Turmoil and Anxiety Follows Overthrow of Haitian President
Episcopal News Service. October 18, 1991 [91197]
Nan Cobbey, Features Editor of Episcopal Life
The coup d'etat that toppled Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected president, temporarily closed down several ministries of the Episcopal Church in that country, and prompted public statements of condemnation from the presiding bishop.
The diocesan office closed for four days the first of October as violence flared throughout the capital city and its environs. Seminary classes in Port-auPrince were canceled. The church's elementary and secondary schools in the capital have yet to open, and the 6 A.M. daily masses at the cathedral were suspended during the first few days because of a curfew imposed by the army. The army seized power the night of September 29.
The sisters of the [Episcopal] Society of St. Margaret, whose convent in the cathedral close is located two blocks from the National Palace, watched and heard the coup unfold. They were forced to move out of their bedrooms on the second floor and sleep on mattresses on the first floor to avoid gunfire whizzing through their windows.
However, no members of the church, clergy or laity, were injured in the fighting that claimed several hundred people, according to Bishop Luc A. J. Garnier of Haiti. All is back to normal, he said in a telephone interview from his home.
Within 24 hours of the coup, Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning sent a cable decrying the overthrow to President Bush, Secretary of State James Baker, Congressional leaders, the Organization of American States (OAS), and several UN ambassadors.
"It is with profound distress and horror that I learn of the violent ouster of Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide," wrote Browning. He called for the immediate reinstatement of the man, who "has valiantly begun the process of cleaning out the corruption, the violence, and the injustice of the past."
A second letter to the OAS supporting its trade embargo of Haiti followed. "It is my profound hope," wrote Browning, "that your efforts will serve at once to convince Haiti's provisional leaders and their military sponsors of the world community's determination to sustain the Haitian people's struggle for democracy, a struggle so vividly manifested in the December elections that swept President Aristide to power.... Only by the immediate of restoration of Aristide's government can the Haitian people be spared the continued repression, suffering and a return to dictatorship."
"This is an illegal movement from the Army and whoever has been backing the Army," said the Rev. Ricardo Potter, partnership officer for Latin America and Caribbean, and a native of the neighboring Dominican Republic. "It sets back the whole hope of the people of Haiti to move into the 20th century with a democratic and constitutional government."
Gamier, a long-time critic of Aristide, expressed a different view. "The country was going down, doing nothing, under Aristide," he charged. Garnier said that he believes there will be greater freedom under the newly formed interim government. He added that he expects the new government will transform Haiti into "a real democracy where people have a right to speak freely without being afraid."