OUR CARIBBEAN: This unwise decision by Haiti regime

[Tinoire]

OUR CARIBBEAN: This unwise decision by Haiti regime - Friday 19, March-2004
by RICKEY SINGH

THE UNITED STATES-approved interim Prime Minister of Haiti, Gerard LaTortue, has shown a surprising lack of appreciation for diplomacy and the historical nature of Haitian-Caribbean Community relations when he announced on Monday a freeze of Haiti’s membership in CARICOM. It is an unwise move, however engineered.

While official focus in Washington, primary sponsor of the interim regime in Haiti, as well as in Port-au-Prince, is expediently designed to specifically blame Jamaica for hosting ousted President Jean Bertrand Aristide, the reality is that the George Bush administration has gone on the offensive to foment division within CARICOM on the issue. But it will not succeed.

None can be so politically obtuse not to understand the real reason: It has to do with independent nations of CARICOM exercising their sovereign right, collectively, to openly question the circumstances of Aristide’s dramatic departure from power and flight into exile on February 29.

Having decided at the Kingston emergency summit of Community Heads of Government to call for a probe into the circumstances of Aristide’s fall from power, it was only logical for the Jamaica Prime Minister to have granted the request of the Haitian leader for a temporary ten-week stay with his family. He had signalled this initiative to CARICOM colleagues as well as to the United States, Canada and France.


It would have been laughable, tragic really, had no CARICOM country, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago or else, agreed to grant a temporary stay to Aristide and his family, while the United States continues to refuse asylum to fleeing Haitian refugees while still “sheltering” former Haitian political thugs and killers.


<snip>

http://www.nationnews.com/StoryView.cfm?Record=48272&Section=Life&Current=2004-03-19%2000%3A00%3A00

[donsu]

1. Hold Strong CARICOM, hold strong

give the criminal bushgang an inch and they will have what's yours.

[seemslikeadream]

2. The rebels and Special Forces

Rebel commander Wilfort Ferdinand, also known by the nickname Ti-Wil, greets leader Guy Philippe, right, with an affectionate pat as he arrives with a group of rebel troops in Cap Haitien, Haiti, Saturday. (AP /Pablo Aneli).

Rebel leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain talks with other rebels at their headquarters in the Mont Joli Hotel in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, Saturday Feb. 28, 2004. (AP Photo/Pablo Aneli).

Members of the U.S. special forces sit in the back of a truck, from part of a convoy which delivered people to the Dominican Republic. (Reuters/Andrew Winning)

[seemslikeadream]

3. The Destabilization of Haiti

by Michel Chossudovsky
The Civilian "Opposition"

The so-called "Democratic Convergence" (DC) is a group of some 200 political organizations, led by former Port-au-Prince mayor Evans Paul. The "Democratic Convergence" (DC) together with "The Group of 184 Civil Society Organizations" (G-184) has formed a so-called "Democratic Platform of Civil Society Organizations and Opposition Political Parties"....

The Role of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)

In Haiti, this "civil society opposition" is bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy which works hand in glove with the CIA. The Democratic Platform is supported by the International Republican Institute (IRI) , which is an arm of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Senator John McCain is Chairman of IRI's Board of Directors. (See Laura Flynn, Pierre Labossière and Robert Roth, Hidden from the Headlines: The U.S. War Against Haiti, California-based Haiti Action Committee (HAC), http://www.haitiprogres.com/eng11-12.html )....

The IMF's Bitter "Economic Medicine"

The IMF and the World Bank are key players in the process of economic and political destabilization. While carried out under the auspices of an intergovernmental body, the IMF reforms tend to support US strategic and foreign policy objectives.


In February 2003, Washington announced the appointment of James Foley as Ambassador to Haiti . Foley had been a State Department spokesman under the Clinton administration during the war on Kosovo. He previously held a position at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Foley had been sent to Port au Prince in advance of the CIA sponsored operation. He was transferred to Port au Prince in September 2003, from a prestige diplomatic position in Geneva, where he was Deputy Head of Mission to the UN European office.

It is worth recalling Ambassador Foley's involvement in support of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1999....

Media Manipulation...

The Militarization of the Caribbean Basin...

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO402D.html


Supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide scream at the gate of the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince while he holds a news conference, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2004. Aristide appealed for the world to come to Haiti's aid, warning that thousands of deaths and a wave of boat people could result from political chaos. (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan)

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

4. Typical sock puppet.

It should made a lot of people here happy that Aristide (the Hussein of the Caribbean) is now gone and we once again have restored democracy.

[DulceDecorum]

5. Africa does not tolerate coups d'etat.

Africa has of course experienced a few hundred coups since its first state became independent in 1957.
For many years, the leadership of Africa almost accepted coups as a routine method of transferring power. But that started to change in July 1999.
At its summit in Algiers that month, the Organisation of African Unity approved an historic resolution to outlaw coups.
Departing quite radically from its 36-year-old policy of non-intervention in the affairs of member states, the OAU leaders decreed that henceforth governments that came to power by coups, or other unconstitutional means, would be suspended from the organisation.
The OAU suspended the governments of Cote d'Ivoire and the Comoros soon after that. In the latter case, it began protracted negotiations to defuse the intra-party conflicts which had sparked several coups over the years.
When the African Union (AU) took over from the OAU, it also took over the anti-coup policy and strengthened it, at least on paper, by giving itself much more explicit powers to intervene in countries to stop extreme violence and abuses of power.
Last year the AU - with the South African government very much to the fore - reversed, by diplomacy, a coup in S‹o Tomé and Pr’ncipe, the Atlantic ocean island state near Bioko, the island where Equatorial Guinea's capital Malabo is located.
http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=372493&fSectionId=233&fSetId=257

A foreign-planned coup against the government of Equatorial Guinea has just been thwarted (March 9, 2004) and the entire continent of Africa wants to see the mercenaries get a dose of their own medicine, ie swing by the neck until they are dead. The mercenaries are alleged to hold South African passports but that did not stop the government of South Africa from ratting them out and then not agitating for their release.

South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said that her department was in no rush to assist the South Africans in Zimbabwe, or at least seven others among those under house arrest in Equatorial Guinea.
“They are not exactly innocent travellers finding themselves in a difficult situation,” she was quoted as saying.
http://www.examiner.ie/breaking/2004/03/11/story137872.html

The Caribbean should follow suit.
CARICOM should outlaw coups.
Now would be a good time to start, and I am SURE that they could ask Africa for assistance if need be.

"Even the US and Britain cannot do what they are doing to other countries. In Zimbabwe it is very impossible," he said.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200403190204.html

[Dirk39]

6. Thank you for posting this....

if Africa would wake up again and raise it's voice, like parts of Latin-America seem to do. This would be good news.
Please keep on posting news like this!
Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[bpilgrim]

7. they are subjected to them

hence the term... but what has that got to do with haiti :shrug:

peace