Father Gerard Jean-juste: a Haitian Hero Dies

Scan page 11

MIAMI—Haitian human-rights activist Father Gerard Jean-Juste passed away on May 27, leaving thousands— perhaps millions—who knew and loved him heart-broken, myself included.

Jean-Juste died of a stroke and leukemia.

He was 62.

Known simply as “Gerry” to his many friends and supporters, he was a tireless community organizer for refugee rights and democratic rights in Haiti. I worked with Gerry while I lived in Miami in 1979-1986, years of intense struggle for the Haitian community. Gerry shook up Miami’s conservative political climate like no one else.

Rules Jean-Bart, a long time Miami Haitian activist told Socialist Action, “Gerry gave a voice to the Haitian Beginning in Miami in the late 1970s, Juste-Juste led so many demonstrations that many remember him bullhorn in hand. Jean-Juste, along with a collective of Haitian leftists called “Konbite Liberte” (Working together for freedom), denounced U.S. immigration policy as racist and demanded “political asylum” for Haitian refugees.

The Reagan administration had declared Haitian refugees “economic,” not political, refugees, despite the abysmal human rights record of the Duvalier regime. In contrast, Miami’s Cuban exiles, mostly white and fervently anti-communist, were deemed “political” refugees and given automatic asylum and citizenship. Gerry coined the term “Black Boat people” to highlight the blatant double standard. What’s more, Gerry never failed to link refugee demands with ending Washington’s decades-long support for the brutal family dictatorship of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier (1971-1986), son of the notorious Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier (1957-1971).

For imperialism, granting Haitians political asylum would mean discrediting a loyal anti-communist ally. Haitians were making the journey to Miami in shark infested waters, in which hundreds, probably thousands, died. Refugees who made it to Miami were often deported back into the arms of Duvalier’s thugs, where many were jailed, tortured, and sometimes murdered as dissidents.

In 1980, Jean-Juste’s overtly political message got him into trouble as director of the Catholic Church-run Haitian Refugee Center (HRC). They tried to fire him. In response, the HRC was physically occupied for two weeks by Haitian activists. Finally, Gerry was reinstated. The HRC’s funding source changed to the left-of-center National Council of Churches, whose Haitian Refugee Project was then headed by Cuba activist Rev. Lucious Walker.

With help from New York radical attorney Ira Gollobin, the HRC acquired talented lawyers such as Ira Kurzban and Steve Forrester, both still active defending Haitian rights. They won many influential court battles. However, Gerry believed the political struggle—particularly mass mobilizations—framed all legal battles and created the conditions for a favorable court decision. The HRC’s politically astute attorneys agreed.

Early in the Reagan administration, an “interdiction” policy began in which U.S. Coast Guard vessels would seize Haitian refugee boats in international waters, in clear viola... Honduras (continued from page 12: “Support the general strike in Honduras! Down with the Micheletti government!”)

... it’s a legal matter,” said the State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. This is a primary consideration because the U.S., on making the determination that a coup has taken place, is required by its own laws to suspend all military and economic assistance to Honduras. The Obama administration is searching for a plausible legal argument to continue its long history of funding the Honduran military.

Honduras has long been a bastion of U.S military might in Central America, as it was a staging ground for the Reagan-era Contra attacks on the Sandinista-led revolution in Nicaragua, and has long been a training ground for death-squads that operated in many places around Central and Latin America, including Honduras itself. Hundreds of Honduran military officers participate in the counter-insurgency training programs at the U.S. School of the Americas (nearly 1000 from 2005-07)

and this relationship is one of the most extensive that the U.S. enjoys with any Latin American nation.

Moreover, the Pentagon has maintained a constant presence in the country, where its Joint Task Force Bravo for the Southern Command coordinates joint exercises with Central American militaries. The U.S. shares the Soto-Cano air base in Honduras with the Honduran air force. It is becoming increasingly clear that while tion of U.S. and international refugee law.

Refugees were given farcical asylum hearings in the middle of the Caribbean. Reagan also began a long-term detention and deportation policy specifically designed to punish and exclude Haitians. Haitian refugees were placed in the Krome Detention Camp on the edge of South Florida’s everglades, left to languish in “legal limbo” for up to a year or more awaiting hearings. Many were deported anyway. In stark contrast, Cubans exiles intercepted under similar circumstances spent a brief time at Krome. They were quickly released into the custody of friends or family. None were deported.

Hunger strikes by Haitians at Krome were numerous; suicide attempts not uncommon. One Krome camp chief quit and denounced conditions there. Gerry led innumerable pickets at Krome and held as many press conferences. Some activists committed civil disobedience. Rules Jean-Bart repeatedly met in Miami with a representative of the Reagan administration. “The fear of Gerry was very real. What was this guy going to do to our community? That would drive them crazy!” explained Jean-Bart. “They asked us what did Haitians want? We always said “refugee status” and they wouldn’t go for it.”

The fall of Duvalier After a mass uprising forced Duvalier to flee Haiti on Feb. 7, 1986, Jean-Juste spent more time in Haiti. He joined with other proponents of “liberation theology” such as future President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Jean-Juste returned to Haiti before the election of Aristide in December 1990, whom he supported. Gerry was made head of the “10th Department,” the exile community.

