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[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser <torx@joimail.com>

World Socialist Web Site
http://www.wsws.org

Haiti’s US-installed government cracks down on opponents
By Richard Dufour

October 18, 2004

A fresh eruption of political violence in Haiti has claimed at least
46 lives in the past two weeks as the US-installed interim government
of Prime Minister Gérard Latortue has sought to silence supporters of
the ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in advance of the
scheduled 2005 elections.

Aristide was driven to exile last February following an armed
rebellion by former officers of the disbanded Haitian army and the
combined pressure of Paris, Ottawa and Washington in what amounted to
a US-engineered coup.

Since then, economic and security conditions in the impoverished
Caribbean island have worsened. A promised $1 billion aid package has
failed to materialize. And the UN “stabilization” force, with fewer
than half of the 8,300 scheduled troops, has proved unable and
unwilling to make any serious efforts at disarming the ex-soldiers
and armed gangs who are behind the alarming rise in kidnappings and
crimes of all sorts.

Further eroding the government’s legitimacy has been its open
identification with the military and paramilitary thugs from Haiti’s
former dictatorships who led the armed anti-Aristide rebellion
earlier this year.

Not only were these elements hailed by Latortue as “freedom
fighters”; they have been given free reign in taking over cities
throughout the country and pressing their demands for the
reestablishment of the army.

A case in point was the recent acquittal in a hasty, one-day trial of
rebel and former death-squad leader Jodel Chamblain, charged among
other crimes for the assassination of businessman Antoine Izméry, a
prominent Aristide supporter.

On top of those deeply unpopular moves was the government’s response
to the recent flooding of the country’s third-largest city in the
wake of Tropical Storm Jeanne—a response characterized by inaction
and indifference—even as the death toll in Gonaïves reached 3,000 and
250,000 city residents were rendered homeless. In addition, the same
criminal elements that Latortue celebrated as “freedom fighters” in
this very city just last March have hampered relief efforts by
looting desperately needed aid.

Lacking any genuine base of support among ordinary people, the
Latortue government also faces growing resentment from those in the
country’s tiny elite who had vehemently opposed Aristide but still
felt excluded from the corridors and perks of power. Except for
Herard Abraham, the former head of the armed forces who was named
minister of the interior in Latortue’s cabinet, his government is
mainly composed of “technocrats” with few links to the country’s
numerous political cliques.

Such is the background for the political warfare of the last couple of
weeks.

Things came to a head on September 30, when supporters of Lavalas,
the political party formed by Aristide, called for a mass
demonstration on the anniversary of the coup d’état carried out
against Aristide 13 years earlier by then army chief Raoul Cédras.

This was not the first protest action against the Latortue government
by Lavalas, a party that has dominated the Haitian political scene
for the last decade and remains a significant political force,
especially among the poor in the capital’s massive slums.

The difference, this time, was the precarious position in which the
government found itself. This may have prompted it to reply with
desperate, police state methods, especially since Lavalas could score
well if elections planned for 2005 are indeed held.

The march began peacefully, but gunfire soon erupted, setting off
what has been described as “bloody battles” between armed supporters
of Lavalas and the police.

Dozens of people have died in the ensuing days as snipers roaring the
capital’s streets reportedly fired at random at passersby.

The official US response was, not surprisingly, to accuse so-called
Aristide loyalists of a “systematic campaign to destabilize the
interim government and disrupt the efforts of the international
community.”

Taking his cue from his Washington master, Prime Minister Latortue
has accused Lavalas of being a terrorist group engaged in
Baghdad-style executions as supposedly proven by the discovery of the
bodies of five policemen, three of whom were beheaded.

Without offering any evidence connecting Lavalas officials to these
gruesome acts and the violence of the last days, the interim
government began rounding up Aristide supporters.

Among those arrested were Gérard Jean-Juste, a well-known and
respected human rights advocate who founded Miami’s Haitian Refugee
Center in the early 1980s, along with three Lavalas leaders. The
latter were giving an interview denying any involvement in the
killings of the previous days when the radio station was encircled by
fully armed police who took them away.

One of the arrested Lavalas leaders, Gérard Gilles, who has since
been released, gave the following statement: “They interrogated us
and suggested we were the intellectual authors of the violence. But
we are not.... Every sector uses guns to destroy democracy in Haiti.
Lavalas remains the most popular party. It is unwise to treat us as
the root of all evil because it is a way of disdaining the people.”

Another leading member of Lavalas, former Aristide cabinet member
Leslie Voltaire, rejected the accusations of beheadings thrown at his
party. “This is not the practice of Lavalas, and Lavalas is not
benefiting,” he began. “Those benefiting are the ex-military who need
to crush the popular support for Aristide.”

One does not need to accept Lavalas’s claim to be a party of the
people—it is in fact an establishment party with a populist rhetoric
and its own record of violence, as inadvertently admitted by
Gilles—to recognize that they are the target of a government attempt
to wipe them off the country’s political map.

In the coastal town of Petit-Goave, which has been overtaken by
ex-soldiers with the tacit approval of Latortue, the homes of known
Lavalas supporters have been ransacked and their occupants beaten up.
Remissainthe Ravix, the self-proclaimed commander there, recently
went down to Port-au-Prince to offer his “services.”

Meanwhile, Guy Phillipe, the former military officer who headed the
rebel forces that helped bring Aristide down, declared: “Someone
needs to take control.”

That such elements, with their reactionary dreams of a restored and
strong armed forces if not an outright military dictatorship, have
come to be increasingly relied upon by the US-installed government of
Latortue is a serious threat to the democratic rights of Haiti’s
people. It is also a clear demonstration that US government policy is
fostering not democracy or freedom in Haiti, but the forces of
reaction and oppression.
.