Anti-Aristide violence spreads

by Clarens Renois

Monday, February 9, 2004

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP): Violent opposition to President Jean Bertrand Aristide spread across Haiti on Sunday, with protesters setting barricades ablaze while corpses were left in the streets as rebels besieged local police stations.

Control of the volatile northern city of Gonaives, where rebels have seized control, remained uncertain one day after police attempted to take back the town.

Telephone lines were cut, but television images showed corpses lying in the roads while men armed with guns, improvised maces and machetes stood on cars and roamed the streets.

Rebels, who have aligned themselves with the political opposition in demanding Aristide's resignation, captured and then burned the Gonaives police station Thursday. They also freed prisoners in a nearby jail.

On Friday, they declared themselves in control of the town, which lies on the main road linking the capital to Haiti's second city of Cap-Haitien.

Winter Etienne, a leader of the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front (RARF) rebels, said 14 police were killed in battles Saturday but no confirmation was possible.

Witness and Haitian media reports said between three and seven police were killed after police entered the city, where most of the 200,000 inhabitants had fled.

At least 60 people have died and another 100 injured in Gonaives since September, when the armed group turned against Aristide after their leader was found shot and mutilated.

On Sunday, the unrest spread to other towns around the impoverished Caribbean nation.

Flaming barricades were set in roads in the capital, while an opposition protest march was cancelled over security fears.

Media reports said burning barricades had been erected in Port-au-Prince and Cap Haitien, and that the police station in Grand-Goave, west of the capital, had been burned down after an attack by opponents of Aristide.

Evans Paul, a leader of the political opposition, urged police not to fight the population, who he said shared the rebels' desire to force Aristide to step down.

Aristide, who took office in 2000 after elections deemed flawed by observers, has defiantly refused to step down. On Saturday he vowed that the leaders of uprising in Gonaives "would be arrested and tried before the law."

International efforts, led by Caribbean nations and the Organization of American States, have so far failed to mediate an end to the crisis.

Aristide, a former Catholic priest, was first elected president in 1990, but eight months after taking office he was overthrown in a bloody military coup.

The United States sent 20,000 troops to Haiti in 1994 to bring Aristide back to power. He stepped down after his first five-year term, and was re-elected in 2000.

Legislative elections were supposed to be held last year, but no electoral body was set up to oversee the polls, leaving the nation without a functioning legislature.

Aristide now rules by decree, but has promised elections within six months. The opposition has rejected his proposal as inadequate, and protests against Aristide have mounted in recent weeks.

Aristide has accepted some of the Caribbean mediators' suggestions, including releasing jailed opponents, disarming pro-government groups and guaranteeing the opposition the freedom to demonstrate.

The political opposition has insisted however that Aristide must stand down. 

  Back...

  Most popular articles: viewed, printed and e-mailed

  Printable version