The Lancet on Haiti -- Whom Are Its Critics?

[David Peterson]

Friends:

I’m more than a little curious about whom this Charles Arthur of the U.K.-based Haiti Support Group is.[1] Also what this group’s real reason-for-being is. Who supports it. And the like.

(The same goes for the other critics of the Kolbe – Hutson study that the news media have managed to locate and provide with a platform: Anne Sosin of Haiti Rights Vision; Nicholas Galletti of Rights and Democracy; and MINUSTAH spokesperson Sophie Boutaud de la Combe.[2])

So this morning, I ran various database searches (Factiva, Nexis, and News Bank) for mentions of ‘Charles Arthur’ and ‘Haiti’ or ‘Lancet’ in the same item (i.e., report, commentary, editorial, letter, news blurb, news release, whatever) over the 14-day period beginning with August 31 and running through Wednesday, September 13. (See below, where I’ve excerpted all of the relevant mentions of ‘Charles Arthur’ in relation to the Kolbe – Hutson report that I’ve been able to find.)

With respect to the news media’s near-total neglect of substance of the Hutson – Kolbe study, and the subsequent emergence of a number of critics, not of the study itself, but of the researchers who carried it out, and of Athena Kolbe in particular (after all, this was the focus of Charles Arthur’s complaint), I find it remarkably revealing that Associated Press, the Toronto Globe and Mail, and The Guardian all decided to provide these critics with a platform (i.e., to take them seriously).

As for the U.S. news media: With the exception of Ira Kurzban’s commentary in the September 7 Miami Herald ("Latortue's disturbing legacy"[3]), the Kolbe – Hutson study’s existence has not been reported in the U.S.-based print media. Nor does it appear that any of the major U.S.-based television news programming has mentioned it, either. This really is quite some information blackout that we’ve been witnessing for the past two weeks.

Among the questions that I believe merit some consideration are: How did AP, the Globe and Mail, and The Guardian learn about these critics, and decide that what they are saying is worthy of reporting? And specifically how did they learn about the existence of Charles Arthur’s unpublished letter to The Lancet? Who called its existence to their attention? And why did they take its criticisms ad hominem seriously?

Also worth mentioning: I’ve run some database searches for mentions of ‘Haiti Support Group’ or ‘Charles Arthur’ and ‘Haiti’ in the same item for the five year period prior to August 31, 2006—the date of The Lancet’s online-release of the Kolbe – Hutson study.

The U.K.-based Press Association’s Tom Whitehead reported that Charles Arthur was “an election observer in Haiti in 2000 and a political analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit” (“A Nation at War,” February 24, 2004).

Two days after the February 28-29, 2004 “political kidnapping” of Aristide, a “coup d'etat the modern way” (Aristide’s very own phrases, describing how U.S. Government officials had coerced him into signing away the Haitian presidency, and then threw him on a U.S. military transport for the Central African Republic), the Inter Press Service’s Marty Logan reported Charles Arthur to have explained (“Haiti: Did U.S. Push or Pull Aristide from Power?” March 2, 2004):



One non-governmental observer said the international community will likely make no meaningful contribution to the island country, even now that [rebel leader Guy] Philippe -- a former policeman and army cadet who fled the country after a failed coup attempt against Aristide in 2001 -- and other known human rights violators claim to have assumed power.
"The international community, by which we mean in the case of Haiti the United States, France and to a lesser extent Canada, have already made it absolutely clear that they're not going to intervene in any positive way in Haiti," said Charles Arthur, director of the UK organisation, Haiti Support Group.
Instead, the role of the international armed force "will be to protect whatever assets the international community believes it has, which in short will be the main infrastructure of the capital, the embassies, the big businesses, the areas where the rich people live, the basic infrastructure of the country", he added.
"The peacekeeping, the law and order, in a de facto fashion, will be the preserve of whoever is in charge of the Haitian police force, which it looks like is going to be Guy Philippe," said Arthur.
…………
Arthur argued the world should not mourn the departure of Aristide. "Clearly the United States is the main player in getting him to leave. Whether the left and progressive forces all over the world should be focusing on the issue of the Aristide presidency, I don't think so".
"In my opinion, based on working with grassroots organisations in Haiti over the last 12 years, Aristide hasn't been able to deliver on the demands and aspirations of the 85 percent of the people who are poor in Haiti. And this is one of the reasons why it was possible for the United States to remove him from power," according to Arthur.



