Dominique/Louissaint
Murder
Investigation
Stymied Again
After five months of deliberation, a special commission of the Haitian
Senate charged with determining if the body should lift the legal immunity
of Sen. Dany Toussaint announced Jan. 31 that it did not have enough information
to make a recommendation.
Toussaint is charged with involvement in the murders of Radio Haiti
director Jean Dominique and his caretaker Jean-Claude Louissaint on Apr.
3, 2000 (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 18, No. 3, 4/5/00).
The commission's long-delayed non-recommendation came just one week
after investigating judge Claudy Gassant was effectively removed from the
case on Jan. 23, when President Jean-Bertrand Aristide failed to renew
his mandate, which expired Jan. 4, and instead replaced him with three
new judges: Josua Agnant,
Bernard Sainvil and Joachim Saint-Clair.
Gassant is now staying with relatives in southern Florida for security
reasons.
After questioning Toussaint several times, Gassant last year formally
charged the senator with involvement in the murders and asked the Senate
to lift his immunity. Toussaint and his lawyers claim that Gassant's investigation
is part of a plot to discredit him and President Jean Bertrand Aristide's
Lavalas Family party (FL), to which the senator belongs.
"The commission feels
that it does not have in its possession the essential elements that would
enable it to make an unequivocal recommendation in strict respect of Article
115 of the Constitution," declared Sen. Victor Magloire on behalf of
the six-member commission. Article 115 states that no legislator may be
"arrested" unless s/he is caught "in the act" of committing
a crime or unless "the House of which [s/]he is a member" authorizes
it.
The long document presented
by the Senate commission, which also included Sens. Harry Desiré,
Fourel Célestin, Immacula Bazile, Youseline Bell, and Mirlande Libérus
Pavert, was illogical and diversionary, according to Sen. Gérald
Gilles. "It is a report which is filled with contradictions, lies, and
which is not balanced," he bitterly complained.
"You say that you couldn't
obtain enough information, but that's the flagrant contradiction,"
said Sen. Prince Sonson Pierre, who has been one of the most vocal critics
of the Senate's obstruction of the Dominique/Louissaint investigation.
"There is a principle that the investigation should be secret and that
the Senate should not interfere in it. This body cannot give itself judicial
powers. If you gather all the information, you will have gathered all the
evidence, and then you will pronounce the verdict! It would no longer be
necessary to carry out an investigation or to lift the immunity of the
senator so that he can go before the courts."
"The commission trespassed
into the judicial process," asserted Sen. Lans Clonès. "In
the end, it did not even do what it was supposed to, namely to declare
whether or not it is necessary to lift the senator's parliamentary immunity."
Although Gilles, Pierre,
and Clonès are the only three senators (out of 19 in the exclusively
FL chamber) to regularly speak out in favor of lifting immunity, Toussaint
was not taking any chances on the day of the commission's report. He arrived
at the Parliament with an impressive detachment of armed bodyguards who
brazenly ignored the requests of Sen. President Yvon Neptune that they
not enter onto the Senate floor. Their menacing presence threw a chill
over the session's "debate."
Robert
Ménard, the secretary-general of the Paris-based Reporters Without
Borders (RSF) wrote in a letter to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide last
month that "the murder of Jean Dominique and the numerous obstructions
to Judge Gassant's investigation are a symbol of the impunity that exists
in Haiti. With the replacement of Gassant, there is now virtually no hope
of finding out the truth about the killing, especially if the authorities
continue to block the investigation."
Pierre Espérance of
the National Coalition for Haitian Rights echoed this assessment. "The
three new judges are going to take a lot of time to reconstruct the facts
and reassemble the case," he said. "The executive has thus chosen
the road of impunity."
"The conduct of President
Aristide reminds us of the saying of the famous French politician, Thiers,"
quipped Ben Dupuy, secretary general of the National Popular Party (PPN).
"He said: 'When I want to get rid of a problem, I just name a commission.'
There have already been enough diversions in this case, and it would have
been much more simple to just renew [Judge Gassant's] mandate."
Patrick Elie of Echo Voix
Jean Dominique, an organization close to Radio Haiti Inter and pressing
for justice in the Dominique/Louissaint murders, also questioned the new
three-judge commission and said there was no reason to remove Judge Gassant
from the case unless it could be proven he was "incompetent" or
involved in "shady dealings."
