Originally: GOP group pulling out amid growing violence
Contemporaneous Haiti project web page coverage of International Republican Institute party-building in Haiti, 1998
Questions and answers about the IRI’s Haiti program
1999 press coverage of the IRI’s withdrawal under threat from Haiti:
The International Republican Institute, citing an escalating campaign of violence directed at its staff in Haiti by supporters of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide, is shutting down its democracy-building operations in Haiti today.
“We are leaving Haiti. We are going because we feel we are being targeted,” said Lorne Craner, president of the Washington-based IRI, before leaving for Haiti to close the organization’s offices in Port- au-Prince.
Since May 1998, IRI staffers have been threatened at gunpoint, its workshops have been trashed by Aristide partisans, and members of Mr. Aristide’s political party have demanded the institute’s expulsion from Haiti, according to IRI officials. They said each threat came after an advance in promoting a pluralistic democracy in Haiti.
The International Republican Institute, citing an escalating campaign of violence directed at its staff in Haiti by supporters of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide, is shutting down its democracy-building operations in Haiti today.
“We are leaving Haiti. We are going because we feel we are being targeted,” said Lorne Craner, president of the Washington-based IRI, before leaving for Haiti to close the organization’s offices in Port- au-Prince.
Since May 1998, IRI staffers have been threatened at gunpoint, its workshops have been trashed by Aristide partisans, and members of Mr. Aristide’s political party have demanded the institute’s expulsion from Haiti, according to IRI officials. They said each threat came after an advance in promoting a pluralistic democracy in Haiti.
“The primary source of the threats is Aristide. There is no question about that,” said Michael Zarin, IRI regional director for the Caribbean and Latin America. “IRI employees have had guns put to their heads twice. We don’t want to wait until the trigger is pulled to leave.”
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which is funding almost $100 million in projects and food aid in Haiti this year, said it is “unfortunate” that IRI is leaving.
“I hope {IRI} might reconsider,” Mark Schneider, AID assistant administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean, said yesterday.
He said the IRI’s Washington-based counterpart, the National Democratic Institute, “and others feel they can operate.”
“It is a particularly important time as Haiti prepares for elections” in November that will supersede contested April 1997 Senate elections, he said.
Both IRI and NDI receive money from Congress to promote democracy around the world, a role they fill by monitoring foreign elections and working with political parties.
Mr. Craner said what was left of its $1.2 million Haiti budget for this year will be returned to USAID.
The IRI pullout comes on the heels of a measure that the House passed June 9 to cut off funding for the 400 U.S. troops stationed there by the end of the year. Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman, New York Republican and chairman of the House International Relations Committee, sponsored it. He also sponsored a separate measure that would cut funding and the number of U.S. human rights monitors in Haiti from 80 to 40 on July 1.
Burton Wides, Haiti’s government representative in Washington, said he could not speak for Mr. Aristide, but added that things in Haiti are “rarely what they seem.” He suggested that some of the threats may have come from people posing as Aristide loyalists.
“From the perception of IRI, they were doing neutral campaign training. But from the perspective of {Mr. Aristide’s party} there is the strong feeling that, either overtly or covertly, the IRI meetings were provoking anti-government feelings,” Mr. Wides said yesterday.
He said the government of Haitian President Rene Preval did not condone or tolerate violence against its political opposition.
U.S. officials based in Haiti said that in the past year, and especially this spring, there has been a noticeable rise in crime, politically motivated killings and violent street demonstrations related to the November elections.
A rally to decry escalating violence was broken up by bottle- throwing Aristide loyalists on May 28. The same day, police officers killed 11 persons execution-style, according to witnesses.
“Haiti has deteriorated significantly in the past couple of months,” said a Republican aide on Capitol Hill who travels frequently to the impoverished island nation. “It is very clear that elements in Aristide’s party are orchestrating street demonstrations and sponsoring violence.”
Several people, speaking not for attribution, said the IRI had been “demonized” not because of its work, but because its in-country director, Stanley Lucas, is known as a forceful, if not always diplomatic, advocate for democracy.