Haiti Coup

Filed under World by adam | March 3, 2004 | 4211 hits | 8 comments

According to several knowledgeable sources interviewed by Democracy Now!·, Jean-Bertrand Aristide did not resign but was abducted by American forces as part of a coup d’etat. This is a very different version of the events than that offered, for example, by the New York Times:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 29 President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the slum priest who became his country’s first democratically elected president, resigned today under intense pressure from the United States and the threat of an invasion of the capital by armed insurgents, fleeing by jet at dawn under heavy American guard.

You can download the whole show in ogg vorbis format or as a larger mp3 file. Whether or not you agree with Aristide’s lawyer, friend, and Congressmember Maxine Waters (D-CA), this version of the story needs to be more widely disseminated. It’s our duty as citizens of the blogosphere to correct these sorts of omissions and inaccuracies in the mainstream media.

8 comments

  1. Steve Laniel Jan 28

    Waters has issued a press release about this:

    I spoke to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide by telephone this morning and he told me that did not resign. He said he was kidnapped by American military and U.S. diplomats and military officials and was being held in the Central African Republic.

    Mr. Aristide said that Luis G. Moreno, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, came to his home in the wee hours of the morning with other diplomats and with U.S. Marines. He said he was told to leave and leave now or he and many Haitians would be killed.

    He told me, “The world must know it was a coup. I was kidnapped. I was forced out. That’s what happened. I did not resign. I did not go willingly. I was forced to go.”

  2. Anonymous Jan 28

    Aristide kidnapped?

  3. Anonymous Jan 28

    Aristide kidnapped?

  4. UG Jan 28

    Randall Robinson and Congressperson Waters are very convincing, but are they telling the truth?…and if so, they are really only reporting what they say Aristide told them. Is he merely trying to save face? I don’t know, but I wonder, where are the leaks…where is the American press…are they all under the political/corporate thumb? Who can we believe, and why?

  5. Adam Kessel Jan 28

    It’s certainly possible–even likely–that Robinson, Waters, Aristide’s lawyer, and Aristide himself have their own agenda in all of this. What I find disturbing is that these primary sources appear to be all-but-ignored. This may have changed in the last day or two. If the administration wants to contest Aristide’s claims, it’s free to do so, but we should hear what the claims are first.

  6. UG Jan 28

    I agree, the mainstream responds to its own agenda, or that imposed upon it. Yet, in fact, at least we know that you, Stephen and I have heard these claims. And no one has come to confiscate our computers!…..(yet)

  7. UG Jan 28

    I agree, the mainstream responds to its own agenda, or that imposed upon it. Yet, in fact, at least we know that you, Stephen and I have heard these claims. And no one has come to confiscate our computers!…..(yet)

  8. UG Jan 28

    And apparently we are allowed to repeat ourselves, too!

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