Today is a very sad anniver­sary: two years ago, on August 12, 2007, human rights activist Lovin­sky Pierre-Antoine

Thanks to every­one who sent us let­ters ask­ing UN Spe­cial Haiti Envoy Bill Clin­ton to speak up on behalf of Ronald Dauphin. The response was very Click here for more infor­ma­tion and a sam­ple letter.

On Sun­day, Paul Farmer, founder of Part­ners in Health and IJDH Board Mem­ber, was named UN Deputy Spe­cial Envoy to Haitithat we will send him.

This week we are insist­ing on jus­tice for Lovin­sky (if Lovin­sky were here, he would say to write for Ronald Dauphin first). There are demon­stra­tions for Lovin­sky planned today, Wednes­day, at the Brazil­ian con­sulates in Los Ange­les, by ) and in San Fran­cisco, by the Haiti Action Com­mit­tee

Dear friends,

This upcom­ing August 12th marks the 2nd year anniver­sary of the dis­ap­pear­ance of Lovin­sky Pierre-Antoine, one of Haiti’s bravest and most out­spo­ken human rights lead­ers. He was kid­napped by unknown assailants two years ago after meet­ing with a US human rights del­e­ga­tion. The cur­rent Hait­ian gov­ern­ment, led by Pres­i­dent Preval, and the UN occu­pa­tion forces in Haiti have not car­ried out a pro­fes­sional inves­ti­ga­tion to locate him. There is still some hope that Lovin­sky may be alive. After all, there were peo­ple who “dis­ap­peared” in Latin Amer­ica for con­sid­er­able peri­ods of time and were later recov­ered alive, due to sol­i­dar­ity efforts.

Please take 5 min­utes of your time and con­tact Stephanie Robin­son, a US State Depart­ment offi­cial on the “Haiti Desk”. She can be reached at ph: 202–647-4755 or at robinsonsl2@state.gov. The mes­sage to her is simple:

“We are deeply con­cerned about the polit­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance of Lovin­sky Pierre-Antoine in Port-au-Prince on August 12th, 2007. We urge the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion and the State Depart­ment to sup­port a pro­fes­sional and thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion by all rel­e­vant author­i­ties in Haiti, includ­ing the UN occu­pa­tion forces (MINUSTAH). While it is true that Lovin­sky Pierre-Antoine is a Hait­ian cit­i­zen, he was “dis­ap­peared” for speak­ing out against the coup that removed Pres­i­dent Aris­tide on Feb­ru­ary 29th, 2004– a coup that was made pos­si­ble by the mis­guided for­eign pol­icy of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion. There­fore, it is impor­tant for the cur­rent Obama Admin­is­tra­tion to stand up for human rights in Haiti, just as it pro­fesses to do in Iran and elsewhere.”

Thanks!

For more infor­ma­tion about the Half-Hour For Haiti pro­gram, the Insti­tute for Jus­tice & Democ­racy in Haiti (IJDH) or human rights in Haiti, see our web­site, www.HaitiJustice.org. To receive Half-Hour for Haiti Action Alerts (1–

2 per month), send an email to HalfHour4Haiti@ijdh.org.