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Text File | 1994-05-02 | 39KB | 712 lines

<text> <title> Haiti </title> <article> <hdr> Human Rights Watch World Report 1992 Americas Watch: Haiti </hdr> <body> Human Rights Developments The year 1991 marked the first time in Haiti's history that its citizens, however briefly, lived under a freely elected government. But the rule of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was violently suspended in September with the re-emergence of brutal military rule after the latest in a series of bloody coups d'état. President Aristide's human rights record, though flawed, was distinguished by his efforts to extend civilian control over the army--the chief perpetrator of human rights violations and the main obstacle to democracy in Haiti since the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986. President Aristide pressured generals who had controlled the army under previous abusive military regimes to retire; promoted officers believed to be committed to democracy; and dismissed or transferred to obscure posts others known for human rights violations. President Aristide also abolished the corrupt and abusive system of rural section chiefs. He admitted reform-minded officers into the police force, which in turn began to curb "insecurity," the rampant and often politically motivated violence that has periodically gripped Haiti's cities since 1986. The seven months of the Aristide government also saw a notable decrease in the loss of lives in rural land conflicts, which in the past had been a source of some of the worst massacres, often at the hands of corrupt soldiers in league with large landowners. Nevertheless, President Aristide's human rights record was marred by sporadic military killings of civilians and Aristide supporters in the countryside. In addition, five youths were killed by officers friendly to the Aristide administration and the murders were never adequately investigated. Further, there was an apparent tolerance by the Aristide government of the lynching and intimidation of suspected criminals and at times political opponents by mobs of civilians. The popular killings are, in significant part, a symptom of frustration with the dysfunctional criminal-justice system inherited from President Aristide's predecessors. With justifiably little confidence that criminals, regardless of motivation, will be tried, convicted and punished, some Haitians have simply taken the law into their own hands. These underlying weaknesses in the judicial system persisted under the Aristide government despite its efforts to remove corrupt judges and train new ones. Hundreds of detainees including those alleged to have plotted against the civilian government in an earlier coup attempt on January 7 were permitted to languish for months in prison, under deplorable conditions, before even being formally charged, let alone brought to trial. In part, however, popular violence contributed to the weakness of the judicial system. Threats of lynchings were used by Aristide supporters to intimidate lawyers who attempted to defend the January 7 coup-plotters and the court that sought to try them, as well as members of Parliament who opposed the president's policies. President Aristide failed to use his tremendous moral influence to call for an end to these acts of intimidation, and in two speeches, in August and September, publicly seemed to endorse such threats of violence. The president's own publicly ambivalent attitude toward popular violence was later cited by the Haitian army as an excuse to commit yet another serious human rights violation by depriving the Haitian people of their elected government. In the three months since the September 30 coup, the military government has accumulated a disastrous record on human rights. The regime is headed by Jean-Jacques Honorat, once a leading human rights advocate, who was installed as prime minister in a cynical attempt by the army to put the best face on an outlaw government. In the immediate aftermath of the coup, Haitian troops killed at least three hundred civilians and wounded thousands more, in random shootings and targeted massacres of residents in impoverished neighborhoods who were suspected of being supporters of President Aristide. As many as one thousand may have been killed, according to the Platform of Haitian Organizations for the Defense of Human Rights, a coalition of nine human rights groups monitoring abuses in post-coup Haiti. In one massacre in the days following the coup in Lamentin, just outside Port-au-Prince, soldiers sought to avenge the murder of one or two troops by mowing down pedestrians and shooting into homes, killing some thirty to forty people. On October 2, soldiers killed some thirty civilians in Cité Soleil, an impoverished section of Port-au-Prince with strong pro-Aristide leanings, after a crowd reportedly attacked a police station in the neighborhood. Indiscriminate shooting, heavy automatic-weapons fire, the lobbing of grenades, and mass arrests by soldiers were reported in the early days of the coup in the Carrefours, Carrefours-Feuilles and Martissant sections of Port-au-Prince. Thousands of residents from these neighborhoods, which again generally backed Aristide, have been forced to flee to the countryside. On October 7, heavily armed troops surrounded the Legislative Palace, shooting automatic gunfire into the air, and stormed the building. The soldiers forced legislators at gunpoint and by threatening to use hand grenades to name Supreme Court Justice Joseph Nerette, an elderly jurist, to replace President Aristide. That day scores of armed soldiers badly beat Mayor of Port-au-Prince Evans Paul, a close associate of President Aristide, when they arrested him at the Port-au-Prince airport as he attempted to travel to Venezuela to meet with the exiled president. After hours of beatings and vows by soldiers to kill him, Paul was released the next day and went into hiding. At the same time, in an adjacent room at the airport, another group of soldiers broke up a meeting between a delegation of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the military junta. In December, the military authorities stepped up their attacks on the Haitian legislature. On December 15, a rural section chief under army authority shot and killed Astrel Charles, a member of Parliament, in his home in the northern town of Pignon. Charles, a member of the socialist bloc of the Chamber of Deputies which supports President Aristide, reportedly was killed because he was planning to hold a political meeting. In the preceding three days, soldiers had set fire to some fifty houses in the northern town of Plaisance, including the home of the town's legislator, Deputy Jean Mandenave, and slaughtered livestock; and had reportedly shot and killed two Aristide supporters and burned down some thirty houses in a town near Desdunes in the Artibonite Valley. ("Army Promises Inquiry into Slaying of Pro-Aristide Legislator," Associated Press, December 16, 1991.) The alleged killer of Deputy Charles, section chief Pierre Elium, reportedly turned himself in to the authorities on December 17, and confessed to the killing. Other leading Aristide supporters have been arbitrarily arrested and sometimes savagely beaten by soldiers. They include popular musician Manno Charlemagne and prominent businessman Antoine Izmery. Since their release, they have been forced into hiding. The army also has been responsible for countless raids on homes and offices of those deemed to be opponents of the military regime, including members of President Aristide's cabinet. The homes or offices of Minister of Information Marie Laurence Lassègue, Minister of Finance Marie-Michèle Rey, and Minister of Planning Renaud Bernadin, among many others, have been attacked, forcing these individuals, too, into hiding. The army has targeted popular organizations throughout the country such as the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), the Kombit Ko