Although extremely popular amongst the masses, Aristide did not have a revolutionary program. In 1994 and 2004, Aristide called on U.S. imperialism, not the masses, to rescue his regime from two CIA-backed military coups. A World Bank economic policy was imposed, which has meant deepening misery for the masses.

After both coups, Jean-Juste stayed in Haiti when most well-known Aristide supporters fled. “Gerry was fearless,” said Jack Lieberman, a long-time Miami activist and friend of Jean-Juste. Many Haitians wanted Gerry to run for president while Aristide was living abroad. It was assumed by everyone that he would win. He never decided. In 2005, while in Miami, Gerry led many protests against the Brazilian military’s role in Haiti, which was helping the U.S. government is working publicly to isolate the Micheletti regime—and endorsing similar efforts in the UN and the Organization of American States, it is privately setting terms on Zelaya’s return to power. Obama has notably declined to join in the call for Zelaya’s “unconditional” restoration to power, instead advocating “negotiations” with the coup-makers on the terms of the democratically- elected president’s return.

The Guardian newspaper in the UK published an article titled, “Does the US back the Honduran coup?” which observed, “the Obama administration claims that it tried to discourage the Honduran military from taking this action. … Did administration officials say, ‘You know that we will have to say that we are against such a move if you do it, because everyone else will?’ Or was it more like, ‘Don’t do it, because we will do everything in our power to reverse any such coup’? The administration’s actions since the coup indicate something more like the former, if not worse....”

The Mexico City daily La Jornada reported that representatives of the Obama administration warned the press that the negotiations will be “complicated” because they seek to resolve conflicts that have been festering in Honduras for some time prior to the coup. All of this indicates that the Obama administration intends above all to ensure that should Zelaya return to the presidency of Honduras, he will do so as a hostage of the military and the oligarchy, and at the mercy of the U.S. government that was responsible for restoring him.

The specific price for Zelaya’s return has been sug(Above) Residents of Miami’s “Little Haiti” at funeral procession for Father Gerard Jean-Juste (at left). prop up a U.S.-backed dictator, Gerard La Tortue. Afterward, Gerry received threats on the radio, adding that he would be arrested in Haiti.

He soon went to Haiti anyway and was arrested on absurd charges of killing journalist Jacques Roche. He became an Amnesty International “prisoner of conscience. Jean-Juste was subjected to beatings and deprived of medical care. In jail, he was secretly diagnosed with leukemia by U.S. doctor Paul Farmer. After international protests he was released and flown to Miami for treatment.

When I last saw him in 2006 he looked great and had responded well to treatment. In the last few weeks of his life, however, he had fallen into a coma. Gerry’s funeral in Miami was attended by thousands from the “Little Haiti” community, his coffin taken on a symbolic procession back to where the former HRC had been on 54th St., now headquarters of Ve Ye Yo, an organization founded by Jean-Juste. The real Father Jean-Juste The bourgeois press and Haitian politicians would like to whitewash Jean-Juste’s legacy, as was done to Dr. Martin Luther King. Jean-Juste backed the struggle against the U.S.-supported Salvadoran military and opposed U.S. aid to the CIA-backed counter-revolutionary forces in Nicaragua.

Moreover, says Jack Lieberman, “Gerry never sought privileges. In Haiti, he lived with his sister, he didn’t have a car; the community gave him a car. Gerry didn’t have any money. When Aristide was in power, he never lived high off the hog. He never benefited materially in any way.” Said Jean-Bart, “Gerry’s time was the people’s time.”

Lieberman recalled for Socialist Action, “I’ll never forget a couple of years ago during the big student-worker protests in France, the biggest since May 1968. I went to where Gerry was staying at his sister’s house in Fort Lauderdale.

“Gerry was watching the protests on CNN. We both sat watching it and they showed people battling the police and shutting things down. Gerry was so happy to see French workers and students reclaiming their revolutionary heritage. Both of us were reminiscing about May ’68. He talked about how ’68 inspired progressive Haitians. We both really enjoyed it. We were both laughing. I’ll never forget it.”

Jean-Juste was buried in his hometown of Cavaillon, in the south. Goodbye Gerry, dear comrade and friend. Merci anpil. (Many thanks.) n gested in recent reports that his defense minister had suggested a possible “peaceful arrangement” to the dispute in which Zelaya would be willing to drop plans of pursuing a rewrite of the constitution in return for serving out the remainder of his term—a mere six months. Socialist Action condemns the coup d’etat in Honduras and stands in solidarity with the Honduran workers and farmers and their supporters in the broad masses as they wield the weapons of mass street mobilizations and the political mass strike to cripple the putschist government of Robert Micheletti and the Honduran bourgeoisie. We support the self-determination of the people of Honduras and completely oppose any attempt to “negotiate” with the coup-makers or any similar disguise that imperialism designs for what is only its imposition of a government on a sovereign nation. The explosive situation in Honduras brings sharply into focus once more the crisis of leadership at this phase of the international workers movement. No eccentric bourgeois politician has the political wherewithal to lead the masses in a determined struggle against the class that is responsible for the depredation of the land, the exploitation of the workers, and the impoverishment of the broad masses. With every subsequent crisis, and every “symbolic” leader who finds him or herself momentarily surging on the might of the discontented masses, the need for a revolutionary socialist party becomes increasingly clear to the best fighters in Honduras, who mean to make a permanent break with their ruling elite. n Socialist Action july 2009 11