Violent Reprisals In Haiti

Rock-throwing militants of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide set flaming barricades and stoned people trying to protest Thursday, forcing organizers to cancel a mass march against Haiti's leader.

The clash came a day after Aristide vowed to retain power and defy a bloody and popular uprising that has affected a dozen provincial towns and left 49 dead.

"We don't want confrontation," opposition coalition spokesman Mischa Gaillard said on independent Radio Metropole.

"The police have not done their duty to serve and protect," he charged. "Since our strategy is a peaceful one … we have cancelled the demonstration."

Critics at home and abroad, including the U.S. government, have accused Aristide of blocking similar demonstrations and, despite his protestations against violence, inciting police and his supporters to attack opponents.

The U.S. government may be signaling that it would not be opposed to Aristide's overthrow, reports The New York Times. On Tuesday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said a solution to the crisis is "going to involve some rather thorough going reforms in the way that the government is run out there, the way that Haiti is governed."

A senior State Department official told The Times, "When we talk about undergoing change in the way Haiti is governed, I think that could indeed involve changes in Aristide's position."

Aristide on Wednesday accused his opponents of being behind the bloody uprising led in provincial towns by a former criminal gang and disgruntled ex-soldiers of the disbanded Haitian army, dismissing the opposition Democratic Platform's renunciation of all violence and attempts to distance itself from the revolt.

"They suffer from a small group of thugs … acting on behalf of the opposition," Aristide said at his first news conference since the uprising erupted Thursday.

Haiti's leader insisted "I will leave the palace Feb. 7, 2006," when his term ends. He did not address how he planned to put down the insurrection. His officials have said to prevent civilian casualties, any counterattacks must be part of a strategy that could take time to plan.

The same rebels who started the revolt say they were armed by Aristide's party to terrorize his opponents in Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city, which remained in rebel hands a week later.

Winter Etienne, a leader of the rebel Gonaives Resistance Front, said Wednesday they were taking their battle to other cities.

"We already have a force hiding in St. Marc, and we also have one hiding in Cap-Haitien. They are awaiting the orders to attack," Etienne told The Associated Press.

But it appeared police backed by gunmen loyal to Aristide have reinforced their control in St. Marc, an important port city 45 miles west of the capital.

Rebel leader Charles Nord Thompson, told Radio Vision 2000 on Thursday morning that he could account for only 10 of some 100 members who seized the city on Saturday, indicating the vast majority had fled.

On Wednesday, witnesses said, police entered the slum stronghold where rebels were holed up, shooting to provide cover for Aristide militants who then set ablaze five houses and fired at fleeing residents.

Reporters saw the charred remains of one of two people witnesses said burned to death, and the bodies of three people apparently shot in the back.

Rebels perpetrated similar reprisals Wednesday in Gonaives, burning to death a man accused of being an Aristide hitman in the "necklacing" style by putting a tire over his head, dousing him with gasoline and setting him aflame.

It's a form of assassination that Aristide once encouraged during the popular uprising that led to the downfall of the 29-year Duvalier family dictatorship in 1989 and his rise to power.

Haiti has suffered more than 30 coups in 200 years of independence, the last in 1991 when Aristide was ousted just months after his election as the Caribbean nation's first freely elected leader.

President Clinton sent 20,000 U.S. troops in 1994 to end a military dictatorship, restore Aristide and halt an exodus of Haitian boat people.

U.S. officials say they now are on alert against any new exodus set off by the uprising.

"We are extremely concerned about the wave of violence spreading through Haiti," Scott McClellan, press secretary to U.S. President George W. Bush, said Wednesday. "We call on the government to respect the rights, especially human rights, of the citizens."

Aristide's popularity has waned since his party swept flawed 2000 legislative elections and international donors froze millions of aid dollars.

Haiti's opposition and foreign donors claimed that 10 seats in Haiti's 27-member Senate were illegally decided in a first round of voting, rather than going to a second round, because the votes were tallied using an incorrect formula. Aristide's party won those and most other legislative seats.

The elections had initially been described as fair.

The resulting aid freeze meant Aristide has been unable to keep his election promise of "peace of mind, peace in the belly."

Misery has deepened for the already poverty-stricken nation of 8 million while a new elite of government "gran manje" or "fat cats" outrage people with lavish lifestyles attributed to corruption.

In Haiti's second largest city, the northern port of Cap-Haitien, Aristide militants manned fiery barricades to block any rebel incursion and fired shots throughout the night.

The house of a reporter for Radio Maxima, the voice of the opposition in Cap-Haitien, was torched overnight, witnesses said. Radio Maxima was shut down Dec. 17 by police who smashed and shot up equipment.

The World Food Program has warned of a looming humanitarian crisis in northern Haiti because food trucks cannot get through barricades blocking the main road from Port-au-Prince to Cap-Haitien at Gonaives.

Cap-Haitien has been without electricity since Sunday for lack of fuel to power generators and food prices in Gonaives have shot up because of the roadblocks.