A human rights team conducted an investigation in Haiti from November 11 to 21, 2004. The group met with businessmen, grassroots leaders, gang members, victims of human rights violations, lawyers, human rights groups, and police and officials from the UN and the Haitian and U.S. governments, and conducted observations in poor neighborhoods, police stations, prisons, hospitals and the state morgue. Because of the importance of the findings, the Center for the Study of Human Rights has chosen to publicize them. The report concludes that many Haitians, especially those living in poor neighborhoods, now struggle against inhuman horror. The Center presents this report with the hope that officials, policymakers and citizens will not only understand this horror better, but will take immediate action to stop it.

Contact: Thomas M. Griffin, Esq. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Email: grif...@msgimmigration.com PHOTOS AND AUDIOTAPE AVAILABLE

HAITI: HUMAN RIGHTS IN A HURRICANE OF DESTRUCTION

Philadelphia, PA- January 19, 2005. In response to reports of a growing human rights crisis in Haiti, the Center for the Study of Human Rights at the University of Miami School of Law today released a report, including color photographs, documenting horrific human rights abuses in Haiti, and uncovering links to a U.S. program that destabilized the elected government and contributed directly to the current violence and deprivation in Haiti’s poorest neighborhoods.
Investigators, led by Philadelphia attorney Thomas M. Griffin, made observations in Haiti’s most violent slums, and interviewed officials from the Haitian and U.S. governments, former employees of U.S. “democratization