Njera Njeri Janjis, Revolisyonè

Sunday, 31 May 2009
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/31
Published on Sunday, May 31, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
by Bill Quigley

Though Haitian priest Father Gerard Jean-Juste died May 27, 2009, at age 62, in Miami from a stroke and breathing problems, he remains present to millions.

Justice-loving people world-wide mourn his death and celebrate his life. Pere Jean-Juste worked uncompromisingly for justice for Haitians and the poor, both in Haiti and in the U.S.

Pere Jean-Juste was a Jesus-like revolutionary. In jail and out, he preached liberation of the poor, release of prisoners, human rights for all, and a fair distribution of wealth.

A big muscular man with a booming voice and a frequent deep laugh, he wore a brightly colored plastic rosary around his neck and carried another in his pocket. Jailed for nearly a year in Haiti by the U.S. supported coup government which was trying to silence him, Amnesty International called him a Prisoner of Conscience.

Jean-Juste was a scourge to the unelected coup governments of Haiti, who served at the pleasure, and usually the direction, of the U.S. government. He constantly challenged both the powers of Haiti and the U.S. to stop killing and starving and imprisoning the poor.

In the U.S. he fought against government actions which deported black Haitians while welcoming Cubans and Nicaraguans and others. In Haiti he called for democracy and respect and human rights for the poor.

Pere Jean-Juste was sometimes called the most dangerous man in Haiti. That was because he was not afraid to die. His computer screen saver was a big blue picture of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
"Every day I am ready to meet her." He once told me, when death threats came again. "I will not stop working for justice because of their threats. I am looking forward to heaven."

Jean-Juste was a literally a holy terror to the unelected powers of Haiti and the elected but unaccountable powers of the U.S.

Every single day, in jail or out, he said Mass, read the psalms and jubilantly prayed the rosary. In Port au Prince he slept on the floor of his church, St. Claire, which provided meals to thousands of starving children and adults every week.

In prison, he organized local nuns to bring him hundreds of plastic rosaries which he gave to fellow prisoners and then lead them in daily prayer.
When Pere Jean-Juste began to speak, to preach really, about justice for the poor and the wrongfully imprisoned, restless crowds drew silent. Listening to him preach was like feeling the air change before a thunderstorm sweeps in. He slowly raised his arms. He spread his powerful hands to punctuate his intensifying words.

Minutes passed as the Bible and the Declaration of Human Rights and today's news were interspersed. Justice for the poor. Freedom for those in prison. Comfort for those who mourn. The thunder was rolling now. Crowds were cheering now. Human rights for everyone. Justice for Haiti. Justice for Haiti. Justice for Haiti.

To the rich, Jean-Juste preached that the man with two coats should give one to the woman with none. But, unlike most preachers, he did not stop there. Because there were many people with no coats, Pere Jean-Juste said, no one could justly claim ownership of a second coat. In fact, those who held onto second coats were actually thieves who stole from those who had no coats.

In Haiti and the U.S., where there is such a huge gap between the haves and the have-nots, there was much stealing by the rich from the poor. This was revolutionary preaching.

During the day, people streamed to his church to ask for help.
Mothers walked miles from Cite de Soleil to his parish to beg him to help them bury their children. Widows sought help. Families with sons in prison asked for a private word. Small packets of money and food were quietly given away.

Visitors from rural Haiti, people seeking jobs, many looking for food, police officers who warned of new threats, political organizers with ideas how to challenge the unelected government, reporters and people seeking special prayers - all came all the time.

Every single night when he was home at his church in Port au Prince Pere Jean-Juste led a half hour public rosary for anyone who showed up. Most of the crowd was children and older women who came in part because the church was the only place in the neighborhood which had electricity.

He walked the length of the church booming out the first part of the Hail Mary while children held his hand or trailed him calling out their part of the rosary. The children and the women came night after night to pray in Kreyol with Mon Pere.

Pere Jean-Juste lived the preferential option for the poor of liberation theology. Because he was always in trouble with the management of the church, who he also freely criticized, he was usually not allowed regular church parish work.

In Florida, he lay down in his clerical blacks on the road in front of busses stopping them from taking Haitians to be deported from the U.S.
For years he lived on the run in Haiti, moving from house to house.
When he was arrested on trumped up charges, he refused to allow people with money to bribe his way out of jail, he would stay with the poor and share their treatment.

