Compilation of recent news on Yvon Neptune
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Jens Iverson
Apr 29, 2005, 1:07:38 PM4/29/05
to HaitianPolit...@googlegroups.com, Haiti List
More news available at:
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http://hastingshumanrights.org/
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=75054970
Returning Haiti to political stability
Andy Johnson
Friday, April 29th 2005
Jean Bertand Aristide
HERARD Abraham, the former Haitian army general who is now his country's
foreign minister has outlined what he presented as the three principles by
which his country is being returned to political stability.
The interim government has no interest in participating in upcoming
elections. Political parties are being encouraged to form alliances so that
there can be a manageable number of slates for those elections. He said
there were some 91 parties who originally indicated their intention to
contest the election. And the CEP, the organisation set up to oversee the
arrangements for the election is totally independent.
Abraham made these points Tuesday during an interview on the TV6 Morning
Edition.
He was in Port of Spain for talks with this country's foreign minister, as
part of a mission which takes him to Barbados for similar discussions.
These points, he said, were important since they spoke directly to the
criticisms against his administration for not doing enough to create the
environment for Haiti's return to normalcy, following the protests which led
to the fall of the Aristide government.
He said the army and the national police were "working very closely to
create a secure environment so that the party leaders can go around the
country and have their campaigns for the election. It is difficult but we
are trying our best."
Asked whether the views of some of the region's Prime Ministers who held
that his administration did not yet deserve to be admitted back into
Caricom, Abraham said "what I wish is that all the Prime Ministers can come
to Haiti to see for themselves the efforts of the government. They might not
be satisfied totally but they can appreciate the efforts of the government,
so that we can have free and fair elections.
On charges that the administration was actively preventing some groups,
including Aristide's Lavalas family party from participating in political
decsion-making, he said that was not the case. To the contrary, he said,
there were people criticising the government for the fact that Aristide
supporters and partisans were still in prominent positions inside the
country, and representing Haiti in other countries.
Yvon Neptune was Prime Minister under Aristide. He has been under arrest
for several months pending trial, amid concerns that this was a political
prosecution.
Abraham said on Tuesday Neptune was arrested on charges that he had been
involved in a massacre in the Haitian town of St Marc but that it was his
lawyers who were stalling the process because they refused to allow him to
be tried there. He said the Supreme Court in Haiti recently disallowed those
objections and cleared the way for Neptune to face the court in the
jurisdiction where the massacres took place.
Given what some observers have been saying about the continuing instability
in Haiti and the supposed uncertainty of the elections later this year,
Abraham was defiant.
He was Chief of Staff in the Defence Force in 1990, he said, and he was
confident that there would have been elections that year, contrary to many
views which were held inside and outside the country. those elections came
off and Aristide won his first term in office.
"And I am confident now as I was then that there will be elections this
year, Abraham said on Tuesday.
One of the continuing challenges for the government, he said were the
efforts at building independent public institutions that were above the
politics in his country. He said it was one of the areas in which successive
governments since 1986 had been seeking international assistance. "It is the
kind of help which we have been seeking from the international community,"
he said.
Earlier in the interview he said also that a lot of assistance which had
been promised last year as a means of easing the current economic hardships
had failed to materialised, and this was exacerbating the problems caused by
massive poverty and unemployment among the people.
Agence Haïtienne de Presse - AHP
Haitian News Agency
http://www.ahphaiti.org/
April 26, 2005
Haiti's Former PM in 10th Day of Hunger Strike Over Illegal
Incarceration
The former prime minister begins his tenth day of his second hunger
strike to denounce his incarceration judged illegal: his health is
considered worrying
Port-au-Prince, April 26, 2005 (AHP)- Former Prime Minister Yvon
Neptune began Tuesday the tenth day of his second hunger strike to
protest against his illegal and unjustified incarceration for the
last 10 months.
Yvon Neptune had handed himself to justice after a human rights NGO,
NCHR/Haiti, had accused of involvement in a presumed massacre that
was allegedly perpetrated on March 11, 2004 in a district of
Saint-Marc named La Scierie.
The NGO had tried to justify its accusations with the fact that Mr.
