Awarding Abuse

On April 18, 2005, the San Francisco-based Goldman Environmental Foundation announced it would award its annual $125,000 prizes to six activists from around the world, including Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, a Haitian agronomist and founder of the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP).

A press release quoted Richard Goldman, co-founder of the prize, as stating, "In a country battling both extreme poverty and environmental degradation, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste has inspired thousands of Haitians to protect their watersheds, tree cover and farmland."

However, a Miami Herald article about the award quotes Haiti specialist Robert Maguire of Trinity University as saying, "Chavannes has been a galvanizing figure. Either people are really taken in by him or are really put off by him." The Herald also notes, "Jean-Baptiste had a very public falling out with [President Jean-Bertrand] Aristide in 1997."

One of the reasons many observers are "put off" by Chavannes is that, as Haitians forced into the Dominican Republic have testified, the Papaye Peasants Movement (MPP) made common cause with elements of the disbanded Haitian military as those forces began their terror campaign against civilians in Haiti's Central Plateau in January 2004. These killers were led by Guy Philippe, a veteran death squad operative trained by U.S. Special Forces in Ecuador, and linked by the DEA to Haiti's lucrative drug trade. Peasants from Mirabalais, as well as union organizers and priests, have shown human rights observers evidence that most of the weapons and men moved from the Dominican Republic to launch terror campaigns in Gonaives and Cap Haitien in early February 2004, came through Chavannes' territory and received his support.

On KPFA radio's Flashpoints, international human rights lawyer Brian Concannon described Chavannes Jean Baptiste as "a strong organizer behind the political end of the coup which drove Haitian President Aristide from power."

Tom Reeves, a U.S. human rights activist who has traveled to Haiti many times since 1977, writes in Znet that by early 2004 Chavannes "openly embraced his former worst enemies," working with the USAID and State Department-funded opposition Group of 184. The Aristide government bent over backward to compromise with the Group of 184 to avoid a coup. But in a statement issued shortly before U.S.-backed forces drove Aristide from Haiti, Chavannes wrote, "Democracy is not possible with Aristide. It is over. We must remove him from power. No compromise with him is possible." Chavannes also wrote, "The principal enemy of the people today is Aristide. If the Front [pro-coup paramilitaries], which is not liberal, is the enemy, they are the second enemy." Hence, Aristide's removal was acceptable to Chavannes even though it was carried out by a paramilitary force which Chavannes had previously opposed. Since the coup, Chavannes has not raised his voice to criticize a military government that has perpetuated the slaughter of thousands of Lavalas (Aristide's political party) supporters.

A resident of the Central Plateau interviewed several months after the coup told a human rights investigator, "Since February 16th, the rebels entered the city and killed the [Lavalas] director of police. It was the leader of MPP, Chavannes Jean Baptiste, who went and got these people and hid them at his house, who got these people to kill the director of police and who got all of the Lavalas supporters into hiding."

Another Central Plateau resident testified, "Right now I am in hiding with all of my family because of the old military and MPP which is directed by Chavannes Jean Baptiste. They came and destroyed my house. When the old military and MPP came into the house and destroyed it we left." Numerous elected officials from the region, including the mayor of Hinche and the director of the area's literacy program, are now in hiding due to false allegations Chavannes made against them, encouraging their arrest, over Haitian radio. These officials are unable to return to their communities.

As chair of the country's new council on peasant issues, Chavannes has been complicit in the current coup government's terror campaign against untold thousands of Aristide supporters. Dissidents under the gun in Haiti report that the current situation is even worse the anti-Lavalas terror of the 1991-1994 coup, when at least 3000-5000 Haitians were killed.

Scores of U.S. human rights leaders and lawyers have documented and denounced the ongoing repression in Haiti, including representatives of the Quixote Center, EPICA (Ecumenical Program in Central America and the Caribbean), The National Lawyers' Guild, The Black Lawyers' Association, and Amnesty International.

Leslie Fleming of the Bay Area-based Haiti Action Committee, which works in solidarity with the struggle of Haiti's poor majority to restore constitutional democracy and to end the current reign of terror, told Fault Lines, "the awarding of the Goldman Prize to Chavannes Jean-Baptiste is of great concern to all those who want to see an end to the unbelievable suffering of the Haitian people. Honoring Chavannes' work as an agronomist without acknowledging his anti-democratic support for death squads and the coup regime is a mistake which the Goldman Prize Foundation must work to rectify."

The Goldman Prize Foundation was contacted to respond to this report, but failed to answer.