82 no. After 40 years, the Stasi disbanded with the fall of East Germany. Human Rights Watch, Thirst for Justice. 1999 (May 28): In a shantytown above the Carrefour-Feuilles neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian National Police (PNH) killed 11 people at night, during a routine patrol. In 1983, Pope John Paul II visited Haiti. They were responsible for unknown numbers of murders and rapes in Haiti. 1929 (December 6): In Marchaterre, in the vicinity of Les Cayes (in the South of the country), the US Marines opened fire on a peaceful demonstration of peasants, killing between 12 and 22 of them. _ *** (NCHR, 1986: 18-19; Human Rights Watch, 1996). 1964 (July-August): Following a raid on June 24, 1964 by an anti-Duvalierist, Dominican Republic-based guerrilla group in the southeastern region of the country, the macoutesand the army carried out a vast repression operation and killed about 600 people in the towns of Mapou, Thiotte, Grand-Gosier and Belle-Anse. Bernard Diederich lived in Haiti for 14 years and had personal experience of the early Duvalier days and the period of Maloire's rule. Tonton Macoute was a Haitian paramilitary force created in 1959 by dictator Franois 'Papa Doc' Duvalier. In the episode, Doakes has an altercation with Jacques Bayard, a past member of Tonton Macoute. National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR), Communiqu de Presse, Port-au-Prince, December 5, 2004. _ In addition to executions and violence against unarmed combatants, the US Army and its Haitian auxiliaries (the gendarmerie) allegedly committed massive killings and acts of violence against the civilian population. The Tonton Macoute sat at an otherwise empty table, a bottle of rum and half-filled glass in front of him. The archives of the FRAPH, that may contain crucial information on executions and various individuals responsibilities, are still in the possession of the US government to this day, which has refused to transfer them to the Haitian Ministry of Justice in spite of continuous campaigns from human rights groups. Bernard Diederich, Al Burt. The Tontons Macoutes murdered between 30,000 and 60,000 Haitians. Seligman (in Gaillard, 1983), a US journalist who investigated the occupation, asserted that US soldiers practiced bumping off Gooks, (shooting civilians) as if it were a sport or a shooting exercise. [6], According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the following day, "five men and one woman appeared on the government controlled television station (Tl Nationale) and admitted their participation in the attack on the church. Those who had been arrested were threatened at the prison. According to Pierre-Charles (1973), the urban lumpenproletariat was the social background of most macoutes. "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. Army soldiers, former macoutes, and groups of armed men chased and killed members and alleged members of the pro-democracy movement, including supporters of President Aristide, during the coup perpetrated by a group of military officers led by Colonel Raoul Cdras. Most of the victims were from the military, social and intellectual elites of the country. The Central Office of Banditry Repression, or OCRB was a secret police force formed in the Central African Republic that was formed in the early to 1990s. The government of Boisrond-Canal and General Nord Alexis fought Antnor Firmins rebel troops (Nord Alexis eventually prevailed and governed until 1908). The military ruled until September 19, 1994, when US President Clinton ordered the US marines to intervene and reinstall democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Men, women, children and elderly people were killed. In author Shannon Mayers Forty-Proof series, the 4th installment (titled Midlife Ghost Hunter) uses a voodoo zombie army called the Tonton Macoutes as the main villains army. These assassinations were ordered by dictator Papa Doc himself as a part of reprisals against an embryonic anti-Duvalier guerrilla group known as Jeune Haiti that had landed in the region (but none of them were in Jrmie). The Tonton Macoutes (singular Tonton Macoute referring to a member thereof; or Ton Ton Macoute) was a Haitian militia force under the control of Franois Duvalier. 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. 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. His wife spent 10,000 a month on flowers and always wore expensive furs indoors - with officials facing death if they forgot to turn on the air-conditioning. Tonton Macoutes tntn mkoot [ key] [Haitian Creole,=bogeymen], personal police force of dictator Francois Duvalier (Papa Doc) of Haiti. The SAVAK was the Shah of Irans secret police force from 1957 until the Iranian Revolution in 1979. [from 20th c.] 2011, Kim Ives, The Guardian, 22 March: Every Macoute received a card that afforded him many privileges, like free merchandise from any store he entered, entitlement to coerced sex, and fear and respect from people in general. Americas Watch, Human Rights Developments, Washington, D.C., 1994. _ 1987 (November 29): Event known in collective memory as the massacre de la ruelle Vaillant. Under the rule of General Namphy, at dawn on an election day, a group of 50 to 60 armed men, composed of soldiers in civilian clothes as well as macoutes, killed at least 16 civilians in a polling station of the Ecole Nationale Argentine Bellegarde, a school in Port-au-Prince. Although the event was investigated by several prominent journalists and