(received from jonah house, july
22, 2005, 11:33am & 12:01 pm)
Dear Friends:
This is Bill Quigley. I was with Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste
all day yesterday from church to jail.
Though it seems
unbelievable even to me, this is what happened and some action ideas about
what to do about it. Pardon if it is not very well-written, but the computers
are not working well and this is the best I can do in short time with little
sleep. Please circulate this to anyone you want. Please feel free to reprint and
send it anywhere.
Haitian Priest Assaulted by Mob at Funeral and Arrested for
Murder
By Bill Quigley, in Port au Prince.
Bill is a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans and is co-counsel with
Mario Joseph and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Mario Joseph
can be reached at 509.554.4284. Bill can be reached in Haiti at 509.401.4822 and
in US at 504.861.2709.
* On Thursday July 21, 2005, Fr. Gerard
Jean-Juste went to St. Pierre's Catholic Church to be one of the priests
participating in the funeral of Haitian journalist Jacques Roche. Fr. Jean-Juste
is a cousin of the Roche family and members of the Roche family protected him
from a mob earlier in his life. He went to express spiritual comfort and
reconciliation to the family.
The tragic kidnaping and
death of Jacques Roche has been taken up as a cause by those opposed to the
Lavalas party. Jacques Roche was identified as a supporter of the people calling
themselves the group of 184, who overthrew by force the democratically elected
government of President Aristide, the leader of the Lavalas party, in February
2004.
Opponents of Aristide say that because the body
of Jacques Roche was found in a poor neighborhood that he was executed by the
Lavalas party who is very strong in the poorest neighborhoods. For those of us
in the US, this is much like blaming John Kerry for inner city deaths because
most of the people in the inner city vote democratic.
Fr. Jean-Juste went to the funeral expressly to pay his respects to the family
and express his open remorse and opposition to any killing of anyone, no matter
their political affiliation.
Jacques Roche's coffin was
in the chapel next to the sacristy and main area of the church. At 10 o'clock the
bishop and about seven priests robed in white with purple stoles or sashes
paraded out of the sacristy of the church to the chapel next to the main area of
the church to say blessings over the coffin of Jacques Roche.
When Fr. Jean-Juste walked out, people started yelling at him in the
chapel. They called him "assassin" and "criminal" and yelled out to "arrest and
kill the rat."
Fr. Jean-Juste has been publicly accused
in the last several days of "a plot against the security of the state,"
smuggling money and guns into the country, and of being behind all the
kidnapings.
All clearly false charges but widely
reported by unfriendly press.
People knew Fr. Jean-Juste
was coming to the funeral because that was printed on the front page of a
conservative paper the day before.
As the well-dressed
people continued yelling at Fr. Jean-Juste, the prayer service nearly turned
into a riot. The other priests turned to leave and a well-dressed crowd of
screaming people surrounded him.
I went out to be by his
side. Some plainclothes security people and a few priests surrounded us and
helped push us through the increasingly hostile crowd back into the church
sacristy.
The other priests then persuaded Fr.
Jean-Juste not to continue in the funeral service. So we stood aside as the
priests and the funeral crowd filed past us into the main church.
Well-dressed men and women continued to scream and threaten Fr.
Gerry as they moved by us into the church. Then a crowd of 15 or 20 or more
young men, not dressed at all for the funeral came into the sacristy and the
mood turned uglier and more menacing.
At that point, the
security forces melted away.
The young men continued the
screaming started by the well-dressed people and then started pushing and
hitting Pere Jean-Juste. At that point a young woman came out of the funeral
crowd and embraced Fr. Jean-Juste shielding him with her body from the blows and
the increasingly loud and angry young men. She started praying loudly and saying
"mon pere, mon pere."
A man in a suit, who identified
himself as head of security for the funeral, rushed back in from the church area
- only a few feet away and in plain view -and told Fr. Gerry these people were
going to kill him there in the sacristy unless he fled. Fr. Jean-Juste knelt to
pray and the woman and I knelt with him in the middle of the growing crowd.
At that point people started slapping Fr. Jean-Juste on
the head and face and spitting on him and the other two of us. Something then
hit Fr. Jean-Juste in the head. Someone punched him in the eye. We stood up and
a few UN CIVPOL officers showed up to help us leave the sacristy of the church.
As we tried to get to the stairs people continued pushing and screaming and
shouting threats. They continued to call out "assassin," "criminal," and "kill
the rat."The crowd now overwhelmed the police. More people spit on us and hit
Fr. Gerry, even in the face, while others were grabbing his church vestments
trying to drag him off the church steps.
The CIVPOL were
trying to hold back the crowd but were still well outnumbered and were not able
to halt the mob. We moved up the steps into a narrow dark corridor while the
crowd pushed and shoved and spit and hit. We then retreated into a smaller
corridor and finally to a dead end that contained two small concrete toilet
stalls.
The three of us were pushed into the stalls as
the crowd banged on the walls and doors of the stalls and continued screaming.
The woman held the door closed and prayed loudly as the people outside roared
and the CIVPOL called for reinforcements.
After a few
minutes, reinforcements arrived and the hallway was finally cleared of all but
us and the authorities.