Neptune was in the area 2 days before the so-called facts. The bodies
of the 50 victims who were reportedly killed in the so-called
massacre were never found. Executive Director of the NCHR, Pierre
Esperance explained that they were all eaten by dogs.
However, UN human rights expert Louis Joinet, who had gone to La
Scierie, had declared that there were no grounds to talk of a
massacre there. It was rather a confrontation between two gangs,
Balewouze and RAMICOSM known to be respectively close to Lavalas and
to the former opposition to Aristide who were fighting to get control
of the port of Saint-Marc. The final report on these confrontations
was 5 deaths for each gangs, he also declared.
Concerning Mr. Neptune's hunger strike, a source close to the
detainee said Tuesday that his moral was still up but that his health
was worrying since he was doing a total hunger strike. This source
also expressed worries regarding the new detention place of the
former prime minister who was transferred to the MINUSTHA Argentinean
Hospital last week where he received health care after his first
strike that lasted over fifteen days.
In a note dated of April 25th, the Ministry of Justice and Public
Security informed that it decided to open a building that will be
used as an annex to the National Penitentiary. This building will
welcome prisoners who need particular protection but also dangerous
detainees, the Ministry of Justice pointed out. This is exactly where
the Haitian former prime minister is incarcerated. He has never been
able to appear before a judge in the last ten months.
According to his relatives, police agents had taken him by force to
Saint-Marc where an examining magistrate was supposed to be expecting
him. However, once they got there, the judge in question was absent.
Later, he declared that the authorities of Port-au-Prince had never
told him about Neptune's coming.
Regarding Mr. Neptune's health state, former Lavalas deputy Felito
Doran called Tuesday local as well as international human rights
organizations who respect human rights to mobilize for the immediate
release of the former prime minister, otherwise the worse could
happen, he fears.
Yvon Neptune Taken to St. Marc, Restarts Hunger Strike: Former Prime
Minister Yvon Neptune was taken improperly this Friday to Saint-Marc
by policemen in regards to the presumed massacre at La Scierie. He
was taken back to Port-au-Prince without being brought before the
examining magistrate who did not seem to know about this procedure.
The former prime minister had been transferred Thursday night from a
MINUSTHA Argentinean Hospital to an annex of the National
Penitentiary, not far from the General Direction of the National
Police, in the district of Pacot. Spokesperson of the MINUSTAH,
Damian Onsès Cardona pointed out Friday in an interview to Radio
Solidarité that the decision to move Mr. Neptune had been taken after
a request from interim authorities. The UN official confirmed that
the former prime minister restarted on April 17th the hunger strike
he had started on February 20th at the National Penitentiary. (AHP,
4/22)
Letter from Former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, English translation
[Serge Bellegarde, Guy Antoine, Marilyn Mason]:
From the time I left the Prime Minister's residence on March 12,
2004, up until June 27, 2004, the source of my insecurity had been
the Government itself. When the Government had me arrested on June
27, up until today, not only did this source of my insecurity
increase and became more direct, but even worse, the Government
deprived me of my freedom of movement, together with my freedom to
speak freely, with all the length and breadth and depth that the
Constitution allows for this right to be exercised. The hunger strike
I began on February 20 was aimed at forcing the Government to set me
free and to stop being the cause of my insecurity. Because of a
promise the Government had made that it was going to liberate me, I
accepted to put an end to my hunger strike and to go to the Argentine
Hospital under the jurisdiction of the MINUSTAH/United Nations.
Even while in that hospital, however, my insecurity continued because
of the Government¹s continuing refusal to set me free. That is why,
while I was in the Hospital managed by the Argentinians/MINUSTAH, I
continued to resist so that the United Nations would not send me to
the trap of the supposed Villa in Pacot, but rather, that it would
require instead that the Government free me and stop threatening my
life. It was in the context of the dilatory tactics of this wicked
Government that I was obliged to resume my hunger strike with even
more force and why I am continuing it in the prison in Pacot, still
with the aim of regaining my freedom and my security. My friends,
listen. On April 20, here is the information I had passed on: this
plot aims at keeping me in prison by all means for as long as
possible; that is one objective. The second objective is to take me,
no matter what the conditions, to Saint-Marc to continue the
political humiliation. Friends, listen: while I was already into the
fifth day of my complete hunger strike, on Thursday afternoon, April
21, having given me guarantees that nothing would happen to me, the
United Nations Forces took me, against my will, to a supposed Prison
Villa in Pacot, close to the General Administration and Inspection
Headquarters of the Police, despite the fact that I had explained to
the UN Representative that this was a trap that the de facto
Government had set up to implement the death plan it had for me.
