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Article published Feb 11, 2004
Aristide Supporters Vow to Attack Rebels
By IAN JAMES
Associated Press Writer
Vowing to keep rebels from advancing to other Haitian cities, loyalists of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide blocked roads with heaps of scrap metal, boulders and trees to stem a violent uprising that has killed at least 42.
Most of the country returned to relative calm Tuesday with Aristide supporters looking to the battle ahead. Opponents refuse to participate in new elections unless Aristide steps down.
"We're going to devour them," said Jean-Claude Joseph, 35, standing arms crossed at a barricade with more than a dozen others at Cap-Haitien, the nation's second-largest city.
The State Department authorized the departure of family members and non-emergency employees of the U.S. Embassy even though most of the country was unaffected by the uprising. The U.S. government also issued a travel warning to private citizens, although few tourists travel to Haiti.
Roadblocks had prevented food deliveries to tens of thousands in the north, the U.N. World Food Program warned from Geneva, and fuel tankers were blocked. Some gas stations already have run out of fuel in Cap-Haitien, although the capital, Port-au-Prince, remained unaffected.
In some areas where gunbattles had died down, neither police nor rebels were present. In the northern town of Ennery, young men played soccer in front of its charred police station, abandoned days earlier. Businesses and schools were closed.
"Everything's blocked," David Metelus, a 22-year-old mechanic in Ennery, said.
Police regained control in three of the 11 towns affected. Reports from the other eight were vague. In Gonaives, rebels continued patrolling the streets but there was relative calm.
Bands of drunken pro-Aristide youths threw rocks at passing cars at the edge of northern Cap-Haitien, a former Aristide stronghold whose support for the president has waned with deepening poverty. Others said they were protecting the city's half-million residents.
After sporadic gunbattles Monday, police regained control of the port city of St. Marc, 45 miles west of Port-au-Prince, and nearby Grand-Goave. At least two men were shot in St. Marc and another was allegedly shot and killed by Aristide supporters.
At Dondon, 12 miles outside Cap-Haitien, police helped by a pro-Aristide militia managed to fight off rebels Monday and regain control of the town. Aristide supporters then torched houses of nine anti-government activists there, Radio Vision 2000 reported.
The uprising began Thursday in Haiti's fourth-largest city, Gonaives, presenting a dangerous turning point in the island nation's three-year political crisis. A similar revolt in 1985 also started in Gonaives and led to the downfall of the 29-year Duvalier family dictatorship.
Opposition politicians and civilians distanced themselves from the revolt, denying government contentions they were uniting with the rebels to stage a coup.
The United States, meanwhile, was "pushing very hard for an end to violence," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday. He said the U.S. government was urging Haitian leaders and the opposition to accept help from the Caribbean Community.
Last month, Trinidad's leader Patrick Manning said Caribbean nations were ready to send peacekeepers to Haiti, but Aristide's government rebuffed the offer.
Tolls put together from witnesses, Red Cross officials, rebel leaders and radio reports indicate at least 42 people, including policemen, have been killed in the uprising.
Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, has suffered more than 30 coups in 200 years, the last in 1991 when Aristide was ousted just months after becoming the Caribbean nation's first freely elected leader. Former President Bill Clinton sent 20,000 U.S. troops in 1994 to restore Aristide.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday the U.S. military has "no plans to do anything" in Haiti.
Tension has mounted since Aristide's party won flawed legislative elections in 2000 and international donors blocked millions of dollars in aid. Poverty has deepened, with most of the nation's 8 million people unemployed and living on less than $1 a day despite election promises from Aristide, a former priest who has pledged to improve the condition of the poor.