Word: haitians
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Tonton Macoutes, the paramilitary force employed by the Duvaliers and officially disbanded by the Namphy junta, though never disarmed. Last week several well-known henchmen had come out of hiding, and were walking the streets again in broad daylight. "The return of the Tonton Macoutes is total," said a Haitian journalist...
...Palace five days before the election. Moreover, the performance of Namphy's army raised disturbing questions. At best, military officials stood by and let the carnage unfold. At worst, they were active conspirators. Either way, there was little denying that the Macoutes conducted their rampage with little interference from Haitian officials. "They were not incapable of acting," charged a senior U.S. State Department official. "They were simply unwilling to stop the violence. The army failed in its responsibilities...
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...
Other presumptive cases are emerging from the past. In New York City in 1959, for example, a 49-year-old Haitian-born shipping clerk fell victim to what today would be a telltale disorder: Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. "It was so unusual at the time," recalls Dr. Gordon Hennigar, who performed the postmortem and is now chairman of pathology at the Medical University of South Carolina. "AIDS is such a strong possibility that I've often thought about getting the samples and testing them...