Baby Doc shows up to court Score for Haiti's justice system

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'Baby Doc' shows up to court: A score for Haiti's justice system?
The former dictator is accused of multiple human rights abuses, but his presence in court this week raised hopes for some that Haiti’s pattern of privileging the elite may be slowly changing.

By Rashmee Roshan Lall | Christian Science Monitor – Fri, Mar 1, 2013

Haiti’s former dictator, Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, surprised critics yesterday when he showed up in court to answer questions to determine whether he could be prosecuted for human rights abuses dating back to his 1971- 1986 regime.
Mr. Duvalier missed three previous court dates, and was threatened with jail if he missed the fourth. But according to his party spokesperson, Duvalier heeded yesterday’s summons to the Port-au-Prince courtroom because he wanted “to show the Haitian people no one is above the law.”
His day in court brought him face to face for the first time with a handful of the estimated thousands of people his regime allegedly tortured over the course of his 15-year rule. He is accused of multiple human rights abuses, including murder and torture, but his presence in court yesterday raised hopes for some that Haiti’s pattern of privileging the elite amid corruption and instability may be slowly changing tack.
“I cannot even interpret the event, this has never happened before in my country,” says Andre, a student, standing in the dusty streets of Port au Prince, referring to the common practice of Haitian elites and politicians not being held accountable by the country’s justice system.
RECOMMENDED: Where does Haiti stand three years after its 7.0 earthquake?
‘LAW IS PAPER’
Plagued by extreme levels of poverty and natural disasters like the 2010 earthquake that the Haitian government estimates killed 316,000, Haiti faces numerous challenges to strengthening all institutions, not just the justice system. There’s a well known Creole proverb here: “lwa se papye, bayonet se fe,” which translates to “law is paper, bayonets are iron," and for much of Haiti's history violence has prevailed.
Duvalier, who was just 19 when he succeeded his father François “Papa Doc” Duvalier as “president for life,” is accused of corruption and repression, among other human rights abuses. Like his father, he relied on a private militia known as the Tonton Macoutes to enforce his rule, but in 1986 he was forced out of office by a popular uprising. Duvalier fled to France in exile.
“The rule of the gun, of money, and of political power has prevailed” in Haiti, says William G. O’Neill, a human rights lawyer and former senior adviser to the United Nations.
Just weeks ago, the International Crisis Group warned that Haiti could become “a permanent failed state” due to its “failure of will” on many counts, including rule of law.
“There really is no model for justice,” says Nicole Phillips, a staff attorney at the Haitian public interest law firm Bureau des Avocats Internationaux.
Haiti’s justice system is based on the French civil system, yet despite two decades of judicial reform initiatives spearheaded by the UN and the Organization of American States, the penal code has not been updated since 1835, Ms. Phillips says.
“[A] technical fix to codes, constitutions, and regulations, with a healthy dash of training and logistical support” has not been able to overcome a deeply ingrained system of preference and elitism in Haiti, Mr. O’Neill says.
Phillips agrees. “Court fees and lawyers are too expensive for the poor to afford. Proceedings are conducted in French, which most Haitians do not speak. Elitist legal training conditions lawyers, judges, and prosecutors to give preferential treatment to the powerful while they discount the causes, testimonies, and legal needs of the poor,” she says.
THE QUESTION OF EQUALITY
One may not need look further than the Baby Doc case as an example of inequality in Haitian society and the justice system, observers say.
“Nothing has been done to remind the new generation of Haitians of Duvalier atrocities,” says historian Michel Soukar, who lectures at universities throughout Haiti. And Haitians have watched as Duvalier and his cronies “never paid for their crimes,” he says. In fact, many Haitians still speak fondly of the Duvalier era, when the streets were safe, movie theaters existed, and there was a plentiful supply of electricity.
“We [the Haitian people] hope that the judicial system will stay independent so that in the future, we will do things a different way,” Mr. Soukar says.
RECOMMENDED: Where does Haiti stand three years after its 7.0 earthquake?
Though Duvalier appeared in court, he mumbled his answers to the three presiding judges' questions and at times rolled his eyes, reports the Associated Press.
Duvalier’s court appearance came on the same day Haiti’s government ordered the arrest of a senior government official on undisclosed corruption charges. Some say the arrest may have been an attempt to show the international community that Haiti is striving to be more accountable.
According to Jean Joseph Exumé, a former minister of justice and public security, and the lawyer for 10 of Duvalier’s alleged victims, “The case will take time but the fact that he came to court at all gives people hope.”

