A Fabrication by the Group of 184
(See also "Exposing the Big Lie of 'Operation Baghdad'," "Two Human Rights Investigations," "Not the Usual Suspects: Making and Breaking Illusions in Haiti" and "Alternatives, to the Truth // Alternatives, to Democracy")
On December 16, 2004, the 14th anniversary of President Aristide’s first electoral landslide in 1990, more than 10,000 Haitians took to the streets of Cap Haitien, the country’s second largest city, to demand his return and to call for an end to repression against his Lavalas political party.
Depicted here is the Kreyol banner that led the demonstration. It reads: "Operation Baghdad is a plot by Group 184 to put an end to Lavalas. They will Fail!" An organizer of the demonstration explained:
"It was the Group 184 and [its leader André] Apaid who twisted the violence following September 30 [2004] into further justifying our extermination. Everyone knows September 30 began as a peaceful protest that degenerated into violence after the UN stood by as police opened fire on the crowd. We, in Lavalas, categorically reject the assertions of Apaid’s puppet Jean-Claude Bajeux, a so-called human rights activist, and the international press, that there was ever any such [Operation Baghdad] campaign by our movement. It was a fabrication that fed the violence to justify our slaughter and we denounce those who use it to portray our movement as gangsters and bandits."
Source: "Massive Protest demanding Aristide’s return in
Haiti’s second largest city," Haiti Information Project, December 16,
2004.
www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/12_16_4.html
The above article is from Press for Conversion! magazine, Issue
#63 (November 2008)
"
Previous issues of this
Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade publication include:
#62 "Putting the
Aid in Aiding and Abetting:
CIDA's Agents of Regime Change in Haiti's 2004 Coup"