HAITIÂÂ14/2/2004Â17:15
CRISIS: SITUATION STILL CRITICAL, ARISTIDE FAMILY GOES ON HOLIDAY TO US
The family of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has left the country for Florida (United States). Contrary to reports by some international news agencies, the wife of the Head of State, Mildred Trouillot, and her two children, Christine e MichaÃlle, do not seem to have escaped to the US to seek refuge there, but âto spend a week in Florida as the Presidentâs family is wont to do every year during the period of Carnivalâ. Speaking to MISNA by telephone, the Haitian foreign minister Leslie Voltaire said that âthe Presidentâs family will return to Haiti within a weekâ. Trouillot is of US origin, having been born in New York. Aristide is facing a huge anti-government movement organised in part by the pacifist political opposition and civil society and in part by some armed insurrectionist groups. However, according to MISNA sources the discontent has also spread to elements of Aristideâs own party, âFanmi Lavalasâ (Famiglia Lavalas). In the meantime, the worsening social situation is having an ever more serious effect on the economy of the Caribbean social situation. In the north of Haiti, on the border with the Dominican Republic, MISNA sources say that over the last few weeks the habitual flow of people and goods lorries from Ouanaminthe (Haiti) to the market of Dajabon (Dominican Republic) has practically dried up, despite the fact that the border protest has apparently been reopenedâ. The same sources claim that the presence of the security forces on the border between the two countries has also increased. Thus, only five members of the Haitian opposition have been able to flee âthe selective repression carried out by the Haitian policeâ in search of refuge in the Dominical Republic. Some aid agencies contacted by MISNA fear that the Dominican government might deny dissidents exile, forcing them to return to their country. Meanwhile, news is beginning to arrive from the two main centres in the northwest, GonaÃves and Saint-Marc, theatre to the recent armed uprising. At GonaÃves (roughly 170 kilometres north of the capital Port-au-Prince), the leader of âFront de RÃsistante rÃvolutionnaire de l'Artiboniteâ, Butteur MÃtayer, has said that his men have repelled a police offensive from the sea. In Saint-Marc (65 kilometres further south), roughly 70 per cent of the population have apparently abandoned their homes following fighting between the police and rebels of âRassemblement des Militants ConsÃquents de Saint Marcâ (Ramicosm). According to unconfirmed reports, a government helicopter allegedly machine-gunned a group of civilians. [LC
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state."
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
