23747: (pub) radtimes: Massacre of Aristide supporters brings back memories of Papa Doc (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Massacre of Aristide supporters brings back memories of Papa Doc

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1286122004

Sun 7 Nov 2004
by REED LINDSAY IN PORT-AU-PRINCE

THE bodies had been whisked away, but a pool of dried blood covering a
dirt-floored dead end of a twisting alleyway was a chilling sign that a
massacre might have taken place.

Residents in the Fort National neighbourhood, which like most of
Port-au-Prince's slums is a bastion of support for former President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, gathered around the darkening blood the following day.

Some of them say police officers wearing black hooded masks shot and killed
12 people, and then dragged their bodies away. Eliphete Joseph, a young man
wearing a blue basketball jersey who claims to be a friend of several of
the men who were killed last week, his eyes red with tears, said: "The
police officers will say that this was an operation against gangs. But we
are all innocent. The worst thing is that Aristide is now in exile in South
Africa, but we are in Haiti, and they are persecuting us only because we
live in a poor neighbourhood."

Two days later, in a nearby slum area known for its pro-Aristide militancy,
residents said armed men dressed in police uniforms and black hooded masks
executed four young men. The next day, their rotting bodies lay face down
in the street covered in flies. Their wrists had been tied by shoelaces,
and at least two had charred fingers, an indication they might have been
tortured.

The killings appear to be the latest example of what human rights groups
describe as a campaign of repression against supporters of Aristide, who
was escorted out of the country on February 29 by US marines.

The US government says he resigned, while Aristide says he was forced out
against his will in a coup d'état.

Some Haitian and international human rights observers are beginning to make
comparisons with the darkest days of the 1991 to 1994 military regime, and
with the 1957 to 1986 dictatorship of François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier and his
son Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc'.

One difference, they say, is that the current government has received the
blessing of the international community. Neither the US nor the United
Nations, which has a peacekeeping force of more than 3,000 troops in Haiti,
have censured abuses committed under the government of Prime Minister
Gerard Latortue, who took power in March.

Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in
Haiti, said: "When 20 to 30 people were getting killed a year [under
Aristide] there was a cascade of condemnation pouring down on the Aristide
government. Now that as many as 20 to 30 are getting killed in a day, there
is silence. It is an obvious double standard."

UN and Haitian officials deny government security forces are murdering
opponents. Justice minister Bernard Gousse said: "The government is not
violating people's rights. We've made it clear to the police. We have to
fight terrorists, but also protect the civilian population."

Gousse added that the government was investigating one case of an alleged
human rights abuse committed by police.

Human rights observers in Haiti concede that it is difficult to document
exactly how many people have been killed and by whom. There are myriad
armed groups in the country, including some gangs that support Aristide and
others that have shifting political allegiances.

However, according to Gerardo Ducos, who is leading an observation mission
for Amnesty International in Haiti, Aristide's backers have suffered the
brunt of human rights violations since the change in government.

Renan Hedouville, head of the Lawyers' Committee for the Respect of
Individual Liberties, a group that was a loud critic of Aristide's
government for rights abuses, said: "A lot of us were hoping the human
rights situation would improve after Aristide left. Now it is worse. The
international community needs to condemn these abuses. If they don't, they
will be complicit."

Brazilian Juan Gabriel Valdes, who heads the United Nations Stabilisation
Mission in Haiti, said: "What we have seen in this country during the last
month or two has been a resurgence of brutal violence organised probably in
order to provoke a process of political destabilisation. Any state has the
right to defend itself."

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