Who Let 'Baby Doc' Duvalier Back into Haiti?
Jean-Claude Duvalier, the former Haitian leader known as 'Baby Doc', makes his way through the Karibe Hotel in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 16, 2011
(See pictures of Haiti's cholera outbreak.)
All the country needed now was the return of a brutal exiled dictator.
This being Haiti, whose chronic tragedy is so often served with a helping of banana-republic bizarreness, that's what it got Sunday afternoon when Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier landed in Port-au-Prince for the first time since being thrown out of the country and packed off to France almost 25 years ago. "I came to help my country," the 59-year-old former despot declared as some 2,000 of his supporters met him at the airport. But it's hard to imagine how Duvalier's reappearance, which Haitian officials insist took them by surprise, could do anything more than throw Haiti into even deeper turmoil as it tries to rebuild after last year's disaster.(See TIME's exclusive pictures from the Haiti earthquake.)
And what's perhaps even harder to imagine is how the government of French President Nicolas Sarkozy could have allowed Duvalier, who arrived from Paris, to board an Air France flight bound for Haiti under the current circumstances. "For the French to have even permitted [Duvalier] to leave their territory amidst an electoral and cholera crisis here shows they have not much interest in the welfare of the Haitian people," says a high-ranking Haitian government official.
French officials, who technically had no power to stop Duvalier, weren't responding to that question on Sunday night. But Port-au-Prince media were rife with conflicting conspiracy theories — all of them focused on last week's election report by the Organization of American States (OAS). It concluded that Jude Célestin, the candidate of Haitian President René Préval's party, actually finished third, not second, in the first-round balloting on Nov. 28, and that Célestin should therefore not be eligible for a runoff vote — which, ironically, was originally supposed to have been held Sunday but has been postponed.(See TIME's photo-essay "Haiti One Year Later.")
The less-than-credible Nov. 28 results, which many if not most Haitians believe the government fixed to eke out a runoff spot for Célestin, were met by violent street protests last month. Even before last week's OAS report, the aloof and unpopular Préval was under ample international pressure, including from the U.S., to recognize the official third-place finisher, Michel Martelly, as the actual runner-up. (He would then face first-place candidate Mirlande Manigat in the runoff.) Last week, France's ambassador to Haiti, Didier Le Bret, was frequently on Haitian radio calling on Préval to respect the OAS recommendation. Préval in turn angrily charged France and the international community with imperialist-style strong-arming.
The question now is, Who if anyone in this standoff benefits from the sudden presence of Duvalier? Some Haitian pundits on Sunday said it might be meant to compel Préval to acquiesce to international demands to sacrifice Célestin. But it's hard to believe, even under Sarkozy, that France and the international community would stoop so low diplomatically as to encourage Duvalier to return to Haiti for that purpose. Others suggested that Duvalier's return instead gives Préval leverage by showing the international powers how much more turbulent things can get if they keep messing with the Haitian President. But again, could even Préval be cynical enough to open the door to one of the 20th century's most notorious dictators for that kind of political gain? Either way, sources close to Duvalier told reporters Sunday that he'd entered Haiti on a diplomatic passport — but if so, it was unclear which country had issued it to him.(See the early days of Baby Doc's life in exile in France.)
What's worse, this drama could actually send many Haitians, albeit with blinders on, to the side of Duvalier, whose stunning return might make him seem a figure of stability and order amid their country's nightmarish uncertainties. Baby Doc had already announced his desire to return to Haiti in 2004, after the ouster of populist President Jean-Bertrand Aristide (whose supporters may now clamor more loudly for his own return from exile in South Africa). Duvalier even said he wanted to run for President himself in the 2006 elections. But Haitian officials made it clear that if Duvalier did return, he'd face trial on charges of corruption and brutality during his 15-year dictatorship, which had succeeded the even harsher regime of his father, François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, who died in 1971.(See the death and legacy of Papa Doc Duvalier.)
Both Papa Doc and Baby Doc ruled through terror, relying on bloodthirsty enforcers like the Tonton Macoutes, and each stole the western hemisphere's poorest nation blind. After Baby Doc and his infamously venal wife, Michèle Bennett, were whisked out of Haiti in February of 1986 on a U.S. Air Force plane amid a seething uprising by Haitians, they settled in the south of France and lived in one of the world's most luxurious exiles. (They divorced in 1993; Duvalier arrived in Port-au-Prince on Sunday with his new wife, Véronique Roy, the granddaughter of a former Haitian President.)(Comment on this story.)