Attorney: Haiti’s ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier hospitalized following court hearing
(Dieu Nalio Chery/ Associated Press ) - Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as “Baby Doc,” center, attends his hearing as his companion Veronique Roy sits behind, right, inside a courthouse in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013. Duvalier appeared in court Thursday after three times shunning a summons for a hearing on whether he should be charged with human rights abuses during his brutal 1971-1986 regime. Next to him sat his defense attorneys and his longtime partner, who did not remove her sunglasses during the proceedings.

By Associated Press, Published: March 4

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — An attorney for Jean-Claude Duvalier said Monday that his client was hospitalized for an unspecified illness just after the former ruler testified last week in court about alleged human rights abuses and embezzlement associated with his 15-year rule.

Lawyer Reynold Georges said Monday night that Duvalier wasn’t feeling well before the Thursday court hearing and his doctor advised him not to testify.

“I decided otherwise” and urged him to attend, Georges said.

Georges declined to name the hospital where Duvalier is apparently receiving medical attention or specify the ailment, saying simply that “he’s sick.”

The former ruler known as “Baby Doc” gave a historic testimony last week that surprised many. Few thought he would appear in court after he rebuffed three earlier orders to show up and rights groups and plaintiffs hailed the event as a small triumph for a justice system that’s long been plagued with dysfunction and corruption.

In the hearing the 61-year-old Duvalier defended his rule as a better time for Haiti. Looking gaunt and bored, he periodically wiped his forehead with a white cloth as he answered questions about political prisoners, murders and disappearances under his watch as the country’s “president for life.”

Duvalier became president in 1971 at the mere age of 19, succeeding his father Francois “Papa Doc,” and ruled until he was ousted in a popular rising in 1986. A private militia known as the Tonton Macoutes helped the Duvalier dynasty stay in power.

Plaintiffs in the current case are due to testify on Thursday but Duvalier has not been ordered to appear.

The former leader was charged with rights abuses and financial crimes upon his sudden return in January 2011 following 25 years in exile in France. A judge in a lower level court last year ruled that Duvalier face only charges on financial crimes, and not the human rights abuse charges because they are exempt under a statute of limitations.

Attorneys for more than 20 plaintiffs appealed that decision and so has the legal team for Duvalier, whose attorneys assert he’s innocent on all charges.

Lawyer Nicole Phillips of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, a Boston-based advocacy group helping Haitian attorneys who represent the alleged victims, noted the timing of Duvalier’s alleged hospital visit.

“It would be unfortunate if his illness stalls the appeals process,” Phillips said.

The alleged hospitalization is the second time Duvalier has sought medical treatment. Two months after his 2011 return, he checked into a hospital for unspecified chest pains. Family friends and associates declined to discuss details of his health condition.

Despite the almost week-long hospital stay, Duvalier was well enough to travel the country — a violation of a house arrest that, the attorney Georges said, has since expired. Duvalier has also been seen dining with friends in restaurants in the capital.

The Haitian government reissued his diplomatic passport in December on the grounds that he’s a former head-of-state.

Jean Claude Duvalier: Mothballed Playboy Dictator Recalled to Service

By Kim Ives, Editor of Haiti Liberté
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI * HAITI LIBERTE, Vol. 4, No. 27, January 19 - 25, 2011

The big question Haitians are asking is: who is behind Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier's surprise arrival in Haiti with an expired Haitian passport on Jan. 16 aboard an Air France flight from Paris? "I have come here to see how I can help my country," he announced, stepping off the plane.

Yeah, right. It is inconceivable that Baby Doc, 59, would return to the country where there are outstanding criminal proceedings against him without knowing that some powerful foreigners have his back.

With dozens of Haitian SWAT team police outside and a helicopter hovering overhead, Haitian government prosecutor Aristidas Auguste and investigating magistrate Gabriel Ambroise met for about an hour with Duvalier in his suite at the posh Hotel Karibe in Pétionville on Jan. 18 and then took him unhandcuffed to their offices downtown for more questioning, before allowing him to return to his hotel.

Ambroise will now weigh the evidence, which sources say is solid and massive, that Duvalier, his former wife Michelle Bennett, and other cronies embezzled over $300 million (and by some counts almost triple that) during the course of his rule from 1971 to 1986.

