589-636. Defying the widespread opposition and pressing need for other development projects, Haitian President Michel Martelly is pressing ahead with a plan to recreate Haiti's military, which has a dark legacy of repression in the Caribbean country. 1987 (July 23): Event known in collective memory as the Jean-Rabel massacre. In the vicinity of Jean-Rabel (in the Northwest of the country), paramilitary groups led by macoutesand acting upon orders from a local land oligarch, Rmy Lucas, killed at least 139 peasants (300 according to various human rights groups and the OAS, and 1,042 according to Nicol Poitevien, one of the self-proclaimed assassins). Dolo k tomu v roce 1959 po pokusu tradin mulatsk elity a armdnch piek legln zvolenho prezidenta Duvaliera svrhnout. _ * (Pierre-Charles, 1973: 38 and 44; Leconte, 1999: 38). La Droute de lintelligence, Le Natal, Port-au-Prince, 1992. Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (ICHR), Annual Report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 1988-1989, Washington, D.C., 1990. [8], The Mayor of Port-au-Prince at the time, Franck Romain, a former Tonton Macoute leader, was accused of being involved. After Germanys defeat, the subsequent Nuremberg Trials declared the Gestapo a criminal organization and many of its members were executed for war crimes. As a result of their political indifference, March 29, 1969 became known as the worst day for the people of Cazale as Duvalier's Tonton Macoute (private army), built a barricade around Cazale, and murdered many young men. 1919 (January): 19 Caco prisoners were executed in Hinche on US Captain Lavoies orders. Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who has died of a heart attack aged 63, was just 19 when he inherited the title of president-for-life from his father, Francois or "Papa Doc", who had ruled Haiti . All the victims were Duvalierists and close to the Duvalier family, or to Papa Doc himself. I solemnly vowed to keep alive the memory of my departed cellmates." Saez, Jos Luiz, Los Jesuitas en la Repblica Dominicana, Santo Domingo: Museo Nacional de Historia y Geografa: Archivos Histricos de las Antillas, 1988. Many times they put the corpses of their victims on display, often hung in trees for everyone to see and take as warnings against opposition. Learn all about Tonton Macoute on AllMusic. Edwidge Danticat is the best-selling author of Claire of the Sea Light and Brother, I'm Dying. Among many awards and honors, she received the 2017 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Both their allusions to the supernatural and their physical presentations were used with the intention of instilling fear and respect. Several Tontons Macoute, their faces taut with worry, stood behind a low cement fence, armed with submachine guns and rifles, belts of ammunition strapped to their waists. United Nations, Report of the Independent Expert of the Commission on Human Rights on the Situation of Human Rights in Haiti (AA 55/335), United Nations, New York, 2000. ", The hunt was indeed on for Duvalier's adversaries, army and civilian alike. These attacks may have been the first ever carried out by air on civilian populations. Learn how and when to remove this template message, Front for the Advancement and Progress of Hati, "Children and the Politics of Violence in Haitian Context: Statist violence, scarcity and street child agency in Port-au-Prince", "2. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (ICHR), Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Haiti, Organization of American States (OAS), Washington, D.C., 1988. Martissant, des Tontons Macoutes aux gangs arms - Le Nouvelliste Literature. At least 13 people[1] (it is impossible to say how many;[2] some sources say 50[3]) were killed and around 80 wounded in a three-hour assault on the Saint-Jean Bosco church in Port-au-Prince, which saw the church burned down. According to the National Palace Chief of Police, Jean Tassy, 2,053 individuals were killed from 1957 to 1967, in the police headquarters alone (Pierre-Charles, 1973: 56). One of the most brutal secret police forces as well, the Securitate was responsible for monitoring and spying on Romanian citizens, as well as their arrests, tortures and executions. There have been many brutal regimes in history that have employed a secret police service to carry out everything from intelligence activities against its citizens, to terror and mass executions. The MICIVIH carried out an investigation immediately after the event and concluded that it was a premeditated collective murder., _ *** (Commission Nationale de Vrit et de Justice, 1997: chapter V, section B; MICIVIH, 1994). On November 9, 2000, after a highly symbolic trial broadcasted live on the radio and led by the judicial authorities with assistance from international organizations, including the United Nations, 16 individuals out of the 29 tried were sentenced to prison terms. Under the rule of interim President Ertha Pascale Trouillot, in the rural area of Saint-Marc (in the Artibonite discrict, North of the capital), three dozen army soldiers and armed local civilians killed 11 peasants, in the villages of Piatre, Djean, Dupervil, Ka Jan and Ti Plas, in the context of a land conflict between local peasants and big landowners. 