On Haiti
Engelstein, Stanley
Armed soldiers were not in evidence. At the airport it looked like business as usual. I was in Haiti as one of two observers sent by the Americas Watch Committee, which had set up an office in...
...This was never confirmed...
...Some observers were confident that the army would remove the barricade during the night and that an election, however flawed, would take place...
...The van stopped suddenly about ten yards in front of a barricade, which included a burned out tap-tap...
...In a variation on Bertolt Brecht's famous quip, the regime had lost confidence in the people and it had become necessary to exterminate them...
...The Haitian in our group was determined to take another crack at the barricade and we went to the local police station to get protection...
...The wave of terror in Port-au-Prince began Saturday night...
...We passed a church and other buildings pockmarked with bullet holes and saw many empty shells on the ground...
...We were always aware of the dangers and never thought the election was a sure thing...
...A little further along we saw a huge truck lying on its side...
...Our observer group consisted of the two of us from Americas Watch, some staff of the National Coalition for Haitian Refugees, and a group of seven led by Robert E. White, former U.S...
...Veteran reporters and photographers said Port-auPrince was worse than Vietnam or Beirut...
...The offices of the Federation of Union Workers (FOS) had been set on fire and partially destroyed...
...The woman in our car, who was a professor of Latin American history, pointed to the hills as an example SPRING • 1988 • 141 Reports from Abroad of the policies of the Duvalier dictatorship, which had devastated the country's natural resources...
...No one was hit and it was believed that they were shooting in the air to inject a little fear into us...
...We brought news of the barricade and the shooting in the North to the capital, which had been quiet all day...
...We passed other barricades of stones and branches and soon found ourselves about fifty yards behind a van with large letters,"TV," on its back...
...No dot matrix submissions, please...
...At the press center, the international contingent had been well organized...
...There would be no voting at all the next day in Cap Haitien...
...In some places, they regrouped in order to vote after the shooting cars had taken off...
...Ambassador to El Salvador...
...People were on the street...
...Apart from myself, three young men carrying photographic equipment, and an older man, head of a French press agency, the plane was filled with Haitians...
...The cab driver spoke with excitement about casting his ballot...
...2) Please don't write to ask whether we're interested in such and such an article—it makes for useless correspondence...
...The local police, who may not yet have known what was going on, provided us with an armed escort in uniform...
...But our Haitian was not about to give up the chance to get to his home town and the rest of us reluctantly went along...
...on November 6, the offices of two presidential candidates were sprayed by fire...
...As we're not an academic journal, we prefer that they, wherever possible, be dropped altogether or worked into the text...
...THE EDITORS SPRING • 1988 • 143 Reports from Abroad it...
...6) Please bear with us—we have accumulated quite a backlog of material, and you may have to wait for a few issues before you see your article in print...
...And even if, incredibly, bowing to local authority, the Macoutes would let us through, it was already clear that this was to be a day of violence in the North...
...It was immediately clear that the worst had happened...
...It had amazed my travel agent that the flight had been sold out...
...Driving through Port-au-Prince Saturday morning, we thought that the city looked cheerfully normal...
...They escaped by scaling a wall and hiding out for three hours in a Haitian home to which they had fled...
...His policy had not "backfired...
...To the right of the road as we drove north were chains of hills and mountains, nude of any growth, as if some giant razor had shaved them clean...
...embassy came to convoy us to the airport...
...I don't think our policy backfired at all...
...Their strategy seemed to have been to knock out the North on Friday night and Saturday and then to launch the major attack on Port-au-Prince on Saturday night and Sunday, election day...
...Here, the regime's problem was not to massacre the people who wanted to vote against it but to corral the people to vote for To Our Contributors: A few suggestions: (1)Be sure to keep a copy of your ms —the mails aren't always reliable...
...For a flickering, joyous moment the people of Haiti had come to the edge of genuine democratic change, only to be hurled back savagely by a corrupt military dictatorship, worthy successor of the hated Duvalier regime...
...Less than two hours out of Port-au-Prince, beyond the town of Montrouis, ominous signs began to appear...
...After a few minutes on the road to the barricade, cars with reporters and photographers came speeding toward us and warned that the Macoutes were in a state of frenzy and that we ought not even think of getting through...
