USA brings "Freedom" to Haiti-Here's what it looks like

[poe]

Now that President George W. Bush has outlined his plans to "bring freedom to the world," it would seem urgent that the world look closely at what Bush calls his successful mission to bring freedom to Haiti in 2004. Yet with Iraq dominating the news, most media ignore Haiti. When there is coverage, as when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell visited in December to celebrate the U.S. and U.N. "success," it is brief and distorted. Recent international documentation of extreme human rights abuses by the U.S.-backed de-facto Haitian government should wake up the media.
Now a new human rights report from the Center for the Study of Human Rights (CSHR) at the University of Miami (Florida) has documented some of the worst abuses committed directly by the Haitian National Police (HNP), and in some cases by the UN forces (MINUSTAH) accompanying them. The noted Philadelphia attorney, Thomas Griffin, and other investigators include horrendous photos they took of boys as young as twelve, lying unattended in pools of their own blood in the General Hospital, where doctors refused to treat them. Other photos show bodies left in the street and dozens of bodies rotting and piled high at the morgue after police and UN invasions of Port au Prince slums targeted as Aristide strongholds. Interviews with police and others make it clear that there has been a systematic campaign of political repression and assassination aimed at Aristide's Lavalas Party. The report ties the abuse directly to "sensitization" of many sectors of Haitian society--human rights groups, judges, students and police alike--by U.S. non governmental organizations like IFES (International Foundation for Electoral Systems) with support from USAID. (See www.ijdg.org/cshrhaitireport.pdf).
U.S. officials like the ultra-right-wing Roger Noriega (Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs), continue to express support for Latortue. "Haiti is on the right track," he insisted recently. The U.S. announced jointly with Canada, France and the Haitian government, that $41 million will be given to support Haitian elections next fall. "The elections will go forward," Noriega insists--a refrain heard nowadays in that other U.S. protectorate, Iraq. Charles Arthur, of the U.K.-based Haiti Support Group, says the timing of this announcement of elections while serious human rights abuse charges have not been addressed is suspicious. Unless we are to give up altogether and let Bush have a free-hand in building up the American empire and installing it's repressive, violent version of "freedom" world-wide, there is something very urgent that we must all do: expose the U.S. game everywhere for what it is: blatant tyranny. Nowhere is that plainer than in Haiti.
www.counterpunch.org/reeves01292005.html