“Freedom always has a price."

For about two hours this afternoon, I found myself transported to revolutionary-era Iran, Vienna, and back again to Paris under the aegis of Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s stunning new animated French-language feature, Persepolis. The film depicts the evolution of a Bruce Lee-worshipping, Iron Maiden-listening young girl in Tehran concurrently and in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution that ousted the Pahlavī dynasty and replaced it with a theocracy under a sheen of democracy. Based on Satrapi’s comic book of the same name, both film and book take their titles from the name of an ancient Persian city. We follow the trajectory of the main character through the years of the anti-Pahlavī uprising, through the terror of the Iran-Iraq war, an alternately eye-opening and desperately lonely time at school in Europe and back to Iran.

I must confess that, in the wilderness years between watching Bugs Bunny as a small child and the advent of The Simpsons in the early 1990s, I missed out on the whole comic book/graphic novel thing, preferring “real” books, playing guitar in a series of bands and generally being a working-class roustabout. But I must agree with Variety’s Lisa Nesselson when she writes of Persepolis that the animated feature is an “autobiographical tour de force (that) is completely accessible and art of a very high order."

Today, on a blazingly hot summer’s day here in Paris, in movie theater off Boulevard Saint-Germain, I was duly impressed. The movie’s fluid visual vocabulary, its witty skewering of European youth subcultures, its expert juggling of comedy and pathos and most of all its depiction of the fate of fragile humans in the face of powerful, brutal and unyielding state machinery makes it a very rewarding and thought-provoking cinematic experience.

“Freedom always has a price,” a character says at one point. Indeed, but as this film shows us, it if often a price worth paying.

Distasteful politicking in Haiti?

Perish the thought! Thought that was indeed what was evidently behind this week’s successful passage of a parliamentary motion in Haiti of no-confidence against Daniel Elie, the Minister of Culture in the government of Haitian president René Préval.

The move - lead by Deputies Jonas Coffy and Poly Faustin of Fanmi Lavalas, Laurore Edouard of UNION, Accluche Louis-Jeune of OPL and Isidor Mercier of the RDNP - apparently came to pass because, though Elie staged what is by many account the most successful Carnaval that the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, has seen for many years, and a similarly well-received fête in the southern city of Jacmel (site of perhaps Haiti’s most colorful pre-Lentian celebrations), the Minister did not apparently spread the wealth of the Carnaval budget around enough for the politicians’ liking.

The move by the deputies, some of whom in the past have been highly critical of any judicial oversight of their activities, financial or otherwise, preferring to behave more like rooster in in a yard than the representatives of 8 million plus people depending on them to reduce the misery in their lives, has been seen by some as a warning to Préval himself not to forget about the largess that Haiti’s president’s historically shower on parliamentarians to curry favor and the spoils of corruption which often form its core. Seeing how Préval responds to this challenge, as he sets about strengthening Haiti’s judiciary and police, and instituting a rule of law over politicians as well as civilians in a country where impunity has historically reigned for the powerful, is one of the most telling and important questions being posed in Haiti today.

It will be interesting to see how all this plays out.

Pa bliye Pere Ti Jean

On 3 August 1998, assassins in Haiti struck down Father Jean Pierre-Louis, known as “Pere Ti Jean” to the peasants in Haiti’s Plateau Central, on whose behalf he had advocated for many years. The fifty-year-old priest was a diminutive mulatto from a family of some means—his former sister-in-law, Michele Pierre-Louis, was the executive director of the respected Fondation Connaissance et Liberte (FOKAL)—yet he had chosen to work among Haiti’s poor and had helped found the Sèvis Ekimenik pou Devlopman ak Edikasyon Popilè (Ecumenical Service for Popular Development or SEDEP).

On the 9th anniversary of Pere Ti Jean's slaying, SEDEP, along with the Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen organization, has issued a call for a new investigation into the slaying, which was never solved and for which those responsible were never held accountable. The full text of the declaration can be read in the original Kreyol below.

MD


Ayiti : 3 out 2007, 9 lane depi kriminèl te fè kò sasinay sou pè Ti Jan Pyè Lwi

vendredi 3 août 2007

(Read the original here)

“Nou mande Minis Jistis la, Mèt René Magloire ak komisè gouvènman Pakè Pòtoprens lan, Mèt Claudy Gasan pou yo pran mezi legal nesesè pou mete Aksyon Piblik an mouvman pou chache, arete epi jije prezime kriminèl ki te sasinen san kè sote Pè Ti Jan gwo lajounen bò midi jou ki te

3 Dawou 1998 la, nan lakou biwo l, nan SEDEP. ”

Pozisyon Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen ak SEDEP

Dokiman sa a vin jwenn AlterPresse 2 out 2007

Pòtoprens 31 jiyè 2007

3 Dawou 1998 – 3 Dawou 2007 fè 9 lane depi bandi kriminèl yo te telegide te sasinen Pè Jean Pierre Louis, di Pè Ti Jan, nan lakou SEDEP, yon enstitisyon Pè Ti Jan t ap dirije.

Pè Ti Jan Pyèlwi, se te youn nan dènye pè konsekan Legliz Katolik, ki depi nan lane 1960 yo, anfas rejim diktati Divalye a, te toujou pran pozisyon pou defann enterè peyi a ak enterè mas pèp ayisyen an. Ti Jan te toujou leve kanpe kont tout sistèm dominasyon, krazezo ak eksplwatasyon feyodal ak kapitalis ki t ap toupizi mas pèp la. Se pou sa, nan zòn kote li te pase pifò tan l kòm pè, nan komin Savanèt, grandon pat vle wè l. Yo te toujou ap monte konplo kont li, paske li te toujou ap pran defans ti peyizan, malere ak malerèz.

Kriminèl asasen te rive tchwe Pè Ti Jan, kèk semèn sèlman apre li te patisipe nan yon reyinyon nan Palè Nasyonal, sou envitasyon premye gouvènman prezidan Preval la. Nan moman an, Pè Ti Jan te manm Komisyon Nasyonal Refòm Agrè, evèk Legliz Katolik nan peyi Dayiti te mete kanpe pou te reflechi sou Dosye REFOM Agrè prezidan Preval t ap klewonnen nan moman an. Se nan kad sa a, Pè Ti Jan t al patisipe nan rankont Palè Nasyonal la, kote divès lòt pè te envite.

Reyinyon sa a te bay Pè Ti Jan okazyon pou te denonse piblikman, jan li te abitye fè l nan prèch li, blòf, demagoji, vòl ak koripsyon ki t ap devlope nan moman an anndan Leta a, nan mitan gouvènman Preval la e menm anndan Legliz la.

9 lane apre krim nan, tout gouvènman ki pase alatèt Leta a pa leve yon ti dwèt pou Aparèy Jistis la mete Aksyon Piblik an mouvman kont prezime kriminèl yo. Nonplis tou, okenn komisè gouvènman, omepri lalwa, pa janm pran okenn mezi legal pou fè limyè sou krim nan, malgre laklamè piblik pa janm sispann egzije jistis pou Pè Ti Jan epi denonse kriminèl yo ak tout konplis yo.

Nan okazyon nevyèm anivèsè sasinay Pè Ti Jan, nou menm oganizasyon ak enstitisyon ki pran pozisyon sa a, mande Prezidan René Préval ak Premye Minis Jacques Edouard Alexis, yo menm ki te deja sou pouvwa a nan moman krim nan te komèt nan lane 1998, yo menm ki tal rann paran Pè Ti Jan vizit lakay yo epi ki te patisipe nan ekspozisyon ki te fèt nan ponp finèb, nou mande yo fwa sa a pran reskonsablite yo. Nou mande Minis Jistis la, Mèt René Magloire ak komisè gouvènman Pakè Pòtoprens lan, Mèt Claudy Gasan pou yo pran mezi legal nesesè pou mete Aksyon Piblik an mouvman pou chache, arete epi jije prezime kriminèl ki te sasinen san kè sote Pè Ti Jan gwo lajounen bò midi jou ki te 3 Dawou 1998 la, nan lakou biwo l, nan SEDEP.

Pandan n ap renouvle solidarite ak senpati nou ak fanmi Pè Ti Jan, n ap envite tout fanmi an, zanmi, kanmarad, senpatizan ak fidèl Pè Ti Jan yo nan seremoni komemorasyon, TET KOLE TI PEYIZAN AYISYEN ak dòt òganizasyon popilè ap òganize jou k ap 3 Dawou a nan vil Savanèt, pou fè sonje memwa Pè Ti Jan ki rete yon modèl fidelite ak angajman nan lit pèp la.

Rosnel Jean-Baptiste Tet Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen

Jhon Blot SEDEP

India, justice delayed…

Bombay’s trinubals surrounding the 1993 explosions that killed 257 persons in India's commercial capital took on a farcical, show-trial element today, as an apparently vindictive judge, PD Kode of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) court, sentenced Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt to six years of “rigorous imprisonment” for possessing a 9 mm pistol and an AK-56 rifle given to him by members of Bombay’s underworld at the height of the riots that preceded the 1993 terror attack.

