[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 23 (Friday, February 27, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1877-S1881]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 HAITI

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, today things are peaceful in Washington, 
DC, and around the United States. We are all enjoying our time at home 
with our families knowing that we can walk outside and go to our local 
grocery store or to a shopping or a local theater, and knowing that we 
are reasonably assured we can do so with the assurance that we will not 
be subjected to being killed or be subjected to a violent activity.
  But today, as we are here, a reign of terror has descended upon a 
small and impoverished country a few hundred miles off our coast, the 
poorest country in this hemisphere, Haiti. A reign of terror has 
descended upon Haiti. It is a crisis of immense human proportions.
  As I take the floor today, the people of Haiti are living under the 
threat of anarchy--under the threat that a few well-armed thugs and 
killers who are well known to them because of their past involvement in 
plotting coup d'etat in Haiti because in the previous years they have 
been convicted by the courts in Haiti of murder. These same individuals 
now have guns, modern weapons, flak jackets, helmets, and communication 
gear. They are threatening to take over the democratically elected 
Government of Haiti, and they are going to do it by killing thousands 
of people.
  Today, stores and shops are closed in Port-au-Prince. The situation 
is deteriorating by the hour. Commercial airlines have cancelled all 
flights in and out of Haiti. Private charter flights have been halted. 
Parts of the main port are reportedly on fire. U.S. diplomatic 
representatives are hunkered down in the embassy compound guarded by 
some Marines. France, Canada, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic have 
withdrawn their personnel.
  What is our response? Silence, nothing. We are a pitiful, helpless 
giant when it comes to averting a humanitarian crisis in a small 
impoverished country in our hemisphere a few hundred miles from our 
shores.
  We can send $160 billion to Iraq. We can send our young men and women 
to Iraq to die. We can send billions of taxpayer dollars to Iraq to 
build their infrastructure. But we can do nothing to stop the bloodshed 
and the anarchy descending upon Haiti today.

  I find this inexcusable. We have a moral obligation, a moral 
imperative because of our past relationships with Haiti, because it is 
a neighbor of ours, because it is in our hemisphere, because we are the 
most powerful country in this hemisphere, let alone the world, and 
because we believe in democracy, we believe in the rule of law, we 
believe in human rights and human dignity.
  Do we only believe in it for Iraq? Do we only believe in it when it 
suits our

[[Page S1878]]

convenience? Do we only believe in these principles when the country 
has a lot of oil, for example? Are these just so many words we utter 
about human rights, democracy, and rule of law? When it comes to a 
small, black, impoverished nation where people are poorer than dirt, 
where they have been subject to centuries of dictatorial rule, where 
they have been ignored by their neighbors and by us for centuries, 
where they have been ground down for a couple of hundred years, I guess 
when it comes to a country like that, like Haiti, democracy, human 
rights, rule of law does not mean much. I guess it just means we can 
turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to what is happening.
  The situation in Haiti cries out for us to do something. The poorest 
people in this hemisphere are crying out to us to help them. Somehow, 
we are saying we cannot do anything. Talk about a lack of moral spine. 
Where is the moral spine of this administration when it comes to Haiti, 
when it comes to a poor, black, impoverished country like that? What is 
our response to the situation?
  I read in the newspaper this morning that Powell puts pressure on 
Haitian leader to resign, that Secretary Powell is questioning whether 
he should stay in office, and as Secretary Powell even said:

       He is the democratically elected president, but he has had 
     difficulties in his presidency.

  United States officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a 
resignation would be in order, that Aristide should resign.
  He has been democratically elected. He has had some difficulties, and 
therefore he should resign.
  Let us take a look at that record, because I find this totally 
unacceptable and the American people ought to find this unacceptable. 
These statements, combined with our inaction, have encouraged and 
emboldened a lawless insurrection by armed thugs and murderers. This is 
no legitimate uprising indigenous to the people of Haiti. These are a 
few killers and thugs who got their hands on guns, who were in the old 
army Aristide disbanded, and now they want to come back and take over 
Haiti again. Guess what. We are helping them by our inaction.
  Human Rights Watch has said these insurrections are by the very same 
people who are responsible for widespread killings and abuses that 
occurred during the military rule in the early 1990s.

