Haiti trial boosts hopes for justice

Mennonite Central Committee
Saturday, 21 October 2000

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- So rarely are human rights abuses punished in Haiti that Anna Versluis, a former Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) volunteer, was stunned when the Port-au-Prince police commissioner was arrested in connection with the massacre of 11 people.

As part of her work with the National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR), Versluis interviewed the commissioner, Jean Coles Rameau, in Haiti's National Penitentiary after his arrest.

"At the time we didn't know what even the next five minutes would bring: would the charges be miraculously dropped? Would he find immunity in some other country, say, the United States, as so many of Haiti's other infamous leaders have done?" she remembered.

Instead, the commissioner and three other former policemen were convicted in September of manslaughter in the killing that took place in the slum of Carrefour-Feuilles on May 28, 1999. The sentence seemed lenient -- three years in prison and a fine equivalent to $1,180 U.S. But their conviction, along the with the current trial of military figures for another high-profile massacre in the town of Rabouteau, has given human right activists in Haiti their first signs of hope in years.

Rameau told Versluis and another NCHR worker his version of the story in a small room used to store the prisoners' personal effects. With no windows and no electricity, they sat in a close circle and talked by the light coming through the door.

Rameau claimed that the people killed in Carrefour-Feuille were gang members. Three of the 11 victims in Carrefour-Feuille were killed by a crowd in an act of "mob justice," he said, and the other eight were killed by police acting in self-defense.

However, a joint United Nations-Organisation of American States report concluded that 10 of the victims were shot at close range in the back of the head, and one in the heart.

"For most people, myself included, there is no doubt that the police did commit a massacre that night and should be judged accordingly," Versluis said.

The interview was cut short when Rameau was called away and did not return.

"We sat there waiting and waiting, and we said to each other, 'Are they releasing him? Maybe they're just letting him go.' It was so surprising that they kept him in prison," Versluis said.

After the arrests and convictions, however, the sentences were a disappointment.

"It really is not much, but it is better than nothing," said Pierre Esperance, NCHR director.

Human rights activists hesitate to say that the trial indicates a new trend in Haiti's justice system. A combination of corruption, incompetence and outdated laws has created widespread cynicism and mistrust in Haiti.

Versluis' work as a research associate with NCHR exposed her to many of these problems. In addition to grassroots education and lobbying for Haitian rights in the nearby Dominican Republic, NCHR monitors the police and court system.

"We came across a lot of ill-treatment of people who were arrested. It's everything from smaller infractions, like arresting someone in the middle of the night when the law says they can do arrests only at certain times, to major things like beating people to the point of death," she said.

More than 80 percent of the people currently in prison have not had a trial. Versluis routinely interviewed people who had been in prison three or four years with no trial.

But when high-level officials or police officers are involved, crime often goes unpunished. Edwin Dening, MCC Haiti country representative, said the entire culture of the police force must change before a truly just system can be expected.

"As the prosecuted police officers [in the Carrefour case] were being led out of the courtroom on their way back to prison, several of the police officers on guard in the courtroom saluted them," he said. "This was a sign, for many of the people I talked to, that the police still see these guilty officers as their superiors and thus not much has changed."

Versluis has returned to the United States and is studying at Oregon State University. A member of Prince of Peace Mennonite Church in Corvallis, Ore., she is following with interest another trial that began Sept. 29 in Haiti. In this case, members of the military are accused of killing 20 to 50 protesters in the town of Raboteau, Gonais, on April 22, 1994.

"Certainly in the last 10 years -- and maybe even going back further back -- there have been no real trials concerning the huge human rights atrocities committed by the government or military or whoever was in power. The Raboteau case is the first," she said.

For more information, or to contact Mennonite Central Committee, see their website at: www.mcc.org