TENTH YEAR IN HAITI Duvalier Regime In Grave Difficulties

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31448, 15 August 1967, Page 19

TENTH YEAR IN HAITI Duvalier Regime In Grave Difficulties

The regime of Dr. Francois Duvalier is rapidly breaking up. Unrest is growing in Haiti. Recently some news agencies were even announcing that President Duvalier had been overthrown. In any case the dictatorship finds itself in an increasingly difficult situation. The correspondence published here gives some details on the subject.

(By TIDIFE BOULE in “Le Monde”) (Reprinted by arrangement) There is no doubt that the tenth year of the so-called Duvalierist Revolution is becoming the “year of confusion” for the gang who control Haiti. It is not by chance that the No. 1 businessman in the regime, Mr Clement Joseph Charles, Duvalier’s banker, tried recently to clear out under the pretext of going to the United States for medical treatment. This led to his being placed under police supervision. For his part, Jean Tassy, chief of the secret services and the "political brains” of the President-for-life, has taken refuge with his family in an embassy in Port-au-Prince. However, to appreciate the latest development in the Haitian situation it must be understood that the Haitian revolutionary movement, although young and clandestine, has passed to the counteroffensive, facing the Duvalier regime, which leans on the militia of the TontonMacoutes. Terrorist Killed Blows are aimed at those known to be responsible for crimes. Last April a commander attacked the residence of the second-in-command of the palace Tontons-Macoutes, Lisius Jaques; the object of this operation was the acquisition of arms. Another commander tried to carry off Mrs Max Adolphe, “commandante” of the sinister political prison at Fort-Dimanche. Two months earlier, in February, the well-known Tibobo, another Tonton-Macute who used to terrorise the population of the capital, particularly the merchants, had been killed by a policeman he had insulted. At Cap Haiti, the house of the Tonton-Macoute leader, was sacked. Since the beginning of the year, each holiday or important Duvalierist demonstration has been troubled by mysterious explosions. This began on January 22,

the day of the masquerade of the legislative elections. On April 14 two bombs spread panic in the capital. To celebrate the republic’s 16th anniversary and the tenth year of his reign, the “spiritual leader of the nation” had conceived a carnival in which beauty queens from Miami, Jamaica, Colombia and the Dominican Republic would take part. With this carnival he hoped to demonstrate that the wind of peace and public tranquillity was blowing over a Haiti to which tourists could come without fear. But a tank in the procession exploded. The TontonMacoutes lost their sangfroid and opened fire and the parade had to be suspended. There were about 70 casualties. On May 22, another explosion caused heavy casualties to the Tonton-Macoutes, who were in Haiti’s international casino celebrating the sixth anniversary of Duvalier’s second coup d’etat. At the same time outbreaks of fire were devastating the cane fields on the plain of Cul-de-Sac and the plain of Leogane. The fields belonged to the American company, Hasco, and to Sibert, the head of the Tonton-Macoute. Posters put up by the “Peasants’ League” were denouncing abuses by Hasco and were calling on the peasants to intensify their struggle. Dissension in the bosom of the Duvalier family was seen. Dr. Duvalier reproached officers of his guard who were friendly with his son-in-law, Max Dominuque, for isolating his private secretary by intercepting all the telephone calls coming from outside the palace. A moral blow was struck at Duvalierism by the publication of a pamphlet by Dr. Price Mars entitled “Is Colour Prejudice a Social Question?” repudiating a system based on colour as a political doctrine. Dr. Mars, the father of “Negritude,” condemned the Duvalier experiment on moral grounds. This was how everyone who read it interpreted it, Dr. Duvalier sooner than anyone else. His precursor was not forgiven for his doctrines and the residence of the old ethnologist was ransacked by the police. “Papa Doc,” distressed, imagines enemies everywhere and plots on all sides. As “Monsieur Cannibale” does not want to give up power, he is eliminating those who have always been the staunchest supporters of his Government, either by accusing them of treason or ingratitude, or just not forgiving them for allowing the grave disorders disturbing the tenth year. This is the context in which one must place the recent execution of the young officers who were considered the spiritual sons of Dr. Duvalier, the dismissal of the ministers who had given him the greatest allegiance, the exile of a member of his family—apparently his own wife whom he had designated two years ago to succeed him on bis death—the new waves of arrests and the unarming of part of the Arcahail militia. Now, lacking confidence, the dictator is creating a vacuum around himself. In this general wreckage each of those who serves him is asking himself when his turn will come. Washington’s Role Washington is following the situation as it develops. It supports, on the one hand, Duvalier’s dictatorship, and on the other the politicians who traditionally oppose him. One section of the Haitian opposition is composed of traditional politicians and retired military men whose headquarters are in New York but whose forces for the most part live in Florida beside the counter-revolutionary Cubans. The Haitian politicians who

■are refugees in the United States denounced the bomb explosions on April 14 as the work of the extreme left But in Haiti, on the spot, the People’s Party has just asserted Its “choice of armed force to combat tyranny” and an important step has been taken with the creation on national soil of a common front reuniting the National Resistance Front, the United Party of Democratic Haitians, and the People’s Party, which has been working secretly for eight years.—“Le Monde” copyright.