  Who are these people? We see them in the Post. They get pictures 
taken. They give interviews. Guy Philippe is quoted all the time. Kind 
of a handsome-looking guy. Guy Philippe has given all these interviews. 
He said in the paper he is going to get Aristide. We are going to get 
him. He said, No way, Jose, will he be allowed to stay in office. This 
Guy Philippe knows how to use colloquial English.
  Who is Guy Philippe? Who is this individual who now says he wants to 
run the country, that he wants to take it over, who has the guns and 
the arms? Well, not a very savory character. Guy Philippe was convicted 
of drug trafficking in Panama. He was extradited to the Dominican 
Republic, put in jail in the Dominican Republic. Somehow--we do not 
know how--somehow he got out of jail last year and, lo and behold, now 
he is in Haiti with guns and with his old thugs from the military.
  Louis Jodel Chamblain, one of the main leaders of this FRAPH, the 
Revolution Front for Haitian Advancement Progress. It means ``hit'' in 
Creole. Again, where does he come from? Well, you do not have to go 
very far back. In the early 1990s during the military government this 
guy was very active--in killing people. In fact, he was convicted in 
absentia in September of 1995 and sentenced to life imprisonment for 
the murder of Antoine Izmery, a well-known prodemocracy activist. 
Chamblain has been notorious for killing people in the past. Yet he is 
in Haiti right now, one of the guys who is going to liberate Haiti. And 
you have Jean Tatoune, Jean-Pierre Baptiste, also a FRAPH leader, also 
in Haiti, one of those responsible for the massacre in Raboteau in 
1994. Again, he was convicted in absentia and sentenced to life 
imprisonment.
  He is back again. He will liberate Haiti. These three individuals--
and there are only three I mentioned; there are more who used to be in 
the military--want to take Haiti back. They do not want democratic 
government. They do not want to run for office.
  Again, a little history is in order. We all know Haiti was one of the 
first countries where there was a slave uprising in 1804 and they threw 
off the French rule and defeated Napoleon, defeated Napoleon's forces 
and became a free country. It was kind of unsettling because we still 
had slavery in America and a lot of Senators and Congressmen at that 
time in the Congress of the United States were very upset about this 
slave revolt in Haiti. We had to be very careful it did not reach our 
shores.
  After that, Haiti devolved into one dictatorship after another. For 
the better part of the last century, most of the dictators were 
supported by us, the Duvalier regime being the most infamous of them 
all.
  Finally, after the Haitian people had been tortured and enough people 
killed, they rose up in the 1980s and they got rid of not only Papa 
``Doc'' Duvalier, who died, but also his son, Baby ``Doc,'' and ran him 
out of the country. They had an electoral process and had an election 
in 1990 everyone said was fair, and a guy by the name of John Bertrand 
Aristide won the Presidency in 1990. He was inaugurated, if I am not 
mistaken, in January of 1991.
  How long was he President? Eight months. In 8 months the military 
came in and threw him out. There was a coup d'etat and they threw him 
out of the country. And thus began a ruthless killing field in Haiti. 
Of all those people who had supported Aristide, the military went out 
and killed them. Some of these guys like Chamblain and Tatoune were 
involved in this.
  The international community came down pretty hard on Haiti at that 
time. Under President Clinton, we sent about 20,000 troops to Haiti to 
restore order and to bring Aristide back as the elected President, 
which was accomplished.
  It took 3 years, but we accomplished it. He came back, if I am not 
mistaken, in late 1994 or early 1995.
  One of the things that was agreed upon with Aristide is that the 3 
years he was out of the country would count as part of his presidency. 
For the good of Haiti, and to move democracy along, President Aristide 
agreed to that. Though he only served 8 months as President, he agreed 
they would count all the time he was out of the country as part of his 
presidency.
  He came back, and he had about a year in office before he had to 
leave, on a 5-year term. Before he left office, though, he did one 
thing: President Aristide, in 1995, disbanded the military. He said: 
Haiti does not need a military. No one is going to invade us. It uses 
up a lot of the money that should go for hospitals and education and 
things like that, paying all these soldiers. We do not need soldiers.
  He was right. Haiti did not need a military. So he disbanded the 
military. Since that time, there has not been a military in Haiti.
  A lot of these military people left the country, Guy Philippe being 
one of them, who went to Panama and got involved in drug trafficking 
and got caught. He got put, as I said, in prison in the Dominican 
Republic. Now he is out. Now he is back with a gun.
  A little history is important to see what happened.
  Aristide was out for 5 years because he also agreed he would abide by 
the Constitution and he would not seek a consecutive reelection. The 
Constitution of Haiti says for a 5-year presidential term, you cannot 
have two consecutive terms. You can come back and run later on, but you 
cannot have two consecutive terms. President Aristide agreed to that.
  From 1995 until 2000, there was another President in there named 
Preval. I will not go into that. Aristide basically was not heard of 
much during that period of time. He formed a new political party. He 
ran again in 2000 and was reelected in what was deemed a fair election. 
Some people say only 5 percent of the people turned out, but there are 
other accounts that as many as 60 percent of the people turned out to 
vote in that election. But the opposition wanted to boycott it, would 
not participate.
  Aristide was reelected for another term. Since that time, the Bush 
administration has put an embargo on financial aid and assistance to 
Haiti. So when Secretary Powell says he has had difficulties in his 
presidency, sure, when we pull the rug out from underneath him, and we 
cut down aid and