...Two reporters were chased and shot at by uniformed soldiers as they went to look at the scene at the Argentine School...
...At 6:30 a.m...
...I asked for whom he was going to vote...
...We needed no further urging and hied back to Port-au-Prince...
...With that barricade, the Macoutes had effectively cut off the North to international press and observers...
...But the city was wrapped in a blanket of fear, a fear of the terror of counterrevolution...
...I arrived on Friday, November 27, 1987, two days before the scheduled election...
...After a conversation among themselves, they took his camera equipment, put him back in the car, and began to shoot at him through the window as he drove away...
...With about 10 percent of the electorate casting open ballots under the eyes of armed soldiers for candidates picked by the regime, this travesty of an election may yet provide the veneer of democracy to restore the junta to the good graces of the United States...
...The Namphy regime had carried out a preemptive strike against a democratic transition of power...
...Then maybe more attention would have been paid...
...On November 2, the national election headquarters was gutted by fire...
...A policy that had taken no action in the preelection months of sabotage and killings had sent a clear message to Namphy...
...It had been quiet for a few days and the presence of hundreds of international press people and observers gave some assurance of safety...
...A local election bureau near the press center downtown was burned to the ground...
...Because all the candidates were anti-Duvalierist, any outcome of the election was a no-win result for the regime...
...We underestimated the grim determination of the regime...
...women were striding along rhythmically with wares balanced on their heads...
...The junta had failed to investigate the assassination of presidential candidate Yves Volel as he was making a speech in front of a police station on October 13...
...they're the author's responsibility...
...It would be hard to exaggerate the euphoria among the people about to vote in the first democratic election in thirty years...
...Check all your figures, dates, names, etc...
...Nobody was going anywhere...
...Bodies of randomly murdered Haitians found on the street helped sharpen the message...
...About noon, as we parked by the side of the road, the TV van, which contained an ABC network crew, joined us and we were surrounded by about thirty people from the village...
...But the horrors in Haiti did not faze our Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American affairs, the implacable, unflappable Elliott Abrams, who was quoted in the New York Times (December 1, 1987): I wouldn't say it took us by surprise...
...The Duvalierists had been disqualified by the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) in accord with a constitutional provision barring them from politics for ten years...
...Tuesday morning two vans from the U.S...
...He squeezed into the rear of the car next to me and I could feel the weight of the rifle...
...I protested that the whole idea was crazy...
...The CEP called off the election at 9 a.m...
...The TV men scooted back into the van which turned around and took off...
...People were shot at as they stood waiting to vote at the polls...
...Or take a chance and send us your article...
...It looked as if things were very much on track, but the Government clearly decided to handle it in a way that turned out to be inadequate...
...If there's a delay, it's because a few editors are reading your article...
...There, the 142 • DISSENT Reports from Abroad risk of getting hit or killed was the price you paid for getting your story, a risk controllable by prudence, alertness, and experience...
...We were to observe the polls in rural areas since Port-au-Prince would be well covered by others...
...Its method was more than adequate to its purpose, which was to prevent democratically elected representatives of the people from taking over the government...
...The road was partially blocked by stones and branches...
...A civilian government led by the most likely winners, Gerard Gourge and Marc Bazin, might consummate the revolution that began with the airlifting of "Baby Doc" Duvalier in February 1986...
...A number of times that morning we all dived for the floor or behind columns or cars as the pop-pop of guns was heard...
...we had all become Haitians...
...The noise of gunfire and exploding grenades was heard through the night, and the next morning smoke could be seen rising from houses set on fire...
...With some trepidation the two of us from Americas Watch decided to go down that Friday...
...United States policy got the election it deserved, one in which bullets, not ballots, determined the outcome and in which the count was not of votes but of corpses...
...That evening at a press conference, French reporters said they had been roughed up by the Macoutes at that barrier and had had their equipment damaged...
...The United States might deplore, but it would not act...
...We quickly turned around and dropped off our armed man at his station, where we were greeted by angry shouts from the chief, who told us to stop meddling and to get the hell out of there...
...We also reversed immediately and preceded the van on the way back...
...election day, the observers in our hotel made their way in a caravan of three cars to the press center downtown...
...The role of the army was not yet clear...
...The badges were to be worn at all times with, as it happened, quite ironic consequences...
