18885: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-Fearful citizen: `I don't know who I can trust' (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Fri, Feb. 20, 2004

UNEASY COUNTRYSIDE


Fearful citizen: `I don't know who I can trust'

Clashes between militia groups and government supporters put residents on
edge. Neighbors in small-town Haiti view one another with suspicion.

BY TRENTON DANIEL

tdaniel@herald.com


''People are either [with Aristide's party] Lavalas or the opposition,''
said Michel St. Cyr, 24, a cabdriver in Limbé, a town of a few thousand
people in northern Haiti. ``Right now, I don't know who I can trust, and I
sleep with both eyes open.''

Gunmen formerly known as the Cannibal Army and now calling themselves the
Anti-Aristide Resistance Front for the Artibonite region seized the central
Haiti port city of Gonaives two weeks ago in a bloody challenge to Aristide
that later spread to 10 other towns and villages.

The ragtag band says it plans to take over major cities like Cap Haitien and
St. Marc. Their threats, coupled with street marches by the political
opposition in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, have thrown one of the
Western Hemisphere's poorest nations into its worst turmoil since a 1994
U.S. military invasion to restore Aristide to power after a 1991 military
coup.

Today, government forces have retaken control of three of the towns.

Gonaives is completely under the thumb of the heavily armed Resistance
Front, and Limbé and many other towns do not appear to be controlled by
either side.

On the road between Cap Haitien, Haiti's second largest city, and Limbé, a
town about 18 miles to the southwest, motorcycle riders wave shotguns in the
air to intimidate bystanders. But no one is sure which side they are on.

KEEPING CAUTIOUS

So residents of Limbé, where everyone seems to know everyone, keep their
counsel to themselves and take precautions.

Sleeping on a mattress close to the floor has become a common practice of
late in such uncertain parts of Haiti. St. Cyr and his 25-year-old wife,
Gladice, and a 3-year-old son do it because they fear bullets -- wayward or
otherwise.

Asked who set fire to the police station and a four-wheel-drive vehicle,
residents say only that it was ``the population.''

The precinct, whose walls were once white and sky blue, is now shut down,
and the rusty front gate is locked. Residents say the officers fled the town
before or during the arson, and no one was killed or injured.

A Herald reporter could not find the mayor on a recent visit.

NOT ALL SUSPECT

To be sure, residents don't look at all of their neighbors with such
suspicion. Rather, some are much more concerned with the country's violent
protests.

''No, I don't have any problems with my neighbors -- we all get along
fine,'' said Marguerite Alcene, 52, a Port-au-Prince resident stuck in
northern Haiti after a relative's funeral when the Resistance Front cut off
much of the north from the capital by erecting barricades of rocks, car
parts and flaming tires. The action also caused food and fuel shortages.

''The biggest problem is the demonstrations. They block everything,'' said
Alcene, an unemployed teacher and typist.

Still, suspicion rears itself in other ways.

Yves Teneus, director of the privately owned Radio Concorde, said a death
threat issued against him -- painted on a school wall -- prompted him to
shut down his radio station like others in the north.

''The political situation is making it difficult on everybody, including
neighbors,'' Teneus said. ``Right now, they don't have any security in the
country, and it's easy to be afraid.''

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