- PORT-AU-PRINCE -- I thought
it was a pile of rubbish I stepped on, half-covered by sheets of cardboard
on the seedy waterfront of the Haitian capital. It took a photographer
colleague to point out that it was the body of a young man, riddled with
bullets and covered with rotting fruit. He had not been dead long and he
is probably still there this morning.
-
- Hundreds of Haitians trampled over the body as they looted
everything they could lay their hands on from the port of this lawless
city. The more ambitious were towing cars away, some using other vehicles
or some with their bare hands. Such is the poverty of this nation that
many ran off merely with crates of empty soft drinks bottles.
-
- The photographer did not take a picture. When I returned
to our vehicle, he was looking down the barrel of a very big, very old
pistol in the small hands of a teenage boy. The pistol was cocked. "No
pictures. No pictures. You go now. You leave," he shouted in the local
French Creole. We did.
-
- The looters will be branded as supporters of the Haitian
President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, for indeed they are. But they were literally
starving and were merely taking what they could as this city collapsed
into total anarchy yesterday. The young man was apparently shot by one
of Aristide's armed supporters, the so-called chimeres, or phantoms, trying
to stop the looting.
-
- So-called anti-Aristide rebels are now said to surround
the Haitian capital. The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has taken
to calling them "the resistance" to elected President Aristide,
the man he and his administration long supported. In fact, they are just
other starving Haitians, led and armed by former officers of the Haitian
army that once served Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.
-
- When I covered earlier stories in this country - Aristide's
dramatic and popular surge to power, the military coup that ousted him
and the American intervention that restored him - these leaders were known
as the Fraph. It was an acronym, in French, for the Revolutionary Front
for the Advancement of the Haitian People. But it was no coincidence that,
when spoken, it sounded exactly like "frappe", the French for
"hit" or "strike".
-
- The mere word struck terrorised Haitians in the same
manner as the group's predecessors, the dreaded Tontons Macoutes of the
30-year- Duvalier family dictatorship.
-
- "The resistance" was one of Colin Powell's
least well-chosen expressions.
-
- The condition of other bodies we saw yesterday was more
shocking still. One, on the main highway between the old city and the wealthier
hilltop suburbs where the country's mulatto, or mixed-race, elite live,
had had the genitals cut off, once the calling card of the Tontons Macoutes.
-
- Everything has shut down here. Few people venture out.
No one is sure when the so-called rebels will show up. Their leader, Guy
Philippe, a former army officer and police chief, abruptly back-tracked
on Friday on his threat to storm into the capital this weekend, take the
presidential palace and arrest Aristide. Now he says he will starve his
own people out by blockading the city. "What we want is desperation
first," he said.
-
- To the people of this city, which makes parts of the
poorest African cities look attractive, that sounded like the scenario
apparently preferred by George Bush. The US President was yesterday contemplating
sending 2,200 Marines here, ostensibly to ensure the safety of US diplomats
and other citizens. He has made it clear he does not want his men involved
in this poor nation's crisis. He has enough on his plate, his advisers
say, with Iraq and Afghanistan.
-
- His policy was brutally apparent yesterday as US Coastguard
officers, wearing surgical gloves, set ashore what appeared to be a couple
of hundred Haitians they had rounded up from leaky boats trying to reach
Florida.
-
- "We will turn back any refugee that attempts to
reach our shore," President Bush warned last week. He did not say
"except if they're Cuban", but it has long been US policy to
give asylum to anyone fleeing Fidel Castro's regime.
-
- It was difficult to move around here yesterday. Armed
men drove wildly around the city, pointing rifles out of their vehicles
and often shooting in the air. Aristide supporters stopped us on almost
every street corner in the old part of the city, yelling and pointing rifles
in our faces. If you did not know Haiti, you would have been terrified.
But they generally ended up removing their barricades for us, laughing
and wishing us well. "At least you are not French," they said.
They have been angered by the French administration's sudden abandonment
of Aristide.
-
- Port-au-Prince now appears to be totally cut off. We
reached the international airport yesterday only to find it abandoned but
for a few security guards. A group of Swedish tourists here were thinking
of driving to the border of the Dominican Republic but were warned that
the roads would be dangerous.
-
- The rebels, who began their campaign in Gonaives and
spread north, have now taken large areas of the south and are said to be
camped within 10 miles of the capital. In fact, many are probably already
here. It is not a classic confrontation. It seems unlikely that the rebels
will storm the capital, preferring to infiltrate gradually and pop up if
President Aristide is forced to step down or flee.
-
- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
-
- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=496235
|
