19768: (Chamberlain) Destruction of Independence Museum (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

(St Petersburg Times, 3 March 04)


Marines watch as Haiti turns wild

Despite stern U.S. warnings, the rebel leader lets soldiers run amok and
gives orders to the new president.

By DAVID ADAMS



PORT-AU-PRINCE - Three days after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide flew
into exile, it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell who controls the
country.

As troops from the United States, France and Canada continued to trickle
into Haiti as part of a small, multinational security force, power-drunk
soldiers from the country's rebel army went on a citywide rampage Tuesday
after declaring themselves the "liberators" of a "free Haiti."

The U.S. Marines, numbering about 450 along with 125 French soldiers and 50
Canadian troops as of late Tuesday, were mostly unable to do anything to
stop them.

"I am the chief," declared rebel leader Guy Philippe, a disgraced former
police chief who is accused by U.S. officials of drug dealing. Philippe,
who now calls himself the commanding "general" of the so-called National
Front for the Liberation of Haiti, defied anyone to challenge the moral
authority of his victorious ragtag army, claiming he spoke for "the people
in the streets."

In a brief press conference at a local hotel surrounded by heavily armed
rebels and members of the national police, he boasted that his men now
controlled the entire country as well as 80 percent of the country's
5,000-member police force.

U.S. officials in Washington reiterated previous statements Tuesday
discrediting Philippe and saying he has no role to play in the new
government.

Philippe "is not in control of anything but a ragtag band of people," said
Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Roger Noriega. The international military
buildup in Haiti will make Philippe's role "less and less central in
Haitian life. And I think he will probably want to make himself scarce,"
Noriega told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"We have sent that message to him. He obviously hasn't received it."

So far, at least, the United States appears unwilling or unable to bring
Philippe to heel.

"I have no instructions to disarm the rebels," said Col. Dave Berger,
commander of the small force of U.S. Marines that was expected to reach 500
by Tuesday night. "That's a Haitian problem," he added.

But Philippe and his rebel army are fast becoming Washington's problem too.

"The way it is unfolding, I can't believe the U.S. is going to accept
this," said Robert Maguire, director of Haitian studies at Trinity College
in Washington, D.C. "This is a society that is totally lawless."

In the afternoon, Marines raced to the offices of Haiti's prime minister,
Yvon Neptune, after Philippe's men announced they planned to arrest and
prosecute him on corruption charges. The Marines got there just in time as
a caravan of pickups loaded with armed rebels came barreling up the hill
toward the office.

Standing at the padlocked gates at the bottom of a tree-lined road leading
up to the prime minister's office, the U.S. Embassy deputy chief of
mission, Luis Moreno, tersely told reporters: "They are closed."

Moreno is playing a lead role in the U.S. efforts on the ground to
stabilize the country and secure a smooth transition of power. It was
Moreno who met with Aristide shortly before his departure Sunday to warn
him it was time to leave, as Philippe's rebel army was poised to attack the
city.

The rebels chose not to defy the Marines, and instead went across town to
arrest a detested Aristide loyalist, Rene Civil, the widely reputed head of
the progovernment gangs known as the chimeres.

But the chaotic tone of the day was surely set by Philippe's arrival
outside a colonnaded downtown building that was once the headquarters of
the disbanded Haitian Armed Forces. It now houses the Museum of
Independence, and a collection of Haitian art. Greeted by a cheering mob of
former army soldiers looking to get their old jobs back, he told the
adoring audience that he was their man.

He then watched as rebels ransacked the building, throwing valuable
paintings and an entire exhibition of 86 voodoo dolls and art over a
second-floor balcony into the crowd.

Chanting "Up with Jesus, down with Satan," the crowd proceeded to burn the
works in a giant voodoo bonfire.

"We burned it because anything that was created during the Aristide
government has to be destroyed," said the Rev. Vladimir Jeanty, a
well-dressed religious fanatic and founder of the Haitian Party of God.

"This is a sad day for Haitian culture," said Haiti's acting culture
minister, Leslie Voltaire. The exhibit opened Jan. 1 to commemorate the
country's 200th anniversary of independence and had been widely acclaimed
as the country's first major showcasing of Haitian voodoo art, including
unique works by a deceased voodoo houngan (priest), Pierre Barra.

"Haiti is a country of life and art. They cannot destroy life or art," said
Voltaire, whose distraught wife organized the exhibit.

But the rebels appear to care little about either. Their chief stated goal
is the reconstitution of the country's notorious armed forces, disbanded by
Aristide. Dissolving the Haitian military was one of Aristide's chief
accomplishments after he was restored to power by U.S. troops in 1994. It
was replaced by a new, U.S.-trained civilian police force, which was later
undermined by political squabbling and corruption.

Philippe, who quit the police in October 2000 to go into exile, now plans
to turn the clock back. Tuesday, he virtually ordered the country's new
president, Supreme Court chief justice Boniface Alexandre, to reinstate the
armed forces, claiming its demobilization by Aristide had been
unconstitutional.

In a thinly veiled threat, he advised Alexandre to heed his words,
otherwise, "the people of Haiti will speak to him the way they spoke to
Aristide."