16486: (hermantin) -Haitian thuggery revived, rights group charges (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

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Posted on Thu, Aug. 21, 2003

Haitian thuggery revived, rights group charges
BY MICHAEL NORTON
Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- In a practice reminiscent of past dictatorships, Haiti's
national police force employs auxiliaries whose crimes go unpunished in an
alleged government strategy of repression, a human rights group charged
Wednesday.

With the blessing of police and government authorities, agents ''arrest and
beat people up, rape, steal, commit summary executions, kidnap -- and go
unpunished,'' said Marie-Yolene Gilles, spokesman for the National Coalition
for Human Rights.

The coalition released an 11-page report Wednesday on the resurgence of
police auxiliaries, or ''attaches'' as they are called in French.

''If something is not done, Haiti risks being turned into a bandit state,''
Gilles said.

The report called the agents a ''revised, corrected, and augmented'' form of
the dreaded Tonton Macoute militia used during the 29-year Duvalier family
dictatorship that ended with the 1986 ouster of Jean-Claude Duvalier.

The report came after criticism from the opposition, human rights groups and
the U.S. State Department, all of which accuse the police of helping armed
supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide disrupt opposition protests
and meetings.

The government vehemently denied the findings.

''There are no police auxiliaries,'' government spokesman Mario Dupuy said,
adding that the coalition was ``attempting to destabilize the government by
undermining the morale of the police.''

Re-establishing security and confidence in the judicial system is a key
requirement for the opposition to participate in new legislative elections.

The government and opposition had been in a stalemate since Aristide's
Lavalas Family party swept 2000 elections observers said were flawed.

Wednesday's report said auxiliary gangs were employed by the 4,000-member
police force, and the National Palace, Interior Ministry and municipal
governments.

The impunity offered auxiliaries and their collusion with the police
represents ''incontestable proof the phenomenon is part of a government
strategy,'' the report said.

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