Word: haitianize
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...government-owned TV station has repeatedly flashed a message across the screen: I WILL ONLY SURRENDER THIS TOWN WHEN IT IS REDUCED TO ASHES, AND WHEN IT IS REDUCED TO ASHES, I WILL CONTINUE TO FIGHT. The quote is well known, the pledge of an early 19th century Haitian revolutionary leader to fight French colonists. But most Haitians understood the history lesson to be a warning that Namphy's junta would keep attempting to ensure its own survival. Said a Haitian businessman: "No one doubts now that the military is prepared to go to any extreme to retain power...
According to a former Haitian army officer who now lives in Miami, the real strongman is not Namphy, but Colonel Jean-Claude Paul, commander of an infantry battalion that includes more than 700 soldiers and armed civilians. The officer claims that without Paul's cooperation, military and paramilitary forces could not have aborted the balloting. Paul is known to have a close working relationship with Claude Raymond, a former general whose presidential campaign was crushed when the electoral council disqualified twelve candidates, citing the new constitution's widely popular ten-year ban on Duvalierists seeking public office...
Allegations surfaced last week that the Namphy government was far more interested in disciplining the vigilante groups than in curbing the thugs. A distraught 19-year-old Haitian woman told the San Francisco Examiner that one day before the election soldiers swept Carrefour-Feuilles, a hillside slum south of the capital, rounding up alleged vigilantes. At the Fort Dimanche military prison, she charged, men in uniform shot and bayoneted to death 46 of her cellmates. The woman claimed that only she and two other women were spared. Namphy's government denied the report, but human-rights groups are urging Amnesty...
...Haitian opposition, factious even in the best of times, is divided over what steps should be taken to achieve that goal. Some are advocating a boycott of any government-sponsored elections. Three trade unions have called for a general strike to begin this week. Many Haitians, even staunch nationalists in the slums and the posh capital suburbs, are calling for foreign intervention of some sort. A few are counseling insurrection. Says Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, 34, a firebrand priest popular with the poor: "There is only one avenue to take, and that is revolution...
That hardly silenced advocates of intervention. Representative Walter Fauntroy, a District of Columbia Democrat, called for an international peace- keeping force to protect Haitian voters. He was joined by Sylvio Claude, a Haitian presidential candidate who was one of the front runners. Dante Fascell of Florida, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the U.S. should provide military support as a last resort if Namphy's foes request...