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Boston Haitian Reporter
August 4, 2004
Si M Pa Rele (If I Don't Speak Out)

Pastor Martin Niemöller described his journey to a Nazi concentration camp with a poem. He had been a respected minister, and a German national hero as a World War I submarine captain. As Hitler's regime became more illegal and immoral, he spoke out against it, which led to his imprisonment, near execution, and famous poem:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Niemöller's poem jumped into my head when I read last June's U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Rasul v. Bush. Shafiq Rasul and thirteen others are all Australian or Kuwaiti citizens, accused (but not convicted) of helping the Taliban, and held at the U.S. Naval Base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Bush Administration had declared the base a law-free zone, where Constitutional protections of civil liberties did not apply, where prisoners did not have the right to talk to lawyers or challenge their detention in court.

The Supreme Court Justices decided in favor of Rasul, not Bush, and confirmed that the prisoners did have the right to go to court. Not because the Justices sympathize with the Taliban- Republican Presidents appointed a majority of the Justices, and their court is a few miles from where a 9/11 plane crashed into the Pentagon. They spoke out to defend a centuries' old tradition called habeus corpus, which is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and international law.

Habeus corpus allows prisoners to go to court and insist that the government holding them provide a legal justification for doing so. If the government cannot justify the detention, the court orders the prisoner freed. Habeus corpus can be used by terrorists and other criminals, but it can also be used by Jews and trade unionists, ministers and even judges. In order for it to protect anyone, however, it must protect everyone. As Rev. Niemöller found out the hard way, once the government can lock up one segment of society without justification, there may be no way to stop it from arresting anyone else.

The principles defended in Rasul v. Bush are important for Haiti too, and not just because Haitian refugees are often held at Guantanamo Bay. Habeus corpus is also enshrined in Haiti's 1987 Constitution. As in the U.S. and other countries, police may not legally arrest anyone unless they have a warrant from a judge or are in hot pursuit. All prisoners must be brought before a judge within 48 hours of the arrest, who determines whether the arrest is justified. If the government cannot justify the detention, the court must order the prisoner freed immediately.

Haiti's prisons are steadily filling up with people held without legal justification and denied access to the courts. Most are anonymous, with no one to speak for them, like the thirty prisoners in Gonaives who started a protest on July 20 because they had never seen a judge. Others, because of their prominence, are able to get some information out: former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and former Minister of the Interior Jocelerme Privert, arrested in June and April respectively, have never seen the judge in the case for which they were arrested. Professor Pierre Reynold Charles and journalist Arens Laguerre were brought before judges, but long after the 48 hours required by law. One political prisoner, former Delegué of the South Department Jacques Mathelier, was brought before a judge, who found his detention unjustified, and ordered him freed. The authorities then transferred Mathelier to Port-au-Prince, and kept him in jail.

Journalist Arens Laguerre shows what happens when someone speaks out. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in New York protested his illegal incarceration on June 2, and he was freed on June 4. The others show what happens when no one speaks out: they are all still sitting in overcrowded, unsanitary prisons.

The institutions that we trust to speak out in these situations are not doing so. As CPJ notes (www.cjp.org), the Haitian press is polarized- the National Association of Haitian Media actively participated in the anti-Aristide Group of 184. Most radio stations and newspapers will not report on the illegality of arrests of perceived Lavalas supporters (who are the majority, but not all of the political prisoners) and some even help the repression by broadcasting names of people who are subsequently killed or arrested. Other radio stations have been silenced, destroyed by the insurgents or closed down by the de facto government, or intimidated by threats and abductions of journalists. The international press coverage of Haiti is so meager that South African President Thabo Mbeki titled his article on today's repression "Haiti After the Press Went Home" (www.anc.org.za).

Human rights institutions are also failing to speak out. The best-known Haitian human rights groups either ignore Lavalas supporters altogether, or worse, they fan the repression by denouncing people who are soon arrested illegally. The Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) frequently denounced reported human rights violations by Haiti's democratic governments, but has been silent since the coup d'etat. A search of the IACHR website (www.cidh.org) for "Haiti and Human Rights" leads to 434 references; but only three documents from after February 29, all from mid-March, all generalized condemnation of violence on all sides.

The "International Community"- the wealthy countries that so often lecture poor countries about human rights, are more than silent. They are actively blocking the efforts of countries like South Africa and Haiti's CARICOM neighbors, who are insisting on respect for human rights in Haiti and an investigation into the coup d'etat.

Si M Pa Rele is the title of the 1996 report of Haiti's Truth and Justice Commission. The Commission chose the title because it understood the connection between failing to speak out and the recurrence of human rights violations. The title is therefore a challenge to the rest of us: we know what is happening, are we going to speak out?

Brian Concannon Jr. directs the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, www.ijdh.org. He lived in Haiti from 1995 to 2004, working for the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, a group of lawyers established by Haiti's constitutional governments to help human rights victims pursue their cases in Haitian courts.
 

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