Above all, I told them that I would maintain my hunger strike in the
supposed Prison Villa as long as I was not set free.
My friends, on Friday April 22, early in the morning, a team of 7 to
10 executioners I recognized from the prison system burst in on me to
take me to Saint-Marc. I felt my life was in danger in the presence
of these executioners; I told them I had not eaten, nor drunk
anything in five days, and I asked them to leave me in peace because
I was weak. When they picked me up with force, put me outside, and
tried to handcuff me, I resisted for my life and I bit one of the
many arms trying to force handcuffs on my wrists.
They drove me to Saint-Marc. I threw up all along the way. When we
arrived in Saint-Marc, nothing was done. Supposedly, Mrs. Cluny
Pierre Jules, the supposed Investigating Judge declared that she was
not coming because she had not been previously notified. When the UN
Representative received news of what the conditions were in
Saint-Marc and of what kind of state I was in, he sent a helicopter
to pick me up and take me back to Port-au-Prince, where I received
some care in a UN ambulance which escorted me back to the supposed
Prison Villa in Pacot.
I am continuing my hunger strike, so that I can regain my freedom and
my security and so that the de facto Government will stop threatening
my life, while it continues to trample on my dignity. Yvon Neptune,
Former Prime Minister, Member of Fanmi Lavalas, Political Prisoner,
At the Prison in Pacot, Port-au-Prince
--
Jens Iverson
J.D. Candidate
UC Hastings College of the Law
http://HastingsHumanRights.org
http://HastingsToHaiti.org
Currently gratefully accepting help regarding:
* Summer 2005, NYC: Free housing and part time work
* Public International Law contacts and inspiration
* Informal music-making opportunities
* Legal ways to be filled with joy while doing well in law school
* An accurate, useful world view
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/HaitianPoliticalPrisoners
http://hastingshumanrights.org/
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=75054970
Returning Haiti to political stability
Andy Johnson
Friday, April 29th 2005
Jean Bertand Aristide
HERARD Abraham, the former Haitian army general who is now his country's
foreign minister has outlined what he presented as the three principles by
which his country is being returned to political stability.
The interim government has no interest in participating in upcoming
elections. Political parties are being encouraged to form alliances so that
there can be a manageable number of slates for those elections. He said
there were some 91 parties who originally indicated their intention to
contest the election. And the CEP, the organisation set up to oversee the
arrangements for the election is totally independent.
Abraham made these points Tuesday during an interview on the TV6 Morning
Edition.
He was in Port of Spain for talks with this country's foreign minister, as
part of a mission which takes him to Barbados for similar discussions.
These points, he said, were important since they spoke directly to the
criticisms against his administration for not doing enough to create the
environment for Haiti's return to normalcy, following the protests which led
to the fall of the Aristide government.
He said the army and the national police were "working very closely to
create a secure environment so that the party leaders can go around the
country and have their campaigns for the election. It is difficult but we
are trying our best."
Asked whether the views of some of the region's Prime Ministers who held
that his administration did not yet deserve to be admitted back into
Caricom, Abraham said "what I wish is that all the Prime Ministers can come
to Haiti to see for themselves the efforts of the government. They might not
be satisfied totally but they can appreciate the efforts of the government,
so that we can have free and fair elections.
On charges that the administration was actively preventing some groups,
including Aristide's Lavalas family party from participating in political
decsion-making, he said that was not the case. To the contrary, he said,
there were people criticising the government for the fact that Aristide
supporters and partisans were still in prominent positions inside the
country, and representing Haiti in other countries.
Yvon Neptune was Prime Minister under Aristide. He has been under arrest
for several months pending trial, amid concerns that this was a political
prosecution.
