Another Rep. with courage Mr.Conyers on Haiti

[seemslikeadream]

PROTECT HAITIAN LIVES -- (House of Representatives - March 02, 2004

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The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Blackburn). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) is recognized for 60 minutes.

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Speaker, this Special Order is taken in a spirit of deep sadness and regret about the events that are going on in the nation of Haiti. We have come here this evening to recommit ourselves to the proposition that the United States has a responsibility to prevent the loss of life and the continued deterioration of the nation of Haiti. The present administration's inaction has undermined democracy and security in Haiti, and it is our responsibility to make sure that this does not get any worse.

So we, Members of Congress, call upon the administration to protect Haitian lives by restoring order, upholding the rule of law and disarmament across the country. The current state of affairs in Haiti is chaos. The rebels who were empowered by our inaction must be held accountable and not allowed to benefit from their violence. Humanitarian aid must flow to Haiti immediately. A humanitarian corridor with supplies of food and water and medical equipment must be established to provide assistance to the beleaguered Haitian people. Humanitarian aid must flow to Haiti immediately. We must support the formulation of a donor conference so the people of Haiti can finally get the kind of assistance that they so desperately need and so properly deserve.

This administration is misinterpreting and failing to honor the spirit of the Haitian constitution. Where is Article 149 in the transitional government talks?

So we as Members of Congress call upon this administration to follow the rule of law and the Haitian constitution. In it, Article 149 of the 1987 Haitian constitution clearly outlines the process by which the interim president is appointed and it includes the ratification of the legislature. Due to the unwillingness on the part of the political opposition party's willingness to participate in elections, there is no legislature to confirm the interim president; and, therefore, the recently sworn in president is, unfortunately, regrettably not ruling pursuant to the Haitian constitution.

On Sunday President Bush said, ``The Haitian constitution is working.'' How does he believe just because he said it that that could make it true? The President forgets that when they fail to respond to the opposition's rejection of the U.S. brokered peace plan that they had in fact repudiated their own plan for peace. It was just on Monday of last week that Secretary of State Powell said ``The United States will not support the overthrow of a democratically elected government by thugs and criminals.''

For the administration to remain mute while the constitutional process was thwarted and then to pressure President Aristide, the one who was compromised to resign, is in no way in line or in accordance with Haiti's constitutional process.

Moreover, now that the administration has created this constitutional quagmire in Haiti, it is reprehensible to claim that the constitution is working.




Our administration is jeopardizing the lives of countless numbers of Haitian asylum seekers by enforcing immediate Coast Guard interdiction without an opportunity for a fair asylum hearing.

Members of Congress call on the Bush administration to extend temporary protected status to Haitian asylum seekers because returning to Haiti will pose a serious threat to their personal safety.

To require the Secretary of Homeland Security to designate Haiti under section 244(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act so that the nationals of Haiti present in the United States or reaching our shores may be granted temporary protected status. This would mean that both Haitians who are present in the United States and those who may be fortunate enough to make it to shore will not arbitrarily be sent back to Haiti until the country is stable.

This administration's neglect of Haiti and the intentional, systematic dismantling of the Haitian social, economic, and political circumstance which culminated in the current political instability and provided the environment for a coup d'etat.

As Members of the Congress, we call on our leaders in Congress to hold joint public hearings between the House Intelligence Committee and the International Relations Committee on the Bush administration's role in undermining a democratically elected government in, of all places, the western hemisphere. The United States should not have allowed the opposition in Haiti without a legislative popular mandate to veto the possibility for peace in Haiti. Now there is mayhem and on-the-spot executions and other atrocities which are taking place daily.

Why did the United States not send in a force to reinforce the police when a political solution was still possible? Why did the United States only act after that possibility, along with President Aristide, was removed? Why have the rebels not been arrested? Were their actions not illegal? How did the leaders of the insurgence, some of whom are the most notorious torturers and death squad members, return to power? Louis Jodel Chamberlain is a former military leader who led a brutal paramilitary group that backed the most recent of Haiti's coup d'etats in 1991. The other, Guy Philippe, is a charismatic former soldier once loyal to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide who fled Haiti 3 years ago after being accused of drug dealing and of treason.

What are we to say to history? How will we account for this tragic set of circumstances that have now surrounded this poor beleaguered nation? As of today, the United States Coast Guard has repatriated 902 Haitian refugees to Port-au-Prince despite the escalating and continuing violence there. A handful of Haitians only have met the ``credible fear'' standard required for asylum. They remain on Coast Guard vessels and are being assessed by asylum officers from the Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Officials from the Department of Homeland Security and Coast Guard

GPO's PDF
have said that Haitians picked up at sea who indicate that they are afraid of returning to Haiti are given interviews with asylum officers on Coast Guard cutters. Haitians are not individually asked if they have a fear of return, nor are they necessarily spoken to individually where they may have a chance to say why they left. Homeland security says that when people are afraid, they find a way to convey that. I do not know whether any of the Coast Guard officials who first encountered the Haitians speak French or Creole. If Haitians do not express fear somehow, then they are given an interview with asylum officers who either speak French or Creole or have interpreters. Thus far, three Haitians have been found to possibly have a credible fear of persecution. Those who are deemed to be economic migrants have been turned over to the Haitian Coast Guard and were disembarked in Port-au-Prince. The last repatriation was today when 21 refugees returned to the Haitian Coast Guard. No new refugees have been picked up by the United States Coast Guard since Friday; and as far as is known, the repatriations will be ongoing despite the terrible insecurity in Port-au-Prince.
I have been unable to get information on the current control of the Haitian Coast Guard now that the government in effect ceases to exist. It seems that the United States Government is still treating the Haitian Coast Guard as an official agency under legitimate command of the Republic of Haiti.

And so, my colleagues in the Congress, we are now called to an immediate task to make right, to correct the terrible wrong that has been visited much by our inaction upon the 8 million inhabitants of this small country. We have a duty to persist. It is not over. We will investigate, we will protest, we will evaluate, we will persuade, until the majority of the American people are convinced that we cannot leave this wrong, which is a wrong for which we must be responsible, to go uncorrected. That is the pledge I leave my colleagues with on this evening.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r108:67:./temp/~r1089IdCSm:e0:

[JNelson6563]

1. He's not my Rep but he makes me proud

He is from my state though. Conyers rocks.

Julie

[Bozita]

2. kicking for a gutsy Congressman from Detroit