Armed opposition threatens Haiti government

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Feb. 11 (AGR)— Though reports this week were few, but provocative and short on historical context, one thing is clear about Haiti: some form of widely orchestrated revolt against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is happening there.

In the past week this was made evident by the seizure and eviction of police stations in nearly a dozen cities within the impoverished Caribbean nation by reportedly different, but allied militant factions of Aristide’s opposition.

Various anti-Aristide forces have been at work within Haiti, and abroad in the United States, ever since the populist liberation theologian came to power in 1990. However, in recent months, Haiti has seen an escalation of opposition protests and clashes between government opponents, police, and Aristide supporters that have killed at least 69 people since mid-September.

But the movement to depose Aristide took on a new character on Thursday, Feb. 4 — one day after Bahamas Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell and Colin Granderson, Assistant Secretary General of the Caribbean Community, concluded talks with liberal opposition leaders and, separately, with the Haitian president.

That Thursday, leaders of the opposition group named Democratic Platform said in a statement that during the two days of talks they sought to “explain why Aristide and his government have to go.” The opposition leaders were adamant, saying they would “never engage in any kind of negotiation to maintain Aristide in power.”

Aristide says he intends to serve out his second term to 2006 while the opposition groups are calling for the president’s resignation, saying he stole the 2000 election that returned him to power.

While Democratic Platform made their line-in-the-sand remarks, an armed opposition group called the Gonaives Resistance Front seized control of Gonaives — Haiti’s fourth-largest city — after taking over the Gonaives police station during a five-hour gun battle. The takeover set off widespread looting and burning of government offices throughout the city.

When police tried to retake the city three days later, they were beaten back in fighting in which at least nine people were killed, including seven police.

The armed group set fire to the mayor’s house, freed more than 100 prisoners from the city jail, also setting fire to a hotel where police often stay.

The Associated Press reported that “crowds mutilated the corpses of some police officers; one body was dragged through the street as a man swung at it with a machete, and a woman cut off the officer’s ear. Another policeman was lynched and stripped to his shorts before residents dropped a large rock on his corpse.”

Before dawn on Sunday, arsonists burned down a two-story building in northern Cap-Haitien housing the studio of Radio Vision 2000, the independent Haitian broadcast network said.

“Gonaives is liberated,” Wynter Etienne, described as Gonaives Resistance Front’s leader, told reporters. “Aristide has to go... We’ve liberated the police station and freed the population [from Aristide’s rule].”

Etienne said the group aimed to take control of other towns, and they did exactly that. By the following Monday, the rebels had clashed with police in at least 11 towns, stealing weapons from police stations before setting them ablaze. Shootings, vandalism and looting erupted in several cities as police fought to quash the uprisings. In three towns, rebel leaders said they appointed mayors and police chiefs. Northern cities ran out of power and fuel. It was unclear how many people have been killed but tolls put together from witnesses, Red Cross officials, rebel leaders, and radio reports so far indicate at least 41 have died in what the government is saying is an attempted coup.

US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher responded to Haiti’s turn of events by accusing the Haitian government of contributing to the violence. “The government has responded with a combination of police and pro-Aristide gangs,” he said, adding later, “We call on the government of Haiti to respect the rights, especially human rights, of all citizens and residents of Haiti.”

The Bush administration has made little secret of its distaste for Aristide. Without endorsing the opposition’s demands that Aristide step down, however, it has also repeatedly pressed the Haitian president to undertake major economic and political reforms. In the absence of such measures, Washington has withheld critical economic and development aid, and persuaded other donors to do much the same.

Aristide became Haiti’s first freely elected president in 1990, only to be ousted eight months later in a military coup. He was a radical priest who made his mark in championing the poor against the Duvalier dictatorship and the Tonton Macoutes death squads.

The masses stood up and voted him into office, sweeping aside Marc Bazin, the Haitian technocrat backed by millions of US dollars and who worked with the World Bank. The US State Department — to further ensure the palatability of Bazin — had actually quietly supported the opposition candidacy of a widely loathed organized crime boss named Roger Lafontant. The US wanted Bazin to be as obvious a choice as possible on a deliberately limited list.

Though the US had repeatedly denied having taken any part in the following coup d’etat of Sept. 30, 1991 against Aristide and his Lavalas Movement, US Defense Intelligence Agency representatives were reported to have been in Haitian Army Headquarters at the time of the coup. The DIA and the CIA maintained close relations with the Haitian Army before, during, and after the coup — even as President George Bush (former director of the CIA) was energetically denouncing the coup for the benefit of the American public.

One of the coup’s principle beneficiaries was in fact on the CIA payroll — Emmanuel Toto Constant, who led a political network of death squads called FRAPH, which ended up doing a good deal of the dirty work for the coup government of Raoul Cedras. Constant is currently being protected from extradition by the US government and lives in Queens, New York.

The oppression of Cedras’ de facto regime was fierce, systematic, and widespread. Cedras and the FRAPH, with substantial help from the Haitian Army, killed over 5,000 people in the three years from 1991-1994. The leadership of every popular and peasant organization was killed as well — or driven deeply underground.

In June, 1992, the coup government invested Marc Bazin with the title of prime minister. He accepted. In June, 1993, just four days after the US announced sanctions against coup supporters, Bazin resigned.

A deal was struck between the Clinton Administration, Aristide, and the Haitian de facto government in June, 1993 at Governor’s Island, New York. It called for reinstatement of Aristide, but also called for a number of parliamentary reforms and blanket amnesty for the military.

Haiti presented Clinton with an interlocking set of dilemmas. Aristide was overwhelmingly identified by the Haitian masses with the dual aspirations of popular democracy and sovereignty. His ouster and the subsequent brutality of the Cedras regime had only magnified Aristide’s standing as the embodiment of Haitian popular aspirations.

After the fiasco in Somalia, the Clinton Administration was desperate for a military success, and it was coming under increasing pressure at home from members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Haitian-Americans, and groups like Trans-Africa, to do something about the situation in Haiti and about restoring Aristide’s presidency.

Clinton’s principle patrons, however, the transnational corporations, were not the least bit comfortable with Aristide. Even as neo-liberals such as Clinton worked tirelessly in the US to co-opt Aristide, American reactionaries worked tirelessly to undercut both Clinton and Aristide. A drumbeat of anti-Aristide propaganda was begun. Longtime NC Senator Jesse Helms was in the forefront, and the CIA leaked disinformation to the press about Aristide having mental illness. The CIA actually briefed Congress in a special closed session, in 1993, on what they claimed was evidence of Aristide’s mental illness.

Finally, the United States sent 20,000 troops to Haiti in 1994 to restore the Aristide administration. Aristide served out the remainder of his term, and was once again reelected in Nov. 2000 on a populist pledge to lift up Haiti’s downtrodden. Prior to election day, the US government made a statement refusing to recognize the elections or the presidency of Aristide if he was declared the winner. Running virtually unopposed, Aristide officially won with 92% of the vote.

This week, he renewed pledges to permit protests, disarm politically affiliated gangs, reform the police force and work with the opposition to appoint a new prime minister acceptable to both sides.

Sources: ABCNews.com, Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, BBC, Stan Goff, Independent (UK), OneWorld.net, Reuters, Washington Post