Octo­ber 16 , 2007

Update:last alert). The man­date for MINUSTAH, the UN Peace­keep­ing mis­sion in Haiti, was renewed Mon­day by the UN Secu­rity Coun­cil, for a year (see Reuters Arti­cle on the renewal, see our the UN in Haiti web­site sec­tion for more back­ground on the mis­sion). Rev. Ger­ard Jean-Juste may be get­ting closer to hav­ing his day in court: he had an appeals court hear­ing sched­uled for Novem­ber 6, but that was resched­uled to Novem­ber 26. If you are inter­ested in join­ing the inter­na­tional legal observer del­e­ga­tion for this hear­ing, con­tact us.

Com­ing Attrac­tions: Media Account­abil­ity Con­fer­ence. Among the peo­ple to be hon­ored at the event are Kevin Pina of the Haiti Infor­ma­tion Project, Jeb Sprague of HaitiAnalysis.com, and grass­roots Hait­ian Jour­nal­ist Wad­ner Pierre. All three made impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions to cov­er­ing attacks by UN troops on civil­ians in Haiti, which made the list of top cen­sored sto­ries of the past year.

More debt relief events: In Port­land, Ore­gon, on Octo­ber 18, IJDH will par­tic­i­pate in a panel Respond­ing to Haiti’s Unjust Debt With Jubilee Jus­ticeOver­com­ing a His­tory of Debt Injus­tice in Haiti and Africa on Octo­ber 29.

Last Fri­day was the two-month anniver­sary of the abduc­tion of Hait­ian human rights activist Lovin­sky Pierre-Antoine. Lovin­sky, his dis­ap­pear­ance, and tak­ing action to save Lovinsky’s life, see our web­site, www.HaitiJustice.org.

Lon­don, San Fran­cisco and New York, a peti­tion drive from Los Ange­les, and calls to Haiti and for­eign gov­ern­ments from Canada

There are lots of rea­sons for all of us to take action to help save Lovin­sky. He is a hus­band, father, brother, son, col­league, inspi­ra­tion and a friend to many. He is irre­place­able as an activist: no one has orga­nized more demon­stra­tions in Haiti over the last decade; no one has so effec­tively kept jus­tice issues on the national radar screen. His dis­ap­pear­ance has a rip­ple effect: as long as Lovin­sky is miss­ing, other activists will have good rea­son to fear for their safety if they speak out.

First, sign the Peti­tion to Save Lovin­skyGlobal Women’s Strike. The peti­tion has 1017 sig­na­tures already, but it needs hun­dreds of more to max­i­mize its impact. Sign­ing takes less than three minutes.

avokahaiti@aol.com, and we will ensure that they are deliv­ered.
_________________________________________________________________
Octo­ber __, 2007

Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Haiti
Palais National

Re:

Your Excel­lency:

Mr. Pierre-Antoine is impor­tant to peo­ple all over the world who care about Haiti [Please per­son­al­ize here: men­tion how Lovin­sky has touched, inspired or edu­cated you

Fon­dasyon 30 Sep­tanm

Sin­cerely,