[[Page S1879]]

support to a democratically elected government, of course they are 
going to have difficulties.
  This is a poor country. This is a country where the military wants to 
take over again. This is a country that for 200 years had no democracy 
whatsoever and is still struggling to try to figure out how to make 
democracy work there. Of course there are difficulties. So I question 
Secretary Powell's and our administration's insistence somehow that 
Aristide has to go.
  One other thing is important. Recently the CARICOM nations--this is 
the Caribbean community of nations--met in Jamaica to come up with a 
proposal to help try to solve the impasse in Haiti, the political 
stalemate in Haiti. They met. They invited the opposition to come. They 
invited Aristide to come. Aristide went to Kingston, Jamaica. The 
opposition boycotted it.
  The CARICOM nations decided on a plan they promoted for a political 
settlement in Haiti. Guess who backed that plan. Our State Department, 
I assume speaking for the President. Our Secretary of State, the same 
Secretary Colin Powell, supported the CARICOM proposal, which was a 
power-sharing arrangement Aristide would have to give to the 
opposition. For the benefit of Haiti, to promote, again, democratic 
principles, Aristide agreed to that. He did not have to, but he agreed 
to it. Guess who did not agree to the CARICOM proposal. The opposition.
  Let's get this straight. The Caribbean community comes up with a 
proposal for political settlement. Aristide agrees to it; the 
opposition does not. Our own Secretary of State promoted the CARICOM 
proposal, the settlement, and now our Secretary of State is saying it 
is Aristide who has to go. Wait a minute. He was the one who agreed to 
the proposal. It was the opposition who did not agree.
  What is going on here? One has to ask, what is going on? I see this, 
and I say, there is a disconnect here. There is something wrong here. 
There is something wrong here when all of the focus is being put on 
Aristide to leave the country. When you have murderers and thugs, ex-
military people convicted in absentia of vicious killings and murders 
in Haiti, who left the country, who are now coming back in with guns, 
modern weaponry, one has to ask, where did they get them?
  This is a country of 8 million people. How many people are we talking 
about in Gonaives or in Cap-Haitien or places like that? The best 
estimates are maybe a couple hundred. One town got overrun with 40 
people. Forty people with guns came in, shot the police chief, killed 
him, burned the police station down, and left the town. Out of 8 
million people, you have 200 or 300 people who have these guns causing 
this trouble.
  That is a popular uprising? You might say, well, why don't the 
Haitian people, then, confront these people? Because the Haitian people 
do not have an army because Aristide disbanded the army. The police 
forces he set up are ill-trained, ill-equipped to deal with it because 
we did not come in to help them set up a professional police force in 
Haiti.
  So when you come in with guns blazing, and you have the guns, who is 
going to stand up to you? That is why I opened my comments by saying, 
the people in Haiti are in a reign of terror right now. And make no 
mistake about it, if Guy Philippe and Chamblain and those armed thugs 
are able to take over Port-au-Prince and either kill President Aristide 
or somehow run him out of the country, there will be a killing field in 
Haiti. Thousands of people will lose their lives because this army, 
vicious as it was in the 1990s, will be even more vicious now in 
seeking retribution against those who supported Aristide in disbanding 
the Haitian military.
  It is devolving into anarchy in Port-au-Prince and the rest of Haiti. 
People are fearful. They are fearful for their children, for their 
families. Businesses are closed. Food aid. We were feeding 300,000 
people a day--malnourished, starving people. That now is not happening. 
