"You don’t know what the
hell is going to happen to you,” he told Fabre. Claiming to be “in
contact with the people who will actually arrest you,” he warned Fabre
that “they” will “make you pay.” (See below for audio.)
The telephone directory reveals the number from which the calls to
Fabre were made to be the phone number of none other than the French
foreign ministry’s attaché for information systems and communications,
Olivier Poudade.
Today, Fabre responded publicly to these threats:
"From the
warships Charles X sent to extort financial compensation from Haiti for
the slaves who had liberated themselves in the Haitian revolution, to
the overthrow of a Haitian president who had the temerity to demand
restitution, CRIME is familiar with the French government’s history of
violent retaliation on this issue. Even so, we are quite amazed at the
peculiar lengths to which those working on this file at the French
foreign ministry appear willing to go to punish those seeking to raise
awareness about Haiti’s independence debt."
"We urge the French government to publicly clarify whether the
recent statements by the foreign ministry’s attaché for information
systems and communications about the government’s legal action were the
official position of his employer: Is France really prepared to take
legal action over a spoof announcement that offered such a shining
example of what the French government should do to honour the values of
liberty, equality and fraternity?"
AUDIO:
