Haiti Blood in the Ballot Box

By Jill Smolowe

Slowly, tentatively, life returned to the streets of Haiti. Frightened citizens climbed out from beneath their beds. Uneasy merchants reopened their shops for limited hours. From hiding, election officials fired off defiant messages. But the activity could not disguise the deep psychic toll taken by the election-day violence that left at least 50 people dead and dozens wounded last week. In Port-au-Prince, the capital, hundreds of Haitians packed their meager belongings and fled to the countryside. At the Basilica Notre Dame, the usual crowd of devout worshipers was missing. Instead, a few beggars haunted the steps. It was as if Haitians had lost their faith even in prayer.

As dazed Haitians looked back on Bloody Sunday's appalling carnage, they careened between shock and despair, terror and anger. For 22 months, most of the country's 6.3 million people had dared to hope for a brighter future, one that would heal the wounds inflicted by 28 years of corruption and brutality ; under the Duvalier dynasty. Last week they awoke to the realization that the three-member provisional government, seated to guide Haiti through its transition to democracy, had evidently sold out the people's dreams to protect the army's interests. As talk ranged from new elections and foreign intervention to civil disobedience and armed insurrection, Haiti seemed balanced on the brink of anarchy. "From now on, it will be a constant struggle until we get our way," warned the Rev. Alain Rocourt, an election official and proponent of democratic change. "We've already lost too many people and too much blood. We're prepared to die."

It was not just the election bloodbath that outraged Haitians and international observers. Hours after civilian election officials halted the polling in hopes of curbing the violence, Lieut. General Henri Namphy, head of the military-dominated junta, dissolved the independent nine-member electoral council. Haitians and diplomats alike denounced the move as a "coup d'etat against the constitution."Council members refused to step down, labeling Namphy's move an "act of high treason" and declaring void any elections that the government organizes in the future. At least one presidential candidate demanded that the junta step down.

There was much confusion as to who was behind the violence. Eyewitness reports cited the dreaded Tonton Macoutes, the paramilitary force employed by the Duvaliers and officially disbanded by the Namphy junta, though never disarmed. Last week several well-known henchmen had come out of hiding, and were walking the streets again in broad daylight. "The return of the Tonton Macoutes is total," said a Haitian journalist.

Witnesses put members of the army at the scene of some of the most grisly violence. Photographer Jean-Bernard Diederich, who was caught in one attack on foreign journalists while on assignment for TIME, reported, "The army did the shooting." In some instances, army and Macoute vehicles cruised in tandem, giving the appearance of collaboration and raising questions about just how separate the military and paramilitary forces really are.

Whether Namphy personally ordered the campaign of terror or maverick elements of the army took matters into their own hands is unclear. It is apparent, however, that Namphy never had any intention of allowing an election he could not control. A decree calling for dissolution of the electoral council was prepared at the National Palace five days before the election. Moreover, the performance of Namphy's army raised disturbing questions. At best, military officials stood by and let the carnage unfold. At worst, they were active conspirators. Either way, there was little denying that the Macoutes conducted their rampage with little interference from Haitian officials. "They were not incapable of acting," charged a senior U.S. State Department official. "They were simply unwilling to stop the violence. The army failed in its responsibilities."

That was the dominant view in Washington. Hours after Namphy disbanded the electoral council, the Reagan Administration suspended $62 million in economic aid to Haiti and shelved a pending $4 million military allocation. Reeling from the crushing setback to U.S. policy, the Administration also urged that new elections be held quickly and that those responsible for the violence be prosecuted. Still, the Administration was careful not to accuse the Namphy government publicly of subverting the elections.

Despite the hopes of Americans and Haitians alike, Namphy's junta never demonstrated a commitment to fair elections. As early as last June, Namphy attempted to wrest control of the voting process from the electoral council. Ensuing protests forced the general to back down, but not before soldiers had shot 30 Haitians dead. Two months later a presidential candidate was hacked to death by machete. In October a second candidate was shot fatally. In neither instance was an investigation publicly ordered. Last month the electoral council, citing the new constitution's ten-year ban on Duvalierists seeking public office, disqualified twelve presidential candidates. After that, the terrorism took off virtually unbounded.

