Early reports indicate that on Monday morning at around 4 a.m., a contingent of French soldiers along with some U.N. ‘blue helmets’ invaded the home of Mayor Jean Charles Moise of Milo. Eyewitnesses report that a heavily armed convoy of two big trucks, 10 cars, two ambulances and about 80 soldiers descended on the Mayor’s residence.

The mayor’s four children, ages 3 to 9, were at home asleep at the time of the traumatizing dead-of-night French/U.N. home invasion. According to sources close to Mayor Moise, on finding that he was not home, the soldiers arrested his wife and took her into custody, possibly along with other adults in his house, leaving his small children without their mother. Through these trees, I see Haiti’s murderous army reborn

Mayor Moise’s wife was eventually released. No one has yet reported the reason for her detention by the foreign soldiers, however, or what happened during her arrest, why she was arrested or exactly when she was released.

The house was ransacked and damaged by the soldiers, and the arrest was patently illegal. Under Haitian law, even with a warrant and judge (Juj de pé) present, no arrest may be made between the hours of 6 p.m and 6 a.m.

Since this year’s Feb. 29 coup d’état, foreign troops in Haiti have absolutely refused to respect or be bound to Haitian law, its Constitution or sovereignty. The U.S. Marines and now French and U.N. soldiers seem instead to be establishing a record of terrorizing people targeted for arrest in the dead of night and treating Haitians, even a 5-year-old Haitian child, as in the So Anne’s home invasion, like criminals, especially if they are affiliated with the Lavalas party, which remains Haiti’s strongest and most popular democratic party and movement.

What is most disturbing about this pattern is the single-minded focus on arresting primarily Lavalas voices with a well-known popular support base and credible reputations. Even under the new U.N.-led troops, the pattern is continuing with this current hunt for Mayor Moise of Milo.

An agricultural town in northern Haiti, Milo played a major role in Haiti’s proud history. It was the favorite town of one of the founding fathers, King Henry Christophe, who, along with Toussaint, Pétion and Dessalines, helped defeat Europe’s most formidable military powers to make Haiti the world’s first free Black republic. The town of Milo is where King Christophe built Haiti’s famous wonder, The Citadel, and his beloved Sans Souci Palace.

The dynamic young Mayor Moise is renowned in Haiti for organizing small farmers’ cooperatives and for Milo’s radio station RVPM 100.3 FM, the Radio Voice of the Peasants of Milo, which reaches 500,000 Haitians. JR, then Bay View associate editor who was welcomed to Milo by Mayor Moise last year, described his visit to the station in the July 9, 2003, Bay View: ‘I felt right at home when we walked into the radio station and heard Bob Marley singing ‘Get Up, Stand Up.’ All of the music that I heard being played was revolutionary, and it showed me that although the Haitians didn’t have a total understanding on how the media could be used, they did understand one thing, which was revolutionary music helps to create revolutionary people.’

Mayor Moise has been a frequent voice in the U.S. media denouncing the human rights abuses taking place in Haiti since the U.S. and France forced President Aristide and the constitutionally elected government out of office.

In 1998, Mayor Moise visited California, where he was warmly received by the Board of Supervisors of Alameda County and the mayors and City Council members of Oakland, Berkeley and Davis. He was honored by all these cities, and a day was proclaimed in his honor recognizing his extraordinary contribution to the Haitian people’s struggle for justice and democracy.

Haiti has had a long history of brutal political repression conducted by U.S.-supported dictators and their paramilitaries in the dead of night. That is why the law against such dead-of-night arrests was adopted by sincere and conscientious Haitian legislators who wished to stop this pattern of injustice – such terrorizing, arbitrary and warrantless political arrests as this one.

If the French soldiers and U.N. troops had had a legitimate warrant to exercise, they should have served it at an appropriate hour in accordance with the laws of the land and their U.N. mission as peacekeepers under U.N. SC resolution 1529.

Readers are urged to raise their voices to protest this illegal arrest of Mayor Moise’s wife and to protest the pattern of dead-of-night home invasions, practiced solely against Lavalas officials, while Guy Phillipe, Jean Tatoune and other known drug dealers and convicted murderers run free in Haiti. Denounce the unreported mass killings of Haitian civilians since the coup d’état, the reprisals, continued illegal arrests of popular leaders in the Lavalas party and this current hunt for Mayor Moise of Milo by foreign troops.

