From answer
Statement of Ramsey Clark at the Oct. 11 press conference of the International Tribunal on Haiti's Commission of Inquiry in Port-au-Prince.I first came to Haiti in 1946, before probably anybody else in this room was born. Over the years, I've been back maybe a dozen times, but because of the nature of my work, never at a happy time.
You have heard descriptions of terrible police and military violence against the people of Haiti. All who revere life and seek peace have to recognize that police and military violence against the people is the greatest of all crimes. Who will protect the people when the police and military are violating their rights?
The very special context of this police and military violence against the people of Haiti has to be observed with the greatest care because it has happened in the wake of yet another U.S. regime change of the government of Haiti. Whatever might have happened if George Bush, and Dick Cheney and finally Colin Powell hadn’t said that Aristide has to go, we will never know. But what did happen because President Bush decided that Aristide has to go we know very well: systematic violence against the people of Haiti that is clearly overwhelmingly politically motivated.
You report in the press here regularly that there is a war against what they want to call gangs and bandits.
What they are really talking about is Aristide supporters and the Lavalas. Very often they use the name Lavalas as a synonym for the gangs, the bandits. And they go out and commit summary executions against the people, to control the country for the future.
