Haiti: An Island Full of Fugitives

The man sitting in the dark seems painfully thin, but he has gained 25 lbs. since Haitian police detained him for nine days last March. They stomped on his back, beat him with batons, kicked him with their boots. He survived on a liquid diet: the urine of his captors. He now lives on the run in Port-au- Prince, hiding with friends and begging for food.

Johnson Aristide, a 25-year-old activist from Les Cayes, is no relation to the exiled President, but he is one of thousands living in marronage, or internal exile. While the world watches a flood of boat people go to sea, many more are on the run inside Haiti, hunted down for their political activities. Estimates of these fugitives range from 100,000 to 300,000 of Haiti’s 7 million people. Marronage has its roots in the 17th century, when slaves in the French colony began escaping from plantations into the mountains. After the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in a 1991 military coup, his supporters returned to the ways of their ancestors. They know the tricks of disguise — men often dress as merchant women — but the fear and frustration never fade. Families live apart, sometimes for years at a time. “You learn to live like a bat,” says Aristide. “You fly at night.”

Thermil Salem is a soldier who worked as a driver for a group of antigang policemen who are feared for their brutality. Secretly, Salem supported President Aristide. “My teeth cannot speak about those days,” he says. He served two jail terms. Living outside Port-au-Prince in a brick hut that also serves as a voodoo temple, he never goes out now. “They have spies all around,” he says.

In villages like Ganthier and Petit Trou de Nippes, half the young men live in the brush. They return to town in the morning, after the army patrols have stopped, to collect food and money from their parents. In Ganthier, the local priest says the men fled after soldiers discovered that they had formed a group to discuss politics. “They just want to kill somebody,” he says. “The people are living in hell.” Even the mayor of Port-au-Prince, Evans Paul, lives in hiding. Ever since paramilitary thugs shot up city hall last September, he has not returned to his office. He sleeps in a different house every night. “The threats are permanent,” he says. “Most of the people here are dangerous.”

Unlike the others, Gerald Pierre was never a political activist. His only offense was to serve as the jury foreman in the case of Roger Lafontant, one of Haiti’s most notorious Macoutes thugs. “I read the guilty verdict,” he says, “and that is when my troubles began.” A week after the 1991 coup, five men with machine guns came to his house and accused him of conspiring to condemn the now dead Lafontant. After two years’ hiding in the countryside, he returned to organize a self-defense brigade in the capital. Soldiers encircled the slum and opened fire. He escaped and in desperation applied for refugee status in the U.S. In January an attache spotted Pierre near the processing center and opened fire, killing a friend. Since then, Pierre moves every two weeks. “I cannot live like this much longer,” he says.

Those like Johnson Aristide derive strength from a belief in the President’s return. He issues press releases from hiding, demanding the resignation of military leader Lieut. General Raoul Cedras. “My dream is democracy. Telling me to stop is like telling me to stop breathing,” he says. “I cannot.”