“The people of Haiti remain targets of political violence, torture and in some cases murder, and too often the perpetrators of this violence are the Haitian National Police, armed with U.S. weapons free of charge,” said Lee, who notes that 3,000 weapons have been transferred to the U.S.-installed interim government in Haiti since March 2004.

“This amendment is necessary in the effort to restore democracy. Haiti desperately needs humanitarian assistance, and sending weapons only exacerbates Haiti’s struggle with violence and the criminal activity within the Haitian National Police Force,” Lee said.

“If the Senate approves the bill, it will be a strong first step in both reducing violence in Haiti and moving towards a more principled and humane U.S. policy in Haiti,” says attorney Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, which advocates for human rights victims in the courts and promotes grassroots action and solidarity with Haiti’s pro-democracy movement.

This isn’t the first time that Lee has tried to pass an amendment blocking the transfer of guns to Haiti. In June, after the State Department released a report promising to send thousands of handguns to the PNH, she sponsored an amendment to a spending bill to block that transfer. It passed the House of Representatives on July 1 with little opposition but stalled in the Senate.

Lee’s new amendment comes in the wake of a request from the State Department’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs on Nov. 2 for a transfer of arms to the PNH. The arms would be used for “ensuring security and rule of law during the upcoming elections,” a State Department official said.

Arms are transferred from the United States to Haiti through direct sales, as part of a foreign aid package, and through military draw downs, in which the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency transfers excess or outdated military equipment – including arms – to its allies.

These transfers are illegal, say international observers, because in 1992 the United States imposed an arms embargo on Haiti that is still in place today. This embargo was never lifted after democratically elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide was restored to power in 1994, and some critics say that the embargo prevented PNH officers from adequately protecting the Haitian people and defending themselves during the 2004 coup, when a group of highly trained and well armed disbanded soldiers joined drug traffickers and private militias in overthrowing Aristide for a second time.

Since the coup, the ranks of the PNH have been “purged” and replaced with members of the Haitian armed forces, says police chief Charles Leon. The Haitian Army was disbanded by Aristide in 1995 after they committed numerous human rights abuses against the Haitian poor.

In May 2004, the State Department acknowledged that they had violated their own arms embargo by shipping lethal weapons to the U.S.-installed interim government. That same month the interim government and the newly reconstituted PNH was accused of extensive human rights violations by international and indigenous obverses including illegal arrests, torture in detention, murder, applying lethal forced to disperse peaceful demonstrations and committing mass rape.

“The Bush administration’s response has been to place more weapons in the hands of these police,” explained former Haitian government attorney Ira Kurzban in a Miami Herald commentary. “During Haiti’s democratic administrations, the U.S. government imposed a full-scale arms embargo on non-lethal as well as lethal weapons to the Haitian police. They could not even buy bullet-proof vests or tear gas to disperse crowds.

“In November 2004, however, John Bolton, as undersecretary for arms control in the Department of State, signed off on providing the current police, under a non-democratic government, more than 3,635 M14 rifles, 1,100 Mini Galils, several thousand assorted 38-caliber pistols, 3,700 MP5s and approximately one million rounds of ammunition,” wrote Kurzban.

Geneva’s Graduate Institute of International Studies confirmed Kurzban’s accusations in their 2004 Small Arms Survey, which is regarded by experts as the definitive report on international arms transfers.

Lee’s amendment, which was included in the FY 2006 Foreign Operations Appropriations Conference Report, prohibits all arms transfers and sales by the State Department for use by the Haitian National Police. The amendment also requires an investigation into implications that both senior and rank-and-file officers of the PNH are involved in corruption, kidnappings and narcotics-trafficking – accusations which were documented by the State Department’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Reports in 2004 and 2005.

Concannon hopes that it won’t just end there. “Other steps should follow, including blocking economic support until the interim government frees the political prisoners and otherwise stops persecuting its opponents,” he said.

The bill was approved by a vote of 358-39 and now awaits approval in the Senate before going to the White House and becoming law.

Lyn Duff is a reporter currently based in Port-au-Prince. She first traveled to Haiti in 1995 to help establish a children’s radio station and has since covered Haiti extensively for Pacifica Radio’s Flashpoints, heard on KPFA weekdays at 5 p.m., and other local and national media. Email her at LynDuff [at] aol.com.



http://www.sfbayview.com/110905/ustostop110905.shtml