This week in HaitiHaïti Progrès
13 au 19 Décembre 2000
Renewed Mobilization to Send "Toto"
Constant Back to Haiti
In the wake of a ground-breaking human-rights trial in Haiti, a broad coalition of human-rights organizations and grassroots groups has stepped up its efforts to demand the immediate deportation or extradition back to Haiti of Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, a CIA agent who headed the paramilitary Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti known as FRAPH.
The FRAPH has been cited in countless human rights and press reports as the organizational umbrella for death-squads which terrorized Haiti and killed an estimated 5000 people during the three-year coup d'état in Haiti from 1991 to 1994.
In November, the Haitian government successfully completed the trial of 36 soldiers and 23 FRAPH members for the massacre in Raboteau, a Gonaïves shantytown where 15 people were gunned down on April 23, 1994. Constant and 36 other military and paramilitary leaders were convicted for murder in absentia.
Since 1996, Constant has enjoyed de facto political asylum in the United States, living comfortably in or near Queens, New York. Under a 1996 deal struck with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the State Department, and the CIA, Constant stays out of jail, gets work papers, checks in once a week with the INS, and in return promises to clam up about the services he rendered the CIA and U.S. government during the coup (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 14, No. 13, 6/19/00).
The "Send Toto Back" coalition will hold a candle-light vigil in front of the INS Headquarters in New York, where Toto checks in every Tuesday, at 26 Federal Plaza on Broadway in downtown Manhattan on Wed., Dec. 13. The rally starts at 4 p.m. and then marches three blocks to the U.S. Federal Courthouse at 500 Pearl Street.
"What is this man doing in the United States?" asked Reed Brody, advocacy director at Human Rights Watch (HRW) at a Dec. 11 press conference announcing the rally. "Why has he not been extradited or deported back to Haiti? How can we say that we oppose terrorism when a man who sowed terror in Haiti is allowed to walk on the streets of New York? How can we say we support human rights when we shield this human rights abuser from justice?"
Brody also called on Washington to return "immediately and without redaction" the 160,000 documents taken by U.S. troops in 1994 from Constant's FRAPH and from Haitian military headquarters, "documents which Haitian prosecutors have sought to recover for the past six years in order to bring charges against Constant and his military and paramilitary accomplices." The documents, which Washington has refused to return in their entirety despite repeated Haitian government requests and a world-wide petition signed by over 30,000, are seen as crucial to establishing proof of FRAPH's involvement in Haiti's coup crimes.
"It is galling that many of the very people that Constant chased out of Haiti to the U.S. are illegal in the eyes of the INS while Toto Constant is allowed to work," said Ray Laforest of the Haiti Support Network (HSN) at the press conference.
Washington has argued that it will not honor Haiti's extradition requests for Constant because he would not obtain a fair trial in Haiti. But Ron Daniels, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), pointed to last month's Raboteau trial as proof that "clearly demonstrated the capacity of the Haitian judicial system to effectively adjudicate a massive case involving human rights violations."
The World Organization Against Torture (WOAT), the New York Chapter of the Lavalas Family party, and an art activist group known as the Public Works Project are also part of the coalition organizing the Dec. 13 action. Last week, the Public Works Project produced 2000 large "wanted posters" bearing Constant's photograph, which are being distributed and posted freely around New York.
The "Send Toto Back" coalition has also presented testimony before the New York City Council in February 1998. In August they marched from Toto's house in Queens to a real estate agency where he was working. Constant was subsequently fired. On Dec. 7, the CCR, HRW, and WOAT sent a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright requesting "that the United States government execute the outstanding final deportation order"obtained by the INS against Constant in Dec. 1995. The CCR sent similar requests to Reno on Aug. 4 and Sep. 25, both of which are without reply.
"I am being persecuted," Constant complained to Haïti Progrès in a Dec. 12 interview. "I think instead of demonstrations they should come up with some proof about all those allegations they have been making against me." Even without the 160,000 documents held hostage by Washington, Haitian investigators have compiled thick dossiers of affadavits and testimony linking Constant's FRAPH to hundreds of human rights crimes including the arson of hundreds of homes in the capital's Cité Soleil slum on Dec. 27, 1993 and killing demonstrators in a pro-democracy march on Sept. 30, 1994. Constant claims that the 1993 fires were set by Lavalas agents and that FRAPH members were merely acting in self-defense during the 1994 march. Still, he likes the limelight. "My opponents, by trying to accuse me and pin something on me, not only are they keeping Toto Constant alive politically, but also they are giving people means to doubt what they are saying against me. It was important for people to bring Toto Constant down because I was getting extremely powerful in the country. Are they scared of my political power? I don't mind that. Because like Malcolm X said, better to have negative publicity than no publicity at all."
Despite Constant's swagger and his continuing protection by U.S. authorities, the "Send Toto Back" coalition intends to continue its campaign. "We have to apply a maximum of pressure now before the Clinton administration leaves office," said Ray Laforest. "Because if Bush comes in, it will be even harder to send Toto back. Constant was practically hatched by the Republicans who are now so virulently opposed to incoming Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. They will protect Constant tooth and nail."