However, Judge Ambroise's ruminations might take as long as three months, which lends the whole episode an air of "grimas," as they say in Kreyòl, a face-saving show. Duvalier should have been arrested immediately at the airport, most Haitians say. Instead, he was escorted by Haitian police and United Nations occupation troops to his hotel.

"Usually in Haiti a thief gets unceremoniously dumped into a pickup and carted off to a stinking cell to await trial in a few years or never," quipped author and journalist Amy Wilentz on Twitter. Duvalier will await his improbable indictment dining on grilled conch at the Karibe.

He has this luxury because he has surely received a wink and a nod from powerful government sectors, even if not the official ones, in either the U.S. and/or France, the two nations which helped prop up his regime with economic and military aid. The U.S. also flew Duvalier out of Haiti on Feb. 7, 1986 on a C-130 loaded with his sports cars and motorcycles and his wife's furs, while France has hosted his golden exile and protected him from prosecution ever since.

Duvalier's lawyer is Gervais Charles, the head of the Haitian Bar Association. He makes the dubious claim that the files pertaining to the charges against Duvalier were all destroyed in the earthquake and that, anyway, the statute of limitations on the embezzlement proceedings, undertaken by several governments against Duvalier since 1986, has run out.

But Brian Concannon of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) says this is unlikely. "The statute of limitation on these financial crimes is something like five years after the last instance of investigation by a judge into the case," he said, noting that "a July 3, 2009 order from the First Court of Public Law of the Federal Court of Switzerland said the Haitian government had informed it of criminal proceedings against Duvalier as late as June 2008."

On Jan. 17, the IJDH along with the International Lawyers Office (BAI) in Port-au-Prince issued a statement urging the Haitian government "to comply with Haitian law" by arresting Duvalier for embezzlement on the basis of rulings and investigations in both Haiti and the U.S. The statement also pointed to "Duvalier's human rights violations, including the torture and disappearances of political dissidents at the Fort Dimanche prison and other crimes committed by organizations under his control, including the Armed Forces of Haiti and the Volunteers for National Security (Tontons Macoutes). Mr. Duvalier is not protected against prosecution by any statutes of limitations" for these violations because they are "crimes against humanity, which are imprescriptible under international law."

Meanwhile, former political prisoners and other victims like youth sports trainer Bobby Duval and former journalist Michelle Montas (Duvalier's thugs destroyed her husband's radio station in 1980) expressed their outrage that Duvalier was in Haiti without being immediately arrested and vowed prosecution.

The standard storyline being repeated today is that Baby Doc inherited Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier's repressive dictatorship in 1971 and continued it until the Haitian people rose up and chased him out of the country 15 years later. History is, of course, a good deal more complicated than that, and between the elder and younger Duvalier regimes there are important differences, an analysis of which can help us decipher, or at least make an educated guess about, what lies behind Duvalier's sudden return.

Throughout most of its 207 years, Haiti has had two ruling classes: the grandon, Haiti's big landowning class, and the comprador bourgeoisie, an import-export merchant class based in the coastal cities, primarily the capital, Port-au-Prince. These two ruling groups carried out a bitter rivalry for political power in the capital, control of which gave one an upper hand over the other. This rivalry explains why Haiti's history is checkered with at least 32 coups d'état. The grandon often organized rural militias which would run bourgeois presidents out of the capital, and the bourgeoisie often ousted grandon presidents with the standing city-based Army.

Papa Doc, a former country doctor who came to power in a military sponsored election in 1957, was a classic representative of the grandon, who extract surplus value from peasants through a form of semi-feudal share-cropping called the two-halves system or de mwatye. The arch-reactionary grandon were often hostile to encroaching foreign capitalists, who sought to turn peasant sharecroppers into starvation-wage-earning workers. This put Papa Doc at odds with Washington officials, but they needed him as a bulwark against the spread of communism from revolutionary Cuba, only 60 miles west across the strategic Windward Channel.

To offset the bourgeoisie's and Washington's influence over the Haitian Army, Francois Duvalier, a student of Machiavelli, established his own militia, the infamous Tonton Macoutes. Their reign of terror and violence is legendary, immortalized in Graham Greene's novel The Comedians and Bernard Diederich's and Al Burt's exposé Papa Doc: The Truth about Haiti Today.

The elder Duvalier used the Macoutes to beat back several Washington-sponsored (and ratted on) invasions during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. But there was a sea-change in 1969 when Papa Doc received President Nixon's envoy, Nelson Rockefeller. Shortly afterward, cheap labor U.S. assembly factories began setting up in Haiti.

