13270: This Week in Haiti 20:28 9/25/2002 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
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                           HAITI PROGRES
              "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

                      * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                   September 25 - October 1, 2002
                          Vol. 20, No. 28

MARTISSANT:
POPULAR ORGANIZATIONS BLAME GOVERNMENT FOR LEADERS' DISAPPEARANCE

Angry crowds shouting "Down with Aristide!" clashed with police
in the sprawling hillside shanty town of Martissant this week in
violent demonstrations similar to those which rocked the
northwestern city of Gonaïves last month.

The riots were sparked by the disappearance of three pro-Lavalas
popular organization (OP) leaders whom protesters believe were
kidnapped and possibly killed by the government of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The Haitian National Police (PNH) attributes the disappearances
to gang wars.

Félix "Féfé" Bien Aimé, an OP leader and former director of the
Port-au-Prince cemetery, disappeared on Sep. 17 along with two of
his partisans, Gérard Normil and Paul Musac Jean. The car in
which they were last seen was found burned near Titanyen, where
bodies were dumped by the Army and death squads during the 1991-
1994 coup. No bodies were found, however, in or near the remains
of the car.

Many popular organization militants fear that the disappeared
leaders are victims of a perceived government campaign to
neutralize OP leaders whom had previously been the front-line
defenders of Aristide's party, the Lavalas Family (FL). Recent
Organization of American States (OAS) Resolutions 806 and 822
call on the government to round-up and prosecute such leaders for
their role in sacking opposition leaders' headquarters and homes
after an attempted assassination of Aristide on Dec. 17, 2001.

Last week, one such leader in Cap Haïtien,  Eddy "Ti Tonton"
Sterlin, was riddled with bullets by unidentified assailants. In
July, another leader in Gonaïves, Amiot "Cubain" Métayer, told
that Aristide wanted to meet with him, was arrested when he
presented himself, sparking riots that culminated in his being
broken out of jail along with 158 other prisoners on Aug. 2 (see
Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No. 21, 8/7/2002). Similarly, a Port-au-
Prince OP leader, Ronald "Cadavre" Camille, was arrested by
police in March when he went to the airport to greet Aristide
returning from a trip abroad (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No. 2,
3/27/2002). Several other OP leaders and militants around the
capital and the country have been arrested, disappeared, or
killed in recent months, creating growing alarm and outrage in OP
ranks.

"OAS Resolution 822 has fallen on the back of all militants," one
of Bien Aimé's partisans shouted on Sep. 21, as smoke from a
burning tire barricade billowed behind him, "but we still believe
that President Aristide is intelligent enough not to be taken in
by this provocation so that he would stab us in the back. Because
Aristide better know that without the popular organizations he
has no power. So we ask him, as well as Prime Minister Yvon
Neptune, to please give us back Féfé Bien Aimé in the condition
they took him."

Based on reports which the government denies, OP members say that
a PNH station chief told them that Aristide ordered Bien Aimé's
arrest. Other rumors say he was taken in after a traffic
accident. Demonstrations began on Sep. 17 afternoon and continued
all week, until press time. National Route 2, the main artery to
Haiti's south, was blocked much of that time, and the police have
responded with tear-gas, clubs, and bullets. The week's death
toll is at least three, including a baby suffocated by tear-gas
and a young boy who was killed by gunfire while sitting in a
camionette (small bus). Dozens of people have been wounded. In
the street-fights, car windshields have been smashed, and several
houses burned.

On Sep. 19, OP members chanting angrily encircled the Martissant
police outpost, insisting that the authorities were holding Bien
Aimé. On Sep. 24, the OPs tried to attack the same outpost; at
press time, it is not known if there were victims.

The police deny all responsibility in the disappearance of the
three OP members. "There is no police station in the metropolitan
area which reports that it had Félix Bien Aimé in preventive
detention," said PNH spokesman Jean Dady Siméon. "So there is no
question that these people were ever arrested by the police."

Siméon attributed the disappearances to a "turf war" between
neighborhood gangs in the teeming Martissant slum. "According to
our information, there were already hostilities which existed
between Félix Bien Aimé and others because he was at the head of
a group based near Fort Mercredi called Galil, and there was
another group called Kapab with which it was at odds," he said.
"And both groups were armed."

Kapab members responded angrily to Siméon that they had nothing
to do with Bien Aimé's disappearance. "He was our comrade in the
struggle to return Aristide to power during the coup," one of
them said. "The police should face up to it and not try to find
scapegoats."

Martissant residents also disavowed Siméon's version. "Instead of
Jean Dady Siméon he should be called Jean Dady Cinema because it
is cinema that he is giving," said one demonstrator. "We are all
together. We have Kapab militants, and Galil militants too. There
are also those from MORAD, KOTPAM, and OJD. All the organizations
are together here asking for them to give Féfé back."

Police also cracked down on a concert being given by the popular
rasin group Boukman Eksperyans in the central Champs de Mars
square on Sep. 18. "A CIMO [riot police] chief came up to me and
said 'I have received orders from high up that this concert is to
be stopped right now,'" explained Théodore "Lòlò" Beaubrun, the
group's leader, on Radio Haiti Inter. "We were singing a song
about not wanting war, in which we address the presidents, the
generals, and the politicians in the entire world who make war.
'Mr. President, Mr. General, I am talking to you.'  That's where
we had gotten. Then the guy pulled the plug on the two
keyboards." Beaubrun compared the incident to when the Army
stopped a Boukman concert at the Canado School during the coup.
"Back then, they gave us an ultimatum, but they didn't dare come
on stage to interrupt us," he said. "This time, they came right
up on the stage, with guns in hand to pressure us."

Meanwhile, numerous other demonstrations around the country
raised political tensions. Last week, students opposed to the
government's take-over of the supposedly sovereign State
University marched through the capital, after two previous
demonstrations were aborted by bottle-throwing pro-government
demonstrators. Small depositors in the collapsed Coeurs Unis
banking cooperative demonstrated at the National Penitentiary for
the release from prison of the bank's president, David Chéry, on
the hopes that he will find a way to reimburse their lost
savings. Pro-FL OPs in the central plateau city of Hinche marched
to demand government jobs. And Cité Soleil residents demonstrated
in front of the National Palace for an end to gang violence in
their slum. The CIMO police broke up the demo with tear-gas and
billy clubs.

"For us, the Lavalas regime is starting to act the way the
putschists, the macoutes, the de factos used to act," said a
young man demonstrating in Martissant on Sep. 23. "Right now, we
don't believe in anybody except God and Félix too, and in
militance and struggle."

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