Haiti Fears a Repeat of the Past as New Rulers Arrive
    By Phil Davison
    The Independent UK 
    Wednesday 03 March 2004 

     It is, as they say, déjà vu all over again. American troops in the presidential palace, their guns trained on the Haitian people. Army officers and troops back in their old headquarters across the road, the same building from which they once dispatched death squads and from which they came within minutes of facing down the American President, Bill Clinton, and 20,000 US troops in 1994. 

     The thousands of poor Haitians, many of them barefoot, who peered through the tall green railings of the palace yesterday, down the barrels of the US Marines' Humvee-mounted-machine-guns, are not yet quite sure what to think. The events of the past month happened so fast that they don't yet know what hit them. 

     Have they been liberated? Was this a popular rebellion, a foreign intervention or a coup d'état? Whatever it is, it sometimes looks as though it was all done with mirrors. 

     The two or three hundred "rebels" who spearheaded the military movement against Jean-Bertrand Aristide and were cheered by many in the capital on Monday, appeared almost to have vanished into thin air yesterday. 

     Had the Americans, widely thought here to have armed and supported them, now told them to keep quiet? 

     The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, made it clear on Monday that he considered some of the rebel leaders unsavoury and that he would not like to see them involved in governing this country. 

     But Guy Philippe, a rebel leader, was out in the open. From a hotel in the posh Petionville district high above the capital, said he would run the newly constituted army. 

     "I am the chief," he insisted, hastening to add, "... the military chief. I will answer to the President." Minutes later he said he would arrest the Prime Minister, Yvon Neptune. 

     As it turned out yesterday, many of the rebels were closeted inside the white-painted colonial-style former headquarters of the Haitian army, turned into government buildings by Mr Aristide when he disbanded the army with Washington's blessing in 1995. 

     They had locked themselves in, away from hundreds of curious passers-by, but the men we could see through the railings looked exactly like the men of the old Haitian army, the army of the Duvalier dictators, of the death squads, of the cocaine trafficking and of the 1991 coup that forced Mr Aristide to flee first time round. They had the same uniforms and, perhaps more frightening, the same dread-inspiring look. 

     Some of them had boasted on Monday that they were determined to root out Mr Aristide's chimères gunmen, who have now blended into the scenery of the city's seething slums. They did not beat around the bush. They wanted to execute such men on the spot. Staunch supporters of Aristide's Lavalas party have gone underground. 

     There was no sign yesterday of Louis-Jodel Chamblain, the rebel leader who was convicted of the massacre of 26 Aristide supporters in 1994 and was once linked with army death squads. Amnesty International is calling for his arrest. 

     So Haiti is about to have an army again, perhaps the last thing it needs. And now we hear that ousted dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier wants to come home. Am I dreaming all this? 

     It took only a couple of dozen US Marines to secure the grubby port yesterday, so far their only deployment outside the airport, the American embassy and the presidential palace. 

     They have not yet decided whether to go out on patrol, something George Bush may want to avoid after the Iraq experience. There is, though, no sign of any hostility to the American, French or Canadian troops now here at the forefront of what may become a peace force of 5,000. 

     But neither were the foreigners cheered. Haitians have seen it all before. 

     With the port secure, many Haitians asked whether President Bush would send what is more vital to them than new governments or foreign troops ­ food. 

     Regardless of his faults, and they were many, Aristide left this nation's starving masses one great legacy: the belief that they were worth something and that their votes counted. Whether that belief will be shattered during the next cycle of events remains to be seen. 

    Go to Original 

    Exiled 'Baby Doc' Seeks Return to Haiti
    By The Associated Press 

    Tuesday 02 March 2004 

     MIAMI -- Exiled Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier told a television reporter he wants to return to his homeland now that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has fled. 

     "This is my country," Duvalier told WFOR-CBS4 on Monday in an interview in Paris. "I'm ready to put myself at the disposal of the Haitian people." 

     But Duvalier said he doesn't plan to run for president. 