Think about the implications of that. Think about it. Don't we have a 
moral obligation here? The Bush administration, justifying inaction, 
says it does not want to choose sides. I am not asking anyone to choose 
a side. What we are asking the administration to do is to--right now, 
this weekend, tomorrow--join with the OAS and send in a peacekeeping 
force to bring some order to let people know they cannot run roughshod, 
they cannot come in and shoot police stations up and burn buildings 
down, to help create some stability.
  The side we should choose is the side of democracy. That is the side 
we should choose. These armed thugs were not elected. President 
Aristide was elected, not the armed thugs. It is clear that the 
administration's unwillingness to get involved is paving the way for 
the destruction of Haiti's fledgling democracy.
  What about all this talk of spreading democracy? What about the 
forward strategy for freedom? Can you imagine how this must sound to 
Haitians as we embolden and encourage the gunmen, criminals, and thugs 
who are now trying to overthrow the democratically elected Government 
of Haiti? The administration speaks about democracy halfway around the 
world. What about democracy 600 miles off our shores?
  To be sure, the fledgling democracy in Haiti is imperfect. I am the 
first to admit that. But it would be a profound mistake of historic 
proportions that I believe would have deep moral implications for our 
country if we abandon this fledgling democracy to the likes of these 
gunmen.
  Well, maybe the administration says this is an easy way out. We don't 
do anything, we just let it go. Talk about an abdication of our 
position in this hemisphere. We have a responsibility in Haiti--a 
responsibility based on our democratic values, a responsibility based 
on humanitarianism.
  Mr. President, there is one other thing. There are now 20,000 U.S. 
citizens in Haiti. We have a responsibility to protect them also. What 
about those 20,000 American citizens in Haiti? Why are we not 
protecting them? I ask that question. Why are we not protecting the 
20,000 U.S. citizens living in Haiti? Maybe you can draw your own 
conclusions. I don't know.
  Well, what needs to be done? Right now, there is a debate on how we 
got there. Who is right? Who is wrong? Did Aristide do this, or did he 
not do that? Did he keep out the opposition? There is all this talk 
about how we got here. When your house is on fire, you put out the fire 
first. You don't go around saying, How did it start? Get the fire out, 
then we can have the debate about how we got there.
  Haiti is on fire. It is burning right now. Innocent men, women, and 
children are being killed right now. We can stop it. We have the power 
to stop it--with very little involvement on our part. We have the power 
to stop it.
  Tomorrow, the United States should deploy a stabilization force in 
Haiti along with the Organization of American States. The Organization 
of American States has a history in this, by the way. They have sent 
peacekeeping operations to places like Yugoslavia. The Caribbean 
countries are one-third of the OAS. They have sent people, too, as 
peacekeepers. They have experience in this. They can be involved with 
us in setting up a stabilizing force this weekend in Haiti. If we were 
to send that signal now, that would stop these thugs and gunmen and 
murderers in their tracks. But I can tell you, from conversations I 
have had on the phone with people in Haiti today, that the people in 
Haiti are thinking that we are on the side of the thugs and the 
killers. Why? Because we are not doing anything and they have the guns. 
If we were to send in a stabilization force, the people of Haiti would 
know we are on their side. That would give them courage. But right now, 
the poor people of Haiti believe that they are alone--alone, forgotten, 
abandoned, as they have tried to implement a democratic form of 
government in their country.

