25140: Simidor (news): La Scierie massacre (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: daniel simidor <danielsimidor@yahoo.com>

Haiti Stuck in Bog of Uprising's Bloodshed

BY GARY MARX

Chicago Tribune
Posted on Wed, May. 18, 2005

ST. MARC, HAITI - (KRT) - Amarzil Jean-Batiste was
hiding under a car as she watched two men toss her
eldest son, who was wounded, into a burning building
during a wave of political violence in this provincial
town.

"He was crying, `Mother, please come get me,'"
recalled Jean-Batiste, 43. "I couldn't help him. I had
to leave. I didn't want to die."

Jean-Batiste's son Kenol St. Jule, 23, is one of
scores of St. Marc residents allegedly massacred last
year as militia and police swept into an opposition
stronghold during the final days of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's presidency.

But Aristide supporters have a different version of
events, alleging that only a handful of residents were
killed as pro- and anti-Aristide forces fought for
control of this crumbling port city 50 miles northwest
of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

The controversy surrounding the events in St. Marc
have ignited a furious political battle in this
shattered Caribbean nation and symbolize the deep
divisions that wrack Haiti 15 months after Aristide's
departure.

Former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and former Interior
Minister Jocelerme Privert - top officials in
Aristide's government - have been in custody for
months while a judge investigates whether there is
enough evidence to charge the men and proceed to
trial. The judge said she expects to make a decision
by early summer.

Neptune and Privert have gone on extensive hunger
strikes demanding their unconditional release, and the
former prime minister is reportedly in critical
condition.

Petitions by both men to move the judicial proceedings
from St. Marc, where emotions run high, were rejected
by Haiti's highest court even though diplomats say
it's unlikely the men can get a fair trial in the
city.

"I did not go to St. Marc, not before, not during and
certainly not after the events," Privert wrote in
statement to the Chicago Tribune. "I am a political
prisoner, and everyone knows this."

But Pierre Esperance, director of the National Network
for the Defense of Human Rights, said that forces
acting under the direction of Neptune, Privert and
Amanus Mayette, a pro-Aristide lawmaker and militia
leader, killed at least 25 people in St. Marc.

Esperance visited St. Marc two days after the killings
began and described seeing five corpses being eaten by
stray dogs. Several residents also saw piles of
corpses burning in an opposition neighborhood and
watched as pro-Aristide forces fired at residents
scurrying up a barren hillside to flee the violence.

For many Haitians, St. Marc represents a key test for
the nation's collapsed justice system.

"We are focusing on the massacre because this is
something that was planned at the highest level of
government," said Esperance, a frequent Aristide
critic. "We want this trial to be a model so that it
becomes an example against impunity."

But Esperance and other victims' advocates are
concerned the international community is pressuring
Haitian officials to release the two men because their
imprisonment is jeopardizing crucial elections
scheduled to begin in October.

Leaders of Aristide's Lavalas Family party, the
nation's most potent political force, are threatening
to boycott the vote unless Neptune and other party
leaders held for alleged human-rights violations and
other crimes are freed. Diplomats fear a boycott could
further polarize Haiti.

Juan Gabriel Valdes, the United Nations envoy to
Haiti, said the agency is closely monitoring Neptune's
condition but has no plans "to interfere in the
judiciary process."

Still, Valdes said the U.N. is "very concerned about
the impact that this situation might have on the
general political process."

The rebellion against Aristide began in early February
2004 when gang-members opposed to the once popular
president staged a violent uprising in the key city of
Gonaives, about 25 miles northwest of St. Marc.

Police in St. Marc, the last major city between
Gonaives and Port-au-Prince, fled their posts several
days later after being attacked by a mob led by an
anti-Aristide gang known as Ramicos, according to
residents.

Neptune flew by helicopter to St. Marc on Feb. 9 and
vowed to restore order.

Two days later, special police units backed by a
pro-government gang called Bale Wouze, or "clean
sweep," broke through Ramicos' barricades, scrambled
down a narrow dirt road and attacked the gang's
headquarters, according to residents and human rights
groups.

Smoke billowed from the area as homes and cars were
set ablaze and gunfire rang out, witnesses said.

"Both opposing camps would have done everything
possible to keep St. Marc under their control," said
Ronald Saint-Jean, coordinator of the Committee for
the Defense of the Rights of the Haitian People, a
pro-Lavalas organization. "It was a confrontation
between two groups."

Saint-Jean asserts that no more than five people were
killed in the clashes.

But Terry Snow, a 40-year-old Texas missionary who has
lived in St. Marc since 1991, describes a one-sided
affair in which Ramicos was quickly routed by the more
numerous and heavily armed pro-Aristide forces. Then,
he says, the killing began.

Snow later visited the Ramicos headquarters and
counted 10 bodies piled in the charred rubble of two
homes.

"I'm positive there was not a gun battle," he said.
"If there had been one there wouldn't have been that
kind of massacre."

One of the homes belonged to Fetiere Louidort, a
Ramicos leader who was feeding his goats and pig when
pro-Aristide forces attacked. Louidort hid in an
adjacent building and describes black-clad police and
Bale Wouze shooting at residents running for cover.

"When they finished killing them, they burned their
bodies," Louidort said.

Anne Fuller, a consultant for the New York-based Human
Rights Watch, estimated that at least 10 people were
killed during the Feb. 11 attack.

"Some but not all were Ramicos members and
sympathizers but they were mostly lightly or not at
all armed," Fuller wrote in an article published last
month in the Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste.

Fuller wrote that as many as 11 other St. Marc
residents were killed by pro-Aristide forces between
the Feb. 11 attack and Aristide's exile on Feb. 29.

Residents took revenge in the days after Aristide's
departure. At least six Bale Wouze members were
rounded up and executed, including one notorious
leader who was beheaded and dismembered, according to
residents, local officials and human-rights advocates.

Today, Ramicos militants are a powerful presence in
St. Marc, reclaiming the dusty lot that serves as
their headquarters and marking the site of the alleged
massacre.

The militants are demanding that Neptune and Privert
be charged and convicted, even though they offer scant
evidence directly linking the two former officials to
the killings.

"We hope the justice system does its job," said
Thompson Charlienor, St. Marc's deputy mayor and a
Ramicos leader who heads a victims' advocacy group.

---

© 2005, Chicago Tribune.



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