     "That is not on my agenda," Duvalier said through a translator. 

     The deposed dictator said he requested a diplomatic passport several weeks ago and is in constant contact with people in Haiti. Accused of human rights violations, mass killings and stealing at least $120 million from the national treasury, Duvalier fled to France in 1986, 15 years after succeeding his father, the late Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. 

     "I think I'm getting close and that I will soon have the opportunity to go back to my country," he said. 

     Duvalier also said he was not involved with the rebels who helped force Aristide out of office Sunday. 

     He applauded the "prompt action of the international community," welcomed the presence of U.S. Marines and said the country should stabilize quickly. 

     But Reed Brody, special counsel for the group Human Rights Watch, said: "Duvalier's return to Haiti would be a disaster, unless it is to face justice." 

     "His dictatorial regime was responsible for thousands of political killings and arbitrary detentions," Brody said. "It would be such a step back for Haiti to have Duvalier play a role in Haitian politics." 

     Duvalier had been named president for life at age 18 following the 1971 death of his father. Tens of thousands were killed during the 29-year Duvalier dynasty and hundreds of millions of dollars stolen. Brody said the exact number of killed is unknown. 

    Go to Original 

    Convicted Assassin Gets Role in Haiti
    By Paisley Dodds
    The Associated Press 

    Tuesday 02 March 2004 

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Rebel leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a convicted killer and accused death squad leader, says he has no plans of fading into the shadows. 

     President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled Haiti Sunday -- a departure that created a power vacuum and raised concern that gunmen who terrorized this Caribbean nation in decades past would return to influence. 

     "I'm commanding operations," Chamblain told The Associated Press Tuesday inside the old headquarters of Haiti's disbanded army, where rebels are setting up their headquarters. 

     Chief rebel leader Guy Philippe announced he was "military chief," ordering Aristide's police commanders to meet with him or he'd arrest them. 

     Philippe has not been linked to death squads, but rights groups charge he has a poor human rights record as a police official in the capital. 

     As corpses show on the streets and reports surface of revenge attacks against members of Aristide's government, human rights groups are pressing interim leaders to rethink their position with rebel leaders like Chamblain. 

     "These are the death squad people. These are the killers. These are the people I tried to prosecute in the 1990s," said human rights lawyer Michael Ratner, of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City. 

     Four bodies were spotted Monday on a dirt road, three shot in the head execution-style, hands tied behind their backs. Two more bodies were on the street Tuesday, and six with gunshot wounds were brought to the morgue during the day. 

     "We see it as a very disturbing portent for Haiti's future," said Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch. "There's a potential for a cycle of violence." She noted her organization has already received reports of reprisals against Aristide government officials, including the sacking of homes belonging to former Haitian Police Chief Jocelyn Pierre and government spokesman Mario Dupuy. 

     Among other rebels, the rights groups are also concerned about Butteur Metayer, a street gang leader who freely admits that he used to go around terrorizing Aristide's opponents, and Remissainthe Ravix, one-time leader of armed youth groups that organized bloody protests against Haiti's government in the 1980s. 

     Chamblain says he's never killed anyone and is against executions. 

     But he allegedly ran death squads in the last years of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier's dictatorship in the late 1980s and is more notorious for his role in the paramilitary Front for the Advancement of Progress of the Haitian People, or FRAPH. The acronym in French means "to thrash." 

     Terrorizing supporters of Aristide's Lavalas Family party, the group was blamed for thousands of killings before a U.S. intervention ended three years of military rule in 1994. 

     "I never committed murder. I am not a terrorist. I am not a drug dealer. I am not a criminal," Chamblain told the AP. 

     He was, however, convicted in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1993 murder of Aristide financier Antoine Izmery, who was dragged from Mass in a church, made to kneel outside and shot. 

     A CIA intelligence memorandum implicated him in the 1993 assassination of Justice Minister Guy Malary. 

     A sergeant in the Haitian army, Chamblain left the army in the late 1980s and reappeared in 1993 as FRAPH's co-founder. 

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