Please find below Waters' recent statement.

Regards,

Jens

Maxine Waters says Noriega is undermining Democracy in Haiti
<http://www.haitiaction.net/News/MW/6_10_5.html>
June 10, 2005
News   HaitiAction.net

Washington, D.C. - Today, on Capitol Hill, Rep. Maxine Waters (CA-35)
released a statement on Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega's
visit to Haiti. The Congresswoman's statement follows:

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega's recent trip to Haiti was
filled with contradictions - if not outright hypocrisy. Mr. Noriega urged
the United Nations to respond to the escalating violence in Haiti and
provide security for the elections that have been scheduled for the fall.
What Mr. Noriega failed to acknowledge is that he is largely responsible for
Haiti's chaos.

 Roger Noriega, as the State Department's top diplomat for the Western
Hemisphere, presided over a coup d'etat in Haiti last year. President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the democratically-elected President of Haiti, was
forced to leave Haiti on February 29, 2004, in a regime change supported by
the United States. The tragic results of that regime change are abundantly
clear. The interim government, which was put in power by the United States
and has received unprecedented support from our government, is a complete
failure. Kidnappings, murder and other forms of violence are widespread.
Dead bodies can be found lying in the streets.

Human rights violations have been occurring with impunity since the coup
d'etat. 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. It has been estimated
that there are over 700 political prisoners in Haiti, and most of these
prisoners have been detained illegally for months without formal charges.
Several former government officials and prominent supporters of President
Aristide's political party, including former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune,
former Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert, and Haitian singer Anne Auguste,
are among those detained illegally.

 If Mr. Noriega really cared about the people of Haiti, he might have
visited some of the political prisoners in Haiti's prisons. One prisoner he
certainly should have visited is former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune. Prime
Minister Neptune has been held in prison for about a year without being
formally charged in violation of the Haitian constitution. He is now in the
second month of a hunger strike to protest his illegal imprisonment. He is
reported to be so weak that he cannot walk, and he slips in and out of
consciousness. His life is in grave danger, and he will probably die if the
interim government does not release him immediately.

 If Mr. Noriega had met with Prime Minister Neptune while he was in Haiti,
he would have sent a strong signal to the interim government that the United
States does not support the illegal detention of political opponents. He
might have also embarrassed the interim government into releasing Prime
Minister Neptune and thereby saved his life.

 If Mr. Noriega really cared about democracy in Haiti, he might have
condemned the recent decision of the Haitian Supreme Court to annul the
convictions of over a dozen former soldiers and death squad members who were
involved in a brutal massacre in 1994. The soldiers and death squad members
were convicted in November of 2000 for their participation in a massacre in
Raboteau, a low-income neighborhood in Haiti, in which at least eight people
were murdered. The Supreme Court's decision, which was based on a
technicality, probably opens the door to the release of one of Haiti's most
notorious criminals, Louis-Jodel Chamblain, the second-in-command of the
brutal death squad known as FRAPH.

 If Mr. Noriega had condemned the Haitian Supreme Court's decision to
overturn the convictions of those responsible for the Raboteau massacre, he
would have sent a strong signal to the interim government that the United
States believes that people who commit human rights violations should be
prosecuted.

Instead of demanding an end to political imprisonment and human rights
violations, Mr. Noriega has resorted to blaming the United Nations for the
lack of security in Haiti. Ironically, Mr. Noriega embarked on his visit to
Haiti while the Organization of American States (OAS) was concluding its
meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. At the OAS meeting, the Bush
Administration tried to urge the OAS to create a committee to monitor the
exercise of democracy in the Western Hemisphere.

 It is hypocritical for the Bush Administration to advocate democracy at the
OAS, when the Administration was responsible for dismantling democracy in
Haiti and while Roger Noriega continues to undermine democracy in Haiti. It
is time for the hypocrisy to end.

--
Jens Iverson
J.D. Candidate, UC Hastings College of the Law
http://HastingsHumanRights.org
http://HastingsToHaiti.org

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