New Police and Occupation Tactics: Evacuations and Executions

At 11:00 p.m. on Monday night, January 24, hundreds of heavily armed Haitian police officers and foreign occupation troops assembled at Delmas 33 in Port-au-Prince. An hour later, they swooped down on the sprawling slum of Cité Soleil, kicking in doors and arresting untold numbers of groggy residents. Their goal was apparently to capture or kill Emmanuel Wilmer, known as Dred Wilmè, the head of a pro-Lavalas popular organization who has been leading resistance to the U.S.-backed coup and occupation of Haiti. They didn't succeed.

Such raids in Haiti's popular quarters are becoming nightly occurrences in Port-au-Prince, where the Haitian National Police (PNH) and soldiers of the U.N. Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH) seek to stamp out the fires of rebellion spreading throughout the Haitian capital. But their brutal tactics are only spreading more outrage and resistance.

Last week, residents of the Village de Dieu (God's Village), near the National Theatre, were driven from their tumble-down homes by the PNH and MINUSTAH.

'The police asked us to leave the area,' one fleeing man told the Nouvelliste. 'We don't know where to go, but we definitely have to leave to save our skins.' The man was accompanied by his wife and five young children.

As chilling and brutal as the forced evacuations was the cold-blooded execution of a radio journalist covering the operation. Abdias Jean, 25, a correspondent for the Magic Super Force program on WKAT in Miami, was shot dead Jan. 14 by PNH officers in Village de Dieu.

He had come to cover the story when he learned that two people had been killed in the course of the police evacuation of Village de Dieu. 'As a journalist, Abdias naturally came to the scene to see the bodies,' explained Frantz Cadet of the Collective of Haitian Journalists for a Free Press. 'Then he left to get something to eat. It should be noted that Abdias also lived in Village de Dieu and was often pointed out by certain individuals in the neighborhood as being close to the Lavalas.'

One of these individuals led the police in a search for Abdias, who was arrested. The police then 'took him aside and executed him with several bullets,' Cadet said.

Raymonde Jean, Abdias' mother, contends that her son was killed precisely because he witnessed police brutality and violence. According to Guyler Delva of the Association of Haitian Journalists (AJH), the police killing was no accident and they had chased the journalist into a home.

Only a day earlier, a similar execution came to light. On Jan. 13, Jean-Charles Déus Charles learned that his son had been murdered while in police custody. MINUSTAH soldiers had arrested the young man, Jimmy Charles, eight days earlier and taken him to the PNH's Anti-Gang Unit jail (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 22, No. 45, 01/19/2005). 'The next day, I visited him in his cell,' Jimmy's father told Haïti Progrès. 'His wife even brought him food over the following days.'

When Jean-Charles went to visit his son on Jan. 9, he was told that the young man would go before a judge the next day. But the next day, court officers told Jean-Charles that the case was 'incomplete' and a hearing was postponed for Jan. 12. On that date, his son was also absent.

'I went to Anti-Gang to find out what happened,' Jean-Charles said. 'It was then that I was told he had been 'freed.' I looked everywhere in vain. Finally on Thursday, Jan. 13, I found his body in the morgue at the General Hospital.'

Despite such terror and repression, popular mobilization continues in Haiti's poor neighborhoods. On Jan. 20, hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in Belair to demand an end to the crackdown. and a return to constitutional order. In Cité Soleil, on Jan. 25, the morning after the joint PNH/MINUSTAH raid the night before, hundreds took to the streets to denounce the de facto government, police repression, and foreign occupation.

(From Haiti Progress)