Aristide Supporters Keep Grip on Cap Haitien

For three days, Haiti’s palm-shaded second-largest city has been paralyzed by flaming barricades, a gas shortage that has halted transport and fear that runs through the population like an electric current.

Cap Haitien remains firmly in the grip of “popular organizations” loyal to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas Family party -- street kids armed and deployed by those in power to menace the government’s critics.

The tension is heightened by the armed rebellion of another gang, in Gonaives, the next significant city on the road south. Roadblocks manned by members of the gang, which was once loyal to Aristide, have prevented fuel tankers from reaching Cap Haitien for a week and led pro-Aristide factions to take the offensive.

Repression of government critics has long been the norm in Cap Haitien, but the clashes in Gonaives have empowered the loyalists here to attack with impunity.

“They broke into our home at 4 in the morning, screaming that they would cut off our heads. They smashed the windows and stole everything they could carry off,” Julienne Dorsin, an outspoken critic of local Lavalas leaders, said of a predawn raid Tuesday by a dozen chimeres -- Creole for “monsters” -- who looted her restaurant and upstairs apartment.

Now in hiding and using her cellphone to try to arrange with friends for her escape from Haiti, Dorsin says she’s fleeing for safety but not giving up on her homeland.

Across this steamy jumble of potholed roads, two-story wooden houses, cinder-block shops and tropical gardens, opposition leader Elusca Charles has taken refuge in a seaside hovel.

“We are in a civil war. We are in hiding but we are not capitulating,” said Charles, a leader of the Democratic Convergence movement, which is seeking Aristide’s ouster and the formation of a transitional government.

Barefoot in ripped shorts and a polo shirt, Charles said he believed the pro-Lavalas gangs would kill him if they could find him -- even though he has publicly condemned the violence committed by opponents of Aristide in Gonaives.

Even in the light of day, thugs roam the streets looking for opposition figures or those who would like to meet with them. Along a central street littered with singed debris from the latest riot, a shoeshine boy’s eyes flicked between the scuffed loafer he was holding and a foreign journalist asking where to find Charles or other opposition leaders.

Idle youths loitered among the silent women hawking fruit and plantain chips from their head bundles, and teenage toughs armed with pistols moved through the streets on bikes and motorcycles, listening for the wrong name to be mentioned.

Buttressing their crackdown, the chimeres have set up flaming barricades on the roads to prevent infiltration by rebels from Gonaives to the south and Port-de-Paix to the west. The obstructions and worsening fuel crisis forced the closure of schools and most businesses.

The local governor said Wednesday that it was time to restore order. At police headquarters for the Northern Department, the province encompassing Cap Haitien and several cities in rebel hands, provincial Gov. Myrtho Julien sat behind a desk adorned with a bowl of rifle cartridges. Through Lavalas-run local TV and radio, he appealed to the people of Cap Haitien to remove the barricades and resume normal life because the risk of the city being overrun had abated.

Like Aristide, who summoned foreign journalists to the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince, Julien blamed the scattered insurrections on political opponents, labeling all who challenge Lavalas the “armed wing of the political opposition.”

“The terrorists wanted to come to Cap Haitien. We took these measures to prevent that,” Julien said of the smoldering tree trunks, scorched chassis and boulders strewn across key roads. Asked if any political opponents might be independent of the violent rebels holding other cities, Julien said, sneering, “There is no such thing in Haiti as a legitimate opposition.”

Haitians have endured more than 30 coups and decades of dictatorship in the 200 years since a slave rebellion established their country as the first independent black republic.

Authorities have closed down all independent radio stations in the last week, said Yves Teneus, a journalist with Radio Concorde. His station has also received threats from armed rebels in nearby Limbe for having aired government messages as well as those from the opposition.

With schools closed and most people afraid to leave their homes, streets are empty except for those peering out of doors and windows, or venturing out to watch the street toughs.

“We have no radio. We have no information. Everyone is afraid,” said a young teacher huddled behind a garden wall with three students in mint-green shirts and moss-colored trousers, having come to the center in hopes that their school would be opened. “No one knows what is going to happen.”

Officials dismiss the tension as a response to the chaos in Gonaives and an undue fear of authority.

“It’s a cultural response in Haiti for people to be afraid of the government,” said Yvon Paul, head of administration for the Northern Department, whose gold watch and necklace presented a striking contrast to his shabby surroundings.

“Once you have guns, the people fear you.”