19664: Esser: Reign of terror follows US-backed coup in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

World Socialist
http://www.wsws.org

As Marines occupy Port-au-Prince:
Reign of terror follows US-backed coup in Haiti

By Bill Van Auken
3 March 2004


The US ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide and Haiti’s
occupation by a US-led military force have set the stage for a bloody
wave of repression in the impoverished Caribbean island nation.

By means of covert subversion and overt military intervention, the
Bush administration has overthrown a popularly elected president and
resurrected political forces linked to decades of dictatorship and
counterrevolutionary terror in Haiti.

The landing of the first contingent of several hundred Marines and
the hustling of Aristide out the country aboard a US aircraft
provided the signal for the “rebels” to enter the capital and set
themselves up as a domestic security force.

Led by former death squad members and soldiers linked to previous
coup attempts, the well-armed thugs quickly took over the barracks
facing the National Palace and declared their intention to
reconstitute the Haitian Army. This corrupt and brutal force—a legacy
of the first US occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934—was disbanded
by Aristide in 1995. According to some reports, the army’s former
commander, General Herard Abraham, is preparing to return from exile
in Miami to resume his post.

Among the first acts of the right-wing gunmen was the storming of the
penitentiary in Port-au-Prince, freeing some 2,000 prisoners.
Apparently, the main aim of this action was to liberate a number of
notorious killers from previous dictatorships, including Prosper
Avril, who headed a military junta that ruled the country from 1988
to 1990 and was convicted on charges of illegally imprisoning and
torturing political dissidents. The action also provided a fresh
group of recruits for the terror squads from among the criminals who
were let loose.

Guy Philippe, a former army officer and police chief who was charged
with drug trafficking and conducting summary executions, is a leader
of the “rebels.” On Tuesday, he proclaimed himself Haiti’s “military
chief” and announced his intention to arrest Prime Minister Yvon
Neptune, who has remained effectively imprisoned in his office. Other
members of Aristide’s cabinet fled Haiti, seeking asylum in the
neighboring Dominican Republic.

In a telling indication of the political forces unleashed by the
US-backed coup, Haiti’s former “president for life” Jean-Claude “Baby
Doc” Duvalier, who has lived in exile in Paris since 1986, announced
that he intends to return to Haiti as soon as possible.

Duvalier, whose regime was responsible for killing tens of thousands
of Haitians, welcomed the landing of US Marines. He told an
interviewer from Miami’s WFOR television news that the conditions
were emerging for his return. “I think I’m getting close and that I
will soon have the opportunity to go back to my country,” he said.

On Monday, leaders of what have generally been described in the US
media as the “rebels” and the “democratic opposition” met at one of
the most luxurious hotels in Port-au-Prince. Previously, the
“democratic” political opposition had claimed it had no links with
the armed “rebels.”

Working together, with backing from a group of right-wing ideologues
in the US State Department, these forces engineered the ouster of
Aristide. The “rebels” include such elements as Louis Jodel
Chamblain, who led the Tontons Macoute death squads during the waning
years of the Duvalier dictatorship in the 1980s and then returned as
one of the heads of the Haitian Front for Advancement and Progress,
or FRAPH.

The FRAPH, a paramilitary group formed under the military regime that
took power when Aristide was first overthrown in a US-backed coup in
1991, received financial support and political guidance from the US
Central Intelligence Agency and is blamed for the murder of at least
3,000 Haitians.

The “democratic opposition” consists largely of political parties and
business groups representing the tiny privileged elite that formed
the real base of support for the Duvalier dictatorship and subsequent
military regimes. With financial and political backing from the US
National Endowment for Democracy as well as from the Chirac
government in France, it has worked for the last four years to
mobilize international support for the removal of Aristide.

It seized on alleged irregularities in the 2000 legislative elections
to portray the elected government as illegitimate, though there is no
dispute that Aristide and his supporters would have won
overwhelmingly no matter what procedures were used. Even polls
commissioned by Washington have shown the opposition parties of the
ruling elite enjoying the support of no more than 20 percent of the
Haitian electorate.

The Bush administration—which stole the US election that same
year—cynically used alleged irregularities at the polls in Haiti as a
pretext for continuing an aid embargo on the country. The embargo,
denying Haiti $500 million in humanitarian assistance from multiple
lending organizations, was first imposed by President Clinton,. It
made the convening of new elections a precondition for resuming the
aid. While Aristide agreed to another vote, the opposition rejected
all proposals, effectively blocking desperately needed funding and
further deepening the country’s economic and social crisis.