the human rights group National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR), its existence remains controversial and supporters of Aristide (who was President at the time), as well as the media in favor of him, deny it ever took place. Rural people were crushed.". He came out on to the path and the Tontons Macoute shot him down from a car. _ * (Gaillard, 1983: 40-42, 152 and 282; Gaillard, 1981: 205-213). -. Two years before the end of his mandate, President Aristide was destabilized by repeated, massive demonstrations led by student organizations since the end of 2002. _ In addition to the repression of the rebellion, between hundreds and thousands of civilians died or were killed during forced labor operations called corve, mainly the construction of roads throughout the country. There should be no statute of limitations on the disappeared.". 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 . Showing Editorial results for tonton macoutes. "While in prison," he recalls, "I witnessed the annihilation of a generation, a silent genocide known only to the few who survived. 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. The founder and leader of FRAPH, Emmanuel Toto Constant, lives in exile in the United States, in spite of pressure from human rights organizations to have him extradited to Haiti. Literature. Based on a similar French agency, which the African OCRB often worked with, many crimes by the police force itself have gone unpunished, and a particularly effective method of torture, Le Caf, where one is beaten with a baton and then forced to walk an excruciating distance, became commonplace in interrogations of suspected bandits. 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. Schmidt, Hans, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 1971. The Tonton Macoute move in shadows, like ghosts. In rural areas, these attacks against civilian populations, starting in 1919, are still present in collective memory. "1.2. _ In 1991, the Minister of Justice of President Aristides first government accused army General Williams Rgala, who was Minister of Defense at the time, of having ordered the killing and hence, requested his extradition from the Dominican Republic, where he was living in exile, but to no avail. The story takes place in New Orleans. [6] Gaillard (1983: 261), adding innocent victims and Cacos killed in combat throughout the occupation, reached the number of 15,000. The Tonton Macoutes cut out the hearts, eyes and lungs of opponents with machetes, while Papa Doc, who stole almost a billion pounds in foreign aid, insisted that every television and radio programme had to be entirely in praise of his rule. On April 5, 500 soldiers and macoutes arrived in the area and started the killing. The Tontons Macoutes wore straw hats, blue denim shirts and dark glasses, and were armed with machetes and guns. A Milcia de Voluntrios da Segurana Nacional (em francs: Milice de Volontaires de la Scurit Nationale, MVSN), comumente conhecidos como Tonton Macoute (literalmente "Tio do Saco", em crioulo haitiano, aludindo s figuras do "homem do saco" ou "bicho papo") [ 1] era uma fora paramilitar haitiana inspirada no fascismo [ 2] criada em 1959, e A History of Political Violence against the Poor The Blood-Soaked Record of the Duvaliers", "Duvalier, 64, Dies in Haiti; Son, 19, Is New President", "Ogou- Vodou, Voodoo Spirit, Lwa of the Nago Nation", "5. According to a diocesian commission (Danroc and Roussire, 1995: 160-162), which photo-documented the event, the perpetrators were an army unit assisted by armed men acting on behalf of a local landowner. [22] They appeared in force again at polls in 1964, when Duvalier held a constitutional referendum that declared him president for life. macoutes Sony Borges and Grard Brunache extinguished their cigarettes in the eyes of crying children. Unpaid volunteers who were directly responsible only to Duvalier, they were given virtual license to torture, kill, and extort. However, most of those responsible for the repression escaped prosecution. Franois Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, was elected president with the armys support in 1957 and ruled Haiti until his death in 1971. She was seventeen years old. Article created on Monday, March 3, 1997. Danner, Mark, Beyond the Mountains, in The New Yorker, December 11, 1989. In Haitian Creole mythology, Tonton Macoutes was a bogeyman who kidnapped errant children in the night and stored them in his knapsack. Many people were outraged that these individuals could appear on television, without any disguise, confess their participation in these events and threaten future criminal acts with no fear of being arrested by the authorities."[4]. Ordered to maintain the peace and security within Cambodia, all the while administering the prison camps the Khmer Rouge became notorious for, Santebal was responsible for untold thousands of executions at the roughly 150 prison camps across the country. He would also go on to sell cadavers to medical schools after buying them from Haitian hospitals for $3 per corpse. The total number of victims remains unknown. Though Russia and the Soviet Union have had numerous brutal secret police forces, notably the Cheka and the KGB, the NKVD is most notorious as it was the secret police force in the Soviet Union for the majority of Joseph Stalins reign. [9][11] They began to be called the Tonton Macoute when people started to disappear for no apparent reason. As of August 2004, the minister of Justice had asked for the United Nations and the OAS participation in carrying out forensic analysis. LAgonie dun Etat-Nation, LHarmattan, , 1999. 