In the days leading up to the election, trucks transporting voting materials were attacked and vandalized. When election officials requested helicopters to deliver ballots to outlying posts, the government brusquely refused. Electoral council offices were ransacked and burned. All nine members of the electoral council received death threats. Yet the government declined to commit itself to providing election-day security until two days before the balloting. In some violence-racked neighborhoods, determined voters took matters into their own hands, establishing watch committees and killing at least three members of the goon squads.

Allegations surfaced last week that the Namphy government was far more interested in disciplining the vigilante groups than in curbing the thugs. A distraught 19-year-old Haitian woman told the San Francisco Examiner that one day before the election soldiers swept Carrefour-Feuilles, a hillside slum south of the capital, rounding up alleged vigilantes. At the Fort Dimanche military prison, she charged, men in uniform shot and bayoneted to death 46 of her cellmates. The woman claimed that only she and two other women were spared. Namphy's government denied the report, but human-rights groups are urging Amnesty International to investigate.

As election day dawned, violence seemed all but inevitable. But the breadth and randomness of the bloody assaults caught Haitians and observers unprepared. At least six death squads cruised the city in unmarked cars, sowing terror. At the Sacre Coeur church, Macoutes interrupted a morning service by smashing the altar and beating two women with the butts of their machetes. One man was shot and killed while walking with his children to church. Foreign journalists soon learned to avoid a small, burgundy-colored car that spewed bullets wildly.

The most brutal attack was saved for L'Ecole Nationale Argentine Bellegarde, a school on Ruelle Vaillant in downtown Port-au-Prince. Two hours after the 6 a.m. opening of the country's 6,000 polling stations, a mob of 50 goons descended on a line of about 100 waiting voters. Using machetes and machine guns, they cut down several Haitians on the spot, then hunted down and butchered many who had tried to flee. One woman was decapitated under an almond tree in the schoolyard. Another was dismembered in an adjacent alleyway. At least 17 people, possibly more, died in the attack. Said Photographer Diederich after surveying the scene: "There was no discrimination about whom they killed."

The government response was limp. Making no effort to calm the populace, Namphy pledged to install a new President by the constitutionally mandated deadline of Feb. 7. The junta gave the same eight groups that selected the last electoral council 72 hours to name a new body to oversee balloting procedures. But after Catholic bishops and human-rights groups refused to participate, the junta announced plans to set up its own council. Given the government's anger that Duvalierists were banned from running this time, many Haitians expect the junta to finesse the rules so that they can stand in the next go-round. It is also expected that the government will try to disqualify those candidates who displease the army.

% Most Haitians think new elections would do little more than install a pro- military puppet regime. Namphy has pledged a fair contest, but many people are bitterly skeptical. "To the sons of the Duvalierists, words are like bullets: they are both used indiscriminately," says a former army officer who, like most Haitians, is fearful of reprisals if his name is seen in print. While Washington has called on Namphy to provide a "free, fair and secure electoral process," a U.S. official concedes, "We frankly don't maintain much hope that they will do the right thing." In Haiti, a consensus is rapidly building: the Namphy junta must go.

But the Haitian opposition, factious even in the best of times, is divided over what steps should be taken to achieve that goal. Some are advocating a boycott of any government-sponsored elections. Three trade unions have called for a general strike to begin this week. Many Haitians, even staunch nationalists in the slums and the posh capital suburbs, are calling for foreign intervention of some sort. A few are counseling insurrection. Says Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, 34, a firebrand priest popular with the poor: "There is only one avenue to take, and that is revolution."

Haitians would probably comply if they could get their hands on weapons. After 30 years of what one historian calls the "zombification" of Haiti, the desire for change is strong. Even after the election was called off, many people stubbornly remained at the polls insisting that they were going to vote anyway. "Even if we are massacred by the hundreds, we will never turn back," pledges Rocourt of the beleaguered electoral council. The costs may prove steep, but nearly two years after the hated Duvaliers were ousted, many Haitians would pay almost any price to avoid another dictatorship.

With reporting by Bernard Diederich and Cristina Garcia/Port-au-Prince