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5-26-05, 8:53am
The health of constitutional prime minister Yvon Neptune continues to deteriorate on day 28 of a hunger strike to demand that he be tried or freed. He has been illegally imprisoned since June 27, 2004 without ever going before a judge (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. Vol. 22, No. 16, 6/30/2004).
Congressman Kendrick Meek (D-FL) visited Neptune on May 16 in his prison cell in the jail next to Police headquarters in the Pacot neighborhood of the capital. Meek called de facto government claims over the weekend that Neptune was in good health “totally inaccurate.”
"I had to get on the floor [next to Neptune's bed] just to hear him speak," Meek said.
Meanwhile, in New York on May 11, Neptune’s daughter Maryvonne held a press conference at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). “We don’t know the condition of his organs,” she said. “I’m calling for action, for people to actively and openly put pressure on the people who are detaining him.”
South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) also sounded an alarm over Neptune’s “grave condition” in its weekly Internet newsletter. “As an immediate step, the interim government must either formally charge or release Yvon Neptune and other political prisoners,” the newsletter said. The ANC also said that “urgent steps need to be taken to end the brutalization of Haiti's population and open the way for a meaningful national dialogue towards the restoration of the country's constitutional order.”
Neptune’s situation is perhaps best conveyed by himself, in a letter which was translated into English by Serge Bellegarde, Guy Antoine, and Marilyn Mason. Neptune wrote it just after he was dragged to St. Marc on April 22 for a no-show judge.
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The Church at the Crossroads
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From the time I left the Prime Minister’s residence on March 12, 2004, up until June 27, 2004, the source of my insecurity had been the [de facto] Government itself. When the Government had me arrested on June 27, up until today, not only did this source of my insecurity increase and became more direct, but even worse, the Government deprived me of my freedom of movement, together with my freedom to speak freely, with all the length and breadth and depth that the Constitution allows for this right to be exercised.
The hunger strike I began on February 20 was aimed at forcing the Government to set me free and to stop being the cause of my insecurity.
Because of a promise the Government had made that it was going to liberate me, I accepted to put an end to my hunger strike and to go to the Argentine Hospital under the jurisdiction of the MINUSTAH/United Nations.
Even while in that hospital, however, my insecurity continued because of the Government’s continuing refusal to set me free.
That is why, while I was in the Hospital managed by the Argentinians/MINUSTAH, I continued to resist so that the United Nations would not send me to the trap of the supposed Villa in Pacot, but rather, that it would require instead that the Government free me and stop threatening my life. It was in the context of the dilatory tactics of this wicked Government that I was obliged to resume my hunger strike with even more force and why I am continuing it in the prison in Pacot, still with the aim of regaining my freedom and my security.
My friends, listen. On April 20, here is the information I had passed on: this plot aims at keeping me in prison by all means for as long as possible; that is one objective. The second objective is to take me, no matter what the conditions, to Saint-Marc to continue the political humiliation. Friends, listen: while I was already into the fifth day of my complete hunger strike, on Thursday afternoon, April 21, having given me guarantees that nothing would happen to me, the United Nations Forces took me, against my will, to a supposed Prison Villa in Pacot, close to the General Administration and Inspection Headquarters of the Police, despite the fact that I had explained to the UN Representative that this was a trap that the de facto Government had set up to implement the death plan it had for me. Above all, I told them that I would maintain my hunger strike in the supposed Prison Villa as long as I was not set free.
My friends, on Friday April 22, early in the morning, a team of 7 to 10 executioners I recognized from the prison system burst in on me to take me to Saint-Marc. I felt my life was in danger in the presence of these executioners; I told them I had not eaten, nor drunk anything in five days, and I asked them to leave me in peace because I was weak. When they picked me up with force, put me outside, and tried to handcuff me, I resisted for my life and I bit one of the many arms trying to force handcuffs on my wrists.
They drove me to Saint-Marc. I threw up all along the way. When we arrived in Saint-Marc, nothing was done. Supposedly, Mrs. Cluny Pierre Jules, the supposed Investigating Judge, declared that she was not coming because she had not been previously notified.
When the UN Representative received news of what the conditions were in Saint-Marc and of what kind of state I was in, he sent a helicopter to pick me up and take me back to Port-au-Prince, where I received some care in a UN ambulance which escorted me back to the supposed Prison Villa in Pacot.
I am continuing my hunger strike, so that I can regain my freedom and my security and so that the de facto Government will stop threatening my life, while it continues to trample on my dignity.
Yvon Neptune
Former Prime Minister
Member of Fanmi Lavalas
Political Prisoner
At the Prison in Pacot, Port-au-Prince
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