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US military building base on Haiti?

Submitted April 23, 2004 - 9:17 am by David Keating
Gang,

Can I get a comment on this source (SF Bay View)?  These articles seem legitimate but... suspicion is my middle name.  DK

http://www.sfbayview.com/042104/learningzone042104 .shtml

exerpt...

Haiti, the American Learning Zone

by Tom Reeves

Jeremy, in hiding in Haiti, wore a brave smile as he told his terrifying story.
Photo: Tom Reeves
I returned this month from Haiti as part of the first independent U.S. observer delegation since the removal on Feb. 29 of President Jean Bertrand Aristide. More than a decade ago, I helped organize the New England Observer Delegations to Haiti - nine diverse groups of prominent Boston area people who went to Haiti after the first coup d’état against President Aristide. We witnessed a reign of terror by the Haitian military, in which at least 3,000 democracy activists were slaughtered. We also witnessed the almost universal jubilation of the Haitian urban and rural poor – 85 percent of the population - on Aristide’s return.

...

We heard from people who witnessed nighttime raids against Lavalas. U.S. helicopters came with blinding lights, heavily armed U.S. troops fired into crowds, known criminals and former army men were incorporated into the police.

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The U.S. State Department point man on Haiti, Roger Noriega (he was also involved in the Iran-Contra plot in Nicaragua) told an audience in Washington last year that Cuba and Venezuela should pay close attention to events in Haiti. One of the first acts by U.S. marines after landing in Haiti this year may have been to establish a perimeter around Mole St. Nicolas, the peninsula opposite Guantanamo, jutting into the narrow strait between Haiti and Cuba. Local residents reported to Haitian news media that U.S. military structures were being built on the site long sought by the U.S. as a companion base to Guantanamo.

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Tom Reeves, former director of the Roxbury Community College Caribbean Focus Program in Boston, was a member of the Emergency Haiti Observation Mission, a group of 24 diverse people from throughout the U.S. and Canada, coordinated by the Quixote Center in Maryland, that recently returned from Haiti. Email him at erasumustom@sympatico.ca

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