And the Haitian spiritual and political leader, the Reverend Gérard Jean-Juste, has died. He was sixty-two years old. Doctors say he suffered a stroke unrelated to the leukemia he battled three years ago. Jean-Juste was well-known as an advocate for Haitian refugees and later an outspoken supporter of the ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide after his overthrow in the 2004 US-backed coup. The US-appointed provisional government jailed Jean-Juste two times during its rule. The latest came in 2005, right before he was expected to register as a favored candidate in Haiti’s national elections. In 2004, I interviewed Father Jean-Juste right after his release from his first prison term.

Fr. Gérard Jean-Juste: “Look what they have done to Haiti. It’s broken into pieces. Now we have to collect the pieces and allow the people to come together. And I don’t see any way now, unless President Aristide is restored to power and democracy has been corrected, the same way we did it in 1994.”