When Papa Doc died of natural causes in 1971, he passed the title of "President for Life" (won in a 1964 referendum that some 2.8 million people voted for and only 3,234 against) to then 19-year-old Baby Doc, and the sweat-shop sector began to take-off.

Jean-Claude had gone to Haiti's finest schools with the bourgeoisie's children, developing a taste for fancy women, fast cars, and a less brutish reputation. He began to offer a "reformed" Duvalierism, called "Jean-Claudism," in response to the Carter administration's call for "human rights" in Latin America.

Carter's crusade was actually the beginning of a U.S. policy shift away from strong-arm and corrupt dictators like Duvalier to facade democracies which were backed by so-called multinational peace-keeping forces. The push to reform the Duvalier dictatorship did not stop with Reagan's election in 1980, as the old guard Duvalierists had hoped. Jean-Claude did crack down on journalists that year, exiling many of them. He also married archetypal bourgeois princess Michelle Bennett. That marriage begat an ugly new offspring, a kind of Macoutized bourgeoisie, which would become more familiar to the world during the 1991 and 2004 coups d'état against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

At the same time, the comprador bourgeoisie was transforming into a more assembly industry variant, typified by "Jean-Claudiste" and later coup-backing families like the Apaids, the Bouloses, the Brandts, and the Mevs.

Washington becamse peeved as Jean-Claude and his crew skimmed off millions of development aid dollars into Swiss bank accounts, money that was supposed to build a better roads, water systems and electrical networks to serve expanding U.S. sweatshops and other foreign investments. Even the Pope visited Haiti in 1983 and warned that "Things must change here."

Finally, in 1986, the U.S. decided to give Jean-Claude the boot, fully expecting they could easily install a puppet in post-Duvalier elections.

Among the democratic activists fighting for that change a quarter century ago was René Préval, now Haiti's president. Like activist businessman Antoine Izméry and radio journalist Jean Dominique, Préval came from Haiti's "enlightened bourgeoisie," which was inspired by the anti-imperialist struggles of the 1960s and 1970s and dreamed of a democratic Haiti. Préval along with Izméry were the two who pushed Aristide , a former parish priest, into the electoral ring for president in 1990 against the neo-liberal U.S.-backed candidate, former World Bank economist Marc Bazin.

Six years later, Préval himself was Haiti's president, thanks to Aristide's long coattails. But over the past 15 years, he has compromised repeatedly with the U.S. empire he once vowed to fight, bowing to their demands that Haiti privatize its state enterprises, lower its tariff walls, and allow U.S. military aircraft and vessels to enter Haitian airspace and waters any time they please.

Préval has gradually been turned into a Washington's patsy, often happily but sometimes grudgingly, doing its bidding. Until now.

Washington and Préval are presently at loggerheads over the disastrous Nov. 28 elections, which Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council claims should go to a second round between neo-Duvalierist former First Lady Mirlande Manigat, who supposedly came in first, and Jude Célestin, the candidate of Préval's party Unity.

But the Organization of American States (OAS), acting on Washington's behalf, has issued a report that orders Préval to change the second-place candidate to neo-Duvalierist former konpa musician Michel "Sweet Mickey" Martelly. "There is nothing to negotiate in the [OAS] report," said US ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten. But Préval is resisting. And this is where Duvalier, his old nemesis, comes in.

Manigat and Martelly are essentially the old and young faces of resurgent Duvalierism, of which Baby Doc is the living symbol. Célestin is not that much different; he was, after all, escorted to enlist as candidate by Rony Gilot, an infamous Duvalierist crony who is today escorting Baby Doc around Haiti. But Célestin is suspect because "sources in the American government know that Préval recently sought $25 million from [Venezuelan president Hugo] Chávez to bankroll [Célestin's] runoff campaign," complained the American Enterprise Institute's Roger Noriega, who as President George W. Bush's Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, was an architect of the 2004 coup against Aristide.

Also among the former dictator's current escorts is Jodel Chamblain, the former No. 2 of the death-squad FRAPH during the first coup against Aristide and a leader of the "rebels" who terrorized Northern and Central Haiti during the second coup against Aristide.

So we have come full circle. For the first time in 20 years, the bourgeois-grandon alliance, along with the U.S. and France, have a chance to install one of their preferred puppets through an election, however patently bogus, rather than a coup. This is likely why Duvalier is now in Haiti.