One might be able to take such an unduly harsh sentence seriously (Dutt already served 16 months in jail in connection with the charges) had any attempt been made to bring the politically powerful who orchestrated large parts of the 1992/93 bloodshed to account.

It is hard to forget, of course, that, following the destruction of Babri Mosque in northeastern India by Hindu extremists in December 1992, Mumbai was engulfed in ghastly rioting that left over 2,000 dead , many of them Muslims targeted by Hindu mobs that a government commission later found were affiliated with the stridently sectarian Shiv Sena political party.

The Shiv Sena (or Army of Shiva, referring to Shivaji) was formed by Bal Thackeray in 1966, promoting themselves as Bhumiputra or "sons of the soil," while propagating that native Maharashtrians (those born in Maharashtra state and speaking the Marathi language) deserved greater rights in their eponymous state (of which Bombay is a part) than "foreigners," which in this case meant basically Muslims (the Shiv Sena also promoted the rather exceptionalist Hindutva philosophy) and "southerners" (those from south India).

The Srikrishna Commission Report on the violence, released in 1998, stated unequivocally that “from January 8, 1993 at least there is no doubt that the Shiv Sena and Shiv Sainiks took the lead in organizing attacks on Muslims and their properties under the guidance of several leaders,’ singling out Thackeray for special condemnation.

To date neither Thackeray , nor any of his deputies, has ever had to answer for the terrible crimes they oversaw against their fellow citizens of India. Much as a shameless demagogue such as Narendra Modi - chief minister of Gujarat state who (at best) stood by in 2002 as 2,000 (most Muslim) citizens were slaughtered and now stands accused of involvement in extra-judicial police killings - has never had to appear and authoritatively answer the charges against him.

Pompous judges like PD Kode, evidently drunk with power, can satisfy themselves with sentencing private citizens to harsh stretches of prison time, I suppose. But until they muster up the courage to start hauling the political leaders who have contributed to so much division and destruction in India in recent years into the dock, their statements about the rule of law in India are as transient, transparent and feeble as the breeze blowing through the banyan trees on a hot Bombay day.

Sarkozy charges ahead, sets stage for power struggle within France’s Socialists

My new article on the political landscape here in France, which finds itself worryingly without an electoral or politically-effective opposition, was published by the Inter-Press Service today and can be read below.

MD


FRANCE: Sarkozy Charges Ahead

Analysis by Michael Deibert

Inter Press Service

PARIS, Jul 30 (IPS) - Since his inauguration as France's president in May, Nicolas Sarkozy has appeared as a whirlwind of activity following the often-lethargic decade-plus rule of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac.

The initiatives of the Sarkozy government thus far have been many, often touching on controversial topics.

There is the creation of a much-criticised Ministry of National Identity to address France's immigration concerns. There was Sarkozy on a recent trip to Senegal, calling for an end to Franco-African diplomacy based on personal relations between leaders (a hallmark of the presidencies of Chirac and François Mitterrand) and more on "partnership between nations equal in their rights and responsibilities."

Sarkozy successfully lobbied a recent European Union meeting in Brussels for the removal of the words "free and undistorted competition" from a list of the body's core objectives for coming years and announced an 11 billion euro (15 billion dollars) stimulus package for France's lukewarm economy that all but blew out of the water any chance of balancing France's budget.

Read the full article here.

Shukran, Team Iraq

Yesterday, in Jakarta, Indonesia, a football squad comprised of Sunnis, Shias, Kurds and Turkomans gave a great gift to their fellow Iraqis when they defeated the favored Saudi Arabia team 1-0 to win the final match of the 2007 Asian Cup.

Perhaps the most eloquent commentary of the joy that reportedly followed in Iraq I read appeared in today's Guardian, where a 25-year-old computer programmer named Taha Mahmoud said the following:

"In 90 minutes, 11 men on a soccer pitch thousands of miles away have made millions of Iraqis happy while 250 MPs, our government, the mullahs, imams and warlords can't provide us with a single smile. I hope this is a turning point for our country."

Insha'allah, let it be so.

Russian Roulette

My review of journalist Anna Politkovskaya's new book A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia, is the lead book review in today's Miami Herald. As Herald links tend to become defunct after a few week's time, I am reposting the review in its entirety here. To read the original review, please click on the link below. MD

Posted on Sun, Jul. 29, 2007

NONFICTION A RUSSIAN DIARY

RUSSIAN ROULETTE

SLAIN JOURNALIST OPPOSED TO THE PUTIN GOVERNMENT PUTS FORTH AN IMPASSIONED ARGUMENT ABOUT HER COUNTRY'S FAILURES

BY MICHAEL DEIBERT

''The more I think about it, the more I would be betraying these people if I walked away,'' the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya told an interviewer in 2002. ``The only thing to do is to take this to the bitter end, so that no one can say that when things became difficult, I ran away.''

Politkovskaya, who served as a special correspondent for Novaya Gazeta newspaper, did not run away, and whomever ordered the assassins' bullets that cut her down outside of her Moscow flat in October 2006 failed to still the echoes of that voice, a fact her newly published book powerfully brings home.

An uncommonly eloquent and impassioned voice for what she saw as the destruction of Russia's nascent democracy under the rule of President Vladimir Putin, Politkovskaya made her name reporting from the ground in the most brutal days of Russia's war in Chechnya, painting vivid and often shocking portraits of the agony inflicted on civilians there by Russian forces, Chechen warlords and Islamist rebels alike, and how actors on many sides of the conflict cynically profited from the destruction. Her earlier book A Small Corner of Hell remains a definitive portrait of the conflict.

Later, as the bloodshed spilled to neighboring Caucasus regions such as Ingushetia, North Ossetia and Moscow itself, Politkovskaya reported that, too, and set the stage for A Russian Diary 's account of the ways in which Chechnya was the template for the deformed authoritarian state that, in Politkovskaya's view, has taken present-day Russia by the throat and has no intention of letting go.

Here at first-hand we see the violence and fraud that surrounded Russia's 2003 parliamentary elections and 2004 presidential elections: Candidates opposing Putin's United Russia party receive body parts in plastic bags; in Chechnya, the amount of votes cast is 10 percent more than there are registered voters; a steady, casual and cynical co-opting of other journalists and human rights activists by the state marches forward with disturbing regularity. It is a state that Politkovskaya reveals to be brutal and incompetent. It is hard to read of the callous treatment of the relatives of victims of the 2002 Dubrovka theater siege (where Chechen militants seized a Moscow theater, and security services responded by pumping in an unknown chemical agent that killed three times as many hostages as it did attackers), or that of the grieving parents of the Beslan school siege two years later (an even-worse terrorist outrage and government failure which killed more than 300, mostly children) and not share Politkovskaya's righteous anger.

Throughout the book we see the face of the new Russia that Politkovskaya believes is being constructed, and it is not a pretty picture. We see it in Ramzan Kadyrov, the Moscow-backed current president of Chechnya, portrayed as a ranting, uneducated thug in a long interview that Politkovskaya conducted in August 2004. Kadyrov has been accused of directing the abduction, torture and murder of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. We see the face of the new Russia in the bat-wielding pro-government shock troops of the Nashi (''Ours'') movement, whose similarity to another political youth wing 70 years earlier in another European country appears to be more than simply alliterative.

And yet there are also stories of immense courage and resilience in the midst of what appears to be overwhelming, unyielding state machinery and popular apathy (at one point Politkovskaya witheringly compares modern Russian society to ``a collection of windowless, isolated concrete cells'').

Opposition politician Irina Hakamada stands against Putin in the 2004 ballot and declares that ''I am going into this election as if to the scaffold. . . . There are normal people in Russia who know what they [the Putin government] are up to.'' Observe the unexpected courage and grace of the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, condemned to prison when the Russian state set its sights on Yukos, the petroleum company he controlled. Also flitting like a ghost through the diary entries is Alexander Litvinenko, the former lieutenant-colonel in the Federal Security Service (a successor to the KGB) who went into exile in London and became one of the most bitter and vocal critics of the Putin government. Following Politkovskaya's murder, Litvinenko spoke out strongly, accusing Putin of involvement. A month later he followed her to the grave, poisoned after meeting with another former Russian spy.

Though the overall tone is not one of defeat -- Politkovskaya introduces us to many ex-servicemen, pensioners and victims of terrorism fighting for their rights -- there is a palpable gloom that pervades the book, a sense that, before getting any better, things will get much, much worse and that, when any change comes, it is likely to be bloody.

In an entry from October 29 2004, almost exactly two years before her own murder, Politkovskaya penned a bitterly eloquent epitaph for what she saw as having become of modern Russia. ``Any of us might now go to buy bread and never return. . . . The Russian people remained silent, hoping it would be the neighbors they would come to get.''

Michael Deibert is the author of Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti.

