Haitians, Free of Duvalier, Vent Outrage on His Police

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti —  Revenge killings Saturday against the despised militiamen of ousted President Jean-Claude Duvalier marked the end of 28 years of repressive rule. Celebratory parades, looting and some rioting were also reported in the capital and elsewhere, even as a largely civilian Cabinet was appointed to administer the country.

As many as 100 people were dead and scores injured since Duvalier left the Caribbean country for France on Friday.

There were reports that members of the deposed dictator’s militia, the Tontons Macoutes, had been beaten and hacked to death with machetes. Another account said that bodies were stacked in a sweltering, unrefrigerated morgue at a Port-au-Prince hospital.

At one station of the secret police, in the hillside suburb of Petionville, soldiers on Saturday morning managed to control a screaming crowd trying to get at 30 militiamen inside the walled compound.

A Baptist minister, who identified himself as Jean E. Raymond, said the crowd had gathered to protest the police killing of a young man and a young woman Friday.

The police inside shot and wounded a woman and child in the besieging crowd. The army then surrounded the post, arrested the men who allegedly fired the shots and confiscated rifles from the post.

Military units with tanks reportedly fired tear gas on rioters surrounding the home of Ender Day, a Tontons Macoutes leader who served as personal voodoo priest to Duvalier’s father, Francois, a country doctor who preceded him in power and tyranny and became universally known here as Papa Doc.

The new authorities, attempting to stem the unrest, renewed a 2 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew on Port-au-Prince, a city of nearly 1 million people. International flights in and out of Haiti were canceled, and the airport was closed and guarded by soldiers.

The ruling council, three of whose five members are from the military, also appointed a predominantly civilian Cabinet to begin the process of restoring normal life to the country--one with a history of grinding poverty, of great inequality between rich and poor.

Four Cabinet ministers come from the council itself, a sort of transition body from Duvalier’s rule.

They are Gerard Gourgue, former president of the Haitian Human Rights Commission, who will be justice minister; Col. Williams Regala, minister of the interior and national defense, in charge of domestic security forces; Col. Max Valles, information minister, and Alix Cineas, who was public works minister under Duvalier, now a minister without portfolio.

Others named to the Cabinet were Jacques Francois, foreign minister; Marcel Ledger, finance and economy; Odonel Fenestor, commerce and industry; Rosnex Desroches, education, youth and sports; Pierre Petit, public works; Rony Auguste, social affairs; Dr. Simphar Boutemps, public health, and Montegue Cantave, agriculture and natural resources.

Gregoire Eugene, founder of the opposition Social Christian Party, said Saturday that Gourgue told him that the governing council is considering measures to control the Tontons Macoutes.

Possible Firearms Ban

“They are considering a communique ordering everyone having a firearm to turn it in at the nearest police,” Eugene said.

Two days before Duvalier fled, Gourgue predicted that disarming the Tontons Macoutes “will become one of the major issues facing any new government.”

The U.S. ambassador to Haiti, Clayton E. McManaway, held his first formal meeting with the leader of the new governing council, Lt. Gen. Henri Namphy. Details of their discussions were not released.

However, earlier in the day, an embassy spokesman expressed measured approval of the steps the new leaders are taking.

“This indicated the government is moving rapidly to form a functioning government,” the spokesman said. “There’s a mixture of old faces and new faces and an attempt to move forward without breaking continuity.”

Attacks against symbols of the Duvalier family rule continued Saturday. Rioters vandalized the home owned by Duvalier’s wife, Michele, in Petionville.

Crime of the Poor

As in every coup and revolution, there was looting by the greedy, the angry and the desperately poor.

At a Catholic Relief Services warehouse half a mile from the capital’s airport, women and young children squatted on the floor, scraping a thin layer of powdered milk and scattered grains of wheat into cardboard boxes or straight into their mouths.

Overnight, an estimated $300,000 worth of grain, milk, cooking oil and medicine had been removed.

Area residents said the warehouse had been emptied by a large group of men, using 10 trucks, who worked throughout the night despite the curfew. No one knew for certain who the looters were. Local residents speculated that they were either Tontons Macoutes militiamen stocking up in case of possible battle with the army or profiteers intending to sell the food at a time of growing shortages.

The men left only the debris of burst powdered milk and bulgur wheat bags, as well as Catholic Relief Services documents, scattered across the floor.

As John Klink, the agency’s Caribbean area director, looked on, the barefoot children and the women, their cotton dresses tucked up around their hips, scraped morsels of grain together.

Some used collapsed cardboard boxes, marked “Furnished by the people of the United States of America. Not to be sold or exchanged,” to carry what they could home to feed their families.