Friday, March 18, 2011
Aristide arrived in Haiti
Aristide arrives in Haiti, ending seven years of exile
Posted at 03/18/2011 10:16 PM | Updated as of 03/18/2011 10:37 Pm
Aristide just landed in Haiti
Friday March 18, 2011 09:21 AM ET
Former Haitian president Jean Bertrand aristide just landed in Haiti... ARISTIDE IS BACK IN HAITI... Follow this article for all the updates at the airport...
Here are the updates as it happens...
Keep Refreshing this page for more updates!
9:21am - President Aristide Came out of the airplane... A blue/white jet...
9:25am - Lots of commotion at the airport as President Aristide makes his way to the Diplomatic room
9:26 am - Aristide enters the 'Salon Diplomatic' at the airport
9:28am - The media is mobilized and awaits first words from President Aristide...
Missionary freed from Haitian jail return to US
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BRADENTON, Fla. -- An American missionary who was jailed without charges for five months in Haiti has returned to the United States.
Danny Pye - a 29-year-old pastor who ran an orphanage with his wife in southern Haiti - arrived Thursday evening in Florida, where his wife was about to give birth to their second child.
Pye was released Tuesday. He was initially jailed in October over claims he took property from other missionaries, former associates with whom he split following a dispute last year. He was briefly released on Christmas Eve, then re-arrested and jailed on suspicion of having an invalid residency card.
The group said it never intended for him to be jailed.
Pye has lived in Haiti since 2004 and speaks Haitian Creole
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Haiti braces for deposed president Aristide’s return as election nears
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Exiled Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide will arrive here Friday from South Africa, according to his attorney, returning less than 48 hours before a runoff vote in a presidential election that has already been marred by fraud and chaos.It was unclear what impact the deposed president’s return would have on Sunday’s vote, seen as a critical step toward jump-starting the country’s rebuilding process after the January 2010 earthquake that killed 200,000 people. But U.S. officials have been so worried about Aristide’s disruptive potential that President Obama spoke with South African President Jacob Zuma this week to express his concerns, according to the White House.Aristide boarded a plane in Johannesburg with his wife, Mildred, the Associated Press reported, and the American actor and political activist Danny Glover. “The great day has arrived!” he said in Zulu, a language he studied in South Africa, the AP reported.
Haiti’s attempt to elect a successor to outgoing President Rene Preval, a former Aristide ally, has been a process as shaky as this city’s cracked buildings. The first round of voting in November was plagued by cheating and widespread voter disenfranchisement, leading to a political crisis that international observers had to sort out through delicate negotiations.
That fragility has foreign observers and many Haitians wary of Aristide’s return so close to Election Day. The priest-turned-politician was the country’s first democratically elected leader in 1991 and remains a revered figure among Haiti’s poorest.
Aristide’s critics, though, say he became increasingly corrupt and despotic before a 2004 rebellion that ended when U.S. officials flew him to exile — an event he later denounced as “a kidnapping.”
Aristide has said he will stay out of politics and wants to return to teaching. But few believe him — not his supporters and certainly not his adversaries.
Aristide’s arrival is expected to stir the country far more than that of former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who returned to Haiti in January after 30 years of exile in France. Duvalier now faces charges of corruption and embezzlement, but his presence here has mostly been met with a shrug by Haitians, many of whom are too young to remember his rule.
Both of Haiti’s presidential runoff candidates are former Aristide opponents, but if Aristide signals support for one of them, he could tilt the contest. The vote Sunday sets popular singer Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly, 50, against Mirlande Manigat, 70, a university professor and former first lady.
At a raucous campaign rally Wednesday night in front of a gas station in this city’s Petionville neighborhood, Martelly said in an interview that Aristide had a right to return home, but that he thought the former president was “trying to create a distraction” for his own political benefit.
“He’s just coming back to create instability,” Martelly said.
By Nick Miroff, Thursday, March 17, 9:34 PM
Fugees reunited to support candidate Michel Martelly
(AllHipHop News) Music executive Jimmy Rosemond has teamed with former Fugee members Wyclef Jean and Pras to show support for Haitian Presidential candidate, Michel Martelly.
Re-elections for the office of President of the country is scheduled to take place this Sunday (March 20th), after the original November election results were scrapped, due to fraud, voting irregularities and violence at the polls.
No clear winner emerged in the original Presidential race, paving the way for Sunday's new vote between former first lady Mirlande Manigat and pop singer Michel Martelly.
Tonight (March 17th), Rosemond, Wyclef and Pras will hot a concert featuring Busta Rhymes and The Fugees, including estranged group member, Lauryn Hill.
"It's a new era in Haiti and we are campaigning for change for good in my beloved country," Wyclef told AllHipHop.com. "I had to come home as a diaspora to make a difference."
Over 200,000 people are expected to attend the concert tonight, which will take place at Champs de Mars in Haiti.
"No change comes easy especially in these trying times for the Haitian population but I had to come to encourage voting for that change," said Rosemond, who is also of Haitian descent.
"As the diaspora becomes more involved with Haiti there can't be nothing but good change," Rosemond continued.
Haiti, which is the Western Hemisphere's poorest country, is still recovering from a massive earthquake in January of 2010 that killed over 200,000 people.
To make matters worse, the country has been dealing with a cholera epidemic since last October that has killed thousands of people.