Jean-Rabel: 20 years on

There is an interesting and moving commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the massacre of Haitian peasants in the northwestern town of Jean-Rabel posted on the AlterPress website. The declaration, in Kryeol comes from the Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan organization and calls for justice on behalf of the over 100 peasants slain in the attack, and continued solidarity between Haiti's national and international progressive movements. Read it in full here.

An anti-journalistic talking shop for the privileged class

Ever since I was libeled in its pages by a wealthy, college-dwelling professional dissembler (York University Professor Justin Podur (a man so ignorant he thinks Haiti's grand Cathédrale Nationale downtown and the small Paroisse Saint Pierre in Pétionville are the same building) and a convicted criminal and perjurer (Patrick Elie), and then denied the right of response by its conspiracy-minded founder Michael Albert, I have always thought that one had about as much chance reasoning with the crowd that populates the internet publication ZNet as one did of reasoning with a barnyard animal, though no doubt the barnyard animal would be less pernicious by nature. This is, after all, a website that has made a gospel out of verbally lauding deniers of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre (refusing to print critiques in response and ignoring evidence and tesimonials to the contrary), fawning over Caribbean despots and killers (again, ignoring evidence upon evidence) and a whole host of other unsavory types, pretty much refining the template for armchair radicalism in the service of attacking genuinely progressive, democratic movements the world over. A recent article by Shirley Pate would seem a case in point.

The article, which consists of an attack on director Asger Leth’s film Ghosts of Cité Soleil , is interesting chiefly because it seems fairly obvious that author Pate has not seen the film in question, though that doesn’t stop her from declaring that the its mission is to show that “supporters of (former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand) Aristide are violence-prone sub-humans who, because of their overwhelming majority and continued demand for the return of Aristide, must be contained and then eliminated.”

I have not seen Ghosts of Cité Soleil, and so can’t pass any judgment on it, though I did know its two main protagonists, James “Billy” Petit-Frere and Winston “Tupac” Jean-Bart, with the former being a close personal friend of mine of long-standing before his murder in 2005. Having watched the Aristide government arm and organize street gangs between 2001 and 2004, I can certainly say that some of the political militants portrayed in the film were capable of real violence, though, as always, the story is a bit more complex than Pate and ZNet would have readers believe. Over the three years of Aristide’s second term in office, gunmen in Haiti’s slums were alternately courted and killed by Haitian political elements, chiefly thought not exclusively by political and police officials of Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas political party, the dance between the two becoming one of extreme mutual circumspection over time. There were some bright, highly motivated people among the political militants who could have been of great use to any government that wanted to change Haitian society into a more equitable and just place, but, unfortunately, as so many actors in Haiti that had come before them, Aristide and the Fanmi Lavalas party were simply not interested in that.

Similarly, as René Préval was elected as Haiti's president in February 2006 with 51.5 percent of the vote at the head of the Lespwa coalition of political parties, and March Bazin, the official candidate of Fanmi Lavalas, received 0.68% of the vote in that 35-candidate race, one wonders on what basis Pate describes Fanmi Lavalas partisans as an “overwhelming majority.” Undermining Préval seems to be the task at hand for the handful of activists in North America that appear to long for a return to the days of Aristide in Haiti.

The last article of Pate’s that crossed my radar was also published on ZNet, an ugly attack on the progressive journalist Jane Regan who, along with the Haitian photographer Daniel Morel, has done as much as anyone ever has to help document the Haitian people’s struggle for a more just and decent society, free from predatory politicians, foreign manipulation and economic desperation.

In her attack on Regan, Pate, referring to the inferno of bloodshed that was consuming Haiti at the time, wrote that “we must acknowledge that resistance may involve violence.” Perhaps she was alluding to the kidnapping, torture and murder of Haitian journalist and poet Jacques Roche, the beheading of political activist Weber Adrien or the murder of at least one Police Nationale d'Haïti (PNH) officer every five days between September 2004 and September 2005. It’s hard to tell. The gangs themselves, and the police who would summarily execute scores, probably hundreds, of young men they suspected of being gang-affiliated, did a good job of making life in Haiti’s capital a living hell for it’s residents for many months. Fortunately, with Préval, Haiti seems to be finally pulling itself out of the morass.

At any rate, ZNet, whose founder Michael Albert more-or-less epitomizes the image of what I have heard termed the full-belly revolutionary (as applied to the Palestinian group Fatah, in one case), will no doubt continue to prevaricate, misinform and mislead its readers from the safety and comfort of first-world countries such as the United States, Canada and England, then shutting down debate when its writers are caught out, as has happened in the past.

One can only hope that on issues such as Haiti, the genuinely concerned public will have the insight to glean their news from more reliable sources, such as Haiti’s AlterPresse news service. I recently wrote of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp that I found it to be a shrill, anti-journalistic, cheerleading machine, and I must say I find the same to be very much the case with ZNet, though from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. With sources such as AlterPresse, where Haitians are finally allowed to be able to speak in their own voices, Haiti’s story will hopefully no longer be written solely by affluent foreigners attempting to live out fantasies of radicalism (safely insulated from any danger) but rather from those who live Haiti’s story every day.

For Jazz Musicians, a Paris Tradition Continues

FRANCE: For Jazz Musicians, a Paris Tradition Continues

By Michael Deibert

Inter Press Service

PARIS, Jul 25, 2007 (IPS) - On a quiet side street in the Paris suburb of Louise Michel, jazz musician Bobby Few from the United States sits at his 120-year-old Gabriel Gaveau piano and reminisces about what he has seen come to pass in his nearly 40 years in France.

"After struggling in New York City for so many years, we wanted to find a new territory," Few says when visited at his home on a drizzly, unseasonably cool July day, speaking of his jazz group's decision to move to Paris in 1969. "We landed as total strangers, not knowing anybody, not knowing the language, not knowing where to go. But the music seemed to be everywhere."

Thus Few, who had moved to New York from his native Cleveland, Ohio in the early 1960s on the advice of the legendary jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler, headed to Paris in search of artistic renewal, following an established pattern of African-American musicians who have crossed the Atlantic in search of something they couldn't find in their native United States.

Read the full article here.

Hope, Concern Greet China's Growing Prominence in Africa

Hope, Concern Greet China's Growing Prominence in Africa

By Michael Deibert

Inter Press Service

PARIS, Jul 23, 2007 (IPS) - While China's growing trade and investment flows to Africa have sparked a sometimes contentious debate with the United States and Europe over who has the continent's best interests at heart, a closer look at the dynamic developing reveals a political landscape where the rhetoric is rarely in line with the reality, observers say.

Read the full article here.

A Russian Diary

I am currently reading Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia. The book is Politkovskaya’s final offering, because she was murdered at her Moscow apartment in October of last year.

Politkovskaya was a great, courageous journalist and a writer of tremendous emotional impact and analytical acuity. An earlier Politkovskaya book, A Small Corner of Hell, was one of the definitive portraits of the agony inflicted on the Chechens, and how actors on both sides of the conflict cynically profited from it. When she was killed in 2006, Politkovskaya had been working on an article regarding the use of torture in the regime of Chechnya’s pro-Moscow premier Ramzan A. Kadyrov, which, she told The New York Times in April, would likely include evidence of torture by Kadyrov’s police and paramilitaries, and perhaps even testimony from at least one witness who had been tortured by Mr. Kadyrov himself.

One of the most striking things about A Russian Diary thus far, is the appearance in it (it covers the years 2003 until 2006) of so many of those now-departed. There is Nikolai Girenko, the founder of the Group for the Rights of Ethnic Minorities (GPEM) and a respected professor of ethnology slain by extreme nationalists in St. Petersburg in June 2004. There is Paul Klebnikov, the Moscow editor of Forbes magazine, gunned down outside of his office barely a month later. And there is Alexander Litvinenko,the former lieutenant-colonel in the Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation who went into exile in London and became one of the most bitter and vocal critics of the government of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Following Politkovskaya’s murder, Litvinenko spoke out strongly, accusing Putin of involvement in the killing. A month later he followed her to the grave, poisoned after meeting with another former Russian spy.

I came across a moving and eloquent interview conducted with Litvinenko a few years before his death, which speaks, I believe, not only of the state of modern Russia under Putin, but also of the bravery and courage of people like Politkovskaya and Litvinenko, fragile individuals standing up against awesome political and financial power, and organized campaigns against their integrity and reputations by those in a position to benefit from chaos and banditry.

You did the best your could, Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko. That’s all your countrymen or the rest of us could have ever asked for.

A few notes on journalism

In 1959, a 27 year-old Australian Aborigine named Max Stuart was convicted of raping and murdering Mary Hattam, a nine-year-old girl, near the South Australian town of Ceduna. A confession - purportedly Stuart’s - was presented to the court in sophisticated diction that struck a prison chaplain on hand as quite surprising given the fact that Stuart could barley speak or write English, and was conversant only in his native Arrernte language. Stuart was sentenced to death.

