[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 22 (Wednesday, March 2, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E343-E344]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      ON THE COUP D'ETAT IN HAITI

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. MAXINE WATERS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 2, 2005

  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, 1 year ago this week, our government was a 
party to a coup d'etat in Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest 
country. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the democratically-elected 
President of Haiti, was forced to leave Haiti in a regime change 
supported by the United States. President Aristide left the country on 
February 29, 2004, on board a U.S. airplane when U.S. Marines and 
Embassy officials came to his home in the wee hours of the morning and 
told him to leave immediately or he and thousands of other Haitians 
would be killed.
  One year later, the tragic results of regime change in Haiti are 
clear. Haiti is in total chaos. The interim government, which was put 
in power by the United States and has received unprecedented support 
from our government, is a complete failure. Violence is widespread, and 
security is non-existent. Schools are shut down; hospitals are not 
operating; and roads and infrastructure are in disrepair. Dead bodies 
are found lying in the streets.
  Heavily-armed gangs roam Haiti freely. Many of these gangs consist of 
former soldiers from the brutal Haitian army, which was disbanded 10 
years ago. Residents of poor neighborhoods and members of Lavalas, 
President Aristide's political party, are murdered without any legal 
consequences. Members of Haiti's wealthy elite, including American 
citizen Andy Apaid, are widely suspected of financing the former 
soldiers and paying gangs to kill Lavalas supporters. In some 
neighborhoods, Lavalas supporters have taken up arms and begun to fight 
back against this oppression. So the violence is escalating in Haiti, 
and no one is safe.
  The interim government has been unable to enforce the rule of law, 
disarm the gangs, or restore the government's authority in the cities 
controlled by former soldiers. When Interim Prime Minister Gerard 
Latortue set a deadline of September 15 of last year for all groups 
holding illegal weapons to disarm, the deadline came and went, but 
nothing happened.
  After the interim government failed to disarm the former soldiers, it 
resorted to bribing them. According to press reports in January, the 
interim government agreed to provide payments over a 3-month-period to 
all of the estimated 6,000 former members of the Haitian army. The 
payments will average about $4,800 per person--in a country where most 
people live on less than a dollar a day. The cost of these payments was 
estimated to be $29 million. The interim government never explained 
where the funds for these payments would be obtained, but Interim Prime 
Minister Latortue

[[Page E344]]

has already distributed checks to dozens of armed individuals who claim 
to be former soldiers and who still refuse to turn in their weapons. Is 
this the conduct of a government that wants to disarm the thugs, or a 
government that supports them?
  Human rights violations are commonplace throughout Haiti. Amnesty 
International has expressed serious concerns about arbitrary arrests, 
ill-treatment in detention centers, and summary executions attributed 
to members of the Haitian National Police. Several members of President 
Aristide's government and prominent supporters of Lavalas have been 
detained illegally, including former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, 
former Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert, and Haitian singer Anne 
Auguste. As of February 18, there were over 700 political prisoners in 
Haiti's jails. Most of these prisoners have been held illegally for 
months without formal charges.
  The incompetence of the interim government has manifested itself in 
other ways as well. Haiti's government was the only government in the 
path of Hurricane Jeanne that did not warn or evacuate its citizens 
when the storm came racing through the Caribbean last September. Jeanne 
pummeled the United States, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and 
Barbados as a full-blown hurricane, and killed 34 people in all of 
those countries combined. She was only a tropical storm when she hit 
Haiti, but she killed over 3,000 Haitians and left thousands more 
hungry and homeless, because the interim government was unprepared to 
protect the Haitian people.
  The Provisional Electoral Council, which is responsible for 
organizing elections, has been discredited by corruption. Roselor 
Julien, the former president of the Council, resigned last November, 
warning that other panel members were trying to rig the ballot and the 
council was not capable of ensuring the elections would be free and 
fair. The council also does not include any representatives of Lavalas, 
which continues to enjoy widespread support among the Haitian people 
despite the imprisonment of its leaders. It is abundantly clear that 
the council is incapable of organizing free and fair elections. If the 
current council does manage to organize elections, only the winners 
will accept the result.
  The people of Haiti have suffered tremendously over the past year. 
They deserve better. They deserve to live in peace and security. They 
deserve to be warned when hurricanes are headed for their homes. They 
deserve to know that they can walk to work or buy groceries without 
having gangs kill them for the food they carry. And they deserve free, 
fair and democratic elections in which all political parties can 
participate.
  When President Aristide was forced to leave Haiti a year ago, he was 
told that if he refused to leave, thousands of Haitians would die. Yet, 
in the 12 months that followed his departure, thousands of Haitians 
have died, and as long as the interim government continues to fail, 
there will be no end to the suffering and violence facing the Haitian 
people.
  It is time for the United States Government to accept the fact that 
regime change has failed in Haiti. The United States must ensure that 
Haiti disarms the thugs, immediately frees political prisoners, and 
organizes free and fair elections in order to restore security and 
democracy to the Haitian people. The United States must also provide 
the necessary assistance to enable Haiti to reopen schools and 
hospitals and rebuild Haiti's infrastructure. It is time for the United 
States to clean up its mess.

                          ____________________