Right wing-led rebellion convulses Haiti

[Aidoneus]

Right wing-led rebellion convulses Haiti
By Richard Dufour
12 February 2004

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The Gonaïves rebel group has been widely portrayed in the press as a criminal gang, based in the city’s slums, that until recently enjoyed the patronage of Aristide and his Lavalas party. “But at its upper echelons,” reports the Washington Post, “the group appears to be led by former members of the Haitian military, dissolved in 1994 when Aristide returned to power, and the paramilitary group that opposed him.”

The paramilitary group to which the Post alludes was known as FRAPH. During the three-year rule of the military junta that deposed the first Aristide government in September 1991, FRAPH death squads carried out a campaign of terror aimed at stamping out support for Aristide, who because of his earlier opposition to the Duvalier dictatorship and promises of social reform enjoyed widespread popular support.

Among the very first actions taken by the U.S. marines who restored Aristide to power in 1994 was to raid FRAPH’s headquarters and seize thousands of documents. To this day, the U.S. government refuses to turn the FRAPH files over to Haitian authorities or to extradite Emmanuel Constant, FRAPH’s founder-leader. Constant, who now lives in New York, has admitted that he was a CIA operative.

Initially the opposition’s political leaders—a disparate group of businessmen, ex-Aristide supporters, former Duvalierists and supporters of the 1991 coup—refused to condemn the Gonaïves uprising. But with the United Nations warning of an imminent humanitarian crisis in Haiti and US newspaper editorialists raising fears that Haiti’s descent into civil war could trigger a massive influx of Haitian refugees, they began issuing statements disassociating themselves from the violence.

Their objective, however, remains unchanged. By provoking social chaos they hope to convince Washington to use its economi,c political and military might to force Aristide, whose term ends only in 2006, from office. André Apaid, a sweatshop owner who heads one of the two main opposition groups, declared, “We continue to maintain the nonviolent approach. But the sooner the international community recognizes that Mr. Aristide is the cause of the chaos, the sooner a peaceful process to a transition can take place. The more the wait, the more costly it will be to the United States and the world.”

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/feb2004/hait-f12.shtml