26013: Hermantin(news)PRIEST CALLED `A PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE' (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


Posted Saturday August 20 2005

PRIEST CALLED `A PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE'

Human rights advocates and U.S. officials are demanding the release of former 
Miamian Gérard Jean-Juste from a Haitian jail.

BY JACQUELINE CHARLES

jcharles@herald.com

Former Miami activist Gérard Jean-Juste has become the focus of a strong 
letter-writing campaign urging his release from a Haitian jail and calling him 
a political prisoner.

A Catholic priest who led the most powerful Haitian rights group in the 
country, Jean-Juste was arrested last month for investigation in the murder of 
a journalist, but no formal charges have been filed.

He has been one of the staunchest critics of Haiti's U.S.-backed interim 
government, accusing authorities of human rights abuses against supporters of 
former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Washington of racist policies.

Aristide's supporters allege that more than 700 of their brethren have been 
jailed for political reasons. They include former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune 
and Annette Auguste, a 70-year-old Haitian grandmother and popular singer known 
as Só Ann.

Twenty-nine members of the U.S. Congress plus thousands of supporters from 42 
countries and 10 U.S. states have sent letters to the U.S. and Haitian 
governments demanding his release from a Port-au-Prince jail.

'TRUMPED UP' CHARGES

Amnesty International has said the charges against Jean-Juste are ''trumped 
up'' and it has called him a ''prisoner of conscience,'' a classification 
usually reserved for the victims of the worst abuses.

''Father Jean-Juste is an advocate for human rights in Haiti, and his arrest is 
part of a long-standing attempt to silence him for his criticism of the Haitian 
government,'' said Archi Pyati of Human Rights First, a lawyers advocacy group 
based in New York. The group's campaign triggered 1,351 letters to the Haitian 
government, Pyati said.

In Miami, where Jean-Juste's supporters have held a candlelit prayer vigil in 
Little Haiti and protests outside the Haitian consulate, many Haitians remember 
him as head of the now defunct Haitian Refugee Center, which helped thousands 
of Haitians obtain legal residency status. Jean-Juste served as director of the 
center from the early 1980s until 1991, when he resigned to move back to Haiti 
to work for the Aristide government.

He remains one of the few Haitian leaders who can draw a crowd in Little Haiti, 
and hundreds of Haitians clamored to touch his face at a rally he appeared at 
in December, just days after he was released from his first stay in a Haitian 
jail.

''I know that Father Jean-Juste is being persecuted for what I don't know,'' 
said Farah Juste, a Miami community activist. ``He's fighting for the cause of 
the masses''

In a letter dictated from jail to his U.S. lawyer, a defiant Jean-Juste said he 
had collapsed from unknown causes on Sunday but pressed his demands:

`JOINING MY VOICE'

''Regardless of all the hardship, I am still joining my voice to the voices of 
all democracy lovers to demand the return of constitutional order in Haiti, the 
physical return of our elected president Aristide, release of all political 
prisoners, respect of all human rights,'' he wrote.

But while Jean-Juste's demands for the return of Aristide may have ruffled the 
Haitian government's feathers, supporters say he has become even more of a 
problem amid increasing talk that he might run for the presidency in elections 
scheduled for Nov. 6.

''They do not want him out [of jail] because he could potentially register as a 
candidate for president and easily win if he has the support of Aristide,'' 
said Ira Kurzban, a Miami lawyer who has known Jean-Juste for 27 years and 
worked for the Aristide government.

Jean-Juste has denied any interest in being a candidate, saying he wants to 
maintain his devotion to his church and to Haiti's poor. Aristide also was a 
Catholic priest, but left his order to pursue politics.

Jean-Juste was arrested July 21 after a mob attacked him during the funeral of 
Jacques Roche, a journalist who was kidnapped and murdered.

The priest said he went to the funeral to show his respect and that he and 
Roche were related.

But the mob, which accused Aristide supporters of killing Roche, chased and 
threatened Jean-Juste.

''They don't have anything as evidence or a charge,'' said his Port-au-Prince 
attorney, Mario Joseph. He filed a motion seeking Jean-Juste's release while 
the investigation is completed, but the judge has not yet replied.

Jean-Juste was first arrested by the post-Aristide government in October for 
suspicion of inciting violence and hiding pro-Aristide gunmen. He spent 48 days 
in jail but was not charged.

QUESTIONED BY POLICE

The week before his latest arrest, police stopped and questioned him for 
several hours after he arrived at the Port-au-Prince airport on a flight from 
Miami. Days earlier, Aristide critics had accused Jean-Juste of handling some 
of the former president's money.

Supporters credit his aggressive activism with halting U.S. government attempts 
to deport Haitians who had illegally migrated to South Florida.

''He's responsible for [Miami] having a Haitian community,'' Kurzban said. ``It 
was through his leadership and his creation of the Haitian Refugee Center and 
working with us on the legal work and organizing people politically that [he] 
stopped the deportations. It was the initiation and the creation of the Haitian 
community here.''