Then, something happened. An Adelaide daily called The News campaigned vigorously against Stuart’s sentence, publishing investigative articles, editorials and even creating posters to publicize their take on the case. Though Stuart was eventually spared death (he was freed in 1974 but never pardoned), the campaign of The News had attracted such ire in official quarters - particularly on the part of Premier of South Australia Thomas Playford - that the paper, its editor and it publisher were all charged with three counts of “sedition” each by Australian authorities.

The editor of The News was named Rohan Rivett. The publisher’s name was Rupert Murdoch.

Called on the carpet by Playford, Murdoch made a fateful decision: he fired his longtime friend Rivett with a one-paragraph letter and agreed to pay the costs of the royal commission that had examined the case at the newspaper’s urging.

I mention this because, as Rupert Murdoch makes his 11th hour lunge to buy the venerable Wall Street Journal and bring even more of America’s media under his control (he already runs The New York Post and the Fox News Channel), it is useful to remember that one can find an initial grain of humanity even in the most seemingly co-opted and distasteful individuals, and that we reach a state of moral compromise not overnight, but through a hundred little moments of backing down, hedging and simply not doing the right thing. I have seen this most notably in Haiti, where competent, essentially decent foreign journalists sometimes remain mute while good people are attacked for fear that stepping out of line might jeopardize the narrow trajectory of their own careers. From watching this I know that, once that compromise is made, the quality of a journalist’s work ultimately suffers. For my part, though I may remain monetarily poor, it is of little note, no matter how occasionally difficult, compared to being able to wake up and look confidently in the mirror knowing that one has done the right thing, and spoken truth to power and dogma, no matter what the cost. Too many people I have seen around the world have paid with their lives for doing just that, so how can journalists abdicate that responsibility? In my view, they can’t.

As Murdoch tenders his $5 billion takeover bid for Dow Jones & Co. (the Wall Street Journal’s parent entity), the Bancroft family, which controls a majority interest in Dow Jones, remains bitterly divided on the deal, fearing that a newspaper that carried the fine coverage of reporters such as Jose de Cordoba and Jonathan Weil will become just another element of what is regarded by many (including myself) as Murdoch’s shrill, anti-journalistic, right-wing cheerleading machine. Instead of taking these developments lying down, many of the Journal’s reporters and editors are actively lobbying against the idea in the perhaps vain hope that they can save one of the bastions of great reporting (no matter how I may differ with its editorial page) in a journalism landscape increasingly dominated by a focus on often facile local coverage, half-baked “activist” rantings and an ever-diminishing reserve of foreign reporting at a time when the United States is desperately in need of more, not less, of it.

As we watch this drama unfold, as journalists, it is useful to remember that faithful decision to fire Rohan Rivett that Rupert Murdoch took all those years ago in the wake of a largely forgotten murder trial in Australia. There are two roads we can go down. That of equivocating (a far different thing than soberly weighing both sides of an issue) and that of taking our profession as seriously as the responsibility which has been entrusted to us, to give voice to suffering and a platform to those who have been marginalized from the wider world.

The great Haitian journalist Jean Dominique, shortly before his murder in Haiti in 2000, said into the microphone of his station, Radio Haiti-Inter, that “I have no other weapon than my journalist’s pen! And my microphone and my unquenchable faith as a militant for true change…This is the truth that it is right to speak of this morning, the truth of a free man.”

Let us, as journalists write, and live, as free men and women. The stakes are simply too high for us to be intimidated by monetary or other concerns and do otherwise.

Deibert on YouTube

I have opened up a YouTube account which I hope to update semi-regularly with videos from my travels. For the initial offering, please go see it here.

Following Oil Boom, Biofuel Eyed In Africa

TRADE: Following Oil Boom, Biofuel Eyed In Africa

By Michael Deibert

Inter Press Service

PARIS, Jul 13 (IPS) - While oil profits have flooded into countries such as Angola and Nigeria in recent decades, some African observers see new potential for the continent in the form of increasingly in-demand biofuels.

Biofuels, loosely defined as liquid or gas fuels derived from biomass, produce significantly less ozone-damaging carbon emissions than fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum. A large swath of southern Africa, including Angola, Mozambique and South Africa, is proving fertile ground for those seeking an alternative to fossil fuels.

It is a development that has not escaped the notice of Europe.

Read more here.

The Bush administration’s bad medicine

As the Bush administration, isolated but not, sadly, without weapons, draws to its shameful end, recent testimony by former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona before a Congressional panel this week helped bring home just how rigid the regime’s quackery has been when it comes to matters of medical science over the last several years.

Among the points that Dr. Carmona made with relation to how he was told to do his job during his 2002 to 2006 tenure (that is, as the leading spokesperson on matters of public health for the administration) are the following:

• Dr. Carmona was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of every speech he delivered.
  
• On the topic of sex education, Dr. Carmona’s suggestion that the use of contraceptives be included was met with a refrain that the Bush government wanted to promote “abstinence only.”
  
• Global warming was dismissed as a “liberal cause.”
  
• Dr. Carmona was advised not to testify at a U.S. government racketeering trial of the tobacco industry by an administration that was simultaneously telling the government lawyer in the case that he, Dr. Carmona, was not competent to testify.
  

Quite a way to treat a double Purple Heart United States Army Special Forces veteran, no?

It’s good to know, as one of the 48 million Americans without health insurance, that the Bush administration had its priorities straight.

A Haitian world champion and le jogging

Though I am no fan of boxing, I feel that some kudos are in order for Joachim Alcine who defeated Travis Simms for the World Boxing Association Super-Welterweight championship over the weekend. Alcine is the first Haitian-born boxer ever to win a world title.

On an unrelated note, there was a highly amusing article in the Washington Post this weekend about the cultural significance of the proclivity for jogging of France’s new president Nicolas Sarkozy, and whether it is, in the Post’s words, some sort of stealth “un-French, right-wing conspiracy.” Though I used to jog fairly regularly in New York, I generally opt for the treadmill and the gym here in Paris. But I must say I do notice that ,of the joggers I do see, many of them are inevitably conversing with one another (if running in a pair) in a language other than French.

A nod to the resourceful women of India

Two very different women drew notice for two very different types of protests in India this week

In the southern Indian state of Karnataka (of which Bangalore is a part), J. N. Jayashree, wife of a state bureaucrat named M. N. Vijayakumar who has spoken out vigorously against corruption in the government there, started a blog as a way to spread the word about the pilferage currently plaguing Karnataka . Raising her husband’s international profile in the face of the recent murders of whistleblowers such as Satyendra Dubey and Shanmughan Manjunath was another motivation.

It is, I think, a quite brilliant move and one the should be copied in other places with high-levels of corruption such as Haiti and Guatemala, where honest civil servants and officials often speak out against or take action against corrupt colleagues, officials and business interests at great peril to their own lives. The borderless internet serves as an ideal vehicle to tell the world about what is going on in countries such as these, from the ground level to an international audience, such as Ms. Jayashree is doing, and it would seem to be able to help, flooding the deeds of dishonest with day. Let’s hope that her example catches on.

Many hundreds of miles to the north, in the city of Rajkot in Gujarat state, a young woman named Pooja Chauhan , fed up with harassment and abuse by her husband and in-laws and exasperated with police indifference to her travails, stripped down to her underwear and marched through the conservative city in protest.

Evidently sufficiently shamed, Rajkot police then arrested Pooja Chauhan’s husband, Pratapsinh Chauhan, as well as her in-laws for alleged harassment and physical abuse. Subsequently the subject of much ugly speculation and innuendo, Pooja Chauhan told reporters this week simply that "I am not mad. Just because I threw away my clothes, no one can call me mad. I know what I am doing and for what reason, All I want is justice.”

I hope that she gets it, and that J. N. Jayashree and Pooja Chauhan succeed in forcing India’s largely male political class into taking a more aggressive approach to investigating and punishing claims of both corruption and domestic abuse. Their steps are very courageous in a time and place where it is physically dangerous for them to be taken at all.

Good luck, ladies.

The Struggle for Kashmir (Continued)

My article The Struggle for Kashmir (Continued), based on my visit to the conflict zone in February of this year, has just been published in the Spring 2007 edition of the World Policy Journal.

Featuring interviews with such pivotal figures in Kashmir’s recent political history as People's Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti, Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKFL) chairman Yasin Malik, Indian historian and author Ramachandra Guha and Parmina Ahanger, head of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, the article takes a long and uncompromising look at the situation on the ground in Kashmir today and the role that India and Pakistan have played in fostering it.

It also looks in depth at the effects on human rights and individual liberties in the region as a result of Section 45 of India’s criminal procedure code - which protects any member of the armed forces from arrest for “anything done or purported to be done by him in the discharge of his official duties except after obtaining the consent of the Central government” - and Section 197(2) of the same code, which makes it mandatory for prosecutors to obtain permission from the federal government to initiate criminal proceedings against any public servant, including armed forces personnel.

