Concernant les révisionistes qui tentent de réhabiliter le régime des Duvalier père et fils, un message de Max Blanchet

Publié par Elsie HAAS sur 13 Avril 2007, 13:48pm

Catégories : #DUVALIER

A number of folks have in recent weeks attempted to rehabilitate the Duvalier regime in various publications that appeared on the Web.

Those tempted by their arguments should ponder the statement issued by The International Commission of Jurists in 1963. I translated it from the French original years ago.
Max Blanchet

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INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF JURISTS
2, Quai du Cheval-Blanc, Geneva, Switzerland
August 5, 1963

Press Release

The socio-political Situation in Haiti

The International Commission of Jurists appeals to all individuals capable of providing a personal and direct testimony or unpublished documents on the current situation in Haiti, and invites them to make themselves known to its General Secretariat, 2, Quai du Cheval-Blanc, in Geneva, Switzerland.

The tension that emerged at the end of April between the Dominican Republic and the Republic of Haiti has, for the first time in many years, brought to the attention of the public a country that had kept until now a low profile. It is a fact that the Republic of Haiti, geographically located between countries in which prevailed the dictatorships of Fulgencio Batista and Rafaël Trujillo, has lived for almost 6 years under a dictatorship at least as tyrannical and
bloodthirsty.

The International Commission of Jurists had not waited for these recent events to turn its attention to Haiti. Last year, it began to collect first-hand testimonies and documents on the socio-political situation in this country. It became clear based on these first elements of information that human rights and fundamental liberties were totally ignored by the Government of President François Duvalier. The Commission wanted, however, before passing judgment on the regime, to check its documentation through an inquiry in the country. Towards that end, the President of the Commission sent on April 11, 1963, a personal letter to President Duvalier, asking him to authorize the sending of a group of observers to Haiti who would gather information on the situation. Not
having received a response to this letter, Mr. Bose restated its contents in a telegram to President Duvalier dated May 30 1963, and in a letter dated July 11, 1963. These new démarches did not get an answer either. The President of the Republic of Haiti having thus willingly rejected the opportunity offered to him to meet with qualified and impartial observers and to put aside possible misunderstandings, the International Commission of Jurists deems it proper to comment on the information that has come to its attention.

Socio-economic conditions

We do not intend to dwell on the socio-economic conditions in which more than 4 million Haitians live: suffice it for us to recall a few facts and statistics widely disseminated by the media in recent weeks.
The Republic of Haiti has received since 1954 from the United States financial aid estimated to be 53 million dollars and loans from the United Nations amounting to 15 million dollars. In spite of this assistance, which is considerable when compared to the annual budget of the order of 28 million dollars, the economy of the country is shrinking and the standard of living continues to fall. The annual per capita income is one of the lowest in the world: $75.00, while the average for Latin America as a whole is $307.00. Illiteracy is approximately 90%, one of the highest rates in the world; and infant mortalityapproximately 50%.

Political institutions

We do not want to dwell too long on the structure of political institutions. Let us simply recall that following the period of troubles that prevailed after the end of President Magloire's mandate in December 1956, Doctor François Duvalier was elected, or more exactly put in power with the assistance of the Army in October 1957. The two chambers of Parliament, invested with the power to change the constitution, adopted in December 1957 a new constitution to replace the constitution of 1950, but retained its main features: bi-cameralism and the preeminence of the presidency. In April 1961, President Duvalier decreed the dissolution of the National Assembly and the Senate and modified unilaterally the constitution by instituting a single chamber called the Legislative
Assembly. The term of the President itself was scheduled to end on May 15, 1963. We know what infantile stratagem Doctor Duvalier used to maintain himself in power: at the end of April 1961, the election of the Legislative Assembly took place; there was only one candidate - the candidate of the party in power - for each seat; the President had his name printed on each ballot, right above the name of the candidate running for the indicated seat; at the moment of counting the ballots, the government proclaimed that the presence of the President's name on each and every ballot cast was proof of the electorate's will to reelect Doctor François Duvalier for a new 6-year period starting on May 15 1963. As that date became nearer, many foreign observers wondered how events would unfold; they wondered if such a shameless violation of the constitution would not provoke a strong reaction on the part of the opposition; but, President Duvalier had at his disposal the means that we will examine below to keep the opposition at bay and he was able to defy Haitian and foreign public opinion by declaring himself reelectedfor a new term.