3, Port-au-Prince, CUDHAC, 2003. The intimidation became so extreme that the MVSN, who were rightly known as the Tonton Macoutes, began burning people alive, or stoning them to death. Most of the victims had lived in the poor neighborhoods of Bel-Air, La Saline and Saint-Martin. Commission Nationale de Vrit et de Justice, Rapport de la Commission Nationale de Vrit et de Justice, Port-au-Prince, 1997. "Soldiers and Tonton Macoutes seemed infected with a blood lust and shot anyone who moved or came near the Benoit place," retired Marine Corps officer Charles T. Williamson, in Haiti to help train Duvalier's army, wrote in his 1999 memoir, United States Naval Mission to Haiti, 1959-1963. Soon after Papa Doc Duvalier became president, Emmanuel found his political views at odds with Papa Doc and his secret police, the Tonton Macoute. _ ** (Gaillard, 1983: 186-190, 237-241, 259-262; Trouillot, 1990: 102-107; Manigat, 2003: 71-74). The Chief of Police in charge of the raid, Jean Coles Rameau, was extradited from the neighboring Dominican Republic, where he had fled one week after the event. Mission Civile Internationale en Hati (MICIVIH), February 9, 1994, Communiqu de Presse, Port-au-Prince. [9][10] They were then renamed to Milice Civile (Civilian Militia), and after 1962, Volontaires de la Scurit Nationale (Volunteers of the National Security, or VSN). This killing was allegedly carried out in retaliation for the burning of an army lieutenants home in the area during the night of October 1. The Duvaliers relied on a secret armed militia called Tonton macoutes(its official name was the Volontaires de la Scurit Nationale, or National Security Volunteers), which imposed a rule of terror on the Haitian population (Diederich and Burt, 2005). When Papa Doc began killing anyone he suspected of political opposition, Emmanuel took action . Tonton Macoutes tntn mkoot [ key] [Haitian Creole,=bogeymen], personal police force of dictator Francois Duvalier (Papa Doc) of Haiti. Keyboardist/vocalist Paul French reemerged at decade's end with art-rockers Voyager, which issued three albums between 1979 and 1981. A few weeks earlier, several young, light-skinned members of the Communist Party, a political party persecuted by the regime, including Alex Lamaute and Roger Mhu, had taken refuge in this town, assuming that they would blend into a population regarded as generally light-skinned (for having harbored many Polish soldiers after the war of independence). Later on the same day, peasants from Guyton and Coligny, assisted by army soldiers from Saint-Marc, Artibonite, travelled to Gervais and carried out further killings in retaliation. These sentences were seen as a historical victory over the impunity enjoyed by instigators and perpetrators of political crimes in Haiti. In 1938 in Washington D.C., the Dominican Republic government agreed to pay US$ 750,000 (of which 525,000 were eventually paid) in compensation, but paradoxically, it refused to admit any responsibility for the killings in the document it then signed (Cuello, 1985: 456; Turits, 2002: 622-623). The number of their victims remains unknown. They assaulted or tortured even more, causing countless Haitians to flee their homes for refuge abroad. In 1920, the US Navy investigation commission interrogated occupying officers regarding allegations of acts of violence committed by the air force, but the commission did not deliver any condemnations, or even make any formal accusations. His cruelty earned him the nickname "Vampire of the Caribbean". Former journalist Michle Montas still vividly remembers the bullet-ridden bodies lying on the sidewalk near her home on April 26, 1963. After 15 more years of bloodshed and oppression, the people finally rose up in 1986 and Baby Doc was forced to flee into exile in France. They were believed to have been abducted and killed by the MVSN, who were called the "Tontons Macoutes" as a result. 'I, Too, Want to Be a Big Man': The Making of a Haitian 'Boat People', "The Tonton Macoutes: The Central Nervous System of Haiti's Reign of Terror", "1. The 19 officers may have been suspected or accused of treason by Duvalier, but historians reject this hypothesis and emphasize Duvaliers the terrorist methods: he sometimes had his closest allies killed to ensure even greater submission from the military and the population. [24], The Tonton Macoute remained active even after the presidency of "Papa Doc" Duvalier's son "Baby Doc" ended in 1986,[25] at the height of the Anti-Duvalier protest movement. Roorda, Eric Paul, The Dictator Next Door: the Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1930-1945, Duke University Press, North Carolina, 1998. On April 5, 500 soldiers and macoutes arrived in the area and started the killing. Turits, Richard Lee, Foundations