The article is also, I hope, a tribute to the resilience, hospitality and beauty of the thousands of ordinary Kashmiris, as beautiful even as their spectacular homeland, who, as one Kashmiri I met told me, “are very moderate people not the Taliban projected by media.”

Quite so.

For those interested, here also is a link to an interview I did regarding the situation in Kashmir with talk-show host Leonard Lopate on WNYC in New York this past May.

A quick word of congratulations to Thony Bélizaire

The Haitian news source AlterPresse has printed the good news that veteran Haitian photographer Thony Bélizaire, of Agence France Presse, has been awarded first prize in a photo contest sponsored by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for his work on the topic “Life in Cities.”

I had the good fortune to work with Thony quite a bit in Haiti over the years, covering political unrest, natural disasters and exuberant carnavals,and always knew him to be the consummate professional, dedicated to both his job and his country. Working with Thony and the other local Haitians journalists, who risked their lives in exchange for negligible salaries because of their dedication to their craft, remains some of my best memories of the country over the years.

Félicitations, Thony, on an award well-deserved.

An update on the situation of the Lepcha of Sikkim

While a virtual mainstream news blackout continues to exist with regards to the hunger strike of many Lepcha, the indigenous inhabitants of India’s Himalayan state of Sikkim, against a hydro power project planned along the Teesta River in Dzongu, some enterprising journalist from a website called Asian News International has shown more initiative than all my colleagues in the Western media and written a serviceable summary of the situation here.

As I wrote in response to a posting on the issue on Dilip D'Souza’s Bombay-based blog, being a working journalist who has covered economically disadvantage, politically tumultuous countries in the past (Haiti, Guatemala), I grow weary of the excuses of my colleagues that editors and the like won't "let" them cover certain stories (though I have encountered the hubris of desk-bound editors decided what stories are and aren't worth covering myself in the past).

Perhaps I grow increasingly curmudgeonly in my old age, but I think my colleagues in the international media need to show a little more enterprise and a little more backbone to make sure the stories of people like the Lepcha (or the rural peasantry in Haiti, or the indigenous communities in Guatemala, etc) are given some kind of a platform in the international dialogue, and a little less time worrying about the creature comforts of their personal lives or ease of professional advancement.

Simply put, one is worth fighting for, and one isn’t.

FRANCE: Diaspora Trade Strengthens Communities

FRANCE: Diaspora Trade Strengthens Communities

By Michael Deibert

PARIS, Jun 29 (IPS) - In the northern Paris neighbourhood of Chateau Rouge, a casual visitor could be forgiven for a moment for feeling that one had gotten off the city's storied metro and ended up in Dakar or Abidjan.

Here, percolating soukous tunes from the Congo pump out of storefronts such as that of Rythmes & Musiques while women attired in weaved damask robes and men in West Africa's traditionally colourful dashiki vest go about their business in one of the city's most vibrant open-air markets.

But, say observers, "foreign" as they may seem to some French, it is also, empathically, as much the face of modern France as any of the postcard images of the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe that tourists usually associate with the country.

Read more here.

Few Concrete Steps Proposed for Darfur

My new article on the lack of detailed proposals for action coming out of the recent conference on the Darfur conference here in Paris was published by the Inter-Press Service today and can be read here.

Help support the Lepcha of Sikkim

A friend of mine who worked in the Himalayan Indian state of Sikkim, an area I was not able to visit during my time in India, recently informed me of the terrible plight of the Lepcha, the indigenous inhabitants of the region.

Some leading Lepcha citizens, including members of the Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT), Concerned Lepchas of Sikkim (CLOS) and the Sangha of Dzongu have commenced on an indefinite hunger strike to protest against the arbitrary sanctioning of mega hydro power projects in Sikkim by the state government there.

The Lepcha's concerns have been poignantly summed up by Dawa Lepcha who noted as follows:

“The Lepchas and their distinct culture and social fabric are being threatened by these projects. The Environment Impact assessment (EIA) done by the Centre for Inter-disciplinary Studies of Mountain & Hill Environment (CISMHE) for the Panang project does not mention anything about the Lepcha tribes, save for a single line, under social and anthropological assessment. This shows utter disregard for the Lepcha people and their very survival,”

To find out more about the Lepchas and their struggle, please visit the Weeping Sikkim site here.

New Plans for Niger Basin

My new article on moves by the Niger Basin Authority (NBA) to turn the 4,100 km long Niger River into a regional economic asset was published by the Inter Press Service today and can be read here.

Open letter to Louis Joinet from Charliénor Thompson

An open letter was recently sent to Louis Joinet, the United Nations' independent expert on the situation of human rights in Haiti on behalf of the victims of the February 2004 massacre that took place in the northern Haitian town of Saint Marc.

Readers of this blog will remember the Saint Marc killings as one of the most odious human rights abuses to take place in Haiti as the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide sputtered to an end that month. Following the lead of street gangs formerly loyal to the president in Gonaives (who rose up to avenge the murder of their leader, Amiot “Cubain” Metayer and drove government forces from the town on February 5), the anti-Aristide group Rassemblement des militants conséquents de Saint-Marc (Ramicos), based in the neighborhood of La Scierie, two days later took advantage of the chaos to use the weapons at their disposal—mostly light sidearms and pistols—to overrun the Saint Marc police station, where they freed all the prisoners before setting the structure on fire.

On February 11, however, pro-government forces recaptured the town, and members of the Unite de Securite de la Garde du Palais National d’Haiti and the local pro-Aristide Bale Wouze paramilitary gang set about on a multi-day mass killing of Aristide opponents, as well as politically unaffiliated civilians, during which authoritative accounts list at least 27 people as having been slain and a number of women raped. One of the leaders of Bale Wouze, former Fanmi Lavalas party Deputy Amanus Mayette, a man who witnesses in Saint Marc have charged actively participated in the killings, was freed from prison without trial last month.

The letter to Louis Joinet, written by a former Ramicos member named Charliénor Thompson, now the coordinator of the Association des Victimes du Génocide de la Scierie (AVIGES), named for the neighborhood in Saint Marc where many of the killings took place, with some cause takes the United Mission in Haiti (known by its acronym, MINUSTAH) to task for what some victims of human rights abuses during Haiti's 2001-2004 government charge is the organization's somewhat cavalier attitude when it comes to prosecuting the responsible and defending those victimized in such incidents as the killings in Saint Marc.

Thompson writes that, with Amanus Mayette and other perpetrators now walking free, “what justice can we expect? Who will be able to testify freely while the assassins are free and circulate with total impunity?" The letter then goes on to speak of the fear that residents of Saint Marc live in, afraid that now, as they have been pushing for justice for over three years, they make again become victims of those who attacked them in the past.

Holding people indefinitely without trial is wrong, but equally wrong is the denial of a day in court for people who have suffered as grievously as those of Saint Marc have. The victims of the killings and other violations that took place in Saint Marc in February 2004 deserve to have a lawful, transparent day in court with those that they accuse of such heinous crimes.

In the interest of making the ground-level perspective on this issue more widely available, below please find the unedited text of Charliénor Thompson's letter to Louis Joinet.


Lettre ouverte au juge Louis Joinet
Charliénor THOMPSON
19, Rue Briand Charles, Saint Marc, Haïti
Cell. 781 4794 E-mail : tcharlienor@yahoo.fr
Saint Marc, le 12 juin 2007

Monsieur Louis JOINET, Juge
Expert Indépendant Pour Haïti
Du Conseil des Droit Humains des Nations Unies

Via : Edmond MULLET
Chef de la MINUSTHA
Représentant du Secrétaire Général
Des Nations Unies.

Monsieur le Juge Expert Indépendant,

Nous vous écrivons à titre de coordonnateur d'un groupe dénommé AVIGES qui rassemble les victimes des évènements survenus à Saint Marc, au cours du mois de février 2004 sous la présidence de M. Jean Bertrand Aristide, ordonnés et coordonnés par le Premier Ministre d'alors M. Yvon Neptune. Nous apprécierions que vous puissiez nous accorder quelques minutes de votre attention, le temps de la lecture de la présente, malgré vos obligations habituelles, entre deux missions en Haïti.

De vos divers voyages, dans notre pays, nous avons retenu que la seule visite que vous nous avez rendu, a été pour soutenir la demande en récusation du tribunal de Saint Marc introduite par M. Neptune inculpé dans les massacres de Saint Marc.

Nous suivons avec attention le déroulement de vos missions dans notre pays, et nous avons noté qu'elles sont toutes de courtes durées. En lisant les comptes-rendus de la presse et en écoutant avec intérêt vos prises de positions dans les médias haïtiens, nous avons du mal à comprendre l'objet de votre mission. Nous ignorons les termes de références du contrat vous liant aux Nations Unies, aussi pour nous aider à comprendre serait-il important que nous sachions quels sont les termes de référence de vos intervention dans notre pays. Etes-vous " Inspecteur International des Geôles Haïtienne " ou " Expert chargé de conseiller et de faire des recommandations à l'État Haïtien pour la réforme du système judiciaire et le respect des droits de la personne "? La question peut paraître saugrenue mais elle est pertinente si l'on tient compte de vos déclarations, lors des entrevues que vous avez accordé en Haïti, concernant vos principales préoccupations.

