Some news outlets have reported that Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned his democratically elected presidency in Haiti on Sunday. But TransAfrica Forum founder Randall Robinson told CNN during an interview Monday afternoon that he’d received a phone call from Aristide — and the Haitian leader said that he was “abducted by 20 American soldiers.”

BILL FLETCHER
Fletcher is president of TransAfrica Forum
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LAURA FLYNN
A former assistant to President Aristide from 1996 to 2000, Flynn is now with the Haiti Action Committee.
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MARAGARITE LAURENT
Laurent is founder and chair of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network

ADAM HOCHSCHILD
Hochschild has written about imperialism and colonialism in King Leopold’s Ghost, The Mirror at Midnight: a South African Journey and other books. His next book deals, in part, with the Haitian Revolution. He said today: “You can’t understand Haiti today without understanding the long, bloody struggle in which that country gained its independence 200 years ago this year. It was the most extraordinary and least heralded upheaval of the Age of Revolutions: rebel slaves defeated first the French, then the British, then a new attempt to re-enslave them by Napoleon. But in their ordeal lies some of the seeds of the country’s problems today.”

EUGENIA CHARLES-MATHURIN
Charles-Mathurin is co-director of Haiti Reborn/Quixote Center.

PAUL E. FARMER, M.D., Ph.D. [via Ted Constan]
Farmer is founding director for Partners In Health, which works in Haiti. He is the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy Kidder’s recent book Mountains Beyond Mountains — Healing the World: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer. Farmer said today: “This is violent, undemocratic regime change. There have been more than 30 coups in Haitian history….”
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Agence France-Presse:
U.S. Troops “Made Aristide Leave”
A man who said he was a caretaker for the now exiled president told France’s RTL radio station the troops forced Aristide out. “The American army came to take him away at two in the morning,” the man said. “The Americans forced him out with weapons. It was American soldiers. They came with a helicopter and they took the security guards. (Aristide) was not happy. He did not want to be taken away. He did not want to leave. He was not able to fight against the Americans.” [See: http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=1274&storyid=973655]

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167