Those last two paragraphs tell us a great deal about Charles Arthur, in my opinion.

So my initial question remains: Does anybody know anything about the Haiti Support Group and Charles Arthur?


David Peterson
Chicago, USA


[*] “Haiti – The Traditional Predators,” Media Lens, September 11, 2006, http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060911_haiti_the_traditional.php .
[**] Athena R. Kolbe and Royce A. Hutson, "Human rights abuse and other criminal violations in Port-au-Prince, Haiti: a random survey of households," The Lancet, Vol. 368, No. 9538, September 2, 2006, http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673606692118/fulltext .
[***] “The Lancet on Haiti – Shoot the Messenger,” September 13, 2006, http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1837 .

[1] Haiti Support Group, http://www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org/ .
[2] Among these three groups, I can find some permanent web-presence for the Canadian-based Rights and Democracy (Droits et Démocratie), http://www.dd-rd.ca/site/home/index.php?lang=en ; and, of course, the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/minustah/ .
[3] "Latortue's disturbing legacy,” Ira Kurzban, Miami Herald, September 7, http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/09/07/18306785.php .



[The] British medical journal The Lancet is investigating an alleged conflict of interest by an author of a report in the current issue that claims 8,000 people were slain under Haiti's interim government.
A critic of the study accused one of the report's authors of being a supporter of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whose ouster following a violent uprising led to the installation of the U.S.-backed interim government that ran the country from 2004 to 2006.
…………
Doubts about Kolbe's work were raised by Britain-based human rights activist Charles Arthur, who sent a letter to The Lancet expressing concern that the study tried to exonerate Aristide supporters even though independent human rights workers say they committed killings and rapes after the revolt.
"How can the survey be regarded as objective if the main person coordinating the survey hides her very pronounced political sympathies by using a different name?" Arthur wrote.

---- Stevenson Jacobs, “UK medical journal investigates author of Haiti study,” Associated Press, September 7, 2006



The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, is investigating complaints about a potential conflict of interest involving the author of a recent article that found systemic human-rights violations in Haiti despite the presence of a Canadian-led United Nations police force and peacekeeping mission.
…………
How can Kolbe/Duff's research into the issues of human-rights violations be regarded as objective when she herself states that for 3.5 years she worked with the Lafanmi Selavi centre for street children, where she befriended Aristide himself and presumably some of the boys who later left the centre . . . [who] then acted as armed enforcers?" Charles Arthur, co-ordinator of the British-based Haiti Support Group, wrote this week in a letter of complaint to The Lancet.
"There is a concerted international campaign to distort news and manipulate information about Haiti with the apparent aim of repairing the reputation of Aristide. I am concerned The Lancet has unwittingly been used as part of the pro-Aristide propaganda campaign."

---- Marina Jiménez, “Author of Lancet article on Haiti investigated; Writer critical of Canadian peacekeepers worked at orphanage founded by Aristide,” Toronto Globe and Mail, September 7, 2006



Charles Arthur, an author and Haitian solidarity activist in Europe, has written to the editor of the Lancet challenging the the notion that no Lavalas groups were involved in the violence. He said there had been many allegations that all groups, including Lavalas, had been involved.
Mr Arthur also said that one of the authors of the report, Athena Kolbe, had previously written favourably about Mr Aristide when working as a journalist in Haiti under the name of Lyn Duff. The Lancet report quotes articles by Ms Duff without saying that she is the same person as Ms Kolbe.

