19418: (Hermantin) Sun-Sentinel-Rebels close in on Port-au-Prince (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Rebels close in on Port-au-Prince

By Tim Collie and Jane Regan
Sun-Sentinel
Posted February 28 2004

PORT-AU-PRINCE · As anti-government rebels converged on Haiti's capital city
on Friday, bands of militants terrorized residents -- erecting flaming
barricades to stall the rebels and threatening to kill anyone opposing
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

At least five people were reported killed in isolated melees, several in
apparent execution-style slayings on crowded city streets. Anti-government
rebels, who have overtaken more than a dozen cities in a three-week march
across northern Haiti, advanced to within 25 miles of the capital on Friday.

The uprising, which has left more than 80 people dead since it began Feb. 5,
appeared headed to a standoff here -- one of Aristide's last remaining
strongholds -- as the rebels vowed to choke off or take the capital to oust
Aristide or force his resignation.

On Friday, hundreds of looters ransacked businesses and the city's port
area, breaking into containers of goods and freight offices, and carting off
everything from frozen meats to television sets. One looter who refused to
pay a bribe to pro-Aristide chimère gang militants was shot and killed as
journalists stood nearby, several witnesses reported.

Looters entered and stripped hundreds of shipping containers, filled with
millions of dollars in goods from the humanitarian group CARE and the U.S.
Agency for International Development.

"You understand what is going on?" asked one angry looter, giving only his
first name -- André -- carting a box of chicken parts stolen from the port.
"We are hungry. They are the big shots. They have all this food and they
keep it for themselves. We are taking it."

Areas of downtown Port-au-Prince resembled war zones, with burning
barricades, overturned cars and business districts decimated by rampaging
looters. The bodies of five men were found on the streets in several
normally peaceful neighborhoods, evidently killed in execution-style
slayings. At least two still had their hands bound. Shotgun shells were
neatly arranged near the bodies in streams of drying blood in a brazen,
brutal symbolism not seen in Haiti since the early 1990s, when paramilitary
gangs killed as many as 5,000 people during Haiti's last coup d'etat.

"We're just living in shock and fear, my family, everyone," said a girl, 15,
asking not to be named for fear of reprisals, as she stared at the bodies of
two men in the quiet residential neighborhood of PouPeland.

"The whole world is coming apart," added a 40-year-old man nearby, also
refusing to give his name. "These men weren't from around here, but they
probably weren't doing anything wrong, either. They just got caught after
dark, and these animals, the gangs, killed them for no reason."

Friday's shootings and robberies appeared to be designed to sow terror and
fear among opponents of Aristide.

Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected president, has faced one of
the worst crises of his political career with the escalating rebellion
launched in the city of Gonaives on Feb. 5. The rebels, as well as an
organized opposition movement, have called for his resignation because of
corruption and repression of his political opponents.

"We'll die before we let those soldiers in," said one pro-Aristide gang
member, refusing to give his name, echoing the sentiments of many Aristide
loyalists.

Journalists and foreign aid workers were not spared from the escalating
violence Friday. At least five groups of foreign and Haitian journalists
were attacked or had their cars stolen Friday morning. Several were shot at
while their cars were hit by rocks and other debris. A Canadian reporter was
pulled from her car and assaulted while a gun was placed at her head,
witnesses said. In all, six vehicles were reported stolen: four from
journalists and two from the Red Cross and the international charity UNICEF.

In front of the National Palace, hundreds of youths gathered in an effort
designed to repel a rebel attack. Armed with old rifles and pistols,
machetes and even a dull, rusty ax, they shouted "Five years! Five years!"
Aristide was elected to a five-year term that ends in February 2006.

The only government institution that seemed to be functioning was the
Haitian National Police -- the remnants of a 5,000-member force that has
evaporated in the face of the rebel attacks elsewhere. Many of those killed
in the rebellion had been police officers targeted by the rebels. In
Port-au-Prince, carloads of police patrolled areas of the city. In many
neighborhoods, city officers stood by as militant gang members, known as
chimère, attacked passers-by and stole their cars, witnesses said.

In Petionville, a middle-class enclave on a mountain overlooking the capital
city, huge crowds stood outside a bank after hearing rumors that it was
opening. In the Canape Vert neighborhood, hundreds of people stood in line
to buy kerosene, a crucial fuel used for cooking and lighting by average
Haitians. At one point a fight broke out as a young Aristide supporter
called the gas station owner a traitor for opening his station.

The chaos Friday underscored the profound collapse of nearly all of Haiti's
institutions. Basic services have been eroding for most of the decade in
this poor country, where more than 80 percent of the population live on less
than $1 a day.

At the State University of Haiti Hospital Friday evening, dozens of patients
were left unattended as nurses and doctors fled. In the emergency room, 21
patients, suffering with everything from gunshot wounds to severed limbs,
lay with only their families to care for them.

In the post-operation room, another 22 patients lay unattended by medical
professionals.

"They've been bringing people here all day by ambulance, but when the
families see there are no doctors or nurses here, they just pick them up and
take them away," said Nicolas Martin, 31, who was in the emergency room
recovering from abdominal surgery a week ago. As he spoke, a group of police
officers brought in a young boy with a broken back. When his brother saw
there were no doctors, he decided to take him to a spiritual healer.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Friday it had dispatched a
plane to Haiti with enough equipment for two hospitals to aid victims of the
political violence. The equipment will be used at two hospitals in
Port-au-Prince and Gonaïves, Haiti's fourth-largest city and the place where
the rebellion began. The Red Cross, which has 15 foreign staffers along with
local staff, has expressed alarm over recent days at incursions into
hospitals by armed groups.

Many of the attacks by looters seemed to have been directed at opponents of
the government. Heavily armed men attacked at least two businesses late
Thursday and early Friday. Heavily armed men traveling in a convoy of six
trucks ransacked one, the office and warehouse of an import business owned
by former Prime Minister Smarck Michel.

"It wasn't the chimère," Michel told Radio Vision 2000, referring to the
gun-toting street thugs who now occupy the city's downtown. "It was a
commando of people dressed in black." Michel, who served as Aristide's prime
minister in 1994 and 1995, when Aristide was returned to power after a
three-year coup d'etat, said the men "took the office apart."

Tim Collie can be reached at tcollie@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4573.
Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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