Latinnews Archive

Latin American Weekly Report - 28 September 1979

Haiti: return of the gunmen

Alarmed by the dimensions of the opposition, the regime has silenced the dissident press and radio and unleashed the Tontons Macoutes in a bid to regain the initiative. After two years of ailowing progress of sorts to be made on press freedom and human rights, the Duvalier family celebrated its 22nd anniversary of power last weekend back in the bunker. The jails are filling again, the timid liberals in the regime who encouraged the loosening-up process are lying low or have disappeared from view, and Washington's strategy to avert political upheaval through 'modernisation' has had a sharp setback. Haiti did not want political models thrust upon it which were dreamt up on the banks of 'the Potomac, the Thames and the Seine', President Jean-Claude Duvslier told the thousands of peasants and 'national security volunteers' (VSN), better known as the Tontons Macoutes, massed before his palace for the anniversary. Such 'westernisation', he said, 'hinders the country's progress.' The VSN wouild remain the basis of the regime.


The return to full power by the old guard around the President's mother, Simone Duvalier, and deputy interior minister, Weber Guerrier, began with its victory in last February's legislative elections (LAPR XIII, 8) and has now been completed in response to the unprecedented political pressure which has built up since the revolt against censorship last May (LAPR XIII, 23). The ever-bolder independent media, whose members have founded a new journalists' union in opposition to the official one, have been the catalysts and the weapons of the new dissidence. They have reported prominently the call by the Haitian human rights league, headed by lawyer Gerard Gourgue, for an end to torture by the military and the police and its denunciation of a 'dangerous increase' in human rights violations. The league has been publicly backed by two of the late Papa Doc's former ministers, Lionel Lajoie and Michel Lamartiniere Honorat, who called for a 'national debate'. After last year's rash of strikes (LAPR XII, 47), a number of new unions have sprung up and the pro-regime leaders of some existing ones have been ousted. This has affected sugar factory workers, dockers, cement workers, teachers and bus drivers.

But the most provocative development has been the emergence of three political parties over the past three months, the first for nearly 20 years. All three claim to be Christian Democratic, but public interest lies not so much in their ideology as in their simple existence. The leaders of two, Sylvio Claude and Gr6goire Eugene, both stood and lost against palace-approved candidates in the February elections (Claude against the national commander of the VSN, Rosalie Adolphe). Eugene, a 54-year-old law professor at the University of Haiti, was a junior minister in the brief regime of Daniel Fignole in 1957. He has emphasised that the current constitution allows the formation of political parties and has founded a fortnightly magazine, Frater-nite , which rivals Dieudonn6 Fardin's pioneering Le Petit Samedi Soir in the bluntness of its criticism of the regime.

The response of the palace to these challenges was the organisation of a record crowd of more than 15,000 Tontons Macoutes to hear Duvalier, on the annual 'VSN Day' on 29 July, advise them to 'keep your gun in your hand always'. But it was marred by the murder two days earlier of a young engineer in a Port-au-Prince street by one of the president's chief bodyguards, the widely-detested Antoine Khoury, in a quarrel over a parking place. Public outrage, already high at incidents reported by the dissident media from all over the country of brutalities and killings by the VSN and also by regular troops and police, forced the arrest and dismissal of Khoury. Two weeks later, Le Petit Samedi Soir came out with the first political opinion poll of the Duvalierist era: it showed that more than 80 per cent of respondents (mostly in the capital) were in effect opposed to the regime.

But the final straw was Sylvio Claude's success in holding an impromptu outdoor political meeting of some 2,000 people in central Port-au-Prince on 28 August. At the same time, he wrote a letter to the US ambassador and to President Carter asking for protection because he said he feared for his life. Next day, the secret police smashed up his party's headquarters. Claude himself managed to escape and was given air time at Radio RGR-Progres to tell Haitians what had happened. Station manager Gerard Resil was one of the leaders of the censorship revolt in May. Claude, a 45-year-old businessman returned from exile, was picked up within hours along with Gregoire Eugene, Resil and, according to reports, more than 200 others. Eugene and Resil were freed after a few days, but Claude has not reappeared.

So far the press has obeyed the government's orders not to report the incidents and the subsequent repression.(con t 'd on page 300) Last week the regime pressed the point home with a new law to license all journalists. The Duvaliers have rested their case with the words of interior and defence minister Bertholand Edouard: 'We have been here since 1957 and nobody is going to budge us.' According to the human rights league, in a statement received abroad, 'the law of the jungle' now reigns in Haiti.

Inflation and shortages of staples including flour, rice, soap and petrol have added to the pressure on the regime. With the help of the VSN, industry minister Guy Bauduy forced local industrialists to cut the price of soap, but later made it up to them by obligingly banning the import of a dozen staples from the Dominican Republic. The regime has caved in over its price battle with the French-owned Ciment d'Haiti (LAPR XIII, 23), but the firm's French manager paid by being expelled from the country after being held naked overnight in a prison cell.

lnternationally, pressure has eased slightly on the regime. The departure of Andrew Young, a strong opponent of the Duvaliers, caused rejoicing, and the US Senate has restored the US$18.4m in economic aid for 1979-80 which had been cancelled earlier. However, the strings attached are evidence of serious fiscal reform by the regime. This was demanded also by the five-nation International Aid Committee for Haiti which met in Washington last month. The regime has come up with measures to split the national bank into a central bank and a commercial bank, and to audit the Regie du Tabac and other extra-budgetary accounts used by the Duvaliers as private slush funds. The reforms, together with a 30 per cent increase in the rarely-enforced national minimum wage to US$2.20 a day, are due to take effect next week, but they are unlikely to be more than window-dressing.


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