9 Top Haitian Officers Fired but Action Fails to Halt Military Unrest

In a sweeping move to bring order to Haiti’s chaotic “sergeants’ revolt,” new president Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril sacked nine top officers and sanctioned the arrests of at least eight others Wednesday. But there was continued unrest, including reports of open defiance of the new government by at least one military unit.

In the port city of St.-Marc, 45 miles north of the capital, soldiers and armed civilian thugs loyal to the controversial district commander--who was said to have opposed the weekend coup d’etat by noncommissioned officers that brought Avril to power--waded into a group of demonstrators who had gathered at a Roman Catholic church to express support for the coup, according to several Haitian radio reports.

A 12-year-old boy was killed and three demonstrators were injured in the melee by machete-wielding thugs calling themselves “San Manman” (a Creole expression meaning “motherless” but implying lack of conscience), according to a report on Radio Haiti Inter. The broadcast said the thugs later roamed the city yelling, “Down with Prosper Avril!” and “Down with the military coup!”

The independent Radio Metropole said people who were beaten and driven away from the church called on military units loyal to the new government to put down the St.-Marc dissidents and their commander, Capt. Ernst Ravix, who has long controlled the illicit trade in contraband at the port.

However, visitors to St.-Marc gave conflicting and confused reports of the incident, some saying Ravix and his 30-odd soldiers led the anti-Avril movement and others that it was only the San Manman thugs who were involved.

Meanwhile, there was an air of celebration in Port-au-Prince following Avril’s announcement during the night that most of the army’s generals were being pensioned off and that a number of colonels and lower-ranking officers had been arrested by their own troops. At the top of the list was Lt. Gen. Williams Regala, former defense minister and No. 2 man in the regime of the deposed leader, Gen. Henri Namphy.

A crowd of several hundred celebrants stood outside the armed forces general headquarters and cheered as enlisted men brought handcuffed and bound officers--two colonels, a lieutenant colonel and a captain--into the building. Four senior headquarters colonels, including the armed forces spokesman, Gary Leon, also were removed from office, as were the powerful commanders of most of the country’s 13 military districts, according to radio reports.

The reported defiance exhibited by Ravix and his small unit in St.-Marc was not considered a grave challenge to the Avril government and Haiti’s 7,500-member army, diplomatic observers said. Nor, they said, is there a serious threat in the several-score San Manmans, former members of the private Tontons Macoutes militia of the now-deposed Duvalier family dictatorship who reportedly are loyal to Ravix.

Throughout the rest of the country, the Tontons Macoutes have been targets of both soldiers and angry mobs eager to avenge the acts of terrorism by them and some senior officers of the Namphy regime.

Noncommissioned officers have appeared on both radio and television to explain that it was their outrage over the Tontons Macoutes’ attack on the congregation of the St. Jean Bosco Church in the capital on Sept. 11 that triggered their coup. Thirteen people were killed and more than 70 injured when thugs invaded the church armed with spears, machetes and guns.

“Those Macoutes went on television to boast about what they did, and that is what so shocked the sergeants and other soldiers that they moved to get rid of Namphy’s government, which sponsored the terrorism,” a foreign diplomat said.

At Least 12 Killed

Since the sergeants’ revolt was announced early Sunday, soldiers have scoured neighborhoods in the capital picking up known Tontons Macoutes and in some cases turning them over to the mobs to be killed, their bodies then burned on pyres of flaming tires. At least a dozen have died so far, including one whose smoldering torso was seen Wednesday about 100 yards from the St. Jean Bosco Church.

A local businessman with close contacts among the noncommissioned officers who staged the coup said they told him of a list of Tontons Macoutes who had been employed by the Namphy regime as “attaches” to the brutal Criminal Research Branch of the police. “They’re just going down the list, one by one, and taking the worst ones,” he said.

Among known Criminal Research “attaches” so far apprehended by soldiers and turned over to the mobs were three men previously identified as the murderers of presidential candidate Yves Volel as he was addressing a small crowd outside police headquarters last October. The brazen Volel killing began a reign of terror culminating in the massacre of 34 voters at the polls for what was to have been Haiti’s first free election last Nov. 29.

Despite continued outbreaks of gunfire during the night and the presence of army patrols on the streets, life in Port-au-Prince appeared almost normal Wednesday. One businessman said: “It’s the Lebanonization of Haiti--we’re learning to live with shooting all around.”

Cautiously Optimistic

Diplomats expressed cautious optimism concerning the new government and Avril’s ability to smoothly take control from the sergeants and corporals who put him in power. However, it was apparent at the armed forces headquarters that the noncoms intend to hold their grip on power at least until they are convinced that the new government will accede to their demands for better conditions for the troops and for prompt moves toward democratic elections and constitutional government.

“I give Avril a good chance of bringing things under control,” said a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He will have to take these steps that the sergeants have asked--human rights, moving toward democracy, separating the police from the army. If he moves that way, he will have the support of the Americans and the other developed countries interested in Haiti. If the man is as clever as everyone thinks he is, he couldn’t go any other way.”