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12626: Gonaives Update: AP080502 (fwd)



From: PSlavin@unicefusa.org

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Haiti.html

August 5, 2002

Militants Seek Haiti Chief's Ouster
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 2:51 p.m. ET

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Thousands of protesters in Gonaives city
hurled stones and thrust back riot police Monday, as militant community
leaders called for a nationwide uprising to oust Haiti's president.

``Today the people have taken possession of Gonaives,'' protest leader Jean
Tatoune said from the west-coast city 60 miles from Port-au-Prince, the
capital. ``Aristide has to go,'' he said, a reference to Haitian President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Tatoune was one of 159 prisoners who escaped Friday when armed supporters
crashed a stolen tractor through Gonaives' prison wall. Gunmen set fire to
city hall and the courthouse that day, leaving only charred ruins.

On Monday, the thousands of demonstrators vastly outnumbered about two
dozen riot police who fired tear gas but were forced to retreat. Protesters
threw stones and yelled ``Down with Aristide!'' No injuries were reported.

``We are fighting to save the country,'' political activist Amiot Metayer,
another prison escapee, said on Radio Metropole. ``All nine districts of
Haiti must unite to oust Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Liberty or death!''

Aristide's party, meanwhile, played down the threat posed by the protesters
in Gonaives, Haiti's fourth largest city with 200,000 people.

``It is a small group of armed men that the police should deal with. One
should not dramatize the situation,'' said party spokesman Jonas Petit.

Tatoune, 44, was an important figure in the popular uprising that forced
dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier into exile in 1986. A longtime Aristide
opponent, he had been serving a life sentence for involvement in the 1994
killings of at least 15 Aristide supporters in Gonaives.

On Monday, he said the insurrectionists had contact with activists in other
parts of the Caribbean nation of 8 million people.

Meanwhile, armed protesters blocked roads leading to Gonaives with flaming
tire barricades, witnesses said.

Prison system director Clifford Larose said three people who got away in
Friday's jailbreak were captured over the weekend, but the rest remained
free.

The apparent inability of police to restore order is another sign of
growing lawlessness taking a grip in Haiti, which has been bedeviled by
dictatorships and power struggles since it's independence from France in
1804.

Metayer was an Aristide ally until he was jailed July 2 on charges of
burning down houses of a rival group. He insists he is innocent.

Metayer and his heavily armed supporters want a new interim government,
fresh elections and higher wages for police and other workers. Government
officials rejected the demands.

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press
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