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Haiti: "Forgotten" Repression

By Ben Chitty

Ben Chitty, East Coast Coordinator

Last September 30th, the Haitian military threw out Jean-Bertrand Aristide—the nation's first democratically elected president. The coup was universally condemned. The United States organized a trade embargo. The Organization of American States (OAS) sent delegations to Port-au-Prince to negotiate a return to continual government. Yet seven months later Father Aristide remains in exile. What's up?

Haiti was run by the Duvaliers, father and son, for almost three decades. Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier ruled through the Tontons Macoutes, a semi-clandestine terrorist organization which brutally repressed all opposition. Jean0Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier inherited the government from his father in 1971. Nothing changed. By 1986, the church, the upper classes, even elements within the Army, were alienated from the regime. When the Haitian people took to the streets to fight Tonton Macoutes thugs, the regime evaporated. Baby Doc was airlifted into exile, along with much of his wealth.

Most Haitians agreed the Duvaliers had to go, but not on what came next. For the Army, the revolution meant a new division of spoils. For the anti-Duvalierists among the upper classes, it meant an opportunity to enhance their own economic interests—this time without the arbitrary, capricious rule of a single family, "Duvalierism without Duvalier.' And everyone of importance—the upper classes, the Church hierarchy, the Army—wanted quick elections and a quick return to business as usual.

For the people who had done well under the Duvalier regime, the revolution meant ruin. The Duvalierists slaughtered hundreds of voters in the first election (November, 1987), and the next four years saw a carousel of successive governments as first one then another temporary coalition of factions played musical chairs for power. In 1990, Roger Lafontant, one-time leader of the Tontons Macoutes, returned to Haiti to campaign for president in a new election. In January, 1991, he attempted a coup. Again the Haitian people took to the streets by the thousands, and the coup failed. Then Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide announced his candidacy for the presidency.

Father Aristide had been active for years on behalf of Haiti's poor. A charismatic preacher, he survived several assassination attempts, and lived what he preached, even giving away his paychecks. His campaign was a surprise. He was not the candidate backed by the United States. He had no organized political party. His reforms threatened every established interest. He was incorruptible. But he was loved by the people, and walked away with the election.

His government broke with Haitian tradition. Tax policy, the break0up and redistribution of monopolies, land reform—all were opposed by the wealthy Haitians whose parties dominated the National Assembly. His attempts to stop the Army's customary extortion and smuggling brought many officers into opposition. But his administration did not control the bureaucracy or the judiciary, or especially the Army. When the coup came, it was led by General Raoul Cedras, the man Aristide named to carry out his military reforms, and it was unopposed. Aristide himself refused to call for violent resistance.

Will the coup succeed? The various factions among the Army the Church hierarchy, and the Haitian upper classes (both pro- and anti-Duvalierist) have only one goal—the removal of Father Arstide, a genuine threat to the political and economic arrangements which made Haiti the poorest nation in the Americas for almost two centuries. As long as Aristide is not president, the coup succeeds, The interim government has played a waiting game, offering compromise after compromise, insisting only that Aristide not return. The embargo is far from universal and poorly enforced. The military's repression is brutal and extensive. Early in June, Marc Bazin, formerly of the World Band and the US-backed candidate in the presidential election, was installed as the Prime Minister.

But the situation has not stabilized; the coup is not yet a "done deal", for three reasons. First, Aristide's exile does not solve the dilemma of the Haitian elites. The economy remains collapsed. The Army remains corrupt. And the Tontons Macoutes and their Duvalierist supporters still wait for a chance to return Haiti to a rule of terror.

Second, the US itself is home to a large Haitian community—often called Haiti's "10th Department"—which supports Father Aristide in about the same overwhelming proportion as the people living in Haiti. Their activism in New York and Miami, along with support from Americans already involved in Haitian relief (mainly through churches) or active on behalf of the Haitian refugees unconstitutionally detained in Florida camps, keeps alive the question of Haitian democracy.

Finally, White House policy has been inept. US enforcement of the embargo was late and lax. US negotiators finally got Aristide to agree to a compromise in which he accepted new limitations on presidential power and indefinite exile; the interim regime rejected even that. Then there are the refugees—thousands of Haitians fled their homeland. The White House declared them economic refugees, not eligible for temporary entry into the US. At first the Coast Guard picked them up and processed them in camps in Guantanamo; most were returned to Haiti. Still the refugees fled, some for a second (or third) time; President Bush directed that they be returned directly to Haiti. His rationale is not hard to figure: with a tough election coming up, the President cannot afford to alienate his political base by admitting thousands of poor black people to the United States. But every day the economic refugee fiction grows harder to maintain.

And the policy may backfire: by shutting down the escape route, the Bush administration has raised the ante for the Haitian people. Resistance and repression alike have accelerated. May 18, a plane drops leaflets over Port-au-Prince, then undisturbed makes runs over Leogane, Gonaives, and Cap Haitian. May 23, two soldiers killed, two wounded by assailants using Uzis, standard Haitian Army issue. May 25, a group of soldiers give an interview on clandestine "Radio Solil" declaring "we want to be on the side of the people." May 26, police go into the State University Hospital to kill a wounded man, remove another from surgery, and bring Georges Izmery, a prominent businessman who backed Aristide, to the morgue—his body still warm, his heart still beating. May 29, a barracks is torched. June 2, soldiers attack the Izmery funeral procession. The residents of poor neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince count their dead every morning; fisherman catch corpses with cement blocks tied round their necks.

So, the President may yet be "forced" to reluctantly intervene. For three weeks in May the US conducted Ocean Venture 92 in the Atlantic and Caribbean, a joint forces exercise involving 30,000 personnel in "a realistic multi-threat scenario." The multiple threats are Cuba and Haiti. The US has already begun to discuss a peace-keeping force with the OAS, stepped up criticism of Aristide's human rights record, and floated a story that Navy SEALS had rescued in a commando raid personally authorized by the President. If US intervention is in the works, its mission will be to stabilize the situation, confirm Bazin in place, keep Aristide out of power, rattle the Cubans, and showcase a President whose domestic and foreign policies have—truth to tell—been on disaster after another.