Niraj Joshi, BASICS Community News Service – News Brief
The bewildering appearance in Haiti of the country’s former dictator, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier on an expired diplomatic passport and aboard an Air France flight is only the latest assault on the dignity of the Haitian people. Jean-Claude Duvalier presided over the second half of a brutal 29 year father-son dictatorship (upheld by the US and France), until a mass popular uprising forced “Baby Doc” to flee in 1986 on board an American plane (along with hundreds of millions of embezzled fortune) for a life of luxurious impunity in the South of France.
His reappearance 25 years later comes at a critical time when the Haitian people are grappling with the failed recovery from a catastrophic earthquake, a cholera epidemic, an election crisis and the directly associated foreign takeover by the US, its allies and their institutions. In fact, like many of the recent crises in Haiti, Duvalier’s reappearance is linked to the 2004 foreign-assisted coup against the democratic government of Jean Bertrand Aristide and the subsequent US/Canadian/French and UN imposed dictatorship of Gérard Latortue. The illegal Latortue regime was stacked with Duvalierists who had set the stage for Duvalier’s return by issuing his current diplomatic passport.
While speculation over Duvalier’s renewed haunting ranges from a bold gamble to recover some 5.6 million dollars in a frozen Swiss bank account to contemptible ambitions for Haiti’s presidency; what is indisputable is that Jean-Claude Duvalier could never have returned without the aid of powerful international and local Haitian supporters.
Comments