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. Tonton Macoute var prsidentens privatmilits i Haiti.Gruppen blev oprettet i 1959 af Franois Duvalier "Papa Doc" to r efter at han blev prsident. Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (ICHR), 1992, Annual Report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 1991, Washington, D.C., OEA, 1992. During the 28 years in power of Papa Doc and his playboy son and heir, Jean-Claude Duvalier, or Baby Doc, the Tonton Macoutes and their henchmen killed between 30,00 and 60,000 Haitians, and . Unions were crushed. They created the private army and terrorist death squads known as Tonton Macoutes. After the fall and exile of Nord Alexis, the various political and military leaders responsible for the March 14 killing were tried and pardoned. Turits, Richard Lee, A World Destroyed, a Nation Imposed: the 1937 Haitian Massacre in the Dominican Republic, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. When Papa Doc began killing anyone he suspected of political opposition, Emmanuel took action . Originally published in 1970, this is the story of Haiti under the rule of Dr. Fran ois Duvalier. 1991 (October 2): The army killed at least 7 individuals in Gonaives, Artibonite, including one child and one adolescent, during a demonstration in support of President Aristide. Massacre du 26 Avril 1963 : Vido de la terreur des Duvalier. As the Nazi party apparatus expanded, the control of the Gestapo shifted, ultimately landing under Heinrich Himmlers control during World War Two. 2004 (February 11): Event known as the massacre de la scierie. Fifty individuals, members of an anti-Aristide peoples organization known as RAMSICOM (sometimes spelled RAMICOS) were allegedly killed in the Scierie neighborhood of Saint-Marc by chimres(members of an illegal, armed pro-Aristide group) led by an organization known as Bal Wouz, whose leader, Amanus Mayette, was then a member of the Haitian Parliament. Most of the victims had lived in the poor neighborhoods of Bel-Air, La Saline and Saint-Martin. _ Beyond opponents of the regime, the targeted groups cannot be defined in traditional political terms, which made the Duvalierist violence fundamentally new (Trouillot, 1990: 166-170). 1967 (June 8): 19 military officers and high-ranking officers were killed in Fort-Dimanche by a firing-squad led by Franois Duvalier himself. Coicous body was decapitated, then thrown into a mass grave. Le tonton macoute tait assis seul une table, devant une bouteille de rhum et un verre moiti plein. "He inherited a repressive machine from his father," she says, "and continued to use it to stay in power. [17], The Tontons Macoute were a ubiquitous presence at the polls in the 1961 presidential referendum, in which Duvalier's official vote count was an "outrageous" and fraudulent 1,320,748 to 0, electing him to another term. The Roots of Haitian Vodou". The lynching of Vilbrun Sam provided the pretext for the United States to intervene and occupy Haiti until 1934. Leaving Home 4. p. 21. At least two young women, Anne and Ktia, were raped in the pro-Aristide police station of Saint-Marc, where they had come to report the assassination of their spouses. Historians use the term genocide in reference to this event. In power from 1957, Papa Doc made voodoo the country's official religion and claimed to be Baron Samedi, the religion's spirit of death. Alix introduced the man with his arm in a sling as Eloise Maitre. Most of the victims of this popular justice lived downtown and, therefore, were macoute chiefs of lesser importance or even miserable wretches (Trouillot, 1990: 155). The hunt was on. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, Haiti. Haiti contains relatively small amounts of gold, silver, antimony, tin, lignite Members: Paul French (keyboards, vocals), [] Known to torture its victims with methods including electric shock, removal of teeth and finger nails, as well as boiling water treatment, SAVAK spent the majority of its resources weeding out and torturing either the Shia or communist opponents to the Shahs rule. On April 21, 2005, the Cour de Cassation (the highest court in the country) invalidated this judgment; the court based its ruling on a 1928 law that prohibited trial by jury for multiple crimes, although this very law had already been nullified by the 1987 Constitution. Backed by politician Franois Duvalier, Kebreau proclaimed himself head of the executive branch of government and organized the September 22 elections, later won by Duvalier. "The Tonton Macoutes" by Bernard Diederich. 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. 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. So widely feared that the Haitian population referred to its members as a mythological creature, the Tonton Macoute, a sort of ghoul who kidnaps misbehaving children and eats them for breakfast, Haitian dictator Franois 'Papa Doc' Duvaliers secret police force, founded in 1959, the MVSN were highly feared, and extremely brutal. The fact that most of the victims were killed with machetes indicates that this was an attempt to terrorize the population and impede the voting process on that day. Described by one commentator as an 'international crime scene' rather than a country, Haiti became infamous around the world during the reign of Francois 'Papa Doc' Duvalier, a former doctor who murdered 100,000 people and formed a private band of killers called the Tonton Macoutes. Le Grand fauve, Le Natal, Port-au-Prince 1995. Journalists were crushed. 