He dedicated his entire adult life to the revolutionary proposition that every single person is entitled to a life of human dignity. No matter the color of skin. No matter what country they were from. No matter how poor or rich. No matter woman or man.

His last time in court in Haiti, when the judge questioned him about a bogus weapons charge against him, Pere Jean-Juste dug into his pocket, pulled out his plastic prayer beads, thrust them high in the air and bellowed, to the delight of the hundreds in attendance, "My rosary is my only weapon!" The crowd roared and all charges were dropped.

Gerard Jean-Juste lived with and fought for and with widows and orphans and those in jail and those being deported and the hungry and the mourning and the sick and the persecuted.

Our world is better for his time among us.

Mon Pere, our brother, your spirit, like those of all who struggle for justice for others, lives on. Presente!

By Bill Quigley. Bill represented Pere Jean-Juste many times in Haiti along with the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux in Port au Prince and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.
Bill is on leave from Loyola University College of Law in New Orleans serving as Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He can be contacted at quigley77@gmail.com
Posted by Wadner Pierre

Pè Jean juste te pou jistis pou amou,men li pat komilis non.Sim rann li omaj sa pa vle di ke mwen dwe renmen komilis (lol)ki pa rekonet eksistans bon dye gran architek la.e ni mwen pa di ke nan serten peyi a serten moman li pat nesesè ke revolutyon bolchevik la te fet.mwen di ke ayiti kom yon ti peyi pov san moyen pwodiktyon nan amerik la pa ka imite ideyoloji lot moun te envante pou yon peyi develope .Se pou sa ke mwen di ke ideyoloji pam se dessalinysm.ki mande tou ke sa papa yo te rete an afrik la jwen yon moso gato tou.

Si w rayim paske mwen pa komilis e byen ou fek komanse rayi m, paske mwen pa yon revè.mwen se yon moun ki pragmatik mwen pa viv ak yon utopi kom ideyal.mwen wè moun ki ede ayisyen lè yo nan pwoblem.Mwen li l'archipel du goulag e mwen rann mwen kont ke komilis la pa bay paradi ke anpil ti eservele kwè ya.mwen pale ak kiben ki dim se pa vre kiba pa yon paradi.Mwen pa di ke kapitalis la non pli se ideyal mwen kwè nan lanmou ,nan jisitis ,nan pataj byen yo antre tout moun.mwen kwè nan aime ton prochain comme toi-meme.Si jean juste pran kout brik ,manje prison, e mwen menm se sa ou ta renmen ke mal chache anbas epi pou nou menm ap bechons joyeux sou kadav mwen ,mwen te peye sam te dwe ya deja pandan 29 lane ,jodya mwen ap pran yon repo anvan mwen al jwen gran met la mwen pap al pran kout brik ,al nan prison nan men oken engra.

Ezili Dantò’s Note:
HLLN honors Father Gerard Jean Juste
***********

The road is long and hard, his shadow gave us shelter, rest and comfort. But now, he’s gone. He did not deserve this end - li kite rès la pou nou menm – he’s left the rest to us.

I had thought after living through two US-sponsored Coup D’etats in Haiti, their death squads’ persecution of the Haitian populace; after hitting our heads against the wall of media lies and State Department spins on the second foreign-ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide; after advocating for the many still languishing in UN-occupied-Haiti jails since the 2004 Bush Haiti Regime Change, and meagerly comforting those in exile without papers, giving voice to the hurt and humiliation of the Haitian struggle, enduring the vilifications of the rich, pretentious but ignorant, the charity of the so-called “well-intentioned” and after living through decades upon decades of helplessly watching Haitians capsized on overloaded boats in shark-infested waters, asylum, equal treatment and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) still denied, I had thought, after all this, we-Haitians have surely exhausted all tears.

But the circumstances that herald the death of Father Gerard Jean Juste’s death prove there are still some tears left. From Miami, to Canada, to New York, to Haiti, the sorrow flows. And I cannot, right now, on the day after his death, put the right words together that would make sense of the senseless - the heart-wrenching persecution and coup d’etat imprisonments that led to the deterioration of his health, subsequent hospitalizations and then his death.

How do we tell the world about Father Jean Juste? How do I tell of his kindness to a young Haitian-American lawyer, fourteen years ago, in Haiti, who knew nothing about the journey she was about to undertake, but which he had already mastered. How do we give meaning to his life and works? His tireless advocacy for immigration rights for over 30-years in Miami before he left to return to Haiti and to endure with the people of Haiti, two post-Duvalier coup d'etat persecutions. Perhaps it’s just as well that I simply sank my head in my hands, let the headache pounding in my skull rage on and the tears fall. They killed him. I’m so tired for us all. I’ve not the words, except to say we shall fight from one generation to the next until Dessalines’ children and lands are free, its resources benefiting Africa’s child.

