Haiti’s Bishops Call for Democracy : Press Government for Reforms, Ask for More Foreign Aid

One week after a coup that was inspired by a bloody church massacre, the Roman Catholic bishops of Haiti sent a strong appeal Sunday for justice and democracy to Haiti’s new military leaders and called urgently for intensified foreign aid to raise the impoverished country from the abyss.

As the firmly worded declaration of the Haiti Bishops’ Conference was being read in churches and on nationwide radio, more than 2,500 people took part in a solemn and apparently spontaneous 7-mile procession from the site of a Sept. 11 church massacre in Port-au-Prince to the temporary refuge of the populist priest who narrowly escaped death in that attack.

“The cleanup has just begun,” said Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a wan and soft-spoken priest whose courage in the face of the brutal assault on worshipers of his St. Jean Bosco Church two weeks ago has been credited by many here with inspiring the moral indignation among soldiers that led to a “sergeants’ revolt” Sept. 17 against the dictatorial regime of ousted Gen. Henri Namphy. It was Aristide’s first public appearance since the massacre.

Church Attack Killed 13

On Sept. 11, thugs under the control of deposed Port-au-Prince Mayor Franck Romain, a Namphy ally, invaded the church as Aristide, an outspoken, lifelong opponent of the Duvalier family dictatorship and of the Namphy regime, celebrated the communion service. Thirteen parishioners died and more than 70 were wounded as Romain’s henchmen shot, stabbed and slashed through the congregation, then set the church afire.

The church massacre was quickly followed by two other church burnings, the silencing of two church-affiliated private radio stations and two invasions of a hospital maternity ward apparently aimed at killing a wounded mother and her newborn.

“It is the first time we have seen a church put to fire in Haiti,” the bishops said in their Sunday declaration, “the first time we have seen a pregnant woman stabbed and the child that she bore in her womb wounded . . . The first time that we have seen armed people violate a hospital in an attempt to kill the mother whose testimony could be embarrassing.”

“The crimes of today surpass in horror those of yesterday,” said the bishops of the countless incidents of bloody terrorism that have kept Haiti in turmoil since then-President for Life Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier was sent into exile on Feb. 7, 1986.

Addressing their exhortation to the new government that appears to be jointly presided over by Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril and Sgt. Joseph Hebreux, the bishops demanded that all people associated with the previous dictatorial regimes be banned from politics and government service and that all Tontons Macoutes, the terrorist private militia of the old Duvalier regime, be disarmed.

“But one cannot be content with disarming the (Tontons) Macoutes,” said the declaration. “It is necessary also to set up adequate judicial systems” in which to try them.

The bishops lamented that the absence of a judicial institution in Haiti had forced public indignation to be channeled into blind mob justice “resembling strangely the methods of the executioners of yesterday.”

Soldiers and street mobs put at least a dozen known Tontons Macoutes to death early last week and reduced at least four of their bodies to ashes on pyres of burning truck tires outside the fire-blackened shell of the St. Jean Bosco Church.

Sunday’s hours-long procession along the fiercely hot and humid 7-mile road from the church in the capital to suburban Petionville, where Aristide has taken refuge with a group of Salesian priests, was inspired by a leftist group called the Youth of Jean Bosco, whose members expressed fears that the church hierarchy plans to transfer the outspoken priest out of the country.

However, the Salesian superior here, Father Jacques Mesidor, assured them that Aristide will keep his assignment in Haiti.

In their declaration, unusually forthright for a bishops’ conference that has traditionally been cautious and slow in expressing itself, the Haitian bishops highlighted the country’s devastated economy, which they said “is deteriorating at an extraordinarily swift rate.”

Without naming particular aid-giving countries or international institutions, the bishops said, “We send you an urgent call so that you intensify assistance for the development of our people.”

Virtual Bankruptcy

Most aid givers such as the United States, Canada, France, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund cut back or canceled direct financial aid to the Haitian government after bloody massacres at the polls last Nov. 29 that derailed the country’s only modern attempt to hold fair and free elections. The result, compounded by mismanagement under the Namphy regime, has been virtual national bankruptcy.

The bishops also appealed to the new government, which has pledged to move the country toward democratic reforms and respect for human rights, to inject competence, honesty, wisdom and discipline into public administration.

Avril, working with Hebreux constantly at his side as representative of the noncommissioned officers who led the coup, has retired or dismissed about 70 senior military officers and sanctioned the removal from power of the Namphy-appointed heads of several civil departments and government-run companies.

The new government also has made a number of good-will gestures to the church and various civic bodies, including political leaders who were suppressed under the Namphy regime.