Baby Doc apologized for his government's "errors" in 2004. But despite the welcome he received at the Port-au-Prince airport, Haitian police officials said they were "waiting for instructions from prosecutors" as to whether they should arrest him. After stepping off his Air France flight on Sunday, Duvalier declared, "I am here to see how the situation is." Please. He already knew how bad the situation was. And just as he and his monstrous father did when they ruled Haiti, he's there to make it worse.
— With reporting by Jessica Desvarieux / Port-au-Prince
From TIME's archive: a visit with the 20-year-old "President for Life" of Haiti.
Read "Haiti's Quake, One Year Later: It's the Rubble, Stupid!"
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2042762,00.html#ixzz1BM5dBamm
>via: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2042762,00.html
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Posted on 17. Jan, 2011 by Ezili Dantò in Blog
Ezili Dantò’s Note on the arrival ofJean Claude Duvalier into Haiti today
Bay kou blye, pote mak sonje – the one who gives the blow, forgets. The one who bears the mark remembers: Over 60,000and some say as high as nearly 100,000 Haitians were murdered under the bloody US-supported Duvalier (father/son) dictatorships from 1957 to 1986. Browse the galleries of the Fort Dimanche website for stories and pictures of the dead — those political prisoners who were imprisoned, tortured and killed at Fort Dimanche“Throughout the blood-drenched rule of the Duvaliers (nearly 100,000 killed by the Tontons Macoutes alone), the US barely uttered a peep about human rights violations. In 1986, however, when it became apparent that Baby Doc’s presidency could not in fact be sustained for his entire life (unless he died soon), the Reagan administration airlifted him to a retirement villa in France and started talking about the “democratic process.” ( From The CIAs Greatest Hits, by Mark Zepezauer.”)
Why would the world’s most powerful nation, the United States, allow this?
Well, their pillage of poor Haiti is butt-naked right now. At the one-year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, even the conservative media is talking about the failure of US aid, the UN and the NGO poverty pimping business in Haiti. Thus, the UN, as US proxy, needs to justify its job in Haiti. These folks think of us-Haitians as simplistic animals, so why not set up what’s worked for them in other parts of the world? The bringing back of Jean Claude Duvalier, Haiti’s bloody dictator, is, in their plantation minds, sort of like setting up a Hutu/Tusti thing (Duvalier/Lavalas), a civil war in Haiti, an insecurity to bring “order” to.
Bill Clinton, the poverty-pimp-NGOs, the repugnant UN and the foreign-imposed-IHRC need to distract the world from the donation dollars that’s being pocketed or not collected, so hey, let’s rack up the colonial narrative – remind everyone of those “anti-democratic Haitians not ready for the same standards” as the rest of the “civilized” world. Those infighting, violent, illogical Haitians in love with dictatorship! Why not set up the chess board, right before Feb. 7th – the 25th anniversary of the ouster of Jean Claude Duvalier, bring him back to push the two OAS/Duvalierist candidates – Manigat and Martelly (Sweet Mickey), so everyone can forget about the masses wishes, their total disenfranchisement, the 300,000 dead in 33 seconds and those 1.5million still homeless without sanitation, shelter, clean water; the return of President Aristide; the international fraud since 2004; these imposed UN/US elections. and the UN-imported cholera…We’re just puppets the International community , led by the U.S., are moving around their own battlefield. Haiti is not in control. Haitians are not in control. Air France and American Airlines can land anyone in Haiti.
If Air-France wanted to bring in Osama bin Laden into Haiti, how could Haitians stop it? Still, we-Haitians will be blamed, as usual, for all the outrageous acts the wealthy powers-that-be do in Haiti. The “Friends of Haiti” continue with their macabre plan to further destabilize and exacerbate Haiti’s already agonizing sufferings.
But it’s our fault also, we-Haitians sit around reacting, waiting for THEM to act so we can react. Waiting for the OAS to tell us it didn’t make a mistake and the not fair, not free, non-inclusive Nov. 28 elections it helped orchestrate is not toofraudulent and illegal. HLLN wanted to go to Haiti and make a public statement about the fraudulent elections, we could not get any real support. It’s their play and their game, we’re just consumers of this abomination!
Thank you for this “change” President Barack Obama!
Ezili Dantò for HLLN,
January 16, 2011
Nou se rozo, nou pliye nou pa kase
*Nou se roz, nou pliye nou pa kase: Strong winds may bend the bamboo tree all the way down to the ground, but it snaps right back up. It doesn’t break, no matter how strong the wind. So, Haitians have a saying – “Nou se rozo. Nou pliye, nou pa kase “ – like the bamboo tree, we bend but we don’t break; like the flexible ba mboo tree we-Haitians use even the momentum of our falls to stand back up.
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>via: http://www.ezilidanto.com/zili/2011/01/obamas-change-in-haiti-the-return-of-d...