APPEAL TO TRADE UNIONS, POPULAR ORGANIZATIONS, & POLITICAL PARTIES COMMITTED TO DEMOCRACY AND THE DEFENSE OF HUMAN RIGHTS
This is the official International Solidarity Appeal to demand justice for the assassination of Comrade Azaka, Romario Dangelo Saint John, murdered by a death squad April 18th.
Trade unions, peoples organizations, and political parties who support democracy and universal human rights are urged to sign on to this statement, adopt their own resolutions in defense of MOLEGHAF and its targeted activists, and write letters to the officials listed at the end of the appeal.
On Tuesday, April 18, 2017 at 9 PM, while going out to buy groceries for his 22-year-old fiancée who was caring their 6-month-old baby daughter at home, Romario Dangelo Saint Jean, a 26-year-old militant of the Freedom & Equality Movement of Haitians for Brotherhood (Mouvement de Liberté et d’Egalité des Haïtiens pour la Fraternité, or MOLEGHAF), was the victim of a cowardly murder on rue Icard, Port-au-Prince.
Dangelo had been threatened with death and attacked on Tuesday, August 16, 2016 by police officers consisting of the hirelings of the UN Office of Project Services (UNOPS) in Fort National. Right away, his mother had accompanied him to the Port-au-Prince public prosecutor's office to bring a complaint against these officers denounced by the popular hue and cry as being the murderers of Davidtchen Siméon in August 13, 2016 and abusers of David Oxygène in August 21, 2016. Given the silence of the police and judicial authorities, Romario Dangelo Saint Jean’s parents were planning to send him to a foreign country to save his life, but the delay of the country’s public institutions in the delivery of papers gave way to the assassins of the National Police of Haiti (PNH) and to criminal impunity.
This heinous murder happens just 8 months after these two criminal offences that we wish to remind to the national and international public opinion:
On Saturday, August 13, at 3: 30 PM, in the popular district of Fort National, as a MOLEGHAF meeting concluded, a group of armed men assassinated Davidtchen Simeon, a 23-year-old MOLEGHAF activist, very involved in the fight against the UN occupation forces (MINUSTAH). And before this heinous murder, Wednesday 10 and Thursday, August 11, 2016, Davidtchen had already been violently assaulted and threatened by the police officer Jean Maxime.
On Sunday, August 21, 2016, 9 days after the assassination of Davidtchen Simeon, at 6:30 PM, on this same street, rue Icard, near St-Antoine Church, after having been assaulted violently, David Oxygène, MOLEGHAF Secretary-General and an emblematic figure of the Haitian resistance against the UN occupation forces and the dominance of transnational capital, was just missed by shots fired by police officer Jean Maxime.
It is important to emphasize that these acts of serial murder and attacks against MOLEGHAF militants are committed with impunity and with the complicity of the judicial and police authorities. For MOLEGHAF has invoked all the legal procedures, accompanied by lawyers of the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) at the national level and those of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) according to the Haitian laws and international covenants and conventions signed and ratified by the Haitian State, but the police and judicial authorities are turning a deaf ear.
These acts of barbarism originated from a critical position taken by MOLEGHAF militants with regard to a construction project, including buildings and a road, that UNOPS wanted to put in their neighborhood without public consultation, accompanied by a miserable salary for construction workers. In fact, as everyone knows, in occupied Haiti, “projects” implementation in the popular districts is often conducted only through the use of henchmen who intimidate the population into compliance.
MOLEGHAF, the Organization to which Davidtchen Siméon, Romario Dangelo Saint Jean and David Oxygène all belong, is known in Haiti for its tenacious fight in defense of national sovereignty and for the withdrawal of the MINUSTAH from Haiti—without which, MOLEGHAF considers that the preconditions for the exercise of democracy do not exist.
But, regardless of the diversity of political views that can be held on such subjects, the assassination of Davidtchen Siméon, the assassination of Romario Dangelo Saint Jean and the assassination attempt on David Oxygène must be condemned with the utmost firmness by all who defend democracy and the most basic human rights.
In this way, we, the presidium of the studies workshop on the situation of freedom of expression and association in the context of the UN occupation in Haiti, gathered in Port -au-Prince this Saturday, April 22, 2017, in the premises of the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), located in #3, 2ème impasse Lavaud, Lalue, are appealing to the solidarity of national and international trade unions in order to demand of the competent authorities—particularly the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, the Office of the Citizens’ Protector (OPC) and the Inspector General of the Haitian National Police (PNH)—that all the backers and implementers of the identification and conviction of Davidtchen Siméon’s murder, the assassination of Romario John Dangelo be identified, tried and convicted, and that disciplinary measures be taken against the policeman Jean Maxime for his assassination attempt on the person of David Oxygène.
Down with the occupation! Down with barbarism! United Nations out!
In defense of democracy against barbarism: punishment to those responsible for the serial assassinations of our comrades Davidtchen Simeon, Romario Dangelo Saint Jean and to the police officer Jean Maxime for his assassination attempt on David Oxygène!
Send your messages to:
By letter (these offices have no email addresses to receive messages):
Ministère de la Justice et de la Sécurité Publique (Ministry of Justice and Public Safety (MJSP) : Av. Charles-Summer 18, Port au Prince - post code: HT6113
Inspection Générale de la Police Nationale d’Haïti (General Inspectorate of the National Police of Haïti (PNH): 07 Autoroute de Delmas (zone Delmas 2, Haïti) - Postal Code: HT6120
By e-mail:
Office Protecteur Citoyen (OPC) Protectorate Citizen Agency : Av. John Brown, Lalue (Port au Prince) – tel : (+ 509) 2940 3065 / 3702 0656 e-mail: OPC@protectioncitoyenhaiti.org; opc-haiti@hotmail.com; plainte@protectioncitoyenhaiti.org;
Send copies to: ctsp.haiti@yahoo.fr; avokahaiti@aol.com ; moleghaf17@yahoo.fr