Originally: Haiti stuck in bog of uprising’s bloodshed
BY GARY MARX
Chicago Tribune
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.