The Human Rights Review is a quarterly report prepared by MICIVIH which gives an overview of the human rights performance of the Haitian police, prisons and the judiciary. It is based on the Mission's work both at headquarters and in the field in the three areas of its mandate: monitoring, institution-building and promotion. Also published in French, it is widely distributed, nationally and internationally, and can be accessed on the MICIVIH Web site (www.un.org/rights/ micivih/first.htm), which was recently updated and also contains press releases and other documents on MICIVIH's work. Appended to the review is a set of tables giving comparative annual statistics since 1996 for police killings, allegations of abuses, prison population, pre-trial detention and "popular" justice.

GENERAL CONTEXT

Despite certain vicissitudes, the electoral process held its course and by mid-December there were signs of a growing confidence in the electoral process. According to the electoral calendar published on 6 October, legislative, municipal and local elections were due to take place on 19 March 2000. The most promising development was the successful conclusion of candidate registration, for which the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) assigned a four-week period ending on 10 December. For various reasons almost no candidates registered during the first 3½ weeks. Then there was a rush in the last two days and after extending the period through the weekend of 11-12 December (but refusing a longer extension that might have jeopardised the rest of the calendar), the CEP finally registered a very large number of candidates from all the main parties and alliances including those that had previously indicated their unhappiness with certain aspects of the process.

Among these were Organisation du Peuple en Lutte, whose leaders had consistently displayed reservations about the CEP, and Fanmi Lavalas, some of whose supporters had recently taken to calling for these elections to be held simultaneously with the presidential election at the end of 2000. The most significant indication of Fanmi Lavalas's acceptance of this electoral process was its decision to contest the two senatorial seats it had previously claimed to have won in the disputed 1997 elections, thereby reversing its position that it would not field candidates for these two seats.

For the most part, the registration of candidates went off without violence aside from minor incidents arising from disputes within certain parties and alliances over the choice of candidates. The preceding phase of installation of municipal electoral offices (BECs) was also in general accomplished with little violence although there were protests about the composition of BECs in some parts of the country such as the Artibonite and the Central Plateau, as a result of which BEC members were replaced in a few cases.

The only region that experienced significant disruption to the electoral process was the Grand'Anse, where the regional political movement Kowòdinasyon Resistans Grandans (KOREGA) continued to manifest determined opposition to the composition of the Departmental Electoral Bureau (BED) even after one of the BED members was replaced in October. It was reported that unidentified individuals set fire to the Bonbon BEC and stole registration material from the Corail BEC during the final two days of candidate registration, and tried to attack a number of other Grand'Anse BECs. On 10 December (originally the last day for registration), a fire broke out in the market area of Jérémie which destroyed about 10 houses (including one formerly occupied by the BED president) without causing any casualties. No doubt a sign of the political temperature, claims were made that the fire was started deliberately and was politically motivated. However, there was no initial evidence to support this, the area hit by the fire was far from the BED and BEC offices, and, according to police sources, the fire originated in the third floor of a building where a meeting was taking place. Registration was able to continue and be completed in the Grand'Anse although the region has somewhat fewer candidates than other regions. KOREGA candidates did finally register, albeit under the name of a new alliance, ESKANP. In Anse d'Hainault, the disqualification of the KOREGA mayor (agent exécutif intérimaire) as a candidate for re-election was followed by attacks on the Municipal Electoral Bureau (BEC) and electoral personnel in late December.

A wave of summary deportations of undocumented Haitians from the Dominican Republic, and the possibility that it might exacerbate social and political problems in Haiti, focussed much of the attention of the Haitian media throughout November. The number of deportations appeared to let up after talks between the two governments and the signing of an agreement to ensure that the process was carried out in more acceptable conditions respectful of the rights of the deportees. Another source of discontent was a strike for better pay and conditions by the two main teachers unions, as a result of which the state schools did not function in October and November. This gave rise to a number of incidents, including claims that Jacmel police used excessive force to disperse protesting students on 15 November and stone-throwing against private school students by state school students in Port-au-Prince. Armed crime continued to fuel widespread concerns about insecurity, especially as some well-known business figures were among the victims and the persons killed. However, there were very few incidents of political violence, most of which appeared to be related to unhappiness with the designation of personnel for the electoral apparatus or elective office. It is unfortunate that non-violent methods of expressing discontent were not used.