Contact immediately U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan at (212) 963-5012 or [email protected]; U.S. Ambassador James Foley in Port-au-Prince at (509) 223-7011 or (509) 222-0200, fax (509) 223-9665, or [email protected]; U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell at (202) 647-5291 or (202) 647-7098, fax (202) 647-2283 or (202) 647-5169; U.S. State Department Haiti Desk Officers Joseph Tilghman, (202) 736-4628, fax (202) 647-2901, [email protected], and Lawrence Connell, (202) 647-5088, fax (202) 647-2901, [email protected].

Marguerite Laurent is the founder of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, www.margueritelaurent.com, and Pierre Labossiere is the founder of the Haiti Action Committee, www.haitiaction.net. Be sure to read the commentary by Mayor Moise that accompanies this story.

by Mayor Jean Charles Moise,

Cap Haitian, Haiti – I am the mayor of Milo, a district of about 50,000 people near Cap Haitian. When I was elected nine years ago, at the age of 28, I was the youngest to serve in that office in Haiti’s modern history. I’ve traveled in the United States on speaking tours, telling Americans about how we were building democracy in Haiti under the Aristide government. In late February my district came under attack by anti-Aristide forces and I fled for my life. From where I am now – hiding in the woods – I see the old Haitian army is back.

Those they don’t kill, they lock up in containers, because they burned down the jails. The kind of containers you put on ships.

The situation is different here from what I hear about in Port-au-Prince, where you have the multinational force of American, Canadian and Chilean soldiers. In Cap Haitian you have the former Haitian military. There are no police any more, so they are the ones who are law. They come into your home. They take you, they beat you up, they kill you. They burn down homes. They do anything they want, because they are the only law in town.

The journalists are in Port-au-Prince, but here in the north no one is reporting what’s going on, that the former Haitian military is killing people. They are killing about 50 people a day in Cap Haitian. It’s happening not just in the northern department but also in the central plateau, in the Artibone region.

Can you imagine that on Monday at 2 p.m. the former military declared a curfew that would start at 4 p.m.? The peasants, many of them are poor and do not have a radio, so how could they hear of this curfew? So what happened at 4 p.m.? The former military took to the streets and anyone they saw on the streets they shot. This is the kind of stuff that is going on. Can you imagine this?

We have people like myself, mayors and other members of the municipal government who have had to flee and are now sleeping in the woods and have gone to the mountains. We have church members and priests who have been beaten and whose cars have been destroyed. These people are also in hiding. We could never have imagined that we would be going back to this situation that existed before. It is intolerable.

Since this whole thing started, I haven’t seen my wife and my children. I have been in hiding. This cannot continue. This is a catastrophe for the north of Haiti and all the people of Haiti.

One has to ask, why is all of this happening? Is this because we used to have only 10 public high schools but now we have over 150? Is it because we made a democracy where people could go in the streets, protest and be free to say whatever they want?

Is it because Black people in the country now, people who were poor and always kept out of the political life of the country, they have come out and have been participating in democracy? Is that why they have unleashed this terror on us? Is that what we are paying for?

We ask these questions: Is it because the United States blocked international assistance to Haiti to make people rise up against the president, but they never did? Is it because people here are continuing to support their president? Is that why we are getting all this repression? We have to ask those questions.

We wonder whether it is because the army that used to exist before was disbanded by President Aristide. Instead of defending the people, that army used to carry out a war against us. Is it because that army is no longer there that someone has rearmed it and brought it back to Haiti with very powerful weapons?

Now the old army is doing what they used to do before, except with more powerful weapons and with helicopters. They are drowning people in the sea. That’s what going on.

The press is reporting the looting that is taking place in Port-au-Prince, but they are not reporting about the police stations that were burned and destroyed here in the north. They are not reporting on the number of schools that have been destroyed. They are not reporting on the burning of the airport in Cap Haitian and all the other things that were built under the government of President Aristide for the Haitian people.

I cannot understand how a group of disbanded military has access to such sophisticated equipment and heavy weaponry. They have two helicopters and they have two airplanes. They use the helicopter to transport their troops, and they use them at night with spotlights to look for people in hiding. They are in the air and they have their troops on the ground.

These are the questions we ask ourselves as we hide from those with the guns.

Mayor Jean Charles Moise spoke with Lyn Duff and Dennis Bernstein via cell phone. The interview originally aired on Flashpoints, broadcast at 5 p.m. Monday-Friday on KPFA FM 94.1 and first appeared in print at Pacific News Service, www.pacificnews.org. Duff is a freelance writer who has reported on Haiti since 1995. Bernstein is the executive producer of Flashpoints.

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