"I traveled through South America years ago and wondered how Nazi war criminals like Mengele and Barbie could be harbored there," said Michael Ratner, the CCR's vice president, who defended many of the refugees who fled Haiti during the coup. "I told myself it must be because they are corrupt dictatorships. Today, here in my own country, I would like to think that we are a democracy which does not harbor human-rights criminals."
| To contact the "Send Toto Back" coalition, call the CCR at 212-614-6429 or the HSN at 718-434-8100. |
This week we publish a letter from one reader, Stan Goff, to another, Dan Johansson, whose letter we published last week protesting our article "The U.S. Political Crisis: What Does the Republi-crat Vote Squabble Mean for Haiti?" (Vol. 18 No. 35, Nov. 15, 2000). |
A Reply to Dan Johansson
Dan Johansson's letter taking exception to criticism's of the US from
a Haitian newspaper is fairly emblematic of the near total cluelessness
of many Americans -- often decent people with humane motives, some of whom
have spent time in Haiti, who have never seen the forest for the trees.
It's understandable. We Americans are, in my experience travelling in five
continents, the most indoctrinated culture in the world.
History matters, and that's why Mr. Johansson's superficial and inaccurate
recital of history needs to be corrected. Haitian people as a whole have
good reason to "take an aggressive attitude" with the United States
government, because the policies of that government have been the motive
force behind most of Haiti's problems throughout the 20th Century. These
policies included repeated military occupations, one that lasted 19 years
and virtually reinstituted slavery, the massive theft of Haitian land to
develop giant agribusiness complexes, and the employment of those same
violent regimes Mr. Johansson decries in his letter. Haitians are not,
as he states, ignoring history. They are remaining wisely mindful of it.
American troops are still deployed in Haiti -- I was one of them in 1994
-- and the US foreign policy establishment is still busily trying to subvert
Haitian democracy with a flood of slander, innuendo, and lies.
On the subject of the United States never having a bloody transition
to power, I would beg to differ. As Haïti Progrès noted in
its response, Lincoln, McKinley, and Kennedy were all assassinated, and
the American Civil War, in its time, was the bloodiest conflagration in
human history. What's further missing in his paean to American peace and
democracy are the inconvenient facts of how our great material wealth was
achieved, and at who's expense. Conservatively, 5,000,000 indigenous people
were killed in the theft of native land by Europeans here. Tens of thousands
of Mexicans were killed in the conquest of the Southwest. Millions of Africans
were lost in the slave trade, and millions more reduced to chattel. A million
or so Filipinos were wiped out to achieve the conquest of that nation from
1899-1906. 500,000 civilians we killed in the process of World War II,
so we could fill the Imperial vacuum left by France and Britain. 1,000,000
Koreans to consolidate that empire. 3,000,000 Southeast Asians in Vietnam,
Cambodia, and Laos. 1,500,000 Iraqis to maintain control over the flow
of Middle East oil. We haven't even begun to include the neo-colonial surrogates,
Pinochet, D'Abuisson, Pahlavi, Suharto... Duvalier.
Mr. Johansson says the American system has worked well. I'm sure it
has... for some. But it's obvious that for millions and millions of people,
it has worked anything but "well." Haitians are among that latter group.
Mr. Johansson says no one is happy about our present electoral conundrum.
Actually, I am. At last, we see the electoral college system exposed for
what it is -- an influence peddling scheme hammered out in negotiations
with slave states, who wanted more-than-equal representation in our new
Republic. Yes, sir, it is indeed archaic. And the very notion being bandied
around now, by opportunistic Republicans, that it somehow protects the
interests of smaller states, is illogical on its face. When the campaigns
get rolling, where do the candidates concentrate their largesse? Alaska?
Montana, perhaps? West Virginia? Arkansas? Do the math.
And the hallucination that America is the world's philanthropist! We
spend the smallest percentage of our overall budget on foreign aid of any
industrialized nation in the world. Where does the majority of that go?
Military Aid to Egypt, Israel, and Colombia -- the latter two being the
world's premier human rights violators. This is where America's official
checkbook is open. Guns for thugs.
As for the vaunted two-party system, it strikes most of us as one party
with two competing factions. While there are some differences, it must
be noted that they are circumscribed by the slavish dependence of both
parties on giant corporations for the lion's share of their campaign contributions.
So every couple of years we get to choose one of the two candidates that
big business has approved for us. Look at this race. Two rich guys, both
from political dynasties, and both invested up to their eyeballs in petrochemical
industries. If stepping out of this box will bring "chaos" as Mr.
Johansson suggests, a lot of us are saying, bring it on.
So don't take it personal, sir. It's not you, the individual American, with whom they are upset -- these ungrateful Davids casting stones at the poor, beleaguered Goliath. It's our Imperial government. Look past your official mythologies and your knee-jerk ethnocentrism, and recognize that just because you may have religious and altruistic motives, our government has not behaved in a way that Jesus of Nazareth would have approved of.
Stan Goff
Raleigh
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