Regarding respect for human rights, there were only a small number of killings by police, as in the previous quarter, while there were contradictory swings in the number of cases of ill-treatment depending on the region and the calibre of police supervising officials. Prolonged pre-trial detention continued to be one of the most sensitive shortcomings of the judicial system despite guidelines from the Ministry of Justice to reduce levels and some ad hoc efforts to address the issue. There were some positive developments with regard to some long-outstanding cases of arbitrary and illegal detention where release orders had not been complied with. The declared intention of the new Port-au-Prince state prosecutor to apply the law in this regard was a refreshing approach. However, her release of 21 persons for humanitarian reasons generated some tensions with the Minister of Justice. The rule of law requires difficult decisions that may be at odds with security and political considerations but which are fully consonant with the letter of the law and can only benefit respect for individual rights and due process. There was clearly a new willingness afoot, particularly in Port-au-Prince, to confront the prevailing laxness in the parquet through the imposition of tighter oversight. The need for greater transparency was underlined by the continuing silence with regard to the reports of the investigations, internal and judicial, on the Carrefour-Feuilles police killings of 28 May 1999, and the October report of the commission studying the cases of continued arbitrary and illegal detention of persons benefitting from judicial release orders. The renewed vitality of human rights NGOs and the increased outreach of the Office of the Ombudsman were also encouraging signs.

MICIVIH's mandate was to have ended on 31 December 1999 but it was extended by a U.N. General Assembly resolution of 17 December to allow for a smooth transition to the establishment of a new Mission Internationale Civile d'Appui en Haïti (MICAH), which is to begin its work in the areas of human rights, justice and police by 15 March at the latest. As it approached the end of its mandate, MICIVIH continued to carry out all aspects of its responsibilities, while continuing to give priority to efforts to develop local capacity in the promotion and protection of human rights, above all by providing technical assistance and training to local human rights NGOs and to the Office of the Ombudsman.

POLICE

The Haitian National Police was shaken by a series of events in October which posed a serious challenge to the authority of its leadership and to its institutional integrity. The first event was the unexpected resignation on 7 October of the Secretary of State for Public Security Robert Manuel. Popular organisations close to Fanmi Lavalas and Fanmi Lavalas itself had been calling for his resignation, along with that of the HNP Director General, since the beginning of the year on the grounds of their inability to contain rising insecurity.

The resignation was closely followed by the murder on the evening of 8 October of former Colonel Jean Lamy, a consultant to the HNP directorate and one of the small number of army officers who remained loyal to the Aristide government during the coup d'état period. Police sources said he was shot while driving alone in a government pickup a few yards from the home of a friend he had intended to visit. It was widely reported that the shooting occurred minutes after he left the home of Manuel, where he and another former army officer, Pierre Chérubin, had been meeting with the former Secretary of State. Manuel left the country the next day in a departure which, according to government sources, had been planned prior to Lamy's killing. He warned again of the dangers of politicisation of the institution in a final message to the police that was released after he left. The Prime Minister announced that the position of Secretary of State for Public Security was not essential and that no successor would be appointed.

On 12 October, MICIVIH issued a statement expressing its concern about the murder of Lamy, the killings of 18 police officers since the beginning of the year and the increase in violent crime in general. While the motives for these killings were unclear, the Mission said they threatened Haiti's fragile institutions, contributed to the destabilisation of the police in the runup to the elections and heightened the public's fears. The statement ended by urging the authorities to take energetic measures to restore confidence and take long overdue steps to reinforce the investigative ability of the judicial police.

An attack on the director of the judicial police, Commissaire Mario Andresol, came next in the sequence of disturbing developments. Gunmen fired at his vehicle on the evening of 15 October in Delmas, hitting it five times but injuring neither him nor his driver. News reports linked the attack to the fact that he was directly in charge of the investigation into the Lamy murder, but as head of the judicial police he is also responsible for the HNP's anti-narcotics unit and his name had sometimes been mentioned along with those of Manuel and Denizé by popular organisations demanding the replacement of the police leadership.

