Clients
Jean v. DorelienLexiuste Cajuste
Lexiuste Cajuste is a Haitian activist and father of eight children. In the early 1990s, he was persecuted by the Haitian government for his mobilization of the working class and for his outspoken support for the ousted president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Mr. Cajuste worked as an elementary school teacher and supplemented his income by driving a minibus or tap tap (as they are known in Haiti). In 1986 he helped form Haiti’s first public transportation drivers union. In 1989, he became the Secretary General of Haiti’s largest union, CGT, an umbrella group representing workers from various sectors of Haiti’s economy. Despite the severe repression that union organizers experienced under the military regime that was in power from 1991 through 1994, Mr. Cajuste and his colleagues were public in their opposition to the military dictatorship and sought the return of democracy.
On April 23, 1993, Mr. Cajuste was detained by Haitian military forces and severely beaten and tortured. On the brink of death, he was kept in a small cell without medical attention or even water for three days. Miraculously, he survived the beating, but was kept in a military hospital without adequate treatment for a month.
After his release, Mr. Cajuste eventually received asylum in the US and now lives in Florida with is wife and children. Fourteen years after his ordeal, he still suffers severe physical disabilities related to his torture.
Marie Jeanne Jean
Marie Jeanne Jean was a resident of the Raboteau neighborhood of the coastal city of Gonaïves at the time of the Raboteau massacre, in which Ms. Jean lost her husband and the father of her two young children Vladimy and Michelda Pierre. Her husband, Michel Pierre, was gunned down by Haitian military officers as he fled in his boat from a raid on their seaside neighborhood.
