A truth report of 1,200 pages reaches almost no one

The National Commission for Truth and Justice was created in March 1995 to account for what had been done in Haiti under the military government that held power from 1991 to 1994. It documented 8,652 human rights cases and its mandate forbade it to prosecute a single one of them. Its report ran to 1,200 pages and took its title from a Kreyòl proverb, Si m pa rele, m ap toufe, meaning that if I do not cry out I will suffocate. Seven months after the report was finished it had still not been published, and only the recommendations were released. Human Rights Watch noted in September 1996 that victims had been given no official forum in which to tell their stories and that the courts had no access to the documentation. The United States held 160,000 pages of military and paramilitary records its troops had seized in Haiti, and did not turn them over.