Macoutes remain a problem

Press, 19 February 1986, Page 11

Macoutes remain a problem

By

KERNAN TURNER,

1, of

the Associated Press Port-au-Prince

The Duvaliers are gone, but they left behind one of the new Government’s biggest problems: the Tontons Macoutes, a private army, twice as big as the armed forces, that tortured and killed at will for three decades. Francois “Papa Doc" Duvalier created the personal gang of thugs in 1958. They wore civilian clothes with soft felt hats and mirrored sunglasses and roamed the island, killing and maiming in his interest, their own interests, or for no apparent reason at all. The people of Haiti gave the dictator’s band of enforcers the name “Tontons Macoutes” — Uncle Bogeyman in creole — and the Macoutes lived

up to it. They had killed an estimated 50,000 people by the time “Papa Doc” died in 1971, and passed the island fief to his 19-year-old son, Jean-Claude. He fled Haiti on February 7. Hatred of the Macoutes is so intense that mobs chased some of them down in the streets during the first days after he left. The Justice Minister, Mr Gerard Gourgue said that 30 or 40 members of the militia, which JeanClaude had decked out in blue uniforms in an attempt at respectability, were killed in Port-au-Prince and four or five in each of several other cities. Mobs stoned the Macoutes to death and hacked them with machetes. Witnesses reported

at least one torn apart by his attackers, and an angry crowd even killed a Macoute’s dog. But there were up to 15,000 of them before Mr Duvalier left, twice the strength of the Army, Navy and Air Force combined. The provisional Government issued a decree that disbanded the Macoutes, now called the “Volunteers for National Security,” and ordered them to turn in their weapons. It is assumed that many have not done so. Colonel Prosper Avril, a member of the governing council, told reporters that Tontons Macoutes would become regular citizens and would be welcome in the Army if they met enlistment standards. He added quickly that only youths aged 18 to 21 could enlist and that most

Macoutes were older than that. Victims of the Macoutes included Catholic priests, political opponents of the Duvaliers, union leaders, students, and reporters. Even well-known members of the ruling elite and the Duvalier family were eliminated or disappeared. Violence abated under Jean-Claude Duvalier, but such organisations as Amnesty International and a human rights commission of the Organisation of American States reported arbitrary arrests, beatings and killings by Macoutes as recently as 1983. Haitians say the Tontons Macoutes volunteers received no pay, living by intimidation and extortion such as protecting businesses and private homes. ■: Mr Gourgue, who led

the Haitian human rights league before joining the six-man National Government Council, also confirmed that Rosalie Max Adolphe, leader of the Macoutes, had been arrested. Mrs Adolphe, aged 72, also has served as Mayor of Port-au-Prince and a member of the National Assembly. Guards at her luxurious white villa in the Petionville hills above the squalid capital of one million people said that, on the night Mr Duvalier left, soldiers took her to the the Dessalines military barracks. Mr Gourgue would not confirm she was held there, but when asked about it, he replied with a smile: "I’ve heard that rumour, too.” Will she be tried? "Not yet,” he said.