Rebels seize Haitian city in challenge to president

by Dominique Levanti

Saturday, February 7, 2004

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP): Heavily armed rebels patrolled the streets of Haiti's fourth-largest city, Gonaives, on Friday after seizing control in the most serious challenge yet to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, media reports said.

The leader of the poorest nation in the Americas ordered police reinforcements to the city of 200,000 people in a bid to end the uprising, which started with an assault on a police station Thursday.

That assault left 11 dead and some 20 wounded, local Red Cross official Raoul Elysee said. Five of those killed were police officers, authorities said.

The opposition has been calling for Aristide to stand down for several months, but the country had not seen violence like this.

Rebels with machine guns and other weapons, dressed in camouflage uniforms, drove around the streets on motorbike taxis and in cars, media reports said. Residents in the centre of the city fled.

Rebels combed the Descahos district, an Aristide bastion in Gonaives, looking for government supporters. Several homes were set ablaze.

The fighters also blocked a bridge on the main road leading to the capital, Port-au-Prince, 170 kilometers (105 miles) away.

"These are terrorist acts, and the police will step in to reestablish order and protect the population. The terrorists must be neutralized," Communications Minister Mario Dupuy told AFP.

The rebels, from the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front (RARF), torched and completely destroyed the police building on Thursday. They also took an adjoining prison, releasing the 100 inmates, and the offices of the government representative.

"Gonaives is free. The stores can open, but the schools must remain closed," Winter Etienne, an RARF leader, said Thursday. The group said it also aimed to "free several other cities in the region."

The rebels are led by three men: Buteur Metayer, Etienne and Ti Will, who have declared themselves departmental police chief, city mayor, and Gonaives police commissioner, respectively.

The government acknowledged in a statement read on the official television network late Thursday that the opposition had taken the police station in Gonaives, where anti-Aristide violence has left some 53 people dead and 119 wounded since September.

Gonaives holds a symbolic place in Haiti's history. Its independence was proclaimed there on January 1, 1804, and it was in the northwestern town in 1985 that the fight against Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier began.

Duvalier fell in February 1986, with Aristide playing a leading role.

Aristide was elected to a second term as president in 2000, but the opposition said the vote was rigged and has steadily stepped up demonstrations in recent months.

The failure of international mediation attempts has caused mounting worries.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is "closely following the situation in Haiti and is deeply concerned about the increasing violence," said a spokesman at the UN headquarters in New York.

"Yesterday's events in the city of Gonaives constitute a further escalation in the violence that is affecting the country."

Annan called "upon all Haitians to resolve their differences peacefully and through constitutional means" and expressed support for peace efforts by the Caribbean Community and the Organisation of American States.

The fall of Gonaives poses a logistical nightmare for the government, as it supplies fuel to all of northern Haiti, including its second-largest city, Cap-Haitien, where power rationing was imposed Friday.

The RARF says it was armed by the Aristide government when the rebels supported the president. The rebels went into the opposition after the killing of their leader last September. 

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