March for the release of Father Gerard Jean-Juste

Release Prisoner of Conscience Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste Immediately!

SATURDAY DECEMBER 10, 12:00P.M. AT THE TORCH OF FRIENDSHIP, DOWNTOWN MIAMI

Join over 400 members of the clergy, 34 U.S. Congressmen, the Miami Herald, the Miami Times, Human Rights First, Amnesty International, hundreds of thousands of Haitian- Americans in South Florida, and millions of Americans to demand the immediate, unconditional release of Rev. Gerard Jean- Juste, a prisoner of conscience in Haiti and a hero to South Florida's Haitian Refugee Community.

The first ordained Haitian-American priest, Rev. Jean-Juste moved from Boston to Miami in 1978 to fight for Haitian refugee rights, serving as Executive Director of the Haitian Refugee Center from 1979 to 1989. This student of Martin Luther King and Gandhi is beloved to hundreds of thousands of Haitian refugees.

For the past 11 years, Gerry ministered to a parish of 80,000 Haitian families in a church on a dirt road outside Port-au-Prince, organizing a program which fed 600 children twice a week. Last October, armed men wearing black ski masks broke into his church and arrested him on fabricated charges. Imprisoned in a jail with no beds, blankets, or water to bathe; he was released after seven weeks due to international condemnation of his imprisonment.

This July, visiting Miami, Gerry led a non-violent protest against killings in Cite Soleil which claimed 23 lives. Subjected to public threats and urged by colleagues not to return to Haiti, he went anyway, consistent with his principles, saying he had a mission to fulfill. Police detained and questioned him at Port au-Prince airport and, a few days later, a pro-government mob attacked him at the funeral of a relative murdered while he was in Miami. The government arrested him instead of his attackers and has held him ever since without formally charging him with any crime. In August Gerry fell ill in prison and nearly died. He sleeps on a rubber mat on a concrete floor beneath a picture of murdered Salvadoran priest Oscar Romero.

Gerry is in jail for speaking truth to power in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Let's do everything we can to insure Gerry's immediate release, freedom of speech, and personal safety.

SATURDAY DECEMBER 10, 12:00P.M. AT THE TORCH OF FRIENDSHIP, DOWNTOWN MIAMI