A man in a suit identifying
himself as secretary for security for Haiti told us that he was going to have to
arrest Fr. Jean-Juste because public clamor had identified him as the assassin of
journalist Jacques Roche. The police would bring him to the police station for
his own safety. Fr. Jean-Juste told the man that he was in Florida when the
journalist was killed and he wanted to return to St. Claire's, his parish. The
man left escorting out the woman who helped us.
In a
few minutes, CIVPOL police, including troops from Jordan, surrounded Fr.
Jean-Juste and I and ran us out of the church to a police truck. The truck with
police with machine guns sped away from the church and took us not to Fr.
Gerry's parish but to the police station in Petitionville.
For the next seven or eight hours we were kept in a room while the UN
forces and the Haitian forces negotiated about what to do. Fr. Gerry read his
prayer book while we waited. We were told informally that the UN wanted to
escort Fr. Jean-Juste back to his parish but the Haitian government was
insisting that he be arrested.
The attackers were
allowed to go free and not arrested, but they wanted to arrest the
victim!
Fr. Gerry told me "This is all a part of the
death sentence called down upon me on the radio in Miami.
The searches at the airport, the visits to the police stations, the
mandate to appear before a criminal judge yesterday, and now this. It is all
part of the effort to silence my voice for democracy."
At about 6pm, several Haitian officers came into our room and ordered Fr. Gerry
and I and Haitian attorney Mario Joseph to come with them.
The officers held out a piece of paper that they said was an official
complaint against Fr. Gerry accusing him of being the assassin of Jacques
Roche.
The complaint was based on "public clamor" at the
funeral identifying him as the murderer. They refused to let Fr. Jean-Juste or
the lawyers see this paper.
It was their obligation,
they said, to investigate this public clamor identifying him as the
murderer.
If Fr. Jean-Juste chose not to talk with them,
they would put him in jail immediately.
Fr. Jean-Juste
agreed to the interrogation and it went on for over three hours. He was growing
increasingly sore and tired from the beating he took, but was not bleeding
externally. When the lawyers argued with the police, Fr. Gerry read his prayer
book.
The police already knew that Fr. Jean-Juste was in
Florida at the time of the kidnaping and death of the journalist, because the
police had already interviewed him several times in the last few days in
connection with the other false allegations against him, but asked him many
questions anyway. How many cell phones did he have? What is his exact relation
to Jacques Roche? Why did he go to the funeral? Can he prove he was in Florida?
Since he was on the news in Florida can he provide a copy of the newstape
showing he was in Florida? When Aristide was president was he provided with
armed security? What happened to the pistols that his security had? Could he
find out and have any pistols returned to the government? Why did he go to the
funeral? Did Lavalas promise Aristide to execute someone from the group of 184
in retaliation for them taking power? When was the last time he was in the US?
Are the Catholic sisters in Bel-Air with you when you got to demonstrations
there? and on and on.
After over three hours, the
interrogation finished.
With great solemnity the police
told Fr. Jean-Juste that he was being charged with participating in the death of
Jacques Roche and not returning state property. The said the law orders that he
will be brought before a judge within 48 hours for further decision.
At exactly 10pm, Fr. Gerry handed me his keys and church vestments
and was locked into the jail cell at Petionville with many, many others. He was
holding a pink plastic rosary, his prayer book and a roll of toilet paper.
He flashed a tired smile and told me: "Now you see what
we are up against in Haiti. If they treat me like this, think how they treat the
poor people. Tell everyone that with the help of God and everyone else I will
keep up the good fight. Everyone else should continue to fight for democracy as
well. The truth will come out. I am innocent of all charges. I will be free
soon. Freedom for Haiti is coming. The struggle continues."
As I left him, a very tired Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste was being greeted by
all the prisoners in the very crowded jail cell as "mon pere!"
Action: Write or fax UN Special Representative Juan
Gabriel Valdés, urging him to release MINUSTAH's prison report immediately, and
to resist pressure from the Haitian police to minimize the number of casualties.
A sample letter is below. Mr. Valdés speaks English, French and Spanish. His fax
number is (dial 011 first from the US for an international line)
509 244
3512.
__________
Mr Juan Gabriel Valdés
Special Representative of the Secretary-General
United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti 387, avenue John Brown
Port-au-Prince, Haïti
Contact Information:
U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, James B. Foley United States Embassy
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Telephones: 011-509-223-4711, or 222-0200 or
0354
Fax: 011-509-223-1641 or 9038
Email to Dana Banks, Human Rights
Officer:
BanksD@state.gov
___________
Canadian Ambassador to Haiti, Claude Boucher Embassy of Canada
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Telephone: 011-509- 249-9000
Fax:
011-509-249-9920
Email: prnce@international.gc.ca
________________
Ambassador of France in Haiti, M. Yves GAUDEUL Embassy of France
51 place
des Héros de l'Indépendance - BP 312 Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Telephone:
011-509-222-0952
Fax : 011-509-223 5675
Haiti Authorities:
Fax. No. 011-509-245-0474
Me. Henri
Dorléans
Ministre de la Justice et de la Sécurité Publique Ministère de la
Justice
19 Avenue Charles Sumner
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
________________
Don't forget to visit us at http://www.jonahhouse.org for peace and
resistance news, images and reflections
Update from Jonah House
*
return to night's lantern
bulletin board
with appreciation to jonah house and bill
quigley
posted gerald and maas night's lantern july 23,
2005