time Goal of Toppling Aristide Through Years of Blocking International Aid to his Impoverished Nation
by Jeffrey Sachs
Haiti, once again, is ablaze. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is widely blamed, and he may be toppled soon. Almost nobody, however, understands that today's chaos was made in Washington -- deliberately, cynically and steadfastly. History will bear this out. In the meantime, political, social, and economic chaos will deepen, and Haiti's impoverished people will suffer
The Bush administration has been pursuing policies likely to topple Aristide since 2001. The hatred began when Aristide, then a parish priest and democracy campaigner against Haiti's ruthless Duvalier dictatorship, preached liberation theology in the 1980s. Aristide's attacks led US conservatives to brand him as the next Fidel Castro.?
They floated stories that Aristide was mentally deranged. Conservative disdain multiplied several-fold when then-president Bill Clinton took up Aristide's cause after he was blocked from electoral victory in 1991 by a military coup. Clinton put Aristide into power in 1994, and conservatives mocked Clinton for wasting America's efforts on "nation building" in Haiti. This is the same right wing that has squandered US$160 billion on a far more violent and dubious effort at "nation building" in Iraq.?
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0301-10.htm