Haiti’s Army Shoots at Haiti’s Press

The Haitian army is aiming at the Haitian press. On one particularly harrowing day last month, soldiers shot and wounded two Haitian newsmen while another group of soldiers opened fire on eight foreign journalists, killing a young Haitian who had been accompanying them.

The crux of the problem is the army’s frustration with Haiti’s new liberal constitution that was overwhelmingly endorsed in a spring referendum. It ends the army’s role as power-broker and strips the military of its protection from civil justice, making the army liable to a civil court for any crime committed against civilians. It also calls for the creation of a separate police force, responsible to the ministry of justice, to guarantee public order and citizen protection. And the constitution removes the electoral machinery from the manipulative hands of the Ministry of Interior and National Defense, placing it in an independent nine-member electoral council.

So the press became a target for army fury. In a communique replying to a media protest calling on the army to respect the press, Col. Gary Leon made journalists even more vulnerable by declaring that there were individuals, not members of the media, driving around in vehicles with press signs carrying out terrorist acts and opening fire on the military and on civilian demonstrators. The Haitian Journalists Assn. quickly printed up large presse signs limiting distribution to legitimate newsmen. While the signs may afford some protection from rock-throwing anti-government demonstrators, they also serve as a bull’s-eye for the trigger-happy, press-hating soldiers ordered to put down anti-government demonstrations. So far, rock-throwers have inflicted damage only to newsmen’s vehicles while the more aggressive soldiers have shot and wounded five Haitian newsmen in the past six weeks.

In 1957, when the Francois Duvalier dictatorship came to power, Haitian opposition media were closed down. The military liked those days better. “This army is the creation of the dictatorship,” says a Haitian editor, “its soldiers were Duvalier’s mad dogs. There has been no real effort to tame and educate them for their role in a democratic society.” A manager of one of Haiti’s leading radio stations says, “They hate the press because it is the first and last lines of defense of democracy and they fear democracy because a truly democratically elected government might put them on trial for past crimes.” A radio reporter who has covered most of the recent shooting incidents says, “The army is shooting to kill. It is what we call a method of ‘caponage,’ to coward the people and force them back into a state of zombification as the Duvaliers did for 29 years.” In a country that has known only fleeting moments of press freedom in 183 years of existence, today’s media do not at all resemble the servile, adulatory, subsidized press of the dictatorship.

Today there are witnesses, young tenacious newsmen, many with no formal journalistic training, who refuse to be intimidated, reporting to a score of lively Haitian radio stations. They report from distant villages and they patrol city streets with little walkie-talkies, broadcasting news flashes and instant analysis. For all their shortcomings in experience, they take their roles seriously. The risks are high. They are constantly threatened and their families menaced. The army has reason to fear these newsmen as they improve their skills.

A plainclothes policeman, Henri Toussaint, disrupted an anti-government march last month, launching a shooting spree that wounded seven people. One victim later died. Toussaint, however, told a radio reporter that he had not been there; at the time, he was enjoying a soft drink. Then the evening daily, le Nouvelliste, published photos of Toussaint in action, blazing pistol in hand.

Newsmen, complained a weekly magazine, have been branded as “terrorists” and they have become targets of soldiers “who seek to hide their misdeeds.” The Haitian press--especially the radio in a country with 85% illiteracy--is a major force for the difficult and painful birth of Haitian democracy. To snuff out press freedom would presage the death of democracy and bring about a cut-off of vital U.S. aid.

Lawlessness--in the cities and the countryside--causes other coverage problems, making travel by foreign newsmen extremely difficult and dangerous. A group of visiting journalists arrived in Jean-Rabel, a rugged 140 miles from the capital at Port-au-Prince, two days after the July 23 massacre of more than 100 peasants in the nearby mountains. All were warned by the powerful ruling families of the area that the Haitian press was both “communist and corrupt” and “unwelcome.” On a lonely wind-swept mountain road during the return to the capital, 50 terrorized peasants brandishing machetes, pitchforks and sharp wooden spears suddenly burst into the headlights of the jeep screaming in Creole against the “communist priests and nuns.” Their roadblock was a huge, newly-felled mahogany tree. A presse sign meant nothing to them; patiently the journalists explained their assignments and negotiated passage, no easy sell, even for a Creole-speaking foreigner.

July 29 was the anniversary of the founding of Papa Doc Duvalier’s infamous Tontons Macoutes in 1958, a secret police force that at its peak numbered 300,000 men. The anniversary was always celebrated by these bullyboys in wild partying, usually winding up with the shooting of innocent people. It was much the same this year. The bodies of 10 executed young men were discovered the next morning in various parts of the capital.

And when a festive anti-Macoute demonstration danced along the capital’s main street, soldiers opened fire into the crowd. Within minutes eight persons were dead and 15 wounded, including three Haitian newsmen, one of them riding in a car with a press sign. ABC’s veteran cameraman, Abdiel Vivancos suddenly crossed aim with a soldier at 70 yards. He remembered other instances when cameramen focused on soldiers only to see a soldier aiming into the camera lens. Vivancos quickly dropped to the ground; the Haitian squeezed the trigger. Manny Alvarez, filming for CBS, had his own close call; a soldier’s fire chipped away the masonry inches above his head. As Mike Von Fremd and his ABC crew walked down a deserted street when the shooting subsided, a truck load of troops drenched them with tear gas.

All newsmen carry their press credentials like rosary beads around their necks. An unmistakeable Macoute gesture ended the day’s killings. A group of armed men in olive green shot up seven of the major independent radio stations. No one was injured but one station manager looked at the 40 bullet holes in his studio and said, “This is in the best tradition of Papa Doc Duvalier.”

Because the capital can suddenly become isolated by flaming barricades, the nearby Holiday Inn, not far from of the government palace, has become the press hotel. There is no happy hour at the inn, only Tandy hour as newsmen struggle with their computers and the single direct-dial phone in the hotel, located in the office of Prominex, a group trying to encourage investment in Haiti.

Several street-wise characters hang out in front of the hotel and make a practice of accosting newsmen as they leave, demanding payment for guide services never rendered. They can be nasty; last week one of them drew a long knife, forcing newsmen back into the hotel. Some Haitians believe these troublemakers are paid agents with the specific task of making life even more miserable for foreign newsmen.

Lt. Gen. Henri Namphy, head of the three-member National Council of Government, helped raise tensions in June. He issued a decree taking back control of the electoral process. Whether it was a crude attempt to seize control or a well-designed plan to throw the country into chaos is not known. But it could have buried the constitution, along with its defenders, in the debris of a civil war. Haiti’s Catholic bishop’s said the decree caused “the worse crisis of our times.” In the bloody weeks that followed, nearly 40 people were killed by the army and about 200 wounded in waves of anti-government demonstrations. General strike followed general strike.

Under pressure from donor nations--including the United States, now providing more than $100 million in aid to Haiti annually--the decree was rescinded. But any left-over puddles of Namphy support may have evaporated with the cordite on the capital’s streets. Few Haitians believe that elections in such a climate are possible, especially with Namphy at the helm, or any other general for that matter. Yet everyone grasps elections as a straw to save a wretchedly poor, hungry and angry country from total anarchy. The outlook is not encouraging.