Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Jean-Bertrand Aristide (born July 15, 1953) is a Haitian politician and former Roman Catholic priest who was President of Haiti in 1991, from 1994 to 1996, and again from 2001 to 2004. Aristide's supporters laud him as "the first democratically elected leader of Haiti" and a friend of the poor. Critics claim that he became dictatorial and corrupt once in power, and was unpopular enough to be twice overthrown, first in a military coup (September 1991) and subsequently in a rebellion in which former soldiers prominently participated (February 2004). After his second ouster, he maintained from exile in South Africa that he was still the legal and legitimate president and that U.S. forces had kidnapped him.

External links

• Google News Coverage - Jean-Bertrand Aristide
• Democracy Now! coverage of Aristide's ouster (text/audio/video)
• CommonDreams: the US and France denies Aristide's charges; but block UN probes
• Haiti's "freedom rating"
• Haiti-news list News from Haiti
• Naomi Klein, The Guardian, July 18, 2005, "6/7: the massacre of the poor that the world ignored: The US cannot accept that the Haitian president it ousted still has support"
• Paul Farmer, Who Removed Aristide? London Review of Books 15 April 2004
• http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Haiti/Who_Is_Aristide.html Who Is Aristide by Paul Farmer in The use of Haiti