SCU’s IHRC joins more than 100 human rights advocates and organizations in a letter to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations to express alarm about the escalating threats and intimidation against Attorney Mario Joseph of the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) and other human rights lawyers in Haiti

SCU’s International Human Rights Clinic joins more than 100 human rights advocates and organizations in a letter to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations to express our alarm about the escalating threats and intimidation against Attorney Mario Joseph of the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) and other human rights lawyers in Haiti. Among other things, the joint letter mentions that “attorney Joseph began to receive violent death threats on his cell phone shortly after convening a widely attended press conference on January 30, 2012, condemning the dismissal of charges against former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier for political violence. In the immediate aftermath of the press conference, the volume of threatening calls was often three to four times a day before abating in March. Threats began again in July 2012, shortly after Attorney Joseph submitted a letter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights requesting an investigation of rampant human rights violations in Haiti. While these calls have decreased over the last month, the message is clear: when Attorney Joseph publicly advocates for respect for the rule of law, an independent judiciary and holding Haiti accountable for human rights abuses, he runs the risk of violent threats and, worse, the possibility that the callers will act on those threats with violence.”

The joint letter can be downloaded here.