Haiti Military Backs Junta in Protest Crisis

The Haitian armed forces declared Saturday that they fully support the country’s provisional rulers against a protest movement aimed at forcing a change of government.

“The armed forces of Haiti give their total support to the National Government Council,” said a military proclamation broadcast Saturday night.

Organizers of an on-and-off general strike, which paralyzed Haiti for four days last week, vowed to keep pressing for removal of the military-led council. But a key Cabinet minister insisted, “The government is staying.”

The deepening confrontation threatens to disrupt an electoral process aimed at democratic presidential elections in November. The Provisional Electoral Council announced Saturday that it is suspending negotiations with government authorities over election procedures and regulations.

A statement by the council complained of harsh repression last week by government security forces. At least 22 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded in shooting incidents.

“When we are certain that the barbarous actions we have underlined will not be renewed, then we will resume negotiations,” the council’s statement said.

The general strike was suspended for the weekend but will resume Monday, its organizers said. Port-au-Prince was peacefully busy Saturday, only the second day of open commerce since last Monday.

At midday, a din of honking horns and banging metal filled the city in a demonstration of protest.

The strike had previously been suspended Wednesday to allow the public to lay in new supplies of food and other essentials. On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, the strike brought the country to a virtual standstill.

Protesters threw rocks, burned tires and barricaded streets with rubble. Army and police patrols in Port-au-Prince fired rifles at suspected troublemakers.

Saturday’s proclamation by the armed forces said that “some terrorists, taking advantage of the pacific actions of some citizens in the exercise of their democratic rights, want to promote at any expense a climate of trouble and disorder.”

The strike was organized by a coalition of political, civic, religious, labor, student and business groups. Calling itself the “57 Organizations,” the coalition said in a statement broadcast Saturday that it will persist in its drive to bring down the government.

Gerard Noel, the acting minister of information, told a press conference Saturday that the three-man National Government Council will not be forced out of power.

He said that the strike and protests have been instigated by extremists of the right and the left who seek to destabilize the country.

Haiti’s current crisis is one in a long, sporadic series that began in 1985 as discontent grew under the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier. Duvalier had ruled Haiti as “president-for-life” after inheriting the title from his father, Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier, in 1971.

Successive waves of protests and strikes forced Jean-Claude Duvalier to give up power and flee to exile in France on Feb. 7, 1986.

He left the government in the hands of a military-dominated National Government Council. In response to new protests, the council was recomposed in March, 1986, but it remained under military control.

Its members are army Lt. Gen. Henri Namphy, army Col. Williams Regala and civilian Luc Hector. Namphy is the council president and Regala is the interior minister, responsible for the government’s security forces.

About a year ago, the country was rocked by a protest movement demanding the resignation of Regala and other government officials considered to have been loyal followers of Duvalier. Those protests subsided after the government announced a timetable for elections.

Last November, a Constituent Assembly was elected to write a constitution, and the constitution was approved by 99% of the voters in a plebiscite March 29.

Under a provision of the constitution, the Provisional Electoral Council took office in May. But after a dispute with the government on election procedures, the Government Council published a decree June 23 dismissing two of the Electoral Council’s nine members and taking away most of its authority over the election process.

That same week, the government dissolved a labor federation, the Autonomous Center of Haitian Workers, and arrested several of its leaders after they organized a one-day wage strike. The leaders were later released.

Last week’s general strike was originally called as a 24-hour stoppage to protest those actions. After the strike was extended, the government relented Thursday and revoked the decree against the Electoral Council.

But government concessions failed to defuse the crisis; by then, the strike organizers also were demanding the resignation of the National Government Council.

A spokesman for one of the main groups in the 57 Organizations said the protest movement will accept no concessions from the present National Government Council.

“The people now say that we can no longer trust this government,” said the spokesman, who asked not to be further identified. He said that the strike organizers want the existing council to be replaced by a new three-member council that would be made up of one representative from the Roman Catholic Church, one from Protestant churches and one from the armed forces.

“Our problem is not a government with or without military men,” he said. “It is to have a government that has the trust of the people to organize free and democratic elections.”