- PORT-AU-PRINCE -- At the
Liberty beauty salon in Port-au-Prince, two hairdressers sit in the hope
that the electricity will soon return. "We wait for electricity. We
wait for water. We wait for peace. We wait for war," says one.
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- Worried that she has said too much, she refuses to give
her name, fearing the prescience of her throwaway remark and the implications
that could come with it.
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- For Haiti was yesterday on the verge of civil war.
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- In the last five days anti-government rebels have taken
around a dozen towns around the country in bloody battles that have claimed
at least 42 lives. Meanwhile government supporters in Haiti's second largest
city, Cap-Haitien, built flaming barricades to keep rebels at bay, according
to radio reports.
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- With the future of the president, Jean Bertrand Aristide,
in the balance and little indication of who will replace him, those who
have fled the captured towns wait anxiously for news that they can return.
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- Men with rifles patrol the grounds of human rights organisations.
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- Rumours of towns fallen and recaptured are born and die
in the space of a conversation. With government supporters and rebels both
armed and not in uniform it is impossible to know whose side anyone is
on.
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- No wonder, then, that the United Nations yesterday warned
of an imminent humanitarian disaster, and academics in the capital were
warning of carnage and the potential for massacres.
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- Outside the tax office, where Emmanuel waits with his
typewriter to tap out official-looking letters for the public, there is
a nervous calm.
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- "Everyone knows who is to blame for this situation
but many of us are too scared to say," he said.
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- Even the government admits it does not have control.
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- "The national police alone cannot re-establish order,"
the prime minister, Yvon Neptune, said on Monday after the police took
back the town of St Marc. Calling the uprising an "act of terrorism",
Mr Neptune said the "violence is tied to a coup d'etat".
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- The government has branded it a coup but its opponents
insist it is a popular uprising, rooted in the clampdown on democracy imposed
by President Aristide, and the desperate economy over which he presides.
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- "It's not spontaneous," said Jean-Claude Bajeux,
the director of the ecumenical centre for human rights and a staunch opponent
of Mr Aristide, referring to the events of the last week. "It's been
fermenting for many years. People are fed up with this kind of government
and there is a possibility that some of them will get out of control."
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- Opposition groups date the source of the problem back
to the parliamentary elections in 2000, which they claim were rigged in
favour of Mr Aristide's party, Famni Lavalas. Unimpressed by the conduct
of the ballot many foreign donors withdrew aid, further entrenching the
dismal poverty of the western hemisphere's poorest nation.
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- Now they are demanding that Mr Aristide, whose term does
not run out until 2006, resigns immediately. The president has refused
to step down but has promised legislative elections - a promise he made
last year but has yet to keep.
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- Efforts at mediation from the Caribbean community, Caricom,
and the Organisation of American States, have come to nothing, making the
prospect of a bloody conflict between the two sides almost inevitable.
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- The situation reached a critical point last Thursday
when a group calling themselves the Gonaives Resistance Front took over
the country's fourth largest city and then paraded the mutilated bodies
of the policemen they had killed.
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- "There could be carnage," said Charles Edouard,
a professor at the university in Port-au-Prince. "We are ready for
a massacre. But it's the difference between living without power or food
or dying to gain power and food. So we have no choice but to continue.
We are ready."
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- At the gate of the faculty of human sciences, Leveille
Chanel, 25, carrying Francis Fukayama's book The End of History, said:
"We have reached a point of no return. We are not pacifists but we
are peaceful people. The president has broken his pact with the people
and the people can revoke his presidency."
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- Students have been at the forefront of the opposition
in Port-au-Prince. Alongside human rights activists, business people and
some trade unions, their opposition is broad-based but does not reach into
many of the capital's slum areas. They are calling for a two-year transitional
government followed by elections, but many fear Mr Aristide's departure
may be replaced by anarchy.
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- Haiti has seen more than 30 coups since its independence
in 1804.
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- Mr Aristide was himself deposed in 1991, only to be returned
to power with the backing of the United States in 1994.
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- The political opposition in Port-au-Prince insists it
has nothing to do with the armed uprisings elsewhere in the country - a
claim the government disputes - but the fighting has clearly strengthened
the opposition's hand.
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- The rebellions have largely been led by former supporters
of Mr Aristide, proof, his critics say, that he has been arming his party,
which is now turning against him. The government says it the opposition
is capitalising on the country's economic plight.
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- Haiti, which has been ravaged by Aids, is one of the
poorest countries in the world, with life expectancy at 53 and 80% of the
population living on less than £2 a day.
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- "Our weakness is economic," said Lesley Voltaire,
the minister for Haitians living abroad. "A lot of people are not
happy with us because we have not delivered for them."
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- But Mr Aristide's opponents say the economy is a symptom,
not the cause, of the discontent.
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- "The real coup d'etat started in 2000 when he stole
the election," said Mr Bajeux, a former Aristide supporter who was
once his minister of culture. "Since then he has had no democratic
legitimacy and now the system itself is falling to pieces.
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- "It's full of political, economic, cultural cracks.
It's about to collapse. There is no way to go back."
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1145313,00.html
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