In the strongest challenge yet to embattled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, rebels in nearly a dozen towns on Tuesday pressed ahead with a bloody uprising that has killed at least 42 people and prompted fears of a coup d’état.
Government supporters in Cap-Haitien, the nation’s second largest city, woke early on Tuesday to build barricades around the city to keep rebels out, radio stations reported. There were also reports of gunbattles over night but it was unclear if there were casualties.
After sporadic gunbattles on Monday, police regained control of the important port city of St Marc, 72km west of Port-au-Prince. At least two men were shot and another was allegedly shot and killed by Aristide supporters. His headless body was left on a roadside.
”The national police force alone cannot re-establish order,” Prime Minister Yvon Neptune said in St Marc on Monday.
Haiti has seen more than 30 coups since its independence in 1804. Calling the uprising an ”act of terrorism”, Neptune said the ”violence is tied to a coup d’état”.
As rebels tried to push into more cities across the nation, an opposition coalition met in the capital of Port-au-Prince to discuss whether they should join the rebels. By late Monday, they had distanced themselves from the uprising.
”We do not recognise ourselves in the armed insurrection but in the peaceful struggle of the people for democracy,” said Mischa Gaillard, an opposition politician who met with others in the Democratic Platform. ”We deplore violence.”
The uprising, which began on Thursday in Haiti’s fourth-largest city of Gonaives, signals a dangerous turning point in Haiti’s three-year political crisis. A similar revolt in 1985 led to the ouster to following year of the 29-year Duvalier family dictatorship.
”We are in a situation of armed popular insurrection,” said opposition politician Himler Rebu, who led a failed coup against Lieutenant General Prosper Avril in 1989.
Tension has mounted since Aristide’s party won flawed legislative elections in 2000 and international donors blocked millions of dollars in aid. Misery has also deepened with most of the nation’s eight million people living without jobs and on less than $1 a day despite election promises from Aristide, a former priest who had vowed to bring dignity to the poor.
With no army and fewer than 5 000 poorly armed police, the government is ill-equipped to halt the revolt. Police stations have been a major target because they symbolise Aristide’s authority and officers are accused of siding with government supporters.
Since capturing Gonaives, a city of 200 000 people, the rebels have spread to towns to the west and north, including the Artibonite valley that is the breadbasket of Haiti.
Some residents fled western Grand-Goave with belongings perched on their heads on Monday, the day after rebels torched the police station. Insurgents also set ablaze stations in the northern towns of St Raphael and Dondon, where police launched counterattacks and wounded two rebels.
It reported that police in Dondon put the rebels to flight, and that afterward government supporters torched houses of nine anti-Aristide leaders.
On the highway near Grand-Goave, police fired into the air to disperse a large crowd of clashing protesters who were for and against the government. One man, identified as an Aristide partisan, was shot and killed but it was not clear by who.
The United States condemned the violence and called on Aristide’s government to respect human rights. State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said Haiti’s problems will not be solved by violence and retribution.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said the UN ”will be stepping up our own involvement fairly soon” but did not elaborate.
Bertrand Ramcharan, the acting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, also issued a statement in Geneva, warning of the deteriorating situation.
The rebels are led by several factions, including former Aristide supporters, former soldiers who helped oust Aristide in a 1991 coup and civilians frustrated by deepening poverty.
Aristide won Haiti’s first democratic election in 1990 and was then ousted months later by the army. He was restored in a 1994 US invasion, and disbanded the army three months later.
Rebels have clashed with police in at least 11 towns, and in three towns they said they appointed their own mayors and police chiefs.
Rebels and residents have set up barricades of flaming tires, trucks, wrecked cars and felled trees on roads leading to Gonaives, St Marc and the northern city of Cap-Haitien, preventing trucks from delivering fuel for electric power generators.
It was unclear how many people have been killed but tolls put together from witnesses, Red Cross officials, rebel leaders and radio reports indicate at least 42 have died, including several policemen.
”Aristide can no longer save the situation … The end is looming,” former president Leslie Manigat said by telephone. The army ousted Manigat in June 1988 after five months in office. — Sapa-AP