Through These Trees, I See Haiti's
Murderous Army Reborn
First Person, Jean Charles Moise,
Pacific News Service, Mar 12, 2004
Editor's
Note: A mayor from northern Haiti currently in hiding says that the
Haitian
army is back in force, shooting people and burning homes. How could
this
happen, he asks -- and where are they getting the all the heavy weaponry?
CAP HAITIAN, Haiti--I am the mayor of Milo, a district of about 50,000
people near Cap Haitian. When I was elected nine years ago, at the age
of 28, I was the youngest to serve in that office in Haiti's modern
history. I've traveled in the United States on speaking tours, telling
Americans
about how we were building democracy in Haiti under the Aristide
government. In late February my district came under attack by
anti-Aristide forces
and I fled for my life. From where I am now -- hiding in the woods -- I
see
the old Haitian army is back.
Those they don't kill, they lock up in containers, because they burned
down the jails. The kind of containers you put on ships.
The situation is different here from what I hear about in
Port-au-Prince, where you have the multinational force of American,
Canadian, Chilean soldiers. In Cap Haitian you have the former Haitian
military. There
are no police any more, so they are the ones who are law. They come
into your
home. They take you, they beat you up, they kill you. They burn down
homes.
They do anything they want, because they are the only law in town.
The journalists are in Port-au-Prince, but here in the north no one is
reporting what's going on, that the former Haitian military is killing
people. They are killing about 50 people a day in Cap Haitian. It's
happening not just in the northern department but also in the central
plateau, in the Artibone region.
Can you imagine that on Monday at 2 p.m. the former military declared a
curfew that would start at 4 p.m.? The peasants, many of them are poor
and do not have a radio, so how could they hear of this curfew? So what
happened at 4 p.m.? The former military took to the streets and anyone
they saw
on the streets they shot. This is the kind of stuff that is going on.
Can
you imagine this?
We have people like myself, mayors and other members of the municipal
government who have had to flee and are now sleeping in the woods, and
have gone to the mountains. We have church members and priests who have
been
beaten and whose cars have been destroyed. These people are also in
hiding. We could never have imagined that we would be going back to
this
situation that existed before. It is intolerable.
Since this whole thing started I haven't seen my wife and my children.
I have been in hiding. This cannot continue. This is a catastrophe for
the north of Haiti and all the people of Haiti.
One has to ask, why is all of this happening? Is this because we used
to have only 10 public high schools but now we have over 150? Is it
because we made a democracy where people could go in the streets,
protest, and be free to say whatever they want? Is it because black
people in the country now, people who were poor and always kept out of
the political life of the country, they have come out and have been
participating in democracy?
Is that why they have unleashed this terror on us? Is that what we are
paying for?
We ask these questions: Is it because the United States blocked
international assistance to Haiti to make people rise up against the
president, but they never did? Is it because people here are continuing
to support their president? Is that why we are getting all this
repression? We have to ask those questions.
We wonder whether it is because the army that used to exist before was
disbanded by President Aristide. Instead of defending the people, that
army used to carry out a war against us. Is it because that army is no
longer there that someone has rearmed it and brought it back to Haiti
with
very powerful weapons?
Now the old army is doing what they used to do before, except with more
powerful weapons and with helicopters. They are drowning people in the
sea. That's what going on.
The press is reporting the looting that is taking place in Port au
Prince but they are not reporting about the police stations that were
burned
and destroyed here in the north. They are not reporting on the number
of
schools that have been destroyed. They are not reporting on the burning
of the airport in Cap Haitian and all the other things that were built
under
the government of President Aristide for the Haitian people.
I cannot understand how a group of disbanded military has access to
such sophisticated equipment and heavy weaponry. They have two
helicopters
and they have two airplanes. They use the helicopter to transport their
troops and they use them at night with spotlights to look for people in
hiding. They are in the air and they have their troops on the ground.
These are the questions we ask ourselves as we hide from those with the
guns.
Mayor Jean Charles Moise spoke with PNS
contributors Lyn Duff and Dennis
Bernstein
via cell phone. The interview originally aired on Pacifica Radio's
Flashpoints
show (KPFA FM 94.1 in Berkeley, Calif.). Duff is a freelance
writer
who has reported widely on Haiti since 1995. Bernstein is the
executive
producer of Flashpoints.