18321: (Hermantin)Sun-Sentinel-Haiti in turmoil (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Haiti in turmoil



By Jane Regan
Special Correspondent

February 7, 2004

Gonaives, Haiti · The stench of death rising from burning bodies mingled
with smoke from charred buildings Friday as well-armed rebels maintained
their hold on this embattled city.

An attack by armed members of an anti-government group on police
headquarters Thursday was followed by more killings Friday that left at
least seven dead and over a dozen injured in Gonaives, a dusty port town of
200,000 about 60 miles from Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.

The uprising, led by a group calling itself the Artibonite Resistance Front,
came as protests continued against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide around
the country. The front, which is demanding Aristide step down, has been
clashing with police in Gonaives for over four months.

Aristide's critics say his resignation is the key to resolving a three-year
political impasse that has left the country without a parliament, starved of
foreign aid and diplomatically isolated from Washington and other
governments. At least 50 have been killed and more than 100 injured in
protests throughout Haiti since early fall.

But the overthrow of Gonaives may represent a new stage in the conflict. The
flight of 40 or so police officers after a four-hour gunbattle Thursday
eliminated the last vestige of government representation in the city. Local
radio stations reported Friday that police have fled their posts in at least
three other towns.

Contacted by telephone at midday Friday, Jacques Maurice, a spokesman for
Haiti's National Palace, said the government had no comment "at this time."
He said he did not know if police would be sent in. Haiti has no army or
other military force.

Among the dead was a police officer who killed himself, said an emergency
room doctor at the city's La Providence Hospital. At least two other men
were lynched at the police station.

Members of the front said former Haitian soldiers helped them carry out
their Thursday assault. After attackers pounded the police headquarters with
automatic weapons fire, police ran away, witnesses said. Some turned over
their guns and uniforms, fleeing in their underpants, or hid among
prisoners, according to bystanders.

Front members then burned the two-story headquarters and freed all the
prisoners from the jail next door -- about 180 men and women. They also
torched several police vehicles, using some to barricade streets. Four
businesses across from the police headquarters that belonged to the city's
former mayor, Stephen Moise, were also destroyed.

Looters stepped over the smoldering bodies of the two lynched men as they
picked through the remains of the police headquarters and jail. Offices were
stripped of anything that could be moved: bunk beds, sheet-metal roofing,
benches, window frames and iron bars.

Outside, hundreds of men, women and children defiantly paraded through the
garbage-strewn streets to celebrate.

Shouting "Aristide criminal" and "Gonaives is liberated," dozens sauntered
about in confiscated police uniforms and helmets. They carried an array of
automatic weapons, rifles and pistols. Some danced around barricades made
from charred auto chassis, garbage and piles of rocks.

"Aristide's police went too far. We are sick and tired of it, so we
revolted," said front member Jean-Francois Bernardin, 29.

Dressed in a police officer's hat and holding a tear gas grenade launcher
that he said he used to launch homemade bombs at police on Thursday,
Bernardin stood next to the burning body of one victim. The body was that of
"Narcisse," a mentally challenged man Bernardin and others said police used
as their torturer.

Holding up a nail-studded club, Bernardin said: "He used to hit us with
this. Not anymore."

Outside the still-smoking building, Bernardin and a man who only identified
himself as "Gary" helped direct a fire truck out of the station. Five young
men, some with guns, were hanging out of the truck's cabin.

"We're taking it to our territory," Gary said. "We're going to set up our
own police headquarters."

Other front members, mostly thin and destitute-looking young men wearing
anti-riot uniforms many sizes too large, patrolled the city in confiscated
police vehicles, supposedly to prevent looting. But they did not stop crowds
from attacking homes and businesses of several well-known government
supporters. Hundreds also celebrated with an impromptu voodoo ceremony in
the front's base, the seaside slum neighborhood of Raboteau.

The front, a gang once known as "The Cannibal Army" and controlled by local
strongman Amiot Métayer, was once a pro-government "rent-a-mob" group that
rolled out for pro-Aristide demonstrations. The gang changed their
allegiance when Métayer's bullet-ridden body was found Sept. 22 in a ravine
a few towns away.

In late January, the front announced it had set up its own government with a
mayor and city police chief. Métayer's brother, Buteur, proclaimed himself
Artibonite Department (province) chief of police. On Friday, Métayer,
wearing an ammunition belt of M-60 bullets across his chest, told
journalists the front does not want to run Gonaives.

"We have no intention of becoming the city's army," he said. "We ask
everyone who took police weapons during our intervention against the police
to turn those arms over to us ... After Aristide resigns we will turn the
guns over to an ambassador or to the new government."

A former member of the Aristide government's local office in Gonaives
watched the parade of celebrators run by a still-smoldering body on Friday.
He said he expects demonstrations to grow across the country as people
revolt against the government and police.

"People have chased police out of four cities so far," said Adler Auguste,
58, a former journalist and head of Haiti's state television in 1990 prior
to Aristide's first election. "Gonaives, St. Michel de l'Attalaye, Gros
Morne and last night they took Anse Rouge."

"The country can't sink any lower than this," he said.
Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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