Haiti Protests Spread to All Major Cities

The most violent protests since the toppling of the Duvalier dynasty spread to every major city and town in Haiti on Friday as expectations mounted that the country’s military leader, Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril, will bow to the escalating pressure and resign.

Following bloody clashes between demonstrators and troops in Port-au-Prince and several other cities Thursday, thousands of Haitians poured out Friday morning to light flaming street barricades in a half-dozen cities and most of the market towns along the major north-south agricultural highway of this poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

The local governor’s office and a small military headquarters in Petit Goave, 30 miles southwest of the capital, were burned down, according to reports from diplomats. Haitian radio stations reported the trashing of two other buildings occupied by government officials in Gonaives, 90 miles to the north, after 5,000 people turned out to celebrate a false report that Avril already had fled the country.

One student reportedly was shot to death and three others were wounded by members of Avril’s Presidential Guard during a demonstration at the Science Faculty of the university in Port-au-Prince and there were numerous reports of shootings and beatings by troops and police in other cities including Cap Hatien, St. Marc, Jeremie, Gonaives and Petit Goave. At least three people, including one soldier, died in similar clashes Thursday.

Haitian journalists said troops of the Presidential Guard, which put Avril in power in September, 1988, and supported him through two attempted coups, were becoming more aggressive and even vicious in breaking up the demonstrations with gunfire and truncheons.

Troops in Port-au-Prince burst into private homes and forced residents, under threat of beatings, to extinguish fires and clean up the rubbish left by burning barricades. Bystanders looking at the barricades were clubbed and in some cases hauled away by the soldiers.

Many Haitians said the widespread protests were reminiscent of the nationwide demonstrations in November, 1985, that triggered the departure of second-generation dictator Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier on Feb. 7, 1986.

A coalition of 11 opposition political parties that had earlier asked Haitians to rise against the Avril government issued a new call Friday asking the armed forces to “accept Avril’s resignation and prepare for a peaceful transition” under a provisional civilian government led by the vice president of Haiti’s supreme court.

The coalition, representing the first unified pro-democracy political force in the historically troubled country, called for a nationwide general strike beginning Monday until Avril steps down.

The general’s departure from the Presidential Palace is only a matter of time, said a Haitian lawyer who has been party to negotiations with Avril concerning his resignation. The lawyer, who asked to remain unidentified, said Avril is holding out for guarantees that when he resigns he can remain in Haiti as army chief of staff. The condition is not acceptable to political, business and civic leaders who want to see Avril exiled and the army neutralized, the lawyer said.

But Avril’s complete surrender appears to be unacceptable to the all-powerful Presidential Guard whose officers and men have profited from corrupt business dealings and shakedowns since they put the military leader in power as Haiti’s president.

“We don’t think he is a prisoner of the palace guard,” said a Western diplomat who believes Avril is still in command.

The same diplomat said that reports Thursday that Avril’s wife already had left for the United States were incorrect.

“She is in the palace; people have seen her there,” he said.

Blunt-spoken U.S. Ambassador Alvin Adams met with Avril late Friday, their second encounter this week, prompting questions about the U.S. role in the current situation, but an embassy official said the American government was not involved in any negotiations with the embattled military leader.

“The U.S. government is not putting together a deal,” said the official. “There is a coalition of Haitian political parties involved, and it is up to the Haitians to work it out.”

Despite the denial of American involvement, political observers here have speculated that Adams played a key role in bringing about the coalition of political parties and business and civic groups that brought the current crisis to a head with their calls for Avril’s resignation.

The catalyst for the massive wave of opposition was Avril’s heavy-handed arrest of scores of political activists and his exiling of seven pro-democracy politicians in January after they denounced his plans for elections as insincere and said they would boycott the voting.

The immediate trigger of this week’s turmoil was the death of 11-year-old Rosaline Vaval during a demonstration in Petit Goave on Monday. The girl was hit by a soldier’s stray bullet as she sat on her porch studying a Haitian history book.

Her funeral Thursday drew a crowd of 10,000 which was dispersed by club-wielding soldiers.