Pour nous autres victimes, qui vivons en Haïti et qui avons introduit une plainte auprès du système judiciaire de notre Pays, depuis plus de trois (3) ans, nous demeurons perplexe et nous nous demandons : "Qui se soucie de notre cas ? "

Notre cause traîne, prise dans un labyrinthe de procédures. Nous nous posons la question sur ce qui peut inciter le gouvernement de notre pays à afficher un tel mépris à l'égard des victimes.

Nous avons vu et nous continuons à voir un ballet d'experts s'activer et se préoccuper du cas des bourreaux et faire fi de la situation des victimes. Leur suffit-il, pour se donner bonne conscience, de savoir que nous avons la chance d'être encore en vie après les horreurs et tribulations que nous avons vécues. Pensent-ils pouvoir se mettre à l'abri de toute critique pour avoir prononcer des phrases sibyllines du genre de celle que vous dites en alléguant que vous n'aviez par ailleurs aucune sympathie pour ce monsieur (en parlant de Amanus Mayette), tout en oblitérant les circonstances particulièrement confuse ayant entouré sa mise en liberté.

Que fait ou que devrait faire le système des Nations Unies qui vous emploie ? En quoi consiste ou devrait consister le rôle de ce système et des experts qu'il nous envoie ? De quelle type d'assistance notre Pays a-t-il besoin, dans les circonstances actuelles, particulièrement difficiles de notre vie de peuple ? A quoi sert réellement, en fin de compte toute la " sollicitude" dont nous semblons faire l'objet ? Une réponse doit être trouvée à nos interrogations de citoyens haïtiens.

Nous avons cru déceler dans vos prises de position une pointe d'humanisme quand vous compariez les prisonniers du Cap Haïtien à un tas de vers empilés sur une motte de terre. Pour que vous souciez de notre sort, au lieu d'être de simples victimes devrions nous plutôt être des prisonniers ?

En attendant une réponse nous voudrions rappeler le caractère non violent de notre action pour la justice et la paix ainsi que certains faits vécus qui sont à la base de nos revendications de notre action en justice.

Parmi les faits se rapportant aux événements de février 2004 on peut retenir, notamment :

des jeunes gens désarmés esquissant des pas de " Break Dancing Afro Américain" pour tenter

d'éviter l'impact des balles meurtrières tirées depuis l'hélicoptère du gouvernement d'alors ;

un jeune homme blessé enlever des bras de sa mère pour être jeté vivant dans un brasier ;

une jeune mère se faire violer dans le commissariat de police de Saint Marc une semaine après avoir accouché ;

des cadavres dépecés par des chiens dans les mornes de la scierie après les tueries organisées par le police national et les gangs armés aux ordres du gouvernement Aristide / Neptune ;

un jeune homme arrêté à moins de 50 mètres du commissariat de police de Saint Marc se faire arracher les globes oculaires à l'aide d'une fourchette, être invité ensuite à se mettre à table pour une partie de cartes avec ses bourreaux et être finalement tué ;

un jeune homme traîné vivant attaché à l'arrière d'une camionnette sur plusieurs kilomètres dans les rues de la ville pour être finalement brûlé vif avant de rendre son dernier soupir ;

l'incendie d'une demeure ou vivaient seul deux vieillards quasi nonagénaires qui seraient morts brûlés vif sans l'intervention de certains voisins ;

un jeune homme désarmé se faire brûler avec sa compagne enceinte de huit mois

Etc.…

Tous ces meurtres et crimes ont été exécutés du 9 au 29 février 2004 sous les ordres de MM. Jean Bertrand Aristide Ex Président de la République et Yvan Neptune Ex Premier Ministre d'Haïti. Nous en voulons pour preuve le fait que certains prisonniers de Saint Marc ont été conduits au Palais National ainsi que les 9 heures de conversation téléphonique du Premier Ministre, sur son cellulaire personnel, avec les criminels qu'il avait installé à Saint Marc (60% de ses appels pour la période sus cité), ceci a été révélé par l'instruction de l'affaire.

Aujourd'hui, nous, victimes des actes d'horreurs cités plus haut vivons sous la menace constante des criminels qui ont tous été libérés sous la pression, notamment, de certains organismes de la société civile internationale.

Pour arriver à leurs fins les prévenus, inculpés par le juge d'instruction, ont utilisé tous les moyens dilatoires que leur procuraient les procédures judiciaires. Ils ont aussi utilisé les pressions médiatiques et les opinions d'experts pour faire accréditer la version de la prison préventive prolongée, alors que les délais sont dus aux faiblesses et au mauvais fonctionnement de l'appareil judiciaire dont la bonne marche est une responsabilité du gouvernement.

Actuellement les criminels en liberté ne lésinent pas sur les moyens de pression sur nous autres victimes et sur les témoins de leurs actes barbares. Ils font même jouer leur accointance avec certains tenants du pouvoir politique actuel pour nous intimider.

Aujourd'hui à quelle justice devons nous nous attendre ? Qui pourra témoigner librement alors que les assassins sont libres et circulent en toute impunité. La majorité des habitants de Saint Marc ont peur. Même ceux qui ont été directement victimes des actes cités plus haut ont peur. Les victimes ont envie de fuir la ville et les témoins se terrent.

Quand l'État nous fera-t-il bénéficier des bienfaits de la justice que nous réclamons ? Dans les circonstances actuelles, sous quelle forme viendra-t-elle ?

La communauté internationale, via la MINUSTHA, s'intéresse-t-elle vraiment à voir s'établir en Haïti un état de droit ? Les préoccupations des haïtiens au sujet de la justice sont elles prises en compte par la communauté internationale ? Alors que les haïtiens perçoivent l'insécurité et l'impunité comme le plus grand mal qui ronge notre société, on croirait, à vous entendre, que le plus grand problème du pays est celui du système carcéral! Les experts de passage des Nations Unies condamnent le mauvais état des prisons ainsi que la mauvaise gestion des lieux de détentions alors que le responsable de la gestion des prisons est le gouvernement assisté par une batterie d'experts placés au sein même de ce système carcéral. Les experts de passage des Nations Unies condamnent la mauvaise gestion de la justice alors que tous les circuits de notre système judiciaire regorgent d'expert de ces mêmes Nations Unies qui sont à demeure dans le pays. Nous serions reconnaissants à qui nous permettrait au moins de comprendre.

Nous craignons d'être vu à travers un modèle et nous ne savons pas dans quel modèle l'ONU place les évènements qui se sont produits en Haïti. Nous assistons à une désagrégation de la machine étatique et plus particulièrement, en ce qui nous concerne, du système judiciaire et nous n'avons aucune idée des recommandations au Gouvernement de notre Pays ni des actions concrètes prévues pour redresser la situation. Nous sommes inquiets pour notre avenir et nous recommandons une prudence extrême dans l'emploi des modèles, et dans l'application de mesures toutes faites venant de l'extérieur : l'expérience notamment du Rwanda étant là pour nous interpeller tous.

Nous vous communiquons en annexe deux textes qui vous permettront de vous faire une idée de ce qui s'est réellement passé à Saint Marc : l'un est un communiqué de l'Associations des Entrepreneurs de l'Artibonite daté du 13 février 2004, l'autre une lettre ouverte d'une des victimes.

Nous, haïtiens, sommes familiers des paradoxes de la France éternelle et généreuse. Après nous avoir donné les grandes idées de 1789 et nous avoir envoyé le commissaire Sonthonax qui donna sont appui à la révolte en consacrant officiellement par décret la liberté général des esclaves ; n'a-t-elle pas envoyé l'armée expéditionnaire avec Leclerc et Rochambeau pour rétablir l'esclavage et capturer le Général Toussaint Louverture qui avait cru pouvoir élargir ces idées généreuses à toutes les races. Après avoir compris que Jean Bertrand Aristide était un criminel indigne de la fonction de président ; n'est elle pas devenue la terre d'asile pour deux criminels inculpés dans les évènements de Saint Marc comme elle l'est pour Jean Claude Duvalier.

Juste avant de terminer, permettez nous de soumettre à votre sagacité cette phrase de l'autre : « Eprouver dans sa chair l'injustice commise contre quiconque dans le monde est la plus belle qualité d'un révolutionnaire » En la circonstance nous dirions « de tout juge soucieux des droits de la personne ».

Nous vous remercions d'avoir pris le temps de lire cette longue missive. Nous espérons qu'elle aura la vertu d'enrichir vos réflexions de juge - expert et qu'elle permettra au système des Nations Unies de mûrir ses actions dans le monde en général et en Haïti en particulier.
Dans l'espoir de pouvoir un jour bénéficier de l'attention et de la compréhension des experts internationaux si influents dans notre pays nous vous présentons, monsieur le Juge Expert Indépendant, nos salutations distinguées.

