WANTED: TRUTH ABOUT HAITI

READING BETWEEN THE LINES IN HAITI  Lines are drawn and lines are written about the human disaster in Haiti.  Lines are written about DREAD WILME.  Beyond the regular visits of death squads and moral squalor, one lament heard from Haitians is how their horror is portrayed.  Haitians feel United Nations “peacekeepers are aligned with an oppressive, United States imposed oligarchy and gang enforcers.  Now you might add the media to the list of enemies for the Haitian nation. Who will tell the Haitian truth?

LINES ARE DRAWN in the story of the death of LAVALAS party member DREAD WILME.  Contrast the two stories below.  The New York Times visited the story yesterday.

[NY TIMES] According to the United Nations account of the raid, soldiers responded to months of violence in Cité Soleil - much of it directed at its own residents - by staging a predawn assault with armored vehicles and helicopters. Their prime target: Emmanuel Wilmer, a gang leader also known as Dread Wilmé. Mr. Wilmer and other gang members were killed in the ensuing battle.

[MARGARET LAURENT] TELLS A DIFFERENT STORY  Drèd Wilme was reported assassinated by the UN occupation forces in Haiti on Wednesday, July 6, 2005. But he's been falsely reported dead before. Haitians with faith still know that long after the hired triggermen who are shooting the people of Cite Soleil and even at Wilme, are dust in the wind, Drèd Wilme's deeds, the people of Haiti's resistance to tyranny, will live on, in all Haitians, for all peoples on this globe, who resist Euro/US-led greed, racism and tyranny against the poor and African on this planet.

AND HERE IS A THIRD  VIEW [SOBAKA] Like Amiot "Cubain" Metayer in Gonaives, Dread Wilme ascended the only ladder that reaches down into the sub-cellar of the Port-au-Prince slums. And like many gang leaders/political activists, the locals viewed him with a mixture of envy, adulation and awe. This doesn't mean that they're right and his accusers are wrong - and certainly not that the hacks at the IAC are anywhere near the truth in their portrayal of a modern day Robin Hood. It means that Dread Wilme was born in an entirely different world than most of the people eulogizing or pissing on his grave - an hostile environment that few people have seen, much less lived through.

[DREAD WILME] BEFORE HIS DEATH: The way things are in the country today, journalists are being killed, school children are being killed, business people are being killed. Many people who would have been useful to the country are being killed. As Lavalas militants throughout all the parts of the country, all 9 departments and even in the 10th department we are standing up to defend our rights, to demand that President Aristide return to the country and for us to live in peace because without President Aristide there can be no peace. The government that is here right now is doing only one thing: killing people all over the country.

DREAD WILME?  Gang leader or patriot?  Sinner or saint?  Somewhere in between.  Haitians of Cite Soleil say one thing, few listen.

PREVIOUS HERETIK POSTS ON HAITI [DEATH IN DAYLIGHT]  [DOG DAYS] [PUTTING OUT THE FIRE][ISLAND OF GHOSTS]

RECOMMENDED READING
UPDATED 8/31/05 [BODY AND SOUL] Haiti's poor are under siege. UN peacekeepers are fighting Aristide supporters -- you can find a more graphic description of the July 6 attack on Cité Soleil at Znet -- but ignoring attacks on them. Just this week, Haitian police, assisted by "civilians" armed with machetes, massacred spectators at a USAID-sponsored soccer match. There have been several such incidents in poor neighborhoods where support for Aristide's Lavalas Party is strong. Lavalas remains, by most accounts, the most popular party in Haiti. It's impossible to imagine how you can have anything resembling an honest election, when supporters of the most popular party are being routinely murdered, and their leaders imprisoned without evidence, or even charges (while death squad leaders go free).

[FACTESQUE] It Depends What You Mean by Neighbor?

[Z NET] [FREIHEIT UND WISSEN]