Killings precede election

Press, 28 November 1987, Page 13

Killings precede election

NZPA-Reuter Port-au-Prince Eight people were killed in a night of preelection violence, and shops and schools were shut yesterday as Haiti approached its first free election in decades. Radio and witness reports said the deaths occurred as soldiers and armed assailants roamed the capital overnight Television showed undetonated grenades hanging from a bridge in the capital city of Port-au-Prince yesterday, apparently set there by

armed Tonton Macoutes, former secret police who served the former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier. At least four of the dead were members of vigilante groups, set up to protect neighbourhoods from marauding Tonton Macoutes, radio reports and witnesses x said. Pre-Election violence in Haiti has left more than a dozen dead since the independent Provisional Electoral Council (C.E.P.) barred 12 suspected former supporters of Mr Duvalier on

November 2 from standing as Presidential candidates. Haiti is to hold its first free Presidential elections in 30 years tomorrow (Haiti time). The Interior Minister and member of the National Council of Government (C.N.G.), Brigadier General Williams Regala, issued a tough warning on Wednesday night to groups springing up in response to armed Duvalierists, saying the vigilantes were usurping the Army’s job. Witnesses interviewed on several radio stations

said soldiers shot a man who was crying out in agony on Wednesday night after Tonton Macoutes threw a grenade at him. Some shops were shut yesterday and schools have remained closed since Monday when arsonists burned down a large street market in Port-au-Prince. Unidentified armed men set fire to an office of a Presidential candidate, Marc Bazin, in the city of Gonaives in north-western Haiti on Thursday, radio reports said.