Abraham said on Tuesday Neptune was arrested on charges that he had been
involved in a massacre in the Haitian town of St Marc but that it was his
lawyers who were stalling the process because they refused to allow him to
be tried there. He said the Supreme Court in Haiti recently disallowed those
objections and cleared the way for Neptune to face the court in the
jurisdiction where the massacres took place.
Given what some observers have been saying about the continuing instability
in Haiti and the supposed uncertainty of the elections later this year,
Abraham was defiant.
He was Chief of Staff in the Defence Force in 1990, he said, and he was
confident that there would have been elections that year, contrary to many
views which were held inside and outside the country. those elections came
off and Aristide won his first term in office.
"And I am confident now as I was then that there will be elections this
year, Abraham said on Tuesday.
One of the continuing challenges for the government, he said were the
efforts at building independent public institutions that were above the
politics in his country. He said it was one of the areas in which successive
governments since 1986 had been seeking international assistance. "It is the
kind of help which we have been seeking from the international community,"
he said.
Earlier in the interview he said also that a lot of assistance which had
been promised last year as a means of easing the current economic hardships
had failed to materialised, and this was exacerbating the problems caused by
massive poverty and unemployment among the people.
Agence Haïtienne de Presse - AHP
Haitian News Agency
http://www.ahphaiti.org/
April 26, 2005
Haiti's Former PM in 10th Day of Hunger Strike Over Illegal
Incarceration
The former prime minister begins his tenth day of his second hunger
strike to denounce his incarceration judged illegal: his health is
considered worrying
Port-au-Prince, April 26, 2005 (AHP)- Former Prime Minister Yvon
Neptune began Tuesday the tenth day of his second hunger strike to
protest against his illegal and unjustified incarceration for the
last 10 months.
Yvon Neptune had handed himself to justice after a human rights NGO,
NCHR/Haiti, had accused of involvement in a presumed massacre that
was allegedly perpetrated on March 11, 2004 in a district of
Saint-Marc named La Scierie.
The NGO had tried to justify its accusations with the fact that Mr.
Neptune was in the area 2 days before the so-called facts. The bodies
of the 50 victims who were reportedly killed in the so-called
massacre were never found. Executive Director of the NCHR, Pierre
Esperance explained that they were all eaten by dogs.
However, UN human rights expert Louis Joinet, who had gone to La
Scierie, had declared that there were no grounds to talk of a
massacre there. It was rather a confrontation between two gangs,
Balewouze and RAMICOSM known to be respectively close to Lavalas and
to the former opposition to Aristide who were fighting to get control
of the port of Saint-Marc. The final report on these confrontations
was 5 deaths for each gangs, he also declared.
Concerning Mr. Neptune's hunger strike, a source close to the
detainee said Tuesday that his moral was still up but that his health
was worrying since he was doing a total hunger strike. This source
also expressed worries regarding the new detention place of the
former prime minister who was transferred to the MINUSTHA Argentinean
Hospital last week where he received health care after his first
strike that lasted over fifteen days.
In a note dated of April 25th, the Ministry of Justice and Public
Security informed that it decided to open a building that will be
used as an annex to the National Penitentiary. This building will
welcome prisoners who need particular protection but also dangerous
detainees, the Ministry of Justice pointed out. This is exactly where
the Haitian former prime minister is incarcerated. He has never been
able to appear before a judge in the last ten months.
According to his relatives, police agents had taken him by force to
Saint-Marc where an examining magistrate was supposed to be expecting
him. However, once they got there, the judge in question was absent.
Later, he declared that the authorities of Port-au-Prince had never
told him about Neptune's coming.
Regarding Mr. Neptune's health state, former Lavalas deputy Felito
Doran called Tuesday local as well as international human rights
organizations who respect human rights to mobilize for the immediate
release of the former prime minister, otherwise the worse could
happen, he fears.
Yvon Neptune Taken to St. Marc, Restarts Hunger Strike: Former Prime
Minister Yvon Neptune was taken improperly this Friday to Saint-Marc
by policemen in regards to the presumed massacre at La Scierie. He
was taken back to Port-au-Prince without being brought before the
examining magistrate who did not seem to know about this procedure.
