12623: Police in Haiti fire tear gas as armed protesters take over streets (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Mon, Aug. 05, 2002

Police in Haiti fire tear gas as armed protesters take over streets, call
for national uprising
By The Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Thousands of protesters in Gonaives city hurled
stones and thrust back riot police who fired tear gas in vain Monday as
militant community leaders, some once loyal to Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
called for a nationwide uprising to oust Haiti's president.

''Today the people have taken possession of Gonaives,'' protest leader Jean
Tatoune said by telephone from the west-coast city 60 miles (100 kilometers)
from Port-au-Prince, the capital. ``Aristide has to go.''

He was one of 159 prisoners who escaped Friday when armed supporters crashed
a stolen tractor through Gonaives prison wall.

The gunmen set fire to city hall and the courthouse that day, leaving only
charred ruins.

On Monday, the thousands of demonstrators vastly outnumbered about two dozen
riot police who fired tear gas but were forced to retreat, said reporter
Jean-Claude Noel of independent Radio Vision 2000.

Protesters threw stones, he said, and yelled ``Down with Aristide!''

Some demonstrators stole a police car, Noel said.

But no one was reported injured, even as shots rang out sporadically from
both sides.

''We are fighting to save the country,'' political activist Amiot Metayer,
another prison escapee, said on Radio Metropole. ``All nine districts of
Haiti must unite to oust Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Liberty or death!''

Aristide's party, meanwhile, played down the threat posed by the protesters
in Gonaives, Haiti's fourth largest city with 200,000 people.

''It is a small group of armed men that the police should deal with. One
should not dramatize the situation,'' said party spokesman Jonas Petit.

Tatoune, 44, was an important figure in the popular uprising that forced
dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier into exile in 1986. A longtime Aristide
opponent, he had been serving a life sentence for involvement in the 1994
killings of at least 15 Aristide supporters in Gonaives.

On Monday, he said the insurrectionists had contact with activists in other
parts of the Caribbean nation of 8 million people.

Meanwhile, armed protesters blocked roads leading to Gonaives with flaming
tire barricades, witnesses said.

Prison system director Clifford Larose said three people who got away in
Friday's jailbreak were captured over the weekend, but the rest remained
free.

The apparent inability of police to restore order is another sign of growing
lawlessness taking a grip in Haiti, which has been bedeviled by
dictatorships and power struggles since it's independence from France in
1804.

Metayer was an Aristide ally until he was jailed July 2 on charges of
burning down houses of a rival group. He insists he is innocent.

Metayer and his heavily armed supporters want a new interim government,
fresh elections and higher wages for police and other workers. Government
officials rejected the demands.

''Poverty breeds delinquents who exploit the poor population,'' Prime
Minister Yvon Neptune said. ``We are on the side of the poor, not the
delinquents.''






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