OCT-NOV 97 - HOME

WAR CRIMES

For Abner Louima, and tens (if not hundreds) of Haitian immigrants, America promised to be a place of refuge from the state terrorism that raged in the Black Republic under the U.S.-supported Duvalier regimes (1957-1986) and for nearly 2 decades after the fall of Duvalier fils.

Many thousands of Haitians braved the rolling seas, humiliating incarceration in Miami's Krome Detention facility, and the ever-present threat of return to a Haiti governed by either the malevolent Tontons Macoutes (death squads) or a malfeasant military whose only record of contemporary action was in its war against its own people on behalf of a rapacious elite.

America, for those victimized by the government, seemed like a shining dream, where safety dwelt. On August 9, 1997, that bright, shining dream was shattered, only to be replaced by a brutal nightmare for Abner Louima and his family. For, it was in the early hours that the 30-year old Haitian immigrant was arrested and reportedly beaten by several New York City cops outside of the Rendezvous Nightclub on relatively minor charges (which were subsequently dropped). Taken back to the 70th Precinct station house, Louima was stripped, shuffled into the bathroom, and there cops shoved a wooden toilet plunger up his rectum, tearing his colon and lacerating his bladder. The cops then took the fouled, bloodied plunger and forced it in his mouth, breaking four of his front teeth in the process.

Louima, who had left the government terrorism practiced in Haiti, met the American brand. As he fielded racial epithets, one cop made it clear to the traumatized security guard why he was being so brutalized. Louima, speaking from his hospital bed as he lay swathed in bandages, recalled one cop's words, "Nigger, this is Giuliani time, not Dinkins time." This cryptic message was meant to communicate that under incumbent Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, as opposed to former Mayor David Dinkins, anything goes for cops if done against Blacks. Louima's attorney, Carl Thomas, Esq., when asked to give his level of confidence in the "investigations" launched by the Giuliani administration, replied, "None." "The Administration has been involved in daily crisis management," opined Thomas.

In trying to explain the "medieval torture" meted out to his client, Thomas noted, "They feel you have no recourse.You're just an immigrant" (Lead story BET, 24 Aug. 1997)

Shortly after the installation of Jean-Bertrand Aristide as Haiti's President, American officials sent top NYPD officials to Haiti to train its newly constituted police forces.

One wonders: Who was training New York cops? Haitian community and civil rights groups insist the Louima assault is but one of a long train of brutalities inflicted upon their people, and other Black and Latino residents of the city. What happened to Louima was an Act of War, not on crime, but on a Black man; one duplicated, by various degrees, daily in every NewYork borough, and beyond.

For most of this century, cops have been soldiers in a war of attack on Black interests and to preserve the white supremacist status quo, and no reform, no commission, no 'investigation' will change that.

Born in ethnic gangs (read Ignatiev's How the Irish became White), they have been organized as a force to defeat Black emergence.

The Louima case shows us the savagery of those sworn to protect and serve; who they serve, and who they don't.

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