---- Duncan Campbell, “Lancet caught up in row over Haiti murders: Report appeared to clear Aristide camp of blame: Magazine investigates 'misleading' study,” The Guardian, September 8, 2006

[joe emersberger]

Much information relevant to your questions about Charles Arthur is in the article I linked to in the other thread. I excerpt the portion it seems you missed (or perhaps I misunderstand what you are looking for):

"Charles Arthur's organization the Haiti Support Group acknowledges amongst its associates a number of organizations which failed to report on the interim government's wave of violence upon Haitian slum dwellers, such as the Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organizations (POHDH) which received funding from the Canadian quasi-governmental agency "Rights and Democracy", a partner with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Also affiliated with the Haiti Support Group, the Batay Ouvriye (BO) who called for Aristide to "leave the country" is the recent recipient of $450000 USD in NED and State Department programs through the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS). Camille Chalmers, head of the Haitian Advocacy Platform for Alternative Development (PAPDA) another group affiliated with the Haiti Support Group, lobbied for the resignation of Aristide and coauthored a letter labeling Aristide a "dictator" with another PAPDA official, Yves Andres Wainwright who later become environment Minister under the Latortue government. Chalmers then established close ties with the Canadian "Democracy Promotion" agency Alternatives, who works with the NED and receives 50% of its budget from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Christian Aid a financer of the Haiti Support Group receives significant funding from the British government as well as CIDA."

JEb Sprague adds some additional information on his blog

http://www.freehaiti.net/articles/2006/09/11/b-death-threats-against-lancet-human-rights-investigator-b-charles-arthur-of-the-haiti-support-group-circulated-investigators-family-and-home-address-witnesses-say

Jeb noted

"You can see here how Arthur was "researching" Kolbe, putting out information in regards to her parents on Indy Media UK . Arthur cites references to the church Kolbe attended and the church that her parents are involved with in MA. Meanwhile her parents MA address was being circulated. "

He also notes that

"PAPDA's demand for the resignation of Jean-Bertrand Aristide was translated by the 'Haiti Support Group'. The letter was signed by Marc Arthur Fils-Aime, Camille Chalmers Yves, and Andre Wainright. Wainright later was appointed environment Minister under the interim Latortue government."

In other words Arthur is one of many progressives who, while striking an anti-imperial pose, took a stance that was very much appreciated by the imperialists. Hence the funding from NED and CIDA (essentially the Candian version of NED) for various fake anti-imperialists who take a similar position to Haiti Support Group..

[David Peterson]

Joe Emersberger:

On the contrary, you’ve understood me perfectly well. And thanks for the two sets of material. (Some of which I already had linked at another website.)

In the September 11 piece that you coauthored with Jeb Sprague for CounterPunch,[1] you mentioned that the Charles Arthur letter to The Lancet has been posted online.

I’ve never found it.—Can you or a colleague post a copy of the Charles Arthur letter here, along with its URL?

In your last paragraph, you write that “[Charles] Arthur is one of many progressives who, while striking an anti-imperial pose, took a stance that was very much appreciated by the imperialists. Hence the funding from NED and CIDA (essentially the Canadian version of NED) for various fake anti-imperialists who take a similar position to the Haiti Support Group.”

What demands an explanation is why the Charles Arthur letter to The Lancet has been given any weight at all.

And beyond this, a catalogue of every dirty trick used to discredit the Kolbe – Hutson study. (Which is a separate matter for bona fide criticism. Clearly.)

If we each had a nickel for every person who strikes progressive poses while plugging-into the system,….

Thanks.


David Peterson
Chicago, USA


[1] “‘You Are a Dog. You Should Die!’,” http://www.counterpunch.org/sprague09112006.html .

[joe emersberger]

I sent you a private mesage on this. I hope you got it.

[David Peterson]

To Everyone at Media Lens:

A gentleman named Wim Nusselder has called to my attention the following copy of Charles Arthur’s letter to The Lancet, as posted to the IndyMedia – U.K. website. (See below.)

(For Wim Nusselder’s message to me, see “How to create constructive discussion about Lancet article,” ZNet, September 21, 2006, http://blog.zmag.org/node/2744#comment-57311 .)


