NEWS ANALYSIS : Haitian Violence Belies U.S. Denial of Danger

‘No one’s proven (that) these people are afraid for their lives (in Haiti, or) that you cannot sleep at night in your home for someone’s coming in and going to kill you. . . .’

-- State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler, arguing that Haitian refugees don’t merit political asylum in the United States

Such words ring hollow in the ghastly slums called the City of the Sun and the City of God, ironically named places where at least 1,000 men, women and children are estimated to have been killed by the Haitian military since it took power in a brutal coup Sept. 30.

In fact, just before Tutwiler’s statements were heard here over shortwave radio early Thursday, reporters had been counting the bursts of automatic-weapons fire echoing from the slums, a nightly exercise to pass the time in a city without electricity.

“They come in every night,” said one resident of the City of the Sun, speaking of the government forces. “They shoot at the houses, they grab anyone they want, and we don’t see them again.”

The words came soft and slow as the man, who declined to give his name, watched nervously down the lane in front of the roofless space he called his house. He would speak only in the presence of a trusted priest; even then he was painfully reluctant to give his views.

To Tutwiler, who was repeating U.S. policy, Haitians want to go to the United States only for a better economic life. That this man wants a better life is a given. Simply to stand with him makes it easy to understand why: His floor is the freshest layer of several feet of rotting fruit, vegetables and human and animal waste upon which the hundreds of thousands of residents here live.

Like 80% of Haitians, he does not hold a job; in many cases, even many of the adults here have never earned money in the form of cash.

That has been and remains the way of the world in Haitian slums.

But what is different now--and what is driving many to flee--is the violence, the fear and the repression by the military since it threw out President Jean-Bertrand Aristide two months ago, human rights activists and church workers say.

“What she (Tutwiler) said is beyond belief, an utter lie,” said a European priest who has lived in the City of the Sun for many years, commenting on the official U.S. view on why Haitians are leaving their homes and heading toward America. “The night after the coup, there were more than a hundred people killed within sight of where we are. And now, every night, more die.

“More than 100,000 people have left for the countryside since the coup,” the priest said. “Their (economic) conditions haven’t changed. They are running away because they are afraid.”

When the State Department’s position was read to a doctor at a hospital near another huge slum called Carre Fourfeuille, he gasped, rolled his eyes, then observed: “I stopped counting at 350 the number of bodies that have come into our morgue. We have them every day, even babies, and all with bullet wounds.”

The estimate of 1,000 dead here in the coup is used by most human rights experts, but is always described as conservative.

“We have no way of knowing for sure,” said Jean Dominique, owner of Haiti’s most important independent radio station. “We can count bodies in hospitals, and we have eyewitness accounts to hundreds and hundreds of killings here (in the capital). But we know many aren’t reported, and our reporters tell of more in the provinces.”

Dominique and his wife are in hiding, their station closed down after uniformed armed troops shot up their studio for more than an hour the day of the coup. Also in hiding are a 13-year-old boy and his father. The boy has told a priest that he saw soldiers shooting 20 university students two weeks ago when they met to protest the coup.

The U.S. claim of no political repression here also conflicts with the experience of Mano Charlemane, one of Haiti’s most popular singers and poets. After weeks of arrests and jailings, Mano, as he is called, dropped out of sight two weeks ago and is being hidden in an embassy.

But most of the violence and repression here is not aimed at the well-known; it is directed at the slums because of Aristide’s huge popularity among the poor.

“When there was the coup to keep Aristide from taking office (in January, 1990), the people went into the streets and broke it,” said an Aristide supporter, also in hiding. “This time, the army is determined to keep them out of the streets. That is why they prevent every meeting, every demonstration and why they attack poor areas, to make the people afraid to go out.”

The army defends its conduct. Gen. Raoul Cedras, army chief of staff and the real Haitian ruler, told Danish Television on Thursday that his men fire weapons only in self-defense, citing a recent attack on his troops by stone-throwing youths in the City of the Sun.

The people love the army, he said, adding that the only threat here is from leftist subversives.

Cedras denied that large numbers of killings have occurred and appeared angry when confronted with foreign reporters’ eyewitness accounts of finding bodies in rural dumps and seeing birds and dogs tearing at corpses left in the garbage in the City of God.

“Clearly, the people of Haiti, the poor people of Haiti, are saying there is political repression,” said broadcaster Dominique. “The military killed hope for Haiti, and there is no punishment for this, the killing of hope.”