Aristide is on his way back to Haiti
By DONNA BRYSON and MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press
–
6 mins ago
JOHANNESBURG – Declaring the "great day has arrived," Jean-Bertrand Aristide said farewell to South Africa Thursday, then boarded a plane for Haiti, where he can expect both adoring crowds and probing questions about his intentions.
U.S. President Barack Obama had tried to keep the hugely popular but controversial figure away from his country until it holds a presidential election this weekend, a vote many fear will be destabilized by the presence of the former Haitian president.
Aristide's lawyer Ira Kurzban has said Aristide will be back in Haiti by noon on Friday.
Aristide addressed about 50 reporters in several languages from South Africa and elsewhere on the continent at a small airport in northern Johannesburg that often handles charter flights. South African foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane accompanied him, his wife Mildred and two daughters to the airport to see them off. Michaela, 12, and Christine, 14, have spent half their lives and their most formative years in exile.
"The great day has arrived! The day to say goodbye before returning home," he said in Zulu, a language he studied in South Africa. "We are delighted to return home after seven years. In Haiti also they are very happy .... Their dream will be fulfilled. Together, we will continue to share this endless love."
Thousands are expected to welcome him home. As word spread in Haiti of his imminent return, several dozen people adorned the courtyard of his foundation with small Haitian flags and photos of him. One woman showed up with a bouquet of flowers that she wanted to present to him, while another knelt on the concrete in prayer. A third elderly woman simply wept.
Aristide took no questions before heading to his chartered plane.
"We can't hold him hostage if he wants to go," South African Cabinet Minister Collins Chabane was quoted as saying earlier Thursday, noting Haiti's government had delivered Aristide's diplomatic passport last month.
Aristide, a former slum priest, was twice elected president of Haiti and remains wildly popular among the Caribbean nation's majority poor.
Aristide never completed either of his terms. He was ousted the first time in a coup and restored to power in a U.S. military intervention in 1994. After completing his term he was re-elected years later, only to flee a rebellion in 2004 aboard a U.S. plane. Aristide claimed he was kidnapped.
Aristide has been reclusive in exile, doing university research and polishing his academic credentials with a doctorate awarded by the University of South Africa for a comparative study on Zulu and Haitian Creole. He relaxed by playing table tennis.
Obama was concerned enough about Aristide's possibly destabilizing influence to call South African President Jacob Zuma on Tuesday and discuss the matter, U.S. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told The Associated Press. A Zuma spokesman had no comment, saying he was unaware of the call.
"The United States, along with others in the international community, has deep concerns that President Aristide's return to Haiti in the closing days of the election could be destabilizing," Vietor said. "President Obama reiterated ... his belief that the Haitian people deserve the chance to choose their government through peaceful, free, and fair elections March 20."
At the airport Thursday, South Africa's foreign minister said Zuma had wished Aristide "bon voyage and safe landing in his country of birth."
Aides say Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected president, fears the winner of Sunday's vote might block his return. In the past, both candidates had opposed Aristide. Now, both Michel Martelly and Mirlande Manigat stress his right to return as a Haitian citizen under the constitution. Both candidates would want to attract votes from followers of the Lavalas Family party of which Aristide still is president.
Haiti's electoral council barred Lavalas from the presidential election for technical reasons that supporters said were bogus. Its members are boycotting Sunday's runoff. The initial Nov. 28 vote was so troubled by fraud, disorganization, instances of violence and voter intimidation that 12 of the 19 candidates including the front-runners initially called for it to be tossed out.
Actor Danny Glover, the chair of TransAfrica social justice forum, came to South Africa to accompany Aristide home. Glover asked why former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier could return to Haiti unhindered and not Aristide.
"People of good conscience cannot be idle while a former dictator is able to return unhindered while a democratic leader who peacefully handed over power to another elected president is restricted from returning to his country by external forces," Glover wrote on the TransAfrica Forum website.
Bill Quigley, legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights at Loyola New Orleans Law School said that "the United States trying to control when any Haitian citizen — especially a former President — can enter Haiti is outrageous." Quigley is among more than more than 100 lawyers from the United States, Europe and Canada who wrote a letter of criticism to the U.S. State Department.
South African officials had been showing increasingly impatience with the U.S.
Chabane told a news conference Thursday that South Africa cannot be held responsible for whether Aristide stays or goes, according to the South African Press Association.
"What I should stress is that we are not sending former President Aristide to Haiti. He was given the passport by the government of Haiti and we can't hold him hostage if he wants to go," Chabane was quoted as saying.
Aristide emerged as a leading voice for Haiti's poor in a popular revolt that forced an end to the Duvalier family's 29-year dictatorship. He has said he will not be involved in politics in Haiti and wants to lead his foundation's efforts to improve education in the impoverished Caribbean nation devastated by last year's catastrophic earthquake.
In the Haitian capital's Bel-Air neighborhood Thursday, there was a celebratory air as word spread Aristide was coming.
"We are going to party," said 36-year-old mechanic Assey Woy, passing the afternoon on street corner with friends. "It will be like New Year's Day."
Not far away, in front of the crumbled National Palace, a man who is supporting Martelly in Sunday's election told Associated Press Television that he had mixed feelings about the arrival.
"Yes, I support Aristide. I love Aristide," said the man who gave only his first name, Carlos. "But I don't want him to come back right now because it can be trouble for the election."
___
Associated Press writers Ben Fox in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and Jenny Gross and Ed Brown in Johannesburg contributed to this report.
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