Help save Fr. Gerry’s Life:

Write, fax or call Thomas Shannon, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. A sample letter is below, feel free to modify it. Sec. Shannon’s telephone number is: 1-202-647-5780, his fax is 1-202-647-0791.  You can try emailing to shannonta@state.gov, but we have not been able to confirm that address.

Via Facsimile No. 1-202-647-0791



Thomas A. Shannon
Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW

Washington, DC 20520

Re:  Haitian Political Prisoner Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste

Dear Assistant Secretary Shannon:

I am writing to urge you to immediately take every possible measure to ensure that the Interim Haitian Government (IGH) releases political prisoner Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste immediately. These measures should include suspending all financial aid and arms transfers to the IGH, and suspending the U.S. visas of IGH officials involved in Fr. Jean-Juste’s persecution, including President Boniface Alexandre, Prime Minister Gerard Latortue and Judge Jean-Paul Perez.

The IGH has held Fr. Jean-Juste, Haiti’s most prominent political dissident, for five months without presenting any evidence against him. This unjustified detention may convert to a death sentence: Dr. Paul Farmer of Harvard Medical School recently diagnosed Fr. Jean-Juste with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

U.S. State Department officials have justified not intervening by claiming that the Haitian justice system needs time to work, and that Fr. Gerry is receiving adequate healthcare in prison.  But the State Department’s own website calls medical care in Haiti “scarce and substandard” and warns travelers that “medical care in Port-au-Prince is limited, and … life-threatening emergencies may require evacuation by air ambulance….”  In Fr. Jean-Juste’s case, the government told the Associated Press in December that its doctors could find nothing wrong with Fr. Jean-Juste.  Doctors who did not diagnose an advanced cancer last month should not be counted on to treat it now.  Moreover, Dr. Farmer has concluded that adequate facilities for diagnosing and treating Fr. Jean-Juste are not available in Haiti.

Haiti’s justice system was corrupt and politicized (the UN called it “catastrophic” in October) even before December 9, when the Prime Minister illegally fired five Supreme Court Justices and the courts shut down in protest. The courts have remained closed, and there is no resolution to the impasse in sight.

Haiti’s justice system has been particularly unjust to Fr. Jean-Juste.  In Amnesty International’s words, he has been “detained solely because he has peacefully exercised his right to freedom of expression.”  Fr. Jean-Juste has been arrested illegally twice, and when a courageous judge released him for lack of evidence in November, 2004, the government illegally forced the judge off the bench.

<> If Fr. Jean-Juste dies in prison, it will not be of “natural causes.”  It will be because the IGH, with the acquiescence of the U.S. government, killed him by keeping him in prison without justification and prevented him from receiving adequate treatment. There is still time to prevent this tragedy, and the U.S. has the power to do it. I therefore urge you to do everything in your power to liberate Fr. Jean-Juste immediately.

_______________________________________________________

For more information about the Half-Hour for Haiti Program, the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, or human rights in Haiti, see http://www.ijdh.org/.

 
Brian Concannon Jr., Esq.
Director
Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti
PO Box 745
Joseph, OR 97846
541-432-0597
http://www.ijdh.org/
Brian@IJDH.ORG
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