19661: radtimes: Canada's envoy: It's `mayhem' (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Canada's envoy: It's `mayhem'

[URL at end]

Roving gunmen leave scores dead

Ouster triggers widespread looting

Mar. 1, 2004
by RICK WESTHEAD
STAFF REPORTER [Toronto Star]

Port-au-Prince—Haitian rebels were on the brink of turning their besieged
capital into a bloody war zone early today, less than 24 hours after
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, bowing to international pressure, fled the
country.

His departure sparked widespread looting, instant executions by roving gangs
of gunmen and dozens of mob demonstrations. And it capped weeks of
percolating tensions here as former Aristide supporters-turned insurgents
stormed cities throughout the north.

Canadian ambassador Kenneth Cook described the scene downtown as "mayhem."

"I certainly wouldn't say this is a safe place," Cook said.

With a trio of U.S. Coast Guard cutters stationed offshore, and Canadian
troops securing the airport, thousands of Haitians roamed Port-au-Prince's
rubble-strewn streets.

Some drank champagne and yelled "Happy New Year" but most, milling outside
the city's gleaming white presidential palace, shot at and threw rocks at
journalists, torched office buildings and went on a killing spree that left
dozens dead.

Much of yesterday's violence was marked by indiscriminate drive-by
shootings. On one central thoroughfare, a man in a brown T-shirt lay dead
next to a minivan that was parked on the side of the road, blood congealing
in a foot-wide pool. A hand and foot from another victim jutted from the
van's open side door. Both were shot execution style in the back of the
head.

Brandishing M-16 machine guns, rebels who entered the town just hours after
Aristide's dawn departure, exchanged fire with hooded Aristide loyalists.

Driving pickup and dump trucks with paper signs labelled "Liberation Front"
taped to their windshields, the rebels waved three fingers in the air — in
contrast to the outstretched palm favoured by Aristide supporters who wanted
him to finish his five-year term, which would have run through February,
2006.

Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said Ottawa would send troops to Haiti
to be part of an international peacekeeping force.

It's unclear how many troops Canada would send, although it already has
about 50 soldiers in Port-au-Prince and about 120 soldiers standing by in
Trenton.

Canada neither offered nor was asked to provide asylum for Aristide, Graham
told CTV yesterday.

Canada, meanwhile, continued to evacuate Canadians in Haiti who wanted to
leave the Caribbean nation. About 1,000 Canadians are registered with the
embassy in Haiti, but officials say there are likely many more living there.

After a 20-minute military escort navigated their bus through the dangerous
downtown streets, about 46 passengers — 30 of them Canadian and the rest a
combination of Americans and foreign nationals — boarded a Hercules military
transport plane. A second flight carried 18 people on the 45-minute trip to
Santo Domingo.

Canadian Embassy staff said three transport planes, which arrived Saturday
night, would shuttle Canadians to the Dominican Republic for at least
another two days — as long as there is demand.

In many parts of Port-au-Prince, it's still too unsafe even to move corpses
off the streets.

The Red Cross has pulled its doctors out of Canape Vert, Port-au-Prince's
main hospital after gunmen stormed into an operating room two days ago and
ordered medical staff to save one of their own who had been shot through the
throat.

"In most countries, we put up the Red Cross symbol on the hospital and it's
respected. That doesn't work here," said Red Cross spokesperson Simon
Pluess, who added the aid agency has delayed flights from the Dominican
Republic with medical supplies. "It's anarchy right now, and this
unstructured type of conflict is very dangerous."

Police guarding Haiti's main prison near the national palace abandoned their
post, many changing out of their uniforms to blend in with passersby. The
jail was emptied with an estimated 2,000 inmates spilling into the streets.
At a police station in Petionville, a well-to-do suburb in the hills
overlooking the capital, looters stole police hats, T-shirts, helmets and
other police uniforms.

Yesterday afternoon, civilians worried violence would escalate through the
night.

"It's going to be a cemetery," said one woman on her way to work as a
waitress — the sun beginning to creep behind the mountains.

Aristide, in his letter of resignation dated Feb. 28, said Haiti's
constitution "is the guarantee of life and peace. It should not be drowned
in the Haitian people's blood. This is why tonight, if it is my resignation
that will prevent a bloodbath, I accept to go with the hope that there will
be life and not death. Life for everybody, death for nobody by respecting
the constitution and have it respected, Haiti will find life and peace."

About two-dozen government officials and others loyal to the ousted
president crossed the border to the Dominican Republic, where they are
expected to be granted asylum, officials told Reuters news agency. Among
those seeking protection were Haitian Finance Minister Gustave Faubert and
Henri Claude Voltaire, the minister of public health and population, they
said.

Until Haiti holds an election, which might not occur for another year, the
country's constitution calls for Aristide to be succeeded by Boniface
Alexandre, the chief justice of Haiti's Supreme Court.

"The task will not be an easy one," Alexandre said at a press conference
after being sworn in yesterday as head of a transitional government until
elections next year. "Haiti is in crisis." The country "needs all its sons
and daughters. No one should take justice into their own hands."

But a U.N. official said it's uncertain whether rebels, led by Guy Philippe,
a former Port-au-Prince police chief trained by the U.S. military as an army
officer in Ecuador, would support Alexandre. Alexandre is a former lawyer
for the French embassy in Port-au-Prince who was named to Haiti's 12-member
supreme court in 1990.

"This is bad news in one respect because it's the first time the country has
attempted democracy and it's failed miserably," said Jacques Dyotte, a
Montreal native who is working with the U.N. Development Program to help
reform Haiti's judiciary. "This is a dangerous time."

According to Haiti's constitution, parliament needs to approve Alexandre as
a leader.

This wouldn't be the first time a jurist would oversee the Western
hemisphere's poorest country. In 1990, when Gen. Prosper Avril was ousted in
a coup, Lt.-Gen. Herard Abraham succeeded him and surrendered power to
Haiti's supreme court justice. That allowed a transition leading to Haiti's
first free elections in 1990, which Aristide won in a landslide.

A former Catholic priest with many supporters in Port-au-Prince's slums,
Aristide rose to prominence in the 1980s, speaking out against the Duvalier
family, which ruled Haiti for decades. Since wresting independence from
Napoleon in 1804, the former French colony had been controlled by a series
of kings and dictators.

http://www.thestar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1078097706041&call_page=TS_News&call_pageid=968332188492&call_pagepath=News/News&pubid=968163964505&StarSource=email
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