US Prevents Haiti Investigation

The US Prevents a Haiti Investigation

By http://www.Freace.de

[This article published on April 14, 2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.freace.de/artikel/200404/140404a.html.]

The US and France are applying massive pressure on the Caribbean states to prevent an investigation of the putsch against the Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, IPS reported on Tuesday.

The Caribbean state alliance CARICOM consisting of 15 countries repeatedly urged an investigation but this demand was never officially made to the United Nations.

CARICOM’s statement published in March 2004 says: “Given the fact that conflicting reports are circulating about President Aristide’s resignation, the heads of state (of CARICOM) believe that a complete investigation of the past events and circumstances in connection with the changeover of power of a constitutionally elected head of state is in the urgent interest of the international community.

“We read reports that CARICOM wanted a UN investigation. But we couldn’t do anything as long as we did not receive a formal request either from CARICOM or from the Security Council”, UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told the IPS.

“The reasons are obvious”, an anonymous Caribbean diplomat said. “We are under enormous pressure not to pursue our demand any further.”

To journalists, Secretary of State Colin Powell openly rejected an investigation. “I don’t believe an investigation would serve any purpose”, he said.

Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, has no doubt why the US and France are trying to prevent an investigation. “The United States and France obviously violated both the UN Charter and the 1973 Convention for Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons in view of their criminal treatment of president Aristide”, he said.

In his opinion, Aristide is still Haiti’s legitimate president. The UN General Secretary Kofi Annan should have also taken this position, according to Boyle. The UN Security Council should have urged Aristide’s immediate return to Haiti.

The fact that they didn’t act shows the drastic weakening of the office of the General Secretary of the UN secretariat under the present rule of US hegemony. Boyle calls upon the Caribbean states to indict the US and France before the International Tribunal in the Haag “for what these two criminal states have inflicted on Haiti and president Aristide and to insure his return to Haiti by an order of the International Court.”

“The alternative is even more international chaos and anarchy and a slow precipitous descent into a world war as happened in the League of Nations.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Annan’s advisor, has urged the United Nations to discuss Aristide.

For the trained observer, the circumstances around Aristide’s abduction have “the marks of an operation against Aristide carried out by the US like the 1991 putsch against him under the administration of George Bush in which the US government was implicated (including gangsters who later admitted being on the CIA payroll)”, he said in March.