We need to take a closer look at the system put in place by President Duvalier in order to bring the 4 million Haitian nationals to the most absolute subjection.

The constitution voted in December 1957, like the previous constitution of 1950, is patterned after the most authentic of democracies. It involves a declaration of individual rights and fundamental liberties, provides for the election of the president and of the chambers by the people and sets up a judicious equilibrium among the branches of government. In fact, the state of emergency proclaimed at the beginning of 1958, has been prolonged ever since without interruption, thereby bringing about the "suspension" of constitutional
guarantees. The President has obtained, first from the two chambers and next from the unique Legislative Assembly, the broadest powers to enable him to govern by decree. The only legislative election to have taken place under the new regime, namely the elections of April 1961, was a farce, the candidates of the so-called "democratic" party, that is to say the party of the government, being the only ones authorized to compete for the 58 seats to be filled. The separation of the branches of government is a constitutional fiction, the reality being the concentration of all instruments of coercion in the hands of the head of state.

Individual liberties

We will see further below, when we deal with the role of the police in the Haitian State, the fate reserved for the most fundamental of rights, the right the Universal Declaration defines in Article 3 as the right any individual has "to life, liberty and personal safety."

The freedom to come and go must involve, according to the terms of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration, the right for any individual to "leave any country, including his or her own, and to return to his or her own country." Haitian law violates this principle on both counts because a Haitian national a) cannot leave Haitian territory without an exit visa; b) once outside, cannot return without an entry visa. This provision is all the more paradoxical since nationals of many countries such as the United States, United Kingdom and France enter Haiti without a visa and can leave without any formality. Furthermore, this provision is applied with extreme rigor: requests for visas remain unanswered for many months in the files of the Police and to the extent the same procedure is applied to requests for entry visas, any trip abroad
becomes an adventure whose developments are unpredictable.

The freedom of conscience and of religion consecrated by Article 18 of the Universal Declaration implies that Catholic Church, to which belongs the population almost in its entirety, has the right to exercise its ministry "through teachings, practices, worship, and the implementation of its rites." In fact, President Duvalier saw the Church as the only organized body capable of resisting him and has multiplied the persecutions targeting the bishops. The first victim was Monsignor François Poirier, Archbishop of Port-au-Prince, a French national, who one day witnessed the invasion of his residence by a heavily armed police contingent and was, without warning or courtesy, taken to the airport and shipped out of the country in the first plane to leave the country. His assistant, Monsignor Rémy Augustin, first bishop of Haitian nationality, experienced the same fate a few months later as he was expelled from the country in the company of four other catholic priests.
The Catholic newspaper La Phalange, which was the most important daily newspaper in the country, was seized on order of the President in January 1961, and its editor in chief, a priest of British extraction, expelled. The violence of these persecutions have prompted the Holy See to excommunicate President Duvalier who, nonetheless, continues to attend the more important functions of the Church.

Freedom of the press is practically nonexistent, even though no legal text exists that provides for any sort of restriction or censure. In spite of this lack of legal means, the government has at its disposal sufficient material means to bring to an end at its sole discretion the publication of any periodical: it has in fact used such means to wipe out any velleity to criticize or to oppose. We saw that the daily La Phalange was confiscated. The offices of the newspaper Le Patriote were blown up in broad daylight and its editor in chief mistreated by the police. The offices of the newspapers Indépendance, Haïti-Miroir, Mopisme Intégral, were ransacked by the police and many of their contributors arrested. Lastly, in spite all the government's efforts to cover up the scandal, the foreign press disclosed the facts surrounding the Madame Yvonne Hakim Rimpel affair - Mrs. Rimpel was the editor of the women's weekly Escale - including her kidnapping at night from her home by the militia, her raping by her kidnappers in the presence of her grand daughter, her torturing and her abandonment in the belief she was dead on the outskirt of town. In addition, the government distributes to the docile newspapers the generous subsidies without which they could not survive.