Charliénor THOMPSON
Coordonnateur de l'AVIGES

PJ : Communiqué du 13 février 2004 de l'AEA
Lettre ouverte de Franck Paultre
CC : Le Parlement Haïtien
Le Gouvernement Haïtien
La Presse
Les Organismes des Droits Humains
Le Public

Reports sound the alarm on global warming

A little piece that I wrote for the newsletter of the United Nations Association on the implcations of the first major global assessment of climate change in six years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has been publsihed and can be read here.

Golem à Paris

My old friend Aaron Diskin’s band Golem performed at the Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme last night as part of the Fête de la musique, the highly enjoyable all-day-and-all-night bout of free music that occurs here every June 21st. It was the first show in the City of Lights for the band, who describe themselves as “a 6-piece Eastern European folk-punk band” and sing in a mixture on English, Yiddish and, on this evening, French.

The music is quite a wild mixture of frenetic drumming, driving accordion riffs, trilling viola runs and Diskin’s vocals with seem to race back and forth between the singing traditions of the Lower East Side at the turn of two centuries, the largely Eastern European Jewish former and the rock music filled latter. The setting was quite a beautiful old building along the Rue du Temple and the crowds of several thousand seemed to highly enjoy themselves as the band ended up playing for nearly two hours.

While walking through the streets of Paris after the show with a retinue of friends, hearing music pouring from every street corner, we were amused to remember the floor we shared way back in our college days, which not only included myself, a journalist and author and Diskin, now the singer for this unique sounding band named after a towering Jewish Frankenstein who defended the Jews of 17th Century Prague, but also Enayatullah Qasimi, who did a stint as Afghanistan’s Minister of Transportation in the government of President Hamid Karzai. Now here, many years later, we meet in the streets of a foreign city, thousands of miles away.

Life certainly takes you to some interesting places.

Some stories coming out of Hispaniola

There is a very interesting article recently published by the Inter-Press Service by Elizabeth Eames Roebling that looks, from the Dominican side of the border, at the current debate regarding Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent in the country. One of my own articles for the Inter-Press Service on the same subject was recently quoted by the Boston Globe.

As if one needed any proof that the Dominican Republic is not alone in short-sighted immigration policies, the same day I read for the first time of the plight of Yaderlin Hiraldo, the wife of United States Army Specialist Alex Jimenez, who has been missing since his unit was attacked by insurgents in Iraq on May 12. Jimenez had petitioned for a green card for his wife, who came to join him without proper documentation from the Dominican Republic in 2001, before his disappearance. Ms. Hiraldo is seeking a hardship waiver to stay in the United States which the U.S. government has yet to grant.

From back in Haiti, meanwhile, one of the main gang leaders from the Raboteau district in the northern city of Gonaives, Adecla Saint-Juste, has met his end, “cut down,” Haiti’s Radio Kiskeya is reporting, in the nearby district of Anse Rouge. Many thought Saint-Juste behind the May 16 slaying of Alix Joseph, the director Radio-Télé Provinciale in the city

The offensive of the Police Nationale and United Nation’s MINUSTAH forces against gangs in Haiti’s City of Independence, which has been plagued by gang activity at least since the Armée Canibale gang of Amiot “Cubain” Metayer harassed and killed opponents of then-Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from 2000 until 2003, appears to be bearing some fruit. Metayer himself was murdered, on what many of his supporters believe was Aristide’s orders, in September 2003, one of the sparks that lit the rebellion that eventually ousted Aristide five months later.

Brasil's military and police and Haiti - Clearing up some confusion

As ther seems to be some confusion on the subject, I thought I would quickly post a little something to set right what appears to be a common misunderstanding about the difference between the Brazilian military and police forces.

The Policia Militar in Brasil, which has been criticized by groups such as Amnesty International among others, despite its somewhat ambiguous name, has absolutely nothing to do with the Brazilian military. They are part of the civilian police force. The Brazilian military (army) presence in Haiti is in no way connected with the Policia Militar that is involved in the favelas in Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo. The Policia Militar in Brasil are controlled by the respective states they operate in (every state has its own force), and not by the nation's Ministry of Defense, unlike the army. They are totally separate entities.

With very few exceptions, such as in 2003 and again in 2006, since Brazil's return to democracy in 1985, the government of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been very careful not to give the military any sort of formalized law enforcement role in Brazil. In fact, members of Lula's Partido dos Trabalhadores have often been among those calling for increased accountability and transparency in the law-enforcement regime currently in place in Brasil.

Having spent time in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, I can say that, much as it has been in Haiti, the situation in the favelas is often one in which heavily-armed gang members are squaring off against an often-equally brutal police force with thousands of civilians helplessly caught in the middle.

Immigrants uneasy over proposed policies

My first article since relocating here to Paris, on some of the immigration proposals and the creation of the new Ministère de l'immigration, de l'intégration, de l'identité nationale et du codéveloppement by the government of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, was published by the Inter Press Service today and can be read here.

Vendredi (Paris)

Though I landed in Paris at the beginning of the week, today, for some reason was the day it began to feel like a new home.

After staying up late writing and sleeping in late (which I rarely do, being a habitual early riser), a leisurely stroll around my neighborhood in the 18eme early this afternoon turned interesting when I turned down one side street to see thousands upon thousands of African and Arab men standing with their heads bowed over prayer mats, then pressing their foreheads to the ground in the direction of Mecca as the muezzin's call to prayer echoed down Paris’ bustling Friday streets.

From that auspices beginning, I strolled down past the Gare du Nord and eventually through the largely Asian and Arab quarter of Belleville, birthplace of the famous French chanteuse Edith Piaf in another era. The sky darkening, I found myself, eventually, along the Canal Saint-Martin near the Stalingrad neighborhood, where I took shelter beneath the awning of a café right on the water as the sky opened a torrential deluge that cascaded dramatically down from the sky onto the pavement and the water of the only a few feet away. With typical Parisian schizophrenia, the downpour lasted less than half and hour, and the sun was blazing again as I walked back to the 18eme, arriving home at the height of the outdoor market, where I picked up some bananas and grapes fairly bursting with flavor, and watched as the some of the local vendors took off at a mad dash when the French police showed up to question the legality of some of the watches, jewelry and assorted bling they were selling from makeshift cloth-covered tables and in some cases literally from their bare hands curbside. Arriving home, I found an invitation in my mailbox to join some friends for an apéritif on Sunday.

I think I’m going to like it here.

Radio Caracas, Kashmir and the courtship of Haiti

Continuing on the theme of free speech alluded to in recent posts here about Samir Kassir, Jacques Stephen Alexis and the film The Price of Sugar, I was struck by last week’s editorial in The New York Times by former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo, who governed that Andean nation from 2001 until 2006 and is currently a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

The editorial, regarding the shuttering of Radio Caracas Television by the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, makes some apt and perceptive points on respect for freedom of the press and commitment to the tenants of democracy that would do well to be studied not only by Mr. Chavez himself, but also by the Bush administration and political leaders in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, to name only other three countries.

Having never visited Venezuela, I can’t claim to speak as any authority the particulars of the case, but having served as a correspondent in several highly tumultuous countries where an oligarchic elite, rancid political class and pseudo-populist demagogues often violently square off to the detriment of their people (Guatemala, Haiti and India spring to mind), it seems fairly clear to me that Radio Caracas Television, in addition to being one of the oldest television stations in Latin America and something of an institution in Venezuela itself, was also was, at least at times, a bit of a mouthpiece for anti-Chavez, seditious propaganda over the years (although judging from the crowds protesting the closure station’s in Caracas that is evidently what at least some in the Venezuelan population wanted to hear).

But, at the same time what about Mr. Chavez’s own professed commitment to democracy? This also bears serious scrutiny, and is certainly not without its blemishes. What of the Chavez-lead 1992 coup attempt against Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez, himself democratically elected? Granted Mr. Chavez's move came after the caracazo, as the Pérez government's violent suppression of anti-government rioting in 1989 became known, but does that justify overturning the constitutional order? As we have seen in Haiti, where a democratically-elected government that did not respect the rules of democracy was overthrown by extra-constitutional means, these are not simple questions.

And this is exactly the grain that Alejandro Toledo grasps in his Op-Ed.

“Presidents may be elected democratically, but it is more important to govern democratically, even with an opposing press that reports different opinions,” Toledo writes with admirable clarity. “Latin America's common enemies are poverty, inequality and exclusion — not dissident thought. Hunger is not fought by silencing critics. Unemployment does not disappear by exiling those who think differently. We cannot have bread without liberty. We cannot have nations without democracy.”

Reporting on countries where the killing of journalists is a disturbingly frequent occurrence and where, as my friend Dilip D'Souza notes on his blog, dissenting voices are often meant with violence, these words are welcome.

