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Reed Lindsay in Port-au-Prince
Sunday October 31, 2004
The Observer
The bodies had been whisked away but the dried pool of blood
covering
the dirt-floor dead end of a twisting alley was a chilling sign
of
what happened here last week.
Residents in the National Fort district, which like most of
Port-au-Prince's slums is a bastion of support for former
President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, gathered around the darkening blood the
following day. Some, who were afraid to give their names, said
policemen wearing black masks had shot and killed 12 people,
then
dragged their bodies away. At least three families have
identified
the bodies of relatives at the mortuary; others who have loved
ones
missing fear the worst.
'The police officers will say that this was an operation against
gangs. But we are all innocent,' said Eliphete Joseph, a young
man in
a blue basketball jersey who claimed to be a friend of several
of
those killed, his eyes red with grief as he stood in the shadow
of a
crumbling concrete staircase. 'The worst thing is that Aristide
is
now in exile far from here in South Africa, but we are in Haiti,
and
they are persecuting us only because we live in a poor
neighbourhood.'
A police spokesperson confirmed there had been a police raid at
National Fort looking for gang leaders and that at least eight
people
were killed.
The killings appear to be the latest example of what human
rights
groups describe as a campaign of repression against suspected
supporters of Aristide, who was escorted out of the country on
29
February by US Marines. The US government said he resigned.
Aristide
says he was forced out in a US-backed coup.
The current repression has led Haitian and international human
rights
observers to draw comparisons with the darkest days of the
1991-1994
military regime, and with the 1957-1986 dictatorship of François
'Papa Doc' Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc'. The
difference, they say, is that the current government has had the
blessing of the international community.
Neither the US nor the UN, which has a peacekeeping force here
of
more than 3,000 troops, has censured the abuses committed under
the
government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, who took power in
March. 'When 20 to 30 people were getting killed a year there
was a
cas cade of condemnation pouring down on the Aristide
government,'
said Brian Concannon Jr, director of the Institute for Justice
and
Democracy in Haiti. 'Now that as many as 20 to 30 are getting
killed
in a day, there is silence... It is an obvious double standard.'
UN and government officials deny that security forces are
murdering
opponents. Observers concede it is difficult to record how many
have
been killed and by whom. There are many armed groups in Haiti,
including gangs that support Aristide and others with shifting
political allegiances. Meanwhile, heavily armed ex-members of
the
defunct military, a corrupt force disbanded by Aristide in 1995,
swagger through the capital and control swaths of the
countryside
with tacit UN and government approval.
What is clear is that in recent weeks the government has gone on
the
offensive against members of Aristide's Lavalas party, searching
homes and arresting people without warrants. Jails are full of
suspected dissidents who have never seen a judge or been
charged. The
most publicised case is that of Gerard Jean-Juste, a Catholic
priest
arrested on 13 October at a soup kitchen he runs for children.
Justice Minister Bernard Gousse said on Thursday that Jean-Juste
is
suspected of hiding 'organisers of violence', and no warrant was
required for his arrest. A long-time rights activist who set up
an
organisation in Florida to assist Haitian refugees, Jean-Juste
was an
Aristide supporter. He remains in the national penitentiary,
where he
has not seen a judge, say his lawyers.
Less than two weeks earlier, police burst into a Port-au-Prince
radio
station and arrested three former Lavalas party legislators who
had
appeared on a programme criticising the government. Human rights
groups say hundreds more lower-profile Aristide supporters have
also
been jailed. 'We fought to bring democracy to Haiti, but since
this
government took over, it's been a dictatorship,' said Mario
Joseph, a
lawyer who worked to bring past human rights abusers to justice
under
Aristide and is now representing 54 people he says are political
prisoners.
Gousse refused to grant The Observer permission to visit
prisoners at
the penitentiary, where only 21 of the nearly 1,000 inmates have
been
convicted of anything. The prison was emptied by armed groups
led by
former military officers after Aristide's departure, and Joseph
believes the majority of the new prisoners are Lavalas members.
Government and UN officials defend the crackdown as an attempt
to end
the violence that has left dozens dead in the past three weeks.
They
accuse Aristide supporters of killing police and trying to
destabilise the Latortue administration.
'What we have seen in this country during the last month or two
has
been a resurgence of brutal violence organised probably to
provoke a
process of political destabilisation,' said Juan Gabriel Valdes,
who
heads the UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (Minustah). 'Any
state
has the right to defend itself. We were sent by the United
Nations to
help and assist a government, and this task was given to us by
the
security council of the United Nations.'
Evidence of such 'destabilisation' is scant. Shootings and
robberies
have become common in central Port-au-Prince, but it is not
always
clear whether they are politically motivated or the result of
crime
sparked by desperate economic conditions and an ineffectual
police
force. Gousse said he knew of only two lootings, and that police
officers had only been killed while carrying out raids in slums.
In recent weeks, media attention has focused on the killing and
decapitation of two policemen, described as part of 'Operation
Baghdad'. But the government has presented no evidence that the
decapitations were carried out by Aristide supporters, nor that
any
such operation exists. According to Guyler C. Delva, head of the
Haitian Journalists Association, the term 'Operation Baghdad'
was
coined by Latortue.
Aristide's backers have suffered the brunt of human rights
violations
since the change in government, said Gerardo Ducos, who is
leading an
observation mission for Amnesty International. 'They are
persecuting
the Aristide people because they are afraid of them,' said
lawyer
Reynold Georges, leader of a party opposed to Aristide, who is
representing Jean-Juste and several other jailed Lavalas party
members. 'A lot of people have stayed loyal to Lavalas. Believe
it or
not, it's true. The poor people, the masses, still believe in
Aristide.'
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