of Despotism. Created as a paramilitary force that answered only to Duvalier, the MVSN was implemented to remove any perceived threats to the President's power, of which there were many. The Securitate was also responsible for brutally crushing the dissident movements that attempted to gain footing in Romania starting in the later 1960s under totalitarian ruler Nicolae Ceausescu. Mass Violence and Resistance - Research Network, Asia-Pacific under Japanese occupation during World War II. A fresh take on sports: the biggest news and most entertaining lists. An unruly teen survives the night while being hunted by the Haitian Boogieman. (No subsequent reports from international human rights organizations mention this killing). Anyone who challenged the VSN risked assassination. With nearly a half a million informants alone working for the Securitate, every facet of Romanian life was under surveillance, and even the most banal of criticism towards the regime could be met with severe punishment. Tonton Macoute a member of a notoriously brutal militia formed by President Franois Duvalier of Haiti, active from 1961-86. This represented the largest forced disappearance under the Duvaliers. -. Aristide, Jean-Bertrand (with Christophe Wargny), Tout homme est un homme (Tout moun se moun), , Editions du Seuil, 1992. In fact, the killing also had ideological and racial dimensions, as Duvalier relied on a political ideology known as noirisme (Blackism), through which he claimed to promote the black masses against mulatto elites. Hence, the Duvalier dictatorship targeted mulatto sectors of society, seen as prone to political opposition, but also as illegitimate members of the nation. The Benot, Edelyn and families were exterminated and their bodies left in full view in front of their houses. During their reign, an estimated 30,000 to 60,000 men, women, and children were killed. The name is Haitian French, apparently with reference to an ogre of folk tales. 1986 (February 7): Dchouquageof the Duvalier regime. Papa Docs regime, the more brutal of the two, is said to be responsible for 30,000 to 50,000 assassinations and executions. Those who spoke out against Duvalier would disappear in the night and were never seen again. _ *** (Commission Nationale de Vrit et de Justice, 1997 ; ICHR, 1993), 1991 (September 30 and the first few days of October): In the afternoon of September 30, a commando of army soldiers moved into the Lamentin 50 neighborhood, in the vicinity of Port-au-Prince, randomly opened fire on bystanders and private homes, and indiscriminately threw grenades into local houses. Their unrestrained state terrorism was accompanied by corruption, extortion and personal aggrandizement among the leadership. Human Rights Watch, Thirst for Justice. With one in ten under-40s infected with HIV, and millions living in squalor and destitution, thousands try to flee each year to the U.S. by hanging on to anything that will float. The Tonton Macoutes, or macoutes, became an important piece of the repression apparatus of the regime, which used them to terrorize, torture and kill opponents (Diederich and Burt, 2005). Roadblocks were set up. The vast majority of the victims belonged to the social and intellectual elites of the capital. Also, for the first time in Haitis history, women (Trouillot, 1990: 153 and 167), children and even infants were targeted by the regime. The Tonton Macoutes, or macoutes, became an important piece of the repression apparatus of the regime, which used them to terrorize, torture and kill opponents (Diederich and Burt, 2005). The NKVD was responsible for the detention of nearly two million people between 1937 and 1938 alone; of those detained almost 700,000 were executed, a rate of roughly 1,000 per day. He came out on to the path and the Tontons Macoute shot him down from a car. In 1991, the Minister of Justice of President Aristides first government accused Frank Romain, who was Mayor of Port-au-Prince at the time, of having organized the killing and hence, requested his extradition from the Dominican Republic, where he was living in exile, but to no avail. Tonton Macoutes murdered over 60,000 Haitians. The first independent black state, set up 200 years ago after a rebellion by African slaves against colonial France, the mountainous island is home to exotic birds and animals and mist-shrouded. According to an OAS report (ICHR, 1991), which does not provide details on its sources and its methodology, 75 individuals were killed and 150 wounded, all of them (sic) macoutes or persons directly associated with Roger Lafontant. In 1993, I watched as the might of the U.S. military was repelled by mobs armed with stones and clubs when American troops arrived to restore order. Members: Paul French (keyboards, vocals), [] 1994 (April 22): Event known as the massacre de Raboteau. In Raboteau, a shantytown of Gonaives, Artibonite, army soldiers and FRAPH members killed 14 opponents to the regime in a well-planned operation.

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