27370: Lemieux: news: SF Bay View: Baby Doc returning to Haiti? 1/28/06 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

Baby Doc returning to Haiti?
by Lynn Duff, SF Bay View (reposted) Saturday,
Jan. 28, 2006 at 8:46 AM
Twenty years after his ouster on Feb. 7, 1986,
dictator Jean Claude Duvalier could be returning
to Haiti. Observers predict that the former
president, who is known as Baby Doc, may be
returning to the country in an effort to restrain
the effectiveness of René Préval, leader of the
Lespwa party, who is expected to win the Feb. 7
presidential elections. Préval, who served one
term as president while a member of the Fanmi
Lavalas party, has pledged to release the
thousands of Lavalas members currently held as
political prisoners when he is elected.

Memories of Baby Doc are strong, and Bay View
correspondent Lyn Duff got the reaction on the
ground in Haiti to Duvalier's possible return.

Thelma, 39, market woman: I remember those days,
when I was a child. You couldn't speak out about
your political beliefs. The time of Duvalier was
just as bad as now. There was no freedom, and the
people had no hope.

Jean Louis, 19, carpenter: I'm lucky to have been
raised in an era when people could vote. I heard
stories from my parents about Baby Doc. My father
was a trade unionist. The union leaders were
kidnapped by Baby Doc's macoutes (death squads),
and their bodies were never found.

William, 67, shoemaker: The days of Baby Doc and
his father were dark times. I pray that he will
never return to our country. The Lord should
strike him down; if he gets in a plane to come
here, that airplane should be struck by
lightening. Haiti has been cursed with enough
violence and bloodshed already. With Jesus' help,
Duvalier and his evil will not return to Haiti.

Sierra Marie, 60, market woman: When I went to
vote for the first time, that was the beginning
of the time of the Lavalas [flood] when we were
marching for democracy. The men who worked for
Duvalier, they came with guns and shot at the
people who were lined up to vote. We thought we
would never be able to elect a president. When we
finally elected Aristide, those same armed men
with their sunglasses and guns, they came to
strangle democracy again ?. Jean Claude Duvalier
should be in a prison. The United Nations should
put him in jail for his crimes against the
Haitian people.

Alexander, 22, student: I want you to write this
down. If Baby Doc comes back to live in Haiti,
there will be no peace. Our generation, we are
revolutionaries, and we won't put up with that.
He will not be allowed to stay in Haiti.

Lyn Duff, LynDuff@aol.com, is a reporter
currently based in Port-au-Prince. She first
traveled to Haiti in 1995 to help establish a
children's radio station and has since covered
Haiti extensively for the Bay View, Pacifica
Radio's Flashpoints, heard on KPFA 94.1 FM
weekdays at 5 p.m., and other local and national
media.

http://www.sfbayview.com/012506/babydoc012506.shtml


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