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BY REED LINDSAY
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

November 7, 2004

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The bodies had been whisked away, but dried blood covering the dirt at the end of an alleyway was a chilling sign that a massacre might have taken place.

Residents in the Fort National neighborhood – like most of this capital's slums, a bastion of support for former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide – gathered in the alley the following day two weeks ago. Some who were afraid to give their names said police officers in black hooded masks shot and killed 12 people and dragged away their bodies. At least three families have identified bodies at the morgue; others have not seen missing loved ones and fear the worst.

Tales of repression

These killings and others appear to be the latest example of what human rights groups describe as a campaign of repression against Aristide supporters.

“The police officers will say that this was an operation against gangs. But we are all innocent,” said Eliphete Joseph, a young man who said he was a friend of several victims. “The worst thing is that Aristide is now in exile far from here in South Africa, but we are in Haiti, and they are persecuting us only because we live in a poor neighborhood.”

Two days later, in a nearby slum known for its pro-Aristide militancy, residents say armed men dressed in police uniforms and black hooded masks executed four young men. The next day, their rotting bodies lay facedown in the street. Their wrists had been tied with shoelaces and at least two had charred fingers, an indication they might have been tortured.

Aristide was escorted from Haiti on Feb. 29 by U.S. Marines after armed groups led by former soldiers took control of most of the country and threatened to attack Port-au-Prince. The U.S. government says Aristide resigned; he says he was forced out in a coup d'etat.

“A lot of us were hoping the human rights situation would improve after Aristide left. Now it is worse,” said Renan Hedouville, head of the Lawyers' Committee for the Respect of Individual Liberties, a group that loudly criticized Aristide's government for rights abuses.

“People are being arrested without warrants and for political reasons, and being put in jail without seeing a judge. Women are being raped by police and ex-military, and Lavalas members in poor neighborhoods are being killed,” said Hedouville, who said he has received death threats. Lavalas was Aristide's party. “The international community needs to condemn these abuses.”

Neither the United States nor United Nations, which has a peacekeeping force of more than 3,000 troops in Haiti, has publicly censured abuses committed under the government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, installed in March. UN and Haitian government officials deny Haitian security forces are murdering his opponents.

“The government is not violating people's rights,” Justice Minister Bernard Gousse said in an interview last week. “We've made it very clear to the police: We have to fight terrorists, but also protect the civilian population. We will not accept human rights abuses.” He said the government was investigating one case of an alleged human rights abuse committed by police.

Rights observers concede it is difficult to document exactly how many people have been killed and by whom. There are myriad armed groups, including some gangs that support Aristide and others that have shifting political allegiances.

Meanwhile, armed former members of Haiti's defunct military, a notoriously corrupt and abusive force disbanded by Aristide in 1995, swagger through the capital and control much of the countryside.

While the government has established an office to help meet the demands of the former soldiers, it has gone on the offensive against Lavalas members in Port-au-Prince, searching homes and arresting dozens of people at a time.

Catholic priest arrested

The most publicized case is that of Gerard Jean-Juste, a Catholic priest who was arrested without a warrant Oct. 13 at a soup kitchen he runs for 600 children. Gousse said on Thursday that Jean-Juste, a friend of Aristide and critic of the current government, is suspected of harboring “organizers of violence.”

“People say I was arrested because I could be a potential [presidential] candidate,” said Jean-Juste as he stood outside his cell in the national penitentiary. “Nobody is following the constitution now. We need to return to democracy … I lived many years under [former dictator Jean-Claude] Duvalier. He killed so many people, but he never kept a priest in jail.”

Analysts say the government repression represents an attempt to silence Lavalas leaders before next year's elections. Lavalas maintains strong support among Haiti's majority poor.

Other Aristide supporters have been arrested, but Hedouville says most prisoners are men from Port-au-Prince's slums who are not necessarily politically active but fit the description of armed pro-Aristide militants.

Human rights observers say the former soldiers who control cities such as Petit-Goave in western Haiti – where they have chased out the police and appointed themselves as the government – are arresting and persecuting Lavalas supporters in a similar fashion to what the government is doing in Port-au-Prince.

Government and UN officials have defended the crackdown as an attempt to put an end to violence that has left dozens dead in the past month. They blame Aristide supporters for killing police officers and trying to destabilize the Latortue administration.

“What we have seen in this country during the last month or two has been a resurgence of brutal violence organized probably in order to provoke a process of political destabilization,” said Chilean Juan Gabriel Valdes, who heads the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti.

Evidence of destabilization has been scant. Gunfire and robberies are common in Port-au-Prince, but it is not always clear if they are politically motivated.

Media attention has focused recently on the decapitations of two policemen in what has been described as part of “Operation Baghdad.” But the government has presented no evidence that the Iraq-style decapitations were carried out by Aristide supporters – or that any such operation exists.

Gerardo Ducos, who is leading an Amnesty International observation mission, says Aristide's backers have suffered the brunt of human rights violations since the change in government.

“They are persecuting the Aristide people because they are afraid of them,” said lawyer Reynold Georges, who leads a political party that opposes Aristide but is representing Jean-Juste and several other incarcerated Lavalas party members. “A lot of people have stayed loyal to Lavalas. … The poor people, the masses, still believe in Aristide.”