  The administration says they don't want to act until there is a 
political settlement. Mr. President, you cannot have a political 
settlement until you have some stability. You cannot have a political 
settlement when people are being gunned down in the streets, when armed 
thugs are burning down police stations. Think about that.
  The people who want to ``liberate'' Haiti are the people with guns. 
What are they doing? They are burning down police stations. Does that 
give you an idea of what they want to do after they take over?
  The administration says they are reluctant to act without a political 
settlement. You cannot have a political

[[Page S1880]]

settlement without stability. Stability first. That is why I say this 
administration, tomorrow, needs to send in a peacekeeping force to 
Haiti, along with the Organization of American States. It can be done 
in less than 24 hours. It would stop the bloodshed immediately. Then we 
can work on the CARICOM proposal or other proposals for a political 
settlement.
  How are you going to have a political dialog, a political settlement 
in this environment right now? Our own embassy staff cannot even leave 
the compound or move around. How can we work on dialog and a 
resolution? You have to have a secure environment in order for a 
productive dialog to take place. Is it this administration's intent to 
totally destabilize the Aristide government, the democratically elected 
government of Haiti, and let the gunmen take over and hope somehow we 
can deal with them later? Is that their intent? Because that is who is 
going to take over. It will not be the political opposition. It will be 
the people with the guns. The most lethal element in Haiti will be the 
ones who will take over. Don't take my word for it. Read the paper. 
What are Guy Phillipe and Jodel Chamblain and others saying to the 
press? They are going to run things, not some civilian opposition.
  After we would send in a stabilizing force this weekend, we would 
work with OAS, the CARICOM, to mediate a political solution, one that 
respects and preserves Haiti's emerging democracy. On February 20, I 
joined with a number of my colleagues in sending a letter to Secretary 
Powell saying the CARICOM initiative offers the best vehicle for a 
peaceful resolution of this critical situation. If we fail to act, 
there will be real consequences.
  Consider what happened in 1993 and 1994 when we didn't act at that 
time. Thousands of Haitians were killed, torture chambers were set up. 
There was raping and pillaging and looting. Many more fled to the U.S. 
and other neighboring countries. That was in 1993. That is when we had 
a military dictatorship in Haiti. The same people are now trying to 
overthrow the Aristide government.
  But today we are on the brink of even a bigger catastrophe. The World 
Food Program, which I have mentioned, is feeding about 300,000 Haitians 
a day. This distribution, for all intents and purposes, is stopping. A 
humanitarian crisis of immense proportions is happening on our own 
doorstep, and we do nothing.
  What kind of signal do we send to the children of Haiti? Is it our 
signal that the only way to get anything done is to pick up a gun, to 
kill, to intimidate?
  The issue is not about partisanship. The issue is about a 
humanitarian crisis. This small impoverished country, the poorest in 
our hemisphere, a nation with this long history of dictatorial regimes 
supported a lot by us is crying out for help.
  We have a small, diminutive man, a former Catholic priest, Jean-
Bertrand Aristide, a hero to his people, elected freely twice, 
overthrown once by a murderous coup in the nineties who has come back 
fearlessly to try to engender a political democratic solution to the 
problems in Haiti, this very small diminutive man who disbanded the 
military in Haiti is asking for our help to save the democratic system.
  Every time we have called upon President Aristide to take a step back 
to do something for the democratic process in Haiti, he has done so. As 
I said, when he was in exile in the nineties, in our dealing with the 
military in Haiti, we made Aristide agree that the 3 years he was in 
exile would be counted as part of his Presidency, even though he was 
not there, even though he served only 8 months as President. For the 
good of democracy and his constitution, he agreed to those requests. 
Even though he would have been reelected in a landslide in 1995, he 
abided by the constitution and did not seek reelection, as the 
constitution provides.
  So this little man without an army, without any oil, without some 
strategic importance in the world community, this little diminutive 
man, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former Catholic priest, who, back when 
he first started in the eighties, only wanted to increase the 
educational level, the health level, the living standards of the 
poorest people in Haiti--it has been his life's work--is crying out for 
our help to save democracy.
  What are we saying to him? Leave the country. You leave the country 
and turn it over to the gunmen. That is not saving democracy. That is 
destroying it. That is killing the fledgling democracy in Haiti.
  President Aristide said he would serve until his term is up, I 
believe it is February of 2006, but when Secretary Powell and the 
CARICOM nations went to Aristide and said, Look, to save your fledgling 
democracy, you have to agree upon powersharing, upon this, all the 
elements they put into that package, what did Aristide say? OK, to save 
democracy in Haiti, he would do it. The opposition, to save democracy, 
would they come halfway and meet him? They said, no, they would not 
agree to that. The only thing they would agree to is Aristide going 
completely out of the country and them taking over.
  One has to wonder what is going on. This is a seminal moment, I 
believe, in the history of our country and in our relationship to the 
rest of this hemisphere because what we do or do not do in Haiti this 
weekend and immediately speaks to what the American character is, what 
we really stand for. The moment is now.
  Haiti could descend into anarchy at any moment. On the radios in 
Port-au-Prince, opposition people are getting on the air saying 
Aristide is fleeing the country; right now he is fleeing the country. 
The poor people who were counting on Aristide to protect them now are 
frightened, and it emboldens the gunmen and the thugs to take over 
because they do not see us anywhere, and not seeing us anywhere must 
mean we are on the gunmen's side because they have the guns.