Killing Aristide supporters

 From the outset of the armed wing uprising last month, the Bush
administration signaled that it was prepared to tolerate a wave of
counterrevolutionary violence to meet its objective of installing a
puppet regime committed to defending US interests and those of the
native Haitian elite. The Toronto Globe and Mail Tuesday cited
Canadian diplomatic officials describing Washington’s attitude when
it was supposedly attempting to broker a power-sharing deal between
Aristide and his political opponents. “US officials made it
abundantly clear to their counterparts in Ottawa that Washington had
a ‘high tolerance’ for further Haitian bloodshed and would not be
pressured into defending Mr. Aristide in order to prevent it,” the
report said.

While rejecting any military intervention to halt the armed overthrow
of the Aristide government, once the coup was completed, a waiting US
expeditionary force was rushed to Haiti to consolidate an un-elected
regime formed by Haiti’s privileged elite.

In its report on Monday’s meeting between the gunmen and the
political representatives of the Haitian elite, the New York Times
identified one of the “rebels” as “Faustin,” describing him as “a
well-spoken man...with an M-4 assault weapon strapped around his
neck.”

“Right now it’s very euphoric; everybody’s happy,” he told the Times.
“But behind the happiness, look out.” The report added: “He said he
had killed former Aristide supporters in the streets of
Port-au-Prince, and would kill again in the name of the new
government if so ordered.”

This is precisely what is happening with the tacit support of the
Bush administration and under the gaze of US-led occupation troops.
According to press reports from Haiti, the right-wing gunmen have
rampaged through the Port-au-Prince slums of La Saline, Cite Soleil
and Belaire, hunting down Aristide supporters and carrying out
indiscriminate killings.

Interviewed on CNN Monday, Secretary of State Colin Powell made it
clear that Washington was in close contact with the death squads. “We
have ways of talking to the various rebel leaders, and [we’re]
pleased that at least so far they’ve said they are not interested in
violence anymore and want to put down their arms,” Powell said.

This is one more lie from an administration that has dismissed
Aristide’s charge that he was forced out of Haiti at US gunpoint as
“nonsense.” The so-called rebels—whom Powell himself was referring to
as “thugs” just two weeks ago—have indicated no intention of laying
down their weapons, and violent reprisals are sweeping the capital.

The Boston Globe on Tuesday carried a revealing report by Steven
Dudley on the activities of paramilitary killing squads in the
Port-au-Prince slum of Cite Soleil. “They are upper-class, urban
paramilitaries who say they are protecting their property, families
and country,” Dudley wrote, referring to a squad of over 20 men who
were scouring the shantytown, “M-4s, M-14s, Tech-9s and 9mms at the
ready.”

“These paramilitary volunteers are businessmen,” according to the
Globe article. “Nearly all of them speak English from time spent in
Miami or New England. Most are from Haiti’s light-skinned elite, the
tiny fraction of the population that actually owns something. Some of
them have military training; a few were army reservists in college.
All of them have weapons.” Most, the article states, had come down to
the slums from the upper-class hillside neighborhood of Petionville.

The report quoted one of the gunmen: “We went down every alley, every
street. We’re cleaning up the neighborhoods.” Scores of suspected
Aristide supporters have been reported killed in the area. The
paramilitaries, it added, were working in close collaboration with
the police.

Col. David Berger, the commander of the US Marine force that has
secured strategic points in the Haitian capital, told reporters
Tuesday, “I have no instruction to disarm the rebels.”

Meanwhile, already miserable conditions of life for masses of
Haitians are deteriorating rapidly. Food stocks are exhausted and the
country’s hospitals have largely shut down because of lack of power
and potable water, according to a report from the Pan-American Health
Organization. The eight most important hospitals in Port-au-Prince
have stopped admitting patients.

According to the International Red Cross, the only functioning
medical facility in the capital was an emergency field hospital set
up by a group of Cuban doctors, who attended to scores of gunshot
victims.

While officials in Washington indicated that the Marines’ rules of
engagement do not encompass defending Haiti’s civilian population
from armed violence, a principal mission of the US-led force is
halting the flight of refugees from the strife-torn nation.

Coast Guard vessels have been deployed off of the Haitian coast and
already close to 1,000 “boat people” have been sent back. Only last
week, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issued a
formal statement calling on countries in the region to suspend the
forced repatriation of Haitians fleeing the humanitarian crisis
there. Washington ignored the call.

“Given the violence and disorder reigning in Port-au-Prince, the
Haitians should never have been returned there,” said Joanne Mariner,
deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Americas Division. “With
people being shot dead in the street by gangs of criminal thugs, it
was unconscionable for the United States to dump entire families into
this danger zone.”

 
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