The freedom to form and join unions, consecrated in Article 23 (4) of the Universal Declaration, disappeared upon the rise to power of Doctor Duvalier. The most important union of the time, the National Union of Haitian Workers, affiliated to the International Confederation of Christian Unions, was dissolved and its archives confiscated. Sometime later, the government tried to set up under the same name an organization over which it had complete control. The International Confederation refused to recognize it and instead accepted the affiliation of a new union created in exile by former leaders of the National Union who had fled to New York. Of the two main leaders, one, Dacius Benoît was arrested, tortured, and killed; the other, Lyderic Bonaventure, escaped miraculously to an attempt on his life and today
lives in exile in New-York.

Political rights

Political rights inscribed in the constitution are practically nonexistent: what does the right to vote mean when only one candidate supported by the government is offered per seat to the choice of the electorate? What does the election of representative assemblies mean when they are drained of all of their powers to the benefit of an self-appointed head of state?

Only freely organized parties could constitute an opposition. In Haiti, the only party with a legal existence is the "democratic" party of the President. The communist party has been banned since 1936. The mildly progressive Democratic National Union has brought together segments of the opposition underground but the brutal repression in fact makes it impossible for it to carry out any activity.

The equilibrium among the branches

The Legislative assembly has given up the totality of its prerogatives to the benefit of the executive branch through the process of delegating its powers. Only the judiciary branch could act as a counterweight to the executive. In fact, nothing of the sort is taking place and President Duvalier has succeeded in reducing the courts as well as the lawyers to a state of complete subjection.

A) The judiciary

In the Haitian judicial system, the nomination of the magistrates is the responsibility of the executive, in fact of the President of the Republic, because the Minister of Justice is himself a tool. The only prerequisite is a law degree, a university title with little value. There is no test or entrance examination and no institution such as the Superior Council of Magistrates or the Judicial Commission in certain English-speaking countries, whose intervention in the selection process puts a break on the arbitrariness of the executive. In similar fashion, the promotion of magistrates is left entirely to the discretion of the head of state: this is a most important matter given the hierarchical nature of the judicial organization which include a court of cassation (the highest court), four appellate courts, 11 middle tribunals (de première instance) and tens of lower courts. In recent years, the government has instituted the practice whereby magistrates are forced to sign a letter of resignation with the date left out as a means of keeping them more tightly under control.

Armed with these powers, President Duvalier carried out a purge of the judiciary. Many advisors to the highest court were dismissed, notably Messrs. Théodore Nicoleau and Emile Saint Clair. In 1959, the head of state attended the official ceremony inaugurating the new judicial year; in his speech, the president of the highest court had the temerity to stress the necessity to have an independent judiciary; he was quickly dismissed. His successor is no doubt more docile for after the "reelection" of Doctor Duvalier, he declared publicly and officially that the whole operation was perfectly proper in the perspective of the law and the constitution! It is well known today that most magistrates, especially at the higher levels, are completely subservient to the
government.

B) Lawyers

The legal profession is patterned after the French model, the lawyers practicing at a tribunal or an appellate court forming an independent "barreau" which elects its own head. In theory, such an individual (bâtonnier) is freely elected. In fact, in 1961, lawyers in Port-au-Prince elected to that position one of their members known for his integrity and independence. At the behest of the government, the highest court annulled the election and maintained in this function the previous head whose term was about to end after he made to the
government all the necessary pledges. As for lawyers who would not yield to the government's tyranny, we will see below the means used by the government to break their resistance.

The Police

One might have noted that in our very rapid survey of the judicial system, we did not mention the existence of any special military or political laws or administrative detention procedures. The absence of such laws or procedure is not a sign of liberalism, far from it! It simply means that the government has given itself more reliable and expeditious means to get rid of its enemies. This comment brings us to the examination of the institution which is the linchpin of the Haitian political system: the police.

