19576: Raber: A first person account (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: P&M Raber <raber@valkyrie.net>

Posting a note that I received from friends in Haiti about the last days of
the Aristide Regime in their area and their interpretation of the situation.
I will change people's names to protect their privacy.  The young policeman
mentioned is from a wonderful family I knew very well. His mother has 7
children that she raised in a two room hut alone after kicking out their
abusive father.  I have pictures of her injuries after one of the episodes
when he beat her up really bad (At that time she had already left him for
several years).  He is the oldest.  The next two children after him
succeeded in passing high school national exams.  One of those two recently
left illegally for France looking for a better future.

Saturday Feb 28 2004

To all of you who have in recent days inquired about our safety and who are
praying for us:

Pro-government armed gangs, the famous chimeres, have taken control over
Gressier since yesterday.  One of the chimeres in the area whom we know very
well and who took over the Gressier police station with a band of armed
Aristide loyalists, calls himself "Gressier police chief."  All the police
officers have fled the station.  The chimeres (as young as 13 years old and
heavily armed) are terrorizing the civilian population in Gressier and all
over the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area.  They are searching for weapons
and/or rebels and in the process are stealing, and humiliating civilians, in
particular women.

On our school grounds, there was no incident, but we all had a petrified day
as radio reports were announcing all day long the systematic looting and
pillage that was taking place in charitable institutions, hospitals,
orphanages and general businesses all over the Port-au-Prince metropolitan
area.  Examples of these places visited by the chimeres are the Adventist
Hospital in Diquini, Quisqueya University, and the orphanage Bon Berger.
Typically, the pro-government gangs go to these places and steal all
vehicles parked on the premises and take away cash boxes and ransack
whatever else, using the stolen vehicles to carry them away.  There is no
police presence anywhere and the government has not reacted one way or the
other to SOS calls from the population.  This state of Chaos is strategy by
the Haitian government to force a US intervention that will help Aristide
regain control.  It's a state of complete anarchy and desperation with
scores of unreported dead bodies on the roads. By the way, many of the radio
sation that were describing the situation have been damaged out of the air
by Pro-government gangs last night.

There were flaming roadblocks at our entrance on national 2 and all along
the Leogane-Carrefour strip.  M. (our truck driver) who went to purchase
diesel fuel in the nearby gas station was forced to pay the chimeres to get
through (we use diesel fuel to pump potable water used by the entire
population in the area and we have not had city power in days).  M. was
allowed through the barricade because some of the chimeres recognized him.
Naturally, we are more concerned by the Chimeres from elsewhere who've come
in our area to work with the local chimeres, but all of them are extremely
violent.

Yesterday a truck full of heavily armed false policemen (Chimeres dressed in
police outfits) were dispatched to get P.  P. is R's son who is a police
officer and who has been hiding.  We have seen them driving around the area.
Unfortunately for P., they found him walking one of the back roads and they
took him away with them.

We were hoping that through the night and by this morning, something would
have happened, like Aristide would have resigned or something, but that was
not the case.  People in other parts of the country where the rebels occupy
have now far better security that people in the Port-au-Prince area.  Most
people in Port-au-Prince see the rebels as the lesser of two evils and are
hoping that they would arrive soon in Port-au-Prince to deliver them from
the Pro-Aristide gangs who have been terrorizing them for a solid 4 days

So, it seems that we are up for another day of unbearable tension.  All the
gates are padlocked.  Students are confined inside and we are waiting
prayerfully.