1937 (October): In the neighboring Dominican Republic, dictator Trujillo ordered the slaughter of 17,000 to 20,000 Haitian migrants and Dominicans of Haitian origin by the Dominican army (the conventional number in the Dominican Republic is 17,000, although Saez (1988: 60) puts it at 20,000 ; Turits (2002: 590) calculated a total of 15,000 killed). 1991 (October 2): Thirty civilians were killed by army soldiers in a single day in Cit Soleil, a shantytown of Port-au-Prince known for harboring many supporters of President Aristide, in retaliation for an attack against a local police station. Those dead, too, will be remembered on this now-layered anniversary. In 1970, the militia was officially renamed the Milice de Volontaires de la Scurit Nationale (Militia of National Security Volunteers or MVSN, probably taking name from the homonymous Italian Fascist paramilitary organization). 2022 The Progressive Inc. 931 E. Main Street, Suite 10 Madison, Wisconsin 53703 (608) 257-4626, Memories of a Duvalier Massacre, 50 Years Later. This was the name given to the members of the Volontaires de la Scurit Nationale (National Security Volunteers), Franois and Jean-Claude Duvaliers militia force, created because Papa Doc did not trust the military to guarantee his safety. The dysfunctional Haitian judicial system, plagued with incompetence and the lack of resources, was unable to carry out and conclude its investigation of this event. 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. 1908 (March 14): At least 27 political opponents or alleged opponents, most of them from the intellectual and social elites, were arrested and executed in the evening of March 14; some were also mutilated. 1994 (night of February 2-3): Killing named Massacre de Carrefour Vincent by the Truth and Justice Commission. The exact number of victims still remains unknown. At least two anti-Aristide youths, Jean-Baptiste Knol and Joseph Leroy, were thrown alive into a burning building. 1987 (July 1-3): Army soldiers killed 22 workers on strike in the harbor of Port-au-Prince. 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). . 1902 (September 17): 10 disarmed peasants from the government forces were killed on orders of the pro-Firmin general Laborde Corvoisier after a battle in Limb (in the North of the country). V no. Amnesty International, Haiti Annual Report, 2001. [7][20][21] Even their title of Tonton Macoute was embedded in Haitian lore of a bogeyman who took children away in his satchel or his Makoute. His gang lives on, murdering innocent people and allegedly eating their organs. During the trial, the court heard that during the 28 years they ruled Haiti, the Duvaliers. Even the most conservative estimate makes it one of the largest massacres on a single day in Latin America in the 20th century. Day group, London and Bedford Barcode and Other Identifiers The Trujillo regimes policy of State-sponsored terror, as well as the racist, anti-Haitian ideology put forward by the regime and Dominican intellectuals, provided the context for these events, although Turits (2003), in a seminal work on these killings identified the defense of territorial integrity (against a perceived Haitianization of frontier areas), as a decisive factor. Several of the persons responsible for the killing (prison guards and soldiers) were tried and acquitted in July 1917. During this period, the social movements fighting for the establishment of democracy, human rights and the rule of law were persecuted by the military, former macoutes and paramilitary groups called attachs. The military killed political activists and journalists and organized their disappearance. According to Pierre-Charles (2000: 208), more than 1,500 people disappeared between 1986 and 1990, most of them under the rule of General Henri Namphy, between March and October 1987. The most notable action of the Oprichniki, was the massacre at Novgorod where 1,500 nobles and anywhere from three to 30,000 thousand others were executed, reducing Novgorod to a shell of a city. Anyone who challenged the VSN risked assassination. Tonton Macoute: Directed by Nigel Robinson. Indeed, the devastating earthquake now bringing death and heartbreak is the latest in a long line of tragedies to befall a place dubbed the Island of the Damned. Second only to Stalins secret police force, Hitlers Gestapo terrorized Nazi Germany for 13 years, acting as the main tool of oppressing dissent against the Nazi regime, as the primary force that initially terrorized and rounded up the Jews and latera leading player in the Holocaust. Cuello, Jos Isreal, Documentos del conflicto domnico-haitiano de 1937. (Sleeve) 1971 RCA Limited. Murdaugh is heckled as he leaves court, Ken Bruce finishes his 30-year tenure as host of BBC Radio 2, Ukrainian soldier takes out five tanks with Javelin missiles, Family of a 10-month-old baby filmed vaping open up, Missing hiker buried under snow forces arm out to wave to helicopter, Hershey's Canada releases HER for SHE bars featuring a trans activist, Moment teenager crashes into back of lorry after 100mph police race. 1991 (October 1 and 2): In the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Martissant, during the two days that followed the coup, army soldiers and paramilitary groups terrorized the local population and killed at least seven individuals, including one adolescent.