In Latin America, it is a common occurrence for authoritarian regimes to rely on the support of the army. As a matter of fact we saw that in 1957 Doctor Duvalier was elected thanks to the very strong backing of the army. He no doubt felt that the institution that had brought him to power could become a danger: in recent years, one of the major thrusts of his policies has been to dismantle the army and to deprive it of its resources in men, equipment and finance to the benefit of the police. The army has been reduced to approximately 5,000 men. The president has changed the high command on 5 occasions, closed the military academy, and dismissed many officers in order to replace them with more pliable individuals. Equipment, guns and ammunitions are distributed to the military with parsimony, the bulk of the resources
being reserved for the police.

The segments of the police that report to the President and only to the President are three in number: (a) the presidential guard, about 500 men in all, which provides security to the national palace; (b) the militia which numbers, it is estimated, about 8,000 men who wear a blue uniform; (c) and the most fearsome element, a king of parallel or secret police, without uniform, whose size is not exactly known but is estimated to involve several thousands men, and whose upkeep costs are hidden in fictitious budgetary accounts: we are talking about the legendary tontons macoutes, many of whom are recruited among common criminals. It is estimated that it takes about 15 million dollars to run these various elements of the police, or a little more than half the budget. It is estimated that the United States has provided more than one million dollars in arms and ammunitions to equip the Haitian army, but that these arms and ammunitions were in fact given to the militia and the tontons macoutes.

The methods of the police are simple. In civilized countries, the police cannot interfere with the life, freedom and property of citizens without the approval or control of the judiciary. In special periods, one admits (while deploring it) that certain organs of the executive, albeit at a very high level, can take the decision to arrest and detain without prior judiciary approval: this is administrative detention that one strives to contain with certain controls and guarantees. In Haiti, things are less complicated: militia and secret police agents have carte blanche to arrest, jail, question, torture, and kill any citizen without a written order. They can act, not only on the basis of orders from superior authority, but of their own volition, which means they can practically on the basis of their whims dispose of the life, freedom and property of their fellow-citizens. One will not see in Haiti spectacular political trials: things happen more discretely and those who have the misfortune to be targeted as adversaries of the regime or simply as suspects vanish without traces. Given the practical impossibility of establishing the exact number of such disappearances, one estimates that several hundreds were the victims of summary executions.

The International Commission of Jurists can give a few precise examples of police action on the basis of first-hand testimonies from trustworthy individuals.

Among political personalities at the highest level, we will mention Mr. Clément Jumelle, who ran against Doctor Duvalier for the presidency in the election of 1957; hounded by the police and wounded, he took refuge in the Embassy of Cuba where he died of his wounds; while his family was taking his coffin to the cemetery, the cortège was broken up by the police who confiscated the body and buried it in an unknown place. Two brothers of the victim, Messrs. Ducasse and Charles Jumelle, were themselves machine gunned to death by the militia on August 30, 1958; the first had been minister of the interior and justice and was a well-known lawyer. The fourth brother Gaston Jumelle and their four
sisters were arrested and spent many months in jail. In October 1959, six senators were dismissed; 5 of them succeeded in finding refuge in the Embassy of Mexico and leaving the country later; the sixth, Mr. Yvon Emmanuel Moreau, was arrested and simply vanished. The Port-au-Prince barreau was very hard hit. Among the victims of the militia and the tontons macoutes, we mention the names of Maître Clairveaux Rateau, who disappeared in 1959; Maître Emile Cauvin, former bâtonnier and considered the first lawyer of Port-au-Prince, who was arrested in his home in April 1961 and never been seen since; Maître Emile Noël, shot dead by the police; Joseph Pierre Victor, who disappeared the morning after he had defended in court the Banque de Colombie against a member of the militia. Let us mention also, among those killed or those who
vanished after their arrest, Doctor Georges Rigaud, Doctor Watson Telson, former Senator Frank Legendre, Messrs. Antoine Templier, Yvon Martin, Louis Charles, Anthony Roland, Antoine Marcel, Télémaque Guerrier, Augustin Clitandre, Francisque Joseph, Luc André, and many more. Let us mention the poet Jacques Stephen Alexis, arrested in April 1961 and about whom we are without news since, and the young Eric Brière, aged 17, who was tortured to death by the head of the tontons macoutes inside the national palace. At the beginning of this year, about 20 young men were arrested for having scribbled on walls graffiti alleged to be subversive; two or three weeks after their arrest, we knew that 8 of them had been killed in jail and we had no news of the others.