David Peterson
Chicago, USA


http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/09/350001.html?c=on

Haiti: Lavalas Family propaganda and The Lancet
Charles Arthur | 04.09.2006 16:01 |

Results of a new survey have just been published in the prestigous magazine, The Lancet. The 'survey' claims that huge numbers of people were killed and sexually assaulted in Port-au-Prince in the 20 months following the collapse of the Aristide/Lavalas Family (FL) government. It further contends that the perpetrators of the abuses were the criminals, police, former soldiers and anti-FL gangsters, and that hardly any abuses were committed by pro-FL gangsters. Has pro-Lavalas Family propaganda struck again?

Re: 'Human rights abuse and other criminal violations in Port-au-Prince, Haiti: a random survey of households' by Athena R Kolbe, Royce A Hutson, published in the current issue of The Lancet, Volume 368, Number 9538, 02 September 2006.


Although perhaps closer examination will reveal exagerrated extrapolations of the results of the survey, it does confirm reports from civil society organisations in Haiti and from some parts of the Haitian media indicating that human rights violations and criminal violence in Port-au-Prince have significantly increased in number over recent years.

However I have some doubts about the credibility of the research with regard to the perpetrators of these acts. These doubts focus on the contention that very few of the human rights violations have been attributed to "Lavalas members or partisans" (by which I assume the authors mean members or partisans of the Lavalas Family party led by Jean-Bertrand Aristide).

The main reason why I doubt this finding is that it contradicts the information that I have received from independent human rights investigators working in some of the most violent areas of Port-au-Prince. There is no dispute that many of the violations have been committed by criminals without any apparent political affiliation, by members of the Haitian National Police, by former members of the FAD'H and by armed men affiliated to anti-Aristide, anti-Lavalas Family groups. But I am informed that local people also blame Lavalas Family/Jean-Bertrand Aristide supporters for committing serious acts of violence, including rape.

My concern is that the either the conduct or the interpretation of the research has been skewed or biased in some way in order to exonerate Lavalas Family/Aristide supporters from accusations of invovlement in human rights violations. This concern is heightened on discovering that there is good reason to believe that the coordinator of the research, and one of the two authors of the Lancet article, Athena Kolbe, is in fact a pro-Lavalas Family journalist who uses the name, Lyn Duff.

To reiterate, I have reason to believe that Athena Kolbe and Lyn Duff are one and the same person.

1) At the end of the article "We Won't Be Peaceful and Let Them Kill Us Any Longer" - Interview with Haitian Activist Rosean Baptiste, interviewed by Lyn Duff, 4 November 2005, San Francisco Bay View, there is an email link to the author:

Email Lyn at athenadk@aol.com

2) In a newsletter posted by the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit, 4605 Cass Avenue, Detroit, MI 48201, dated October 16 2005, one can read the following passage:

Quote:
Meet Athena Kolbe
Journalist and Activist
Athena Kolbe, 29, has attended 1st UU for a little over a year now and her enthusiasm for Unitarianism and Judaism (both part of her religious upbringing) has spurred some exciting happenings. The sukkah in McCollester Hall was built on First Friday under her tutelage, and she led last spring’s Passover Seder with her parents, who are active in the Worcester, MA UU Church. She is also one of the planners for the October 23rd Soulful Sundown service and is starting a UU student group at Wayne State. Currently working on her MSW in preparation for a doctorate, Athena already has a MDiv and an MA in theology and Adult RE from San Francisco’s Golden Gate School of Theology, as well as a BA in International Relations and Labor Law. Since 1995, she has lived and worked extensively in Haiti as a Pacifica radio correspondent and has also lived in Israel. Athena loves the cultural and religious diversity at 1st UU but wants to see the “under 40 crowd” and persons with nontraditional styles more enthusiastically welcomed into the church community. She has many worthy ideas to share and she’s fun to talk to. End quote


3)
Then there are the following bits of information to be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyn_Duff

Quote:
In 1995, Duff traveled to Haiti where she established Radyo Timoun ("Children's Radio"), that country's first radio station run entirely by children under the age of 17. She reportedly worked closely with Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide. End quote


Quote:
By the late 1990's, Duff was a well-established international journalist with postings in Haiti, Israel, Croatia, several African countries, and Vietnam.
End quote


Quote:
I February 2004, Duff, who was then living six months out of every year in Jerusalem, was home in the United States on a brief visit when a group of ex-soldiers overthrew the democratically elected government headed by President Jean Bertrand Aristide. She quickly traveled to Haiti, arriving in Port-au-Prince when the coup was only days old and reporting on the situation extensively for several national media outlets.

Since that time, Duff has regularly covered the situation in Haiti for the San Francisco Bay View, Pacifica Radio's Flashpoints, and Pacific News Service. Her reporting is a blend of in-depth investigative reports and "as told to" first person commentaries by Haitian nationals. Subjects have included politically motivated mass rape, the United Nations mission in Haiti, killings by American Marines in Port-au-Prince, civilians taking over the neighborhood of Bel Air, murders of street children by police and ex-soldiers , presidential/legislative elections, and the general human rights situation.

She currently splits her time between Detroit, Michigan, and a home in the Delmas neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
End quote


Put this all together and there is pretty strong proof that the Lancet survey was coordinated by Lyn Duff (known here as Athena Kolbe)

Acording to Lyn Duff's article, 'Jean Bertrand Aristide: Humanist or Despot?' published by Pacific News Service on 2 March 2004:
Quote:
In 1995 when, I was 19 years old, I traveled to Haiti to help set up Radyo Timoun, a radio station run by street children in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Over three and a half years I worked and often lived with the children of Lafanmi Selavi, a shelter for some of the nation's quarter of a million homeless children. It was there that I came to know Jean Bertrand Aristide, not just as the president of the poorest country in the western hemisphere, but also as a father, teacher, a friend, and a surrogate dad for hundreds of parentless street kids. The Jean Bertrand Aristide I know is markedly different from the one that is being portrayed in the media.
End quote

Lyn Duff is described as "a friend of Aristide" in Justin Felux's article, 'Debunking the Media's Lies about President Aristide', published by www.dissidentvoice.org on 14 March 2004.

Recently, Lyn Duff has written a number of reports on the issue of rape in Haiti. On 3 March 2005, The Black Commentator published Duff's article, 'Political Rape Rampant in Haiti', reporting on the rape of the 14-year old girl, Majory. Duff wrote,
Quote:
Marjory is part of a growing number of girls and young women who human rights investigators say have been victims of mass rape committed by members of the disbanded military and their compatriots who patrol the countryside and Haiti’s cities, hunting down supporters of Haiti’s pro-democracy movement.
End quote

On 23 December 2005, the San Francisco Bay View published Duff's article, "Police use rape to terrorize women and girls in Haiti", in which she wrote;
Quote:
Since the Feb. 29, 2004, coup overthrowing the democratic government of Jean Bertrand Aristide, reports have surfaced of a growing problem: politically motivated mass rape. Women in the popular neighborhoods – which are known for their support of Aristide and the democratic movement – have accused members of the police force and U.N. soldiers, as well as members of the demobilized Haitian army, of targeting them for sexual attacks.
End quote

How can Kolbe/Duff's research into the issue of human rights violations and the perpetrators be regarded as objective when she herself states that for three and half years she worked with Aristide's Lafanmi Selavi centre for street children where she befriended Aristide himself and presumably some of the boys who later left the centre and who, according to some sources, then acted as armed enforcers for the Lavalas Family party in certain parts of the capital?

How can the findings be regarded as objective when Kolbe/Duff plainly states her sympathies for what she describes as "Haiti's pro-democracy movement - her loaded short-hand for Aristide supporters - and already states her opinion about the political affiliations of the victims and the perpetrators of rape and sexual assaults before the research is finished?

Above all else, how can the survey be regarded as objective if the main person coordinating the survey hides her very pronounced political sympathies by using a different name?

There is a concerted international campaign to distort news and manipulate information about Haiti with the apparent aim of repairing the reputation of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and of winning support for his Lavalas Family party. The publication of this article in The Lancet has already attracted a lot of media coverage, and some of that coverage reports the non-involvement of Lavalas Family party supporters in human rights violations in Port-au-Prince. For example:

Democracy Now, 31 August, 2006:
Quote:
A shocking new report published in the British medical journal The Lancet has found widespread and systematic human rights abuses in Haiti following the ouster of democratically-elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide in February 2004.(...) Those responsible for the human rights abuses include criminals, the police, United Nations peacekeepers and anti-Lavalas gangs.
End quote

The Independent, 4 September 2006:
Quote:
More than 30,000 women and girls - half under the age of 18 - were raped in Haiti's capital city in the chaotic two years following the ousting of the country's democratically elected president, a survey has suggested. About 8,000 people were killed during the same period.(...)The survey does not identify Lavalas supporters as being involved in any rapes or killings...
End quote

The Lancet article was published at the very moment when rape victims were marching in Port-au-Prince to draw attention to the issue, and specifically to the fact that no political party had said anything to condemn the attacks. Coincidence? I don't know, but clearly the publication of the article shifts attention away from any accusations of Lavalas Family party members' or supporters' involvement and/or criticism of the lack of condemnation of crimes that are still going on to this day, and instead puts the focus on the interim government of 2004-6, on anti-Lavalas Family entities and on the UN forces in Haiti.

I am concerned that The Lancet has unwittingly been used as part of the pro-Aristide propaganda campaign.


Charles Arthur
e-mail: tttnhm@aol.com

[joe emersberger]

My Znet article follows up on some of David Peterson's points.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=55&ItemID=11107

[David Peterson]

Friends:

In the same week that The Lancet’s editor, Richard Horton, helped shepherd into the public realm the invaluable mortality survey of Iraq under the American and British occupation,[1] Horton also turned on the researchers who produced the important study "Human rights abuse and other criminal violations in Port-au-Prince, Haiti: a random survey of households,"[2] namely Athena Kolbe and Royce Hutson of Wayne State University in Detroit. (See below, for a Toronto Globe and Mail report on this episode—so far, the only thing I’ve found about it in the English-language print media.)

Horton very well may have good reason for taking this decision—this remains to be shown.

But if Horton does, it couldn’t possibly have derived from the source mentioned by the Globe and Mail: Charles Arthur of the U.K.-based Haiti Support Network.

Here was how this morning’s Globe and Mail (Oct. 14) described Arthur’s role:


The controversy arose after complaints were made against Ms. Kolbe by Charles Arthur, co-ordinator of the British-based Haiti Support Group. Mr. Arthur alleged that Ms. Kolbe was biased because she had worked for the Lafanmi Selavi centre for street children in the mid-1990s and "befriended" Mr. Aristide.


I strongly urge everyone to take a close look at Charles Arthur’s letter (i.e., at least the version of it that exists within the public realm),[3] and decide whether or not you buy the line that Arthur’s complaint warrants being taken seriously.[4]

And while we’re taking a close look at allegations of bias and calls for further investigation of its possible impact on the Wayne State researchers’ work, let us not forget that this same Richard Horton, in rightly defending The Lancet’s publication of Burnham et al.’s research, offered up the following howler about he misdiagnosed as a “terrible misadventure”:[5]


[W]e can truthfully say that our foreign policy - based as it is on 19th-century notions of the nation-state - is long past its sell-by date. We need a new set of principles to govern our diplomacy and military strategy - principles that are based on the idea of human security and not national security, health and wellbeing and not economic self-interest and territorial ambition.



David Peterson
Chicago, USA

[1] Gilbert Burnham et al., October, 2006 (as posted by the Center for International Studies, MIT), http://web.mit.edu/CIS/pdf/Human_Cost_of_War.pdf . Also see "Updated Iraq Survey Affirms Earlier Mortality Estimates," Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, October 11, http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2006/burnham_iraq_2006.html .
[2] The Lancet, Vol. 368, No. 9538, September 2, 2006, http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673606692118/fulltext .
[3] Charles Arthur, “Haiti: Lavalas Family propaganda and The Lancet,” September 4 (as posted to the IndyMedia U.K. website), www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/09/350001.html?c=on .
[4] “Haiti—The Traditional Predators,” Media Lens, September 11, http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060911_haiti_the_traditional.php ; and “Shoot the Messenger,” ZNet, September 12, http://blog.zmag.org/node/2744 .
[5] Richard Horton, “This terrible misadventure has killed one in 40 Iraqis,” The Guardian, October 12, http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1919977,00.html .