But, of course, that’s not enough. Father Jean Juste did not deserve the suffering visited upon him, especially these last five years of Haiti’s nightmare. He surely now requires that we all stay strong. For he said, before he died, that he’d left “the rest to us” – “Mwen kite rès la pou nou menm.”

So, you cannot imagine how thankful I am to lift up my head and share the tribute below with you, in gratitude. Yes, our grief must wait, for he left the rest to us, as he said.

And a brilliant man that we, at Ezili’s HLLN admire and are privilege to call friend, mentor and supporter, has indeed written a sound introduction and tribute, to the extent that that’s even possible at all, to honor this great soldier of peace and justice, our Gerard Jean Juste.

So, what I can do is stop crying for all that we’ve lost and are losing every Haitian day under UN-occupation, endless IMF/WB debt, foreign domination, pillage and containment-in-poverty, and translate this tribute from the French original into English, not word-for-word, but with my heart.

The essay below was written on May 27, 2009, the day of his death, as a tribute to Father Jean Juste by the Haitian lawyer, scholar and our honored friend, Professor Bell Angelot, of the Haitian Center for Research and Social Science Investigations.

The original French is attached; any errors of translation are solely that of the undersigned, so I urge you to refer to the original for proper sourcing.

Condolences:

Lavarice Gaudin and all at Father Jean Juste's Veye Yo organization in Miami, you are in our prayers. Lavarice we hurt for your personal lost of a man whose journey you shared on a daily basis. Sincere condolences also to all of Haiti’s peoples, at home and abroad, but especially the persecuted in Site Soley, whose massive demonstrations against the 2004 coup d’etat, the Latortue Boca Raton regime and President Aristide’s exile and deportation from Haiti, Father Gerard Jean Juste, led.

We at HLLN, share all your tears, your sorrows and extend our deepest condolences to you and his personal family, brothers, sisters, friends and to all, of every nationality and creed, who stood in solidarity with Haiti.

We at HLLN, who helped campaign for Father Gerard Jean Juste’s release from prison twice, we who have dwell under the shadow of this mighty Haitian soldier for peace, for inclusion and for justice know that Father Jean Juste's life and struggles touched and inspired folks worldwide.

We send our condolences to Bill Quigley, the white American lawyer, one of Father Jean Juste's best friends, who kneeled in prayer with Père Jean Juste in that Church as the coup d'etat folks, brought to power by Bush Regime change, beat and spit on them both, right before the UN soldiers put Father Jean Juste in handcuffs and cast him into the prison that would destroy his health and thus eventually his life.

We recall, it was Dr. Paul Farmer's sneaking into that prison to take blood samples that would eventually prove Father Jean Juste required immediate medical attention for Leukemia and thus had to be released from his second unlawful incarceration.

We recall the lone Haitian woman in that Catholic Church, filled with well-dressed Christians, who prevented Jean-Juste's death that day of his second arrest on trumped-up accusations because she threw her body on top of Father Jean Juste as he was being pummeled bloody. We recall too much to mention with this pounding headache and sorrow.

But suffices to say, we recall that no Catholic priests or other spiritual leader or Christian pastor of the stature of Gerald Jean Juste in Haiti stood with the people of Haiti in their darkest of days, after Bush Regime Change 2004.

Father Gerald Jean Juste risked the guns of the US Marines, UN troops, Haitian coup d’etat police, the dangers of their bullets, arrests and censure to walk with, and suffer with the disenfranchised and vilified residents in the populous neighborhoods of Haiti. He would not let the people stand and suffer alone.

In the end, putting his body in harms way when he could have easily flown to Miami for sanctuary; in the end, giving his voice, his talent, his spiritual comfort to the voiceless of Haiti and protesting the US/France/Canada-orchestrated coup detat, the rich folks’ pillage and occupation of Haiti, indeed killed him.

A great warrior has fallen. He’s left the rest to us.

Ezili Dantò/Marguerite Laurent
President, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network ("HLLN")
May 28, 2009
Email: erzilidanto@yahoo.com

Pipo, mwen remete lien yo pou moun ka jwen yo pi fasil.


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