They are even more so, living in a country, as I currently do, where the government sees fit to fashion laws and procedures that permit withholding evidence from criminal defendants, denying defendants the right to file habeas corpus petitions, establish military tribunals, retain the right to send people to secret prisons abroad and gives immunity to government agents for acts occurring during interrogations. These are indeed not idle concerns, even if the courts do seem to be regaining some of their senses. But it is good to read clear and eloquent calls for moderation, liberal humanism, if you will such as Mr. Toledo’s.

Speaking of alternative points of view, for those interested in an authentic, objective, on-the-ground take on the struggles of the citizens of both Indian and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, I highly recommend checking out the daily news feeds from the Greater Kashmir website. It was recommended to me one day as I sat chatting and drinking kehva with two friends at a second-floor restaurant across the street from the University of Kashmir in Srinagar, and I have been a very regular visitor to the site since then.

And finally, there was a rather interesting article by Tahiane Stochero on the political football Haiti has to some degree become in today’s Estado de Sao Paulo.

For such a small and, economically and geopolitically speaking, relatively insignificant country, Haiti has been the object of the recent attentions of not only the United States and Brasil, but also of the aforementioned Mr. Chavez's Venezuela, Cuba, China, Taiwan and Bolivia. Perhaps the vodou has finally started to work on someone with money instead of just impoverished journalists, filmmakers and anthropologists.

Please sign in protest of Du'a Khalil's murder

The below was forwarded to me. MD.

Du'a Khalil Aswad, a 17 year old girl from the town of Bashiqa, in Iraqi Kurdistan, was stoned to death on April 7, 2007.

She came from a family of Yazidi faith, and was snatched from her home by Yazidi men who had discovered that she was in love with a Muslim Arab man and had visited him. In front of hundreds of people, including local police, they dragged her to the center of town, and viciously beat and stoned her to death. Towns people watched and even filmed this barbaric act. The killers, obviously well knownin the community, are still free.

Please join in signing this petition to demand that the Iraqi Governmentand Kurdistan Regional Government condemn this un-Islamic, brutal act and bring the killers to justice, and that they outlaw honor killings, as well as all violence and oppression of women.

Follow this link to sign on here.

Mohammed's religion in Haiti

In the wake of the rather bumbling apparent attempts by a Trinidadian-Guyanese quartet to blow up New York's JFK International Airport, I came across an interesting piece in the New York Daily News yesterday titled Radicalism heating up in the Caribbean.

While relatively sober and well-written, two passages in the article struck me, as someone who has a bit of experience with the Muslim community in Haiti.

The first, in the text of the article proper itself, stated that "in recent years, a surprising number of mosques have sprouted up in the capital, Port-au-Prince." The second was from an unnamed Caribbean “leader” stating that "We don't understand why there are so many mosques in Haiti."

I found these statements interesting because I have actually followed the rise of Islam in Haiti in some detail over the years, and, as I wrote to the author of the article, James Meek (who sent me a quite nice and open-minded reply), I would venture that the (relatively minimal) growth of the Muslim faith in Haiti is nowhere near as mysterious (or, as seemed to be suggested, threatening) as the “leader” believes that it is.

There are not really "so many" mosques in Port-au-Prince (at last count they numbered under a dozen in a city of two million plus), but, from my research, Islam largely began to take root in Haiti in a modern context with the large-scale return of the Haitian diaspora following the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986, some bringing with them the Muslim faith that they had been introduced to in the United States and Canada. A number of these converts found further succor in the presence of Pakistani and Bangladeshi international forces in Haiti following the 1994 multinational intervention. The growth of Islam in Haiti is in fact a subject I dealt with in my 2002 article, for Reuters Mohammed's Religion Finds a Place in Haiti, which can be read here.

The Haitian Muslims I know are, for the most part, decent, lovely people (like Haitians are in general), though, of course, the one Muslim who managed to get himself elected député under the Aristide regime - Nawoon Marcellus (who threatened me on Haitian radio in early 2003) - turned out to be as unsavory as any Haitian politician I've seen. But one can’t malign an entire religion for the action of one or even hundreds of people any more than one could denounce the Catholic church because Aristide himself sprang forth from its pulpits or the United Methodists because they are U.S.President George W. Bush’s denomination of choice.

I remember, one day, as we listened to the muezzin issue the call to prayer in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood or Carrefour-Feuilles, a Muslim congregant who went by the name Racin Ganga, said to me that “Allah says that if a man kills another man it is as if he has killed all humanity… Islamic people should use the weapon of their love, because violence, as we've seen here in Haiti, will not take us anywhere."

That is a sentiment one would hope that people of many faiths could agree on.

Remembering Samir Kassir

Two years ago, on Thursday June 2, 2005, the Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir was killed in Beirut when a bomb that had been placed in his car exploded as he stepped into the vehicle. He was 45 years old.

By all accounts, Samir Kassir was a dedicated and courageous journalist. A 20-year contributor to the French monthly Le Monde Diplomatique, Kassir founded his own monthly political and cultural review, L’Orient-Express, which published between 1995 and 1998. That year, he became an editorial writer for the daily Lebanese newspaper Al-Nahar.

His editorials criticized the dominant role that Syria had played in Lebanon's convoluted and often violent political landscape, and appealed for a genuinely democratic, self-guided transformation not only for his own country but also in Syria and in the Arab world at large.

Born to a Lebanese Palestinian father and a Syrian mother, and having studied widely in France, it seemed natural that his vision of the world should be a far more broad, inclusive and sophisticated one than any mere nationalism could ever be. He was the kind a progressive, democratic liberal voice that the world needs more of, not less.

Samir Kassir left behind a wife, the Lebanese television presenter Giselle Khoury, and two daughters, Mayssa and Eliana. Take a moment today to remember him, his work and his struggle at a page that has been dedicated to his memory here.

Palabras Prohibidas

The closer they came to the promised land, the more they felt the net tightening around them.

So writes perhaps Haiti’s greatest author, Jacques Stephen Alexis, at the conclusion of arguably his finest novel, Compere General Soleil, translated masterfully into English as General Sun, My Brother by the American professor Carrol F. Coates.

Alexis was depicting the struggles against tyranny, both political and economic, of a desperately poor worker and former restavek (a child from a poor family who goes to work in rich households as a kind of indentured servant) named Hilarion Hilarius, his lover Claire-Heureuse, their young baby and their friends and relatives in 1930s Haiti and the Dominican Republic, as they are preyed upon by the ravenous opportunists of the political and economic classes that control both countries.

Alexis knew of what he wrote. A committed left-wing activist during the dictatorship of Haitian dictator Francois Duvalier (and indeed, long before), Alexis helped form the Part d'Entente Populaire (Party of Popular Accord) in Haiti 1958, serving as the country's representative to the Thirteenth Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers in Moscow the following year, as well as traveling to the Conference of Communist Worker's Parties in Beijing in November 1960, where he met the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong. Setting sail from Cuba with a group of supporters on an ill-fated expedition to oust Duvalier on April 22, 1961 (the writer's thirty-ninth birthday), once ashore in Haiti, Alexis and his group were seized by Haitian soldiers, with the writer was eventually stoned to death by a group of peasants and street children at the urging of the local army and Tontons Macoutes, Duvalier's feared paramilitary henchmen.

Francois Duvalier succeeded in silencing the voice, if not the legacy, of Jacques Stephen Alexis.

In the present day, there are still those who, if perhaps not disposed to immediately take the step of publicly, physically murdering their opponents, seek to do as much through vilification and character assassination.

I have seen this first-hand in India, where supporters of that country’s hegemony in the restive Kashmir region have often sought to cast independence activists there, and indeed, most of the population, in the role of some sort of quasi-Taliban because of the unconscionable acts of a handful of violent jihadists. And, of course, I have seen it in Haiti, where individuals who have risked their lives to build a better country than the one that Jacques Stephen Alexis left behind are still regularly maligned by a privileged few with little knowledge and even less ethical and intellectual integrity,

As such, freedom of speech, especially when it’s the freedom to speak words that the powerful or the intolerant don’t want to hear, has always been an issue near and dear to my heart. And so, in that spirit, I ask you to read and meditate on a recent article I wrote for the Inter Press Service about a new film called The Price of Sugar, and a Paris conference, which deals with the state of Haitians laboring in the sugarcane fields of the Dominican Republic. It is a film that has sparked considerable controversy, and one whose message it would appear is very unwelcome in certain quarters in the halls of the powerful of Haiti’s’ neighbor to the East.

“Body blows wear them down,” a pugilistically-inclined friend once wrote to me, of those who would seek to scuttle an open and honest discussion of what transpires under cloaks of plotting and dissembling surrounding places such as Haiti and the Dominican Republic. “Though not as glamorous, they’re better for real challengers. Work the ribs. The arms will drop!"

While less inclined to view any discussion in terms of a take-no-prisoners kind of combat, I would just suggest that, as George Orwell once wrote in his preface to Animal Farm (which saw Orwell vilified by the British left for daring to criticize the Stalinist Soviet Union), if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.