27431: (news) Chamberlain: Dark past hovers over some Haiti presidential hopefuls (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva and Jim Loney

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb 2 (Reuters) - The leader of a bloody
rebellion that toppled the last democratically elected government, a
weapons dealer, an army chief and an accused killer linked to the Duvalier
dictatorship are among the people whose presidential campaigns have angered
rights workers.
     The candidacy of Guy Philippe, a former police commissioner who led
the rag-tag band of soldiers and gang members who ousted President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide two years ago, and others with questionable
histories worries activists in a country terrorized in the recent past.
     "They are out there campaigning and they know there is no chance of
prosecution," said Joanne Mariner, a Haiti expert with New York-based Human
Rights Watch. "It's another reason to be pessimistic about Haiti."
     Fortunately, human rights experts say, none of these candidates is
expected to win. Former President Rene Preval leads comfortably in
pre-election polls for next Tuesday's vote. Preval is around 20 percentage
points ahead of the field, according to the few opinion polls done in
Haiti.
     Of the candidates that have worried rights workers, Philippe is
polling the best but is still not in double digits. His rebels killed
dozens of people in the month-long uprising against Aristide in February
2004.
     It was not the revolt that first brought Philippe, a charismatic
37-year-old, to the attention of human rights observers, but his time with
the police in Delmas, a suburb of Port-au-Prince.
     "During his tenure as police chief there were credible reports of
summary executions of gang members by police," Mariner said.
     Philippe has campaigned openly with Louis Jodel Chamblain, a former
death squad chief who helped him lead the 2004 rebellion.
     Chamblain has twice been convicted of murder, once in connection with
a peasant massacre in the Raboteau seaside slum in 1994. His convictions
were overturned by Haitian courts after the revolt in trials that rights
activists consider farces.
     Franck Romain, a high-ranking army officer when Francois "Papa Doc"
Duvalier and his dreaded Tontons Macoute paramilitary ruled Haiti, is also
running for president, though his campaign has gained little traction.
     Romain, once a right-wing mayor of Port-au-Prince, was widely blamed
for a Sept. 11, 1988 massacre at St. Jean-Bosco Church, where Aristide,
then a firebrand Roman Catholic priest, was preaching. At least 13 people
were killed and dozens injured.
     During Papa Doc's reign of terror, Romain killed two young men in
front of a Port-au-Prince cemetery and had video of the incident shown on
television, according to Patrick Elie, leader of a Haitian human rights
group.
     Other candidates with tarnished histories include Dany Toussaint, a
gun shop owner who was once a suspect in the killing of Haiti's most
prominent journalist, Jean Dominique; Hubert DeRonceray and Edouard
Francisque, ministers in the Duvalier regime; and Himler Rebu, an army
chief during a military junta that ousted Aristide in 1991.
     Rebu's army and paramilitaries were blamed for thousands of killings,
as well as torture and rape, during the three years Aristide was in exile
near the start of his first term.
     But while none of these men is expected to beat Preval, rights
campaigners say their candidacies have a chilling effect on Haiti's
struggle to mold democratic institutions, as the poorest country in the
Americas tries to throw off a long history of dictatorship and military
rule.
     "It's a big blow for the struggle for human rights in Haiti," said
Renan Hedouville of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, a local rights
group. "It's like they forgot about those people, like they never did
anything."