Toronto Globe and Mail
October 14, 2006 Saturday
SECTION: NATIONAL NEWS; Pg. A11
HEADLINE: Lancet probes allegations of bias
BYLINE: MARINA JIMÉNEZ

The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, has asked Wayne State University to investigate allegations of bias made against the author of a paper that found systemic human-rights violations in Haiti despite the presence of a Canadian-led United Nations police force and peacekeeping mission.

Richard Horton, The Lancet's editor, said he is sufficiently concerned about the complaint that he asked the Detroit university to conduct an investigation into whether author Athena Kolbe's use of a pseudonym and past employment at a Haitian orphanage founded by former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide placed her in a conflict of interest.

"One of the issues the study deals with is violence in a politically divided setting, so the independence of the study becomes very important to understanding it," Mr. Horton said in a telephone interview. "We sought clarification from the authors. We received it and felt there needed to be a further investigation by the university."

The study, published last month, found that 8,000 Haitians have been slain and 35,000 woman and girls raped since the ouster of Mr. Aristide in early 2004.

Ms. Kolbe said that, according to local Haitians, Canadian peacekeepers made death threats against them during house raids, and sexual advances against women while the peacekeepers were drunk and off duty.

The peer-reviewed study of 5,720 randomly selected Haitians living in the capital also found that in the 22-month period since Mr. Aristide was ousted, 97 in Port-au-Prince had received death threats, 232 had been threatened physically and 86 sexually. One-third of those who issued death threats were criminals, 18 per cent were Haitian National Police and another 17 per cent were foreign soldiers. Only 6 per cent were Lavalas, members of Mr. Aristide's party.

Ms. Kolbe, a 30-year-old master's student at Wayne State's school of social work, authored the study with assistant professor Royce Hutson.

The controversy arose after complaints were made against Ms. Kolbe by Charles Arthur, co-ordinator of the British-based Haiti Support Group. Mr. Arthur alleged that Ms. Kolbe was biased because she had worked for the Lafanmi Selavi centre for street children in the mid-1990s and "befriended" Mr. Aristide.

She also used to be an advocacy journalist who wrote under the name Lyn Duff. The Lancet paper contains footnotes from Lyn Duff.

Ms. Kolbe said this week that she disclosed this information about her background to the university's institutional review board and also sought the permission of Haiti's interim president, Gerard Latortue, to conduct the study. She said she used to go by Lyn Duff - an old nickname and her mother's surname - but decided to use her real first name and her father's surname once she entered academia.

"I didn't disclose it to The Lancet because I had already told the review board at the university," she said. "I and Royce Hutson are American citizens. We are not affiliated with the Lavalas [Mr. Aristide's] Party."

In a past interview with The Globe and Mail, Ms. Kolbe said she had "warm feelings" toward Mr. Aristide, but was also critical of some of his decisions. Mr. Aristide's first term in office was interrupted by a 1991 military coup, and his second ended abruptly on Feb. 29, 2004, after a rebellion of thugs and ex-soldiers forced him out. Mr. Aristide maintains the United States forced him into exile.

Canada sent 450 soldiers to Haiti in March of 2004, part of a UN peacekeeping mission of 6,700 soldiers and 1,600 police. There are currently 66 Canadian police officers leading the UN police force.

Ms. Kolbe believes the study generated controversy because of its new methodology in tallying the death rate in a violent conflict. The authors used the same methodology undertaken in a recently released study on Iraq, which found that 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the 2003 invasion and the ensuing violence. Researchers in this study, also published in The Lancet, questioned household members in 47 randomly selected sites about births, deaths and migrations. This study has also been criticized.

"What is clear is that we need to develop new ways to measure mortality and injury during armed conflict. These new ways show higher rates of death than people would like to see," Ms. Kolbe said. "So the topic itself was bound to generate some controversy because it's a new way of measuring mortality."