The former prime minister had been transferred Thursday night from a
MINUSTHA Argentinean Hospital to an annex of the National
Penitentiary, not far from the General Direction of the National
Police, in the district of Pacot. Spokesperson of the MINUSTAH,
Damian Onsès Cardona pointed out Friday in an interview to Radio
Solidarité that the decision to move Mr. Neptune had been taken after
a request from interim authorities. The UN official confirmed that
the former prime minister restarted on April 17th the hunger strike
he had started on February 20th at the National Penitentiary. (AHP,
4/22)
Letter from Former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, English translation
[Serge Bellegarde, Guy Antoine, Marilyn Mason]:
From the time I left the Prime Minister's residence on March 12,
2004, up until June 27, 2004, the source of my insecurity had been
the Government itself. When the Government had me arrested on June
27, up until today, not only did this source of my insecurity
increase and became more direct, but even worse, the Government
deprived me of my freedom of movement, together with my freedom to
speak freely, with all the length and breadth and depth that the
Constitution allows for this right to be exercised. The hunger strike
I began on February 20 was aimed at forcing the Government to set me
free and to stop being the cause of my insecurity. Because of a
promise the Government had made that it was going to liberate me, I
accepted to put an end to my hunger strike and to go to the Argentine
Hospital under the jurisdiction of the MINUSTAH/United Nations.
Even while in that hospital, however, my insecurity continued because
of the Government¹s continuing refusal to set me free. That is why,
while I was in the Hospital managed by the Argentinians/MINUSTAH, I
continued to resist so that the United Nations would not send me to
the trap of the supposed Villa in Pacot, but rather, that it would
require instead that the Government free me and stop threatening my
life. It was in the context of the dilatory tactics of this wicked
Government that I was obliged to resume my hunger strike with even
more force and why I am continuing it in the prison in Pacot, still
with the aim of regaining my freedom and my security. My friends,
listen. On April 20, here is the information I had passed on: this
plot aims at keeping me in prison by all means for as long as
possible; that is one objective. The second objective is to take me,
no matter what the conditions, to Saint-Marc to continue the
political humiliation. Friends, listen: while I was already into the
fifth day of my complete hunger strike, on Thursday afternoon, April
21, having given me guarantees that nothing would happen to me, the
United Nations Forces took me, against my will, to a supposed Prison
Villa in Pacot, close to the General Administration and Inspection
Headquarters of the Police, despite the fact that I had explained to
the UN Representative that this was a trap that the de facto
Government had set up to implement the death plan it had for me.
Above all, I told them that I would maintain my hunger strike in the
supposed Prison Villa as long as I was not set free.
My friends, on Friday April 22, early in the morning, a team of 7 to
10 executioners I recognized from the prison system burst in on me to
take me to Saint-Marc. I felt my life was in danger in the presence
of these executioners; I told them I had not eaten, nor drunk
anything in five days, and I asked them to leave me in peace because
I was weak. When they picked me up with force, put me outside, and
tried to handcuff me, I resisted for my life and I bit one of the
many arms trying to force handcuffs on my wrists.
They drove me to Saint-Marc. I threw up all along the way. When we
arrived in Saint-Marc, nothing was done. Supposedly, Mrs. Cluny
Pierre Jules, the supposed Investigating Judge declared that she was
not coming because she had not been previously notified. When the UN
Representative received news of what the conditions were in
Saint-Marc and of what kind of state I was in, he sent a helicopter
to pick me up and take me back to Port-au-Prince, where I received
some care in a UN ambulance which escorted me back to the supposed
Prison Villa in Pacot.
I am continuing my hunger strike, so that I can regain my freedom and
my security and so that the de facto Government will stop threatening
my life, while it continues to trample on my dignity. Yvon Neptune,
Former Prime Minister, Member of Fanmi Lavalas, Political Prisoner,
At the Prison in Pacot, Port-au-Prince
--
Jens Iverson
J.D. Candidate
UC Hastings College of the Law
http://HastingsHumanRights.org
http://HastingsToHaiti.org
Currently gratefully accepting help regarding:
* Summer 2005, NYC: Free housing and part time work
* Public International Law contacts and inspiration
* Informal music-making opportunities
* Legal ways to be filled with joy while doing well in law school
* An accurate, useful world view
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