President Jean Bertrand Aristide
has proposed to meet with Echo Voix Jean Dominique after Carnaval, which
culminated Feb. 10 - 12. But unless Gassant is reinstated and Toussaint's
immunity is lifted, it is hard to see where such a meeting can lead.
Watching
and Burning
by Katia Ulysse
Tanya lives on the sidewalk, a few blocks south of the White House.
She sits on a bundle of rags, her precious belongings. The sun rises and
sets on her shoulders. Time unravels before her like the stitches in her
tattered dress. The conversations of passersby fall on her like drops of
rain. Those who notice her decide she is insignificant -- another san
fanmi child of the streets. Others rush by, year after year, oblivious
to her existence.
I see Tanya every day. She
smiles as if she knows something no one else does. If I move too fast and
seem to ignore her greeting -- and she is used to being ignored -- she
swallows the 'hello' quickly, keeping her dignity. When I stop and ask
her, "What's going on?" Tanya replies: "I'm alive. I'm still
here," then laughs in spite of her destitution.
Haiti floats on the sea,
a stone's throw from Washington, DC. She sits on a bundle of history, her
treasured possessions. The sun also rises and sets on her shoulders. Time
unfurls and billows in a storm of promises. Some say she is inconsequential,
a worn-out seven-word phrase.
I see Haiti every day: in
the eyes of market women staring down from kaleidoscopic canvases, in tureens
of Premier Janvier pumpkin soup, in the headlines, between the lines
-- dividing the Brooklyn Bridge, in mothers' mourning dresses, in the narratives
of gifted dyas girl- and boy children, on yellow Post-it notes at
the bank -- inside a circular file, in the footnotes of ecological studies,
in Jean-Robert Simeon's unflinching pride, in the tempestuous drum song
of a man who braved the ocean with a goat-skinned dream strapped to his
back -- like a cross. I see Haiti in the scalpel of a surgeon, meticulously
restoring a dying man's lifeline, in a church thronged with a thousand
worshippers on Sunday morning, at the wharf -- where the conch isn't quite
a conch, but the smell of the Potomac River still takes me back to a deserted
resort near Baie des Cayes -- the tourists had left in a hurry. I see Haiti
in kreyòl on the Metro, the subway, on the Internet, in art
galleries, at the movies, on prime-time TV, at conferences where intellectuals
converge to discuss the particulars of poverty, at Saturday evening dinners
where relatives threaten to reveal, once and for all, what Kaseyol told
the cow, at research facilities from San Francisco to Switzerland, at universities
where young anthropologists decode the pawol vye granmoun. I see
Haiti before closing my eyes at night: in the black and white oil waterfall
cascading from the frame on the wall.
Some see Haiti the way they
see Tanya -- in her little corner south of the White House, sitting on
a bundle of rags, her precious possessions. Others fly by, year after year,
oblivious to her existence. If you stop and ask: "Sak Pase?" What's
going on? She might say, "Ma p gade. ma p boule." Watching and burning
. . .
Katia Ulysse was born in Haiti. She grew up in the U. S., where
she lives and writes. Her work recently appeared in "The Butterfly's Way,"
an anthology of Haitian voices edited by Haitian-American author Edwidge
Danticat. A collection of Ms. Ulysse's short stories will be published
in 2002.
| The
Broken Glass
by Michel Sanon
I may have awakened
With a distorted sense
Of a reality drowned
In the rising tide
Of virtual humanity.
Otherwise, I may have been
Caught in the fuzz of dreams
Unwillingly dismissed
By the subconscious
Of a brave collectivity
Casting stones of scourge
At its own shadow.
How is one to handle
The deceptive pieces
Of the perennial glass
Which hasn't stopped breaking
Since the infamous day
Of the great emperor's death?
Here, in my humble hands
Bruised and trembling
With pains untold,
I try to hold and reunite
The puzzling pieces
Each so precious to the whole.
|
I knew somebody's hands
Had to get through the flames.
I knew somebody's hands
Had to suffer the nails
Within the realm of pettiness
And sterile politics,
The grip of which must be broken.
As I try to perform
This legitimate task
Seemingly illusory
To the mere mortal,
I witness with anguish
The constant mutation
Of friends and foes,
Of sheep and wolves
Trading places;
And life flip-flops
In the twilight zone.
I would never loose sight
Of the diverse pieces
Of the broken glass
Broken by the sheer weight
Of selfishness and pride,
And the perfidious intrusion
Of imperialist ghosts
Who glory in and profit
From the woes of our home
And the bleeding of our hearts. |
*~