...It was decided that we would try again the next morning to get through to the North...
...He said that was less important than the fact that he was going to vote at all...
...We saw about ten men in civilian clothes, some with rifles, others with machetes...
...The colorful tap-taps, the jitneys that are the main form of transportation, were put-putting through the streets...
...For months there had been an odd form of dual power in which the regime had de facto control through the army and the disbanded but not disarmed Ton Ton Macoutes while the democratic opposition, through the independent CEP, had constitutional power over the election and the future...
...Any semblance of law had disappeared...
...It was clear to all of us that the regime' was complicit in the terror...
...Shops were open and traffic was moving...
...We were to leave Saturday morning for the four-hour trip along the sea, then through the mountains to the Cap...
...And please remember that we can't return articles unless they're accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...Observers and press had their pictures taken and sealed inside plastic holders, with name and PRESSE and OBSERVATEUR prominently displayed...
...Early that morning the principal antenna of Radio Soleil had been knocked out, silencing the most important source of news...
...Everything looked normal...
...Tap-taps were running...
...A free-lance photographer who had imprudently ventured out alone was stopped by four men in a car and forced to kneel on the ground with his arms behind his back as they put a gun to his head...
...open-air markets were displaying merchandise...
...One group of observers who ventured out witnessed government soldiers standing by while gangs shot up a polling place...
...In June 1987, the junta had attempted to seize control of the CEP, a coup that was thwarted by popular riots and strikes...
...At least thirty-four people were killed that weekend...
...Gangs roamed the streets, killing at will, ignored or abetted by the very forces of law and order that should have controlled them...
...The city of Port-au-Prince became a no-man's land...
...That a peaceful election could have been held was demonstrated by the later, rigged election of January 17, in which not a shot was fired...
...It was the bad luck of the Haitians that General Namphy had not proclaimed himself a Marxist-Leninist...
...A Dominican reporter was shot dead at close range and two ABC television cameramen were badly wounded...
...5)We're usually quick in giving editorial decisions...
...Here the PRESSE and OBSERVATEUR badges had become targets rather than safeguards...
...Downtown, streamers, banners, and graffiti everywhere proclaimed in Creole, "ELEKSYON AYITI '87...
...I was assigned, with two from White's group and a Haitian, to Cap Haitien in the North...
...When I saw him at the hotel a couple of hours later, he was still quivering with fear...
...If that was the idea, it certainly worked...
...The Macoutes had set up barricades on the roads leading out of the city...
...Nobody was safe from the thugs or the army...
...Which was precisely what the Namphy military junta understood as well...
...The slaughter of the innocents reached its horrific climax when at least fourteen people were shot and hacked by machetes at the Argentine School...
...Did we expect to have a shootout at the barricade...
...We were told of a massacre the night before in which over twenty people had been killed...
...Once again our assistant secretary was extenuating the atrocities of an authoritarian regime For there was nothing "inadequate" about the government's "way" of handling the election...
...Besides, wasn't it precisely disruption and even violence at the polls that we were supposed to observe...
...Look at our last few issues to see if your idea fits in...
...4) Notes and footnotes should also be typed double-spaced, on a separate sheet...
...3)Type your ms double-spaced, with wide margins...
...Just another Saturday morning in Port-au-Prince—or so it seemed, because it was not yet known that the tenor had already started in the North...
...Throughout the morning, Macoutes passed by in cars shooting off their guns within a block or so of the hotel...
...But Elliott Abrams is right about one thing and credit should be given where it is due...
...As reporters and photographers returned from the war zone, telling their tales of horror, they were greeted in front of the hotel by swarms of TV cameramen, reporters, and observers...
...We later learned that two helicopters that were supposed to deliver ballots to the North had been grounded by the government...
...The driver, coming around a bend in the road, could not have seen the tree-trunk barricade...
...I was in Haiti as one of two observers sent by the Americas Watch Committee, which had set up an office in Port-auPrince with the National Coalition for Haitian Refugees to monitor the election...
...If they had come to be part of a democratic revolution, they were to become victims of counterrevolutionary terror...
...When the cameramen jumped out of the van to take pictures, the Macoutes started waving their machetes and pointing their guns...
Vol. 35 • April 1988 • No. 2
