16911: loveayiti - NEWS - The Repercussions of an Assassination (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: love haiti <loveayiti@hotmail.com>

All Rights Reserved
The New York Sun


October 3, 2003 Friday

SECTION: FOREIGN; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 1137 words

HEADLINE: The Repercussions of an Assassination

BYLINE: RAYMOND JOSEPH

BODY:
The gruesome murder of "Cannibal Army" chief Amiot "Cuban" Metayer has
plunged his hometown, Gonaives, into chaos, and its repercussions are far
and wide.

Violent protests by the partisans of Cuban for more than a week have left at
least one dead by gunfire and scores hospitalized with severe injuries. They
culminated Wednesday with the storming of four government buildings, three
of which were torched. Hundreds of attackers led by Cannibal leaders set
fire to a customs house, the police station and the state run National
Insurance Office. At the insurance office, the mob first smashed the windows
and took out documents that were burned in the street. The building housing
the equivalent of the International Revenue Office, wasn't destroyed, but
documents seized from it became bonfires in the street. Earlier in the week
the house of the parents of the police commissioner was torched.

"The violence is controlled," said a government official who declined to be
named, "because there is no real looting. The people are attacking the
symbols of government. "Indeed,what is being asked is the resignation of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The "rebels" assert that the body of their
fallen leader won't be buried until the president resigns or is ousted. The
corpse is at the main hospital in Gonaives.

A movement of solidarity with the Gonaives insurgents is taking shape. St.
Marc, 15 miles away to the south of Gonaives, has started its own rebellion.
Late last week some tires began burning at strategic points in the town in
the vicinity of which the body of Amiot Metayer was found in the morning of
September 22.

Cap Haitien, 40 miles to the north of Gonaives, is doing its own thing. The
city, Haiti's second largest with more than 200,000 inhabitants, is planning
another "peaceful demonstration" this Sunday. It is not strictly a
pro-Cannibal affair, because the Northern Opposition Front is a prominent
civil society group that had organized the largest anti-government rally to
date. Since last November when it peacefully mobilized more than 50,000
people in the streets, the government has violently smashed its
demonstrations, two of them in the past five weeks. Contacts have been
established between the formerly pro-Aristide groups in Gonaives and their
antigovernment rivals in Cap Haitien.

Meanwhile, the western town of Petit Goave, a traditional bastion against
the regime, is preparing to respond to the entreaties of the "rebels" in
Gonaives, who asked publicly for "forgiveness" for their past actions.

There was skepticism in Petit Goave and elsewhere regarding the loyalty of
the Cannibal soldiers, because last year they went back on their word. After
Cuban had broken out of jail with about 150 other prisoners on August 2,
2002, he had denounced President Aristide. Cuban had said the president had
given the orders to trash the opposition on December 17, 2001 under the
pretext that a bogus attack on the National Palace in Port-au-Prince that
day was engineered by the opposition, which was attempting a coup d'etat.
The orders, Cuban had noted, came before the purported attack. Cuban also
had accused the president of being responsible for the murder of eminent
Lavalas journalist Jean Dominique on April 3, 2000. Mr. Dominique had be
come critical of the regime he had helped install.

After all the accusations, Cuban had succumbed to the allure of money and
had reconciled with the ruling Lavalas Family Party. This week, the Gonaives
insurgents rebuffed the government that said it was about to send a
delegation to "open dialogue" with them. "Anybody who comes from the regime
will be torched alive," said Jean Pierre, nicknamed "Tatoune," a gang leader
who had built his reputation in the 1985-86 fight to oust the Duvalier
dictatorship. Tatoune was implicated in the so-called "Massacre of Raboteau"
against the partisans of Mr. Aristide, when he was exiled in Washington.
Condemned for life in jail, Tatoune was among the prisoners who broke out of
the Gonaives penitentiary last year with Cuban. Initially Tatoune teamed up
with Cuban, but they broke up the relationship, to again resume it. Now
Tatoune has allied himself with Peter Metayer, the brother of the slain
Cannibal chief, to carry out the attacks against the government.

Faced with a spreading rebellion, the government has tried, unsuccessfully,
to pin the blame of the horrific crime on the international community and
the opposition. Haiti Progres, the unofficial mouthpiece of the regime,
points fingers at the departing French ambassador, Yves Gaudeuil, who had
warned about "hurricanes" on the Haitian horizon. He said he didn't want
people to be "surprised" and they should "hold fast to the railings." Says
Progres: "He knew what he was talking about." Then Progres asks, "Who
profits from this crime?" The editor responds to his own question: "The
opposition that will use this to show that security is lacking for any
election."

But the government has an impossible task in explaining the implication of
Odonel Paul in the assassination of Cuban. The relatives of the victim
affirm that Paul was the last person to be with Cuban. Paul's relatives were
spirited out of Gonaives prior to the crime. Their home was torched by the
mobs.

Moreover, Odonel Paul was seen at the National Palace in Port-au-Prince on
September 22 where he remained from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. He had arrived at the
palace grounds in the same cream colored Isuzu Trooper in which he was seen
in Gonaives the day before, except for an important detail: The old regular
plate that the Isuzu sported in Gonaives had been replaced by an "official"
one.

Meanwhile, the Washington-based Haiti Democracy Project issued a statement
Wednesday saying that Paul "who was the last person seen with Amiot Metayer
before his killing, and who is widely suspected in that death, has himself
been killed. "The former police chief Jean-Claude Jean-Baptiste is said to
have "orchestrated the killing operation both of the Cannibal Army leader
and [of] his assassin." Haiti Democracy Project, directed by James Morrell,
a former adviser of President Aristide, confirms that "Paul worked for both
the Ministry of Interior and the National Palace. He was the leader of a
political gang of hit men and petty racketeers."

The cycle of violence may prove far reaching in Haiti, because Haiti
Democracy states that when Odonel Paul left the National Palace around 3
p.m. on September 22, "he was handcuffed by a group of men led by
Jean-Claude Jean-Baptiste," the discredited police chief who had resigned
earlier this year under national and international pressure. The presumed
murderers of Paul must also be silenced at one point. That begs the
question, "Who is, or are, next to go into the slaughterhouse of the Lavalas
regime?"

.

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