We would need to mention the many cases involving people arrested without reason, jailed, mistreated or tortured and released only after many months in detention. Many were paying for having involuntarily bumped into a militiaman in a crowd, or having passed the car of a police officer. Many lawyers also were rewarded with many weeks or months in jail for their independence judged to be too bold; many bear the indelible marks of the torture they were subjected to. We need to mention the abominable conditions experienced by "suspects" in
detention: for the police has its own jails which are not under any supervision. We would need to mention those expelled from the country and who managed to survive as a result. This is the case of Senator Jean David, who in June 1959 had raised in session disturbing questions about public finances: he was immediately arrested, taken to the airport by an armed escort of 20 militiamen and expelled on the first plane to leave the country without seeing his family. In September 1959, the Senators Jean Bélizaire, Luc Stéphen, Jules Larrieux and Thomas Désulmé were dismissed from the Senate. Sensing they were in danger, they took refuge in the Mexican Embassy where they stayed 4 months before they could leave the country. Many prominent jurists were forced to go into exile: among them, Maître Emile Saint Lot, former dean of the Law School,
Maître Luc Fouché, Maître Alphonse Esmangart and Maître Joseph Dejean,
former ambassador to London.

Let us note that the all-powerful police is not afraid to take on foreigners. A Frenchman, a member of the UN aid mission in Haiti, was attacked and seriously wounded by the tontons macoutes. The British ambassadors Simmons and Corley-Smith were practically expelled in insulting manner.

Extortion of funds

To conclude, we will mention the means developed by the President to secure, with the assistance of the police, extra budgetary resources. Towards that end, he has created two organizations. One is the office of "Economic Liberation" which forces mostly middle-class people, state employees and employees of the private sector, to buy "on a voluntary basis" treasury bonds and tickets of the national lottery. The other is the "Movement for National Renovation," (MRN in French) whose direction was entrusted to the chief of the tontons macoutes, Luckner Cambronne. MRN is supposed to manage a fund with which to finance public works of a general interest, the most important of which would be the construction of a modern city to be called Duvalierville, but whose construction has been stopped for more than a year. The most important task is to keep feeding MRN's coffers. For this, Luckner Cambronne and his men have carte blanche. Transformed into tax collectors, they tax at their sole discretion businessmen and merchants: such people regularly receive the visit of armed policemen who extort voluntary contributions which can be as high as many hundreds of dollars. A consul of a European country had his diplomatic status stripped for having refused to contribute 5,000 dollars. A group of Italian businessmen was recently summoned to police headquarters and asked to give 10,000 dollars. MRN has installed tolling stations on certain roads and has gone as far as taxing Vodou ceremonies. It is estimated that MRN brings in on average 10 million dollars yearly to be used in theory for development projects. But these being purely fictitious, it is easy to imagine the ultimate fate of the
MRN funds.

This element underlines the special character of the dictatorship of President Duvalier. There are in today's world many authoritarian regimes. Generally, these regimes serve an ideology. The abominable tyranny that crushes in Haiti does not even have the excuse of being at the service of an idea; its only objective is to force the country to pay regular contributions to insure the future of those currently in power.

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The International Commission of Jurists will continue to monitor with the greatest of care events in Haiti, and will endeavor to complete its documentation with the information that will come to it, notably in response to the appeal that appears at the beginning of this press release.

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The International Commission of Jurists is an apolitical NGO who has consulting status (Category B) vis-à-vis the UN's Social and Economic Council. It represents 40,000 jurists, magistrates and law professors in more than 60 countries. Its main goal is to define, sustain and promote the progress through practical action of the Principle of Legality and to help implement it in its practical applications - institutions, legislation and procedures - in countries where it is recognized, and to get it accepted where it is not yet recognized.

The Commission has published, in addition to its regular publications, special reports relating to the Primacy of Law in South Africa, Cuba, Spain, Tibet and Hungary. It has sent observers to Spain, Portugal, South Africa, Cuba, Ethiopia, Israel, Turkey, Berlin and the Dominican Republic as well as to other countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe.