Anti-Aristide forces grow stronger
A humanitarian convoy was expected to leave yesterday from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, for St Marc, a northern port city where rebels burned the police station and torched a clinic. The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross would lead the convoy, officials said.
Rebel roadblocks have halted most food and fuel shipments since the unrest began. Emergency supplies of flour, cooking oil and other basics are projected to run out in days in northern areas, where roadblocks are guarded by rebels.
The rebels launched a rebellion on February 5 from Gonaives, 70 miles northwest of Port-au-Prince. Although the rebels are thought to number less than Haiti’s 5,000-member police force, exiled paramilitary leaders and police have reportedly joined them.
One of those reportedly is Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a former Haitian soldier who headed army death squads in 1987 and a militia known as the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, or FRAPH. The group allegedly killed and maimed hundreds of people between 1991 and 1994.
Several people in Gonaives said they saw Chamblain, who fled to the Dominican Republic in the mid-’90s. Also spotted was Guy Philippe, a former police chief who fled to the Dominican Republic after being accused by the Haitian government of fomenting a coup in 2002.
In the video, Philippe appears laughing while surrounded by a handful of rebels on Saturday.
Meanwhile in Jamaica, police detained 10 Haitians, including eight police officers, who arrived on Saturday by boat on the eastern shore requesting asylum. Police seized eight guns and ammunition. Immigration authorities were reviewing their asylum requests.
Opposition politicians refuse to participate in new elections unless Aristide steps down, and the rebels say they will lay down their weapons only when he is ousted.
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