  Now they are trying to say this is some kind of a popular uprising. 
These gunmen, these murderers, these ex-military people were not even 
in Haiti. They had been convicted by the courts in Haiti of murder, 
sentenced to life in prison in absentia. There is no popular uprising. 
These are armed thugs coming across the border from the Dominican 
Republic taking arms, communications equipment, and everything with 
them and terrorizing people, killing policemen, and burning down police 
stations.
  They are well equipped. They have big weapons. They move at night. 
They know how to communicate. This is an uprising of Haitian people? 
Not a bit.
  The people of Haiti are crying out to us. It speaks to our moral 
values. Are we going to pay attention to the poorest country in this 
hemisphere, one of the poorest in the world, almost an entirely black 
country where they have been beaten and trod upon for so long and where 
they saw a little bit of hope and finally getting out from under 
military rule, under dictatorial regimes, such as the Duvaliers, being 
able to have some power to vote for who they wanted to see in office, 
not who we wanted to see in office? Are we just now going to turn our 
backs on them?
  I hope not. I hope that somewhere in this State Department, somewhere 
in this administration there is a spark of conscience that says we 
cannot stand by, that we must send a peacekeeping force to Haiti 
immediately, and we have to work upon a political settlement rather 
than a settlement at the end of a gun barrel held by thugs and 
murderers.
  I hope there is a spark of conscience someplace because if there is 
not, a lot of people are going to die, a lot of innocent people, poor 
people, people who do not have much to begin with. They are going to 
get in their boats. They are going to want to flee the country. What 
did our President say? If they come out, we will pick them up and send 
them right back. Think about that. Poor people trying to flee the 
killing fields, and we are telling them if they get in a boat and try 
to go someplace, we will send them back.
  Is this America? Is this the country my mother came to as an 
immigrant? There is a lot to ponder in our relationship with Haiti at 
this point in time. It is a seminal moment. I believe what happens 
within the next 24 to 48 hours will determine the fate of democracy in 
Haiti. It will determine the fate of thousands of innocent Haitian 
people and it will determine our moral standing, not only in this 
hemisphere but in the world.
  I hope that spark of conscience happens very soon somewhere in this 
administration, because anarchy, murder,

[[Page S1881]]

and killings are going to happen very soon unless that spark of 
conscience happens somewhere in this administration.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant journal clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, we are still in some negotiations and will 
be in for a bit longer. But I will speak for a few moments on several 
issues while those negotiations continue.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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