Although Manuel and Lamy were reported to have been friends, Fanmi Lavalas spokesperson Dany Toussaint and popular organisations close to Fanmi Lavalas repeatedly and stridently accused Manuel of responsibility for Lamy's death, alleging that Manuel was the only one who had known where Lamy was going when he was ambushed. Toussaint, an ex-army officer and head of the interim police force in Port-au-Prince in 1995, also claimed that witnesses had placed vehicles assigned to Manuel's security escort at the scene of the murder. These allegations, though widely reported by news media, were dismissed by government officials while opposition parties portrayed them as part of a perceived Fanmi Lavalas strategy to dominate the police. A small group of pro-Fanmi Lavalas protestors disrupted Lamy's funeral service, held on 16 October in the Cathedral with former President Aristide, Dany Toussaint and Pierre Denizé among those attending. Crossing a security cordon for which the crowd-control unit (CIMO) was reportedly responsible, the protestors entered the Cathedral while the service was in progress, waving Aristide posters and shouting slogans hostile to Manuel and Denizé. They then rolled the posters into balls and kept throwing them at Denizé, who left in the former president's vehicle. The disruption of the funeral was widely deplored, as was the apparent breach of the HNP Director General's own security. Another protest against Denizé and Manuel was staged by Dany Toussaint supporters outside the studios of Radio Haiti Inter in Delmas on 19 October, apparently because the station had been critical of the racial dimension given to some of their accusations against Manuel. The station's director, a long-standing supporter of the Lavalas movement, responded the next day with an editorial that was a stinging rebuke of Toussaint, and thereafter the campaign against Manuel and Denizé abated.

These events were accompanied by signs of further deterioration in police morale, which was exacerbated by the killings of six HNPs in the three weeks ending 15 October and by a delay in the issuing of the September pay cheques. The September pay had been promised for mid-September (to facilitate payment of school fees at the start of the new academic year) but was not distributed until mid-October. Many police displayed a lackadaisical attitude in the metropolitan-area stations, especially Carrefour, where observers had seen a steady fall in discipline since the commissaire municipal's arrest on a drugs charge in July. Police inaction in the face of a wave of robberies and break-ins was cited by residents as the reason for a resurgence of acts of "popular justice" in Carrefour which included the lynching of six suspected thieves in one incident on 20 October. The private sector, for its part, became increasingly concerned about the apparent inability of the police to contain a growing number of armed robberies in which businessmen and store owners were killed, which the president of the Chamber of Commerce called "a pigeon shoot." Police in the central Port-au-Prince area did however respond to the series of killings of HNPs in the Portail Léogâne district, launching a campaign of arrests of suspected street criminals in mid-October.

Some noteworthy successes in the fight against crime and drug trafficking, as well as some improvements in equipment and infrastructure, helped offset these blows to police morale. In November, the government distributed 50 vehicles to the police in all the Departments. The largest allocation went to West Department, where each of the five main commissariats in the metropolitan area were given five new Toyota Landcruisers to improve their capacity to deal with the high crime rate. The Pétionville commissaire municipal said the new vehicles would be used for patrolling and rapid intervention. Another 35 four-wheel-drive pickups and communication equipment were handed over to the police on 8 December by the UNDP, which had acquired them with funds donated by Japan. One of the aims of this donation in the short term was to reinforce the ability of the HNP to provide security for the elections. At the handover ceremony, the Prime Minister stressed that "private or personal use" of the vehicles would not be allowed. A new sous-commissariat under the command of the Pétionville commissariat was opened in October at Delmas 62 with five police officers and two motorcycles (but no vehicles). Its creation follows that of three other sous-commissariats in the metropolitan area in the previous quarter (at Delmas 3, Cité Soleil Route Nationale 1 and Martissant). Three more stations were inaugurated in December in the North and Centre departments. A police operation in December called "Boucler Port-au-Prince," consisting of an increase in vehicle patrols and road checks and heightened police visibility, appeared to contribute to a fall in armed crime in the capital and to ease people's minds somewhat.

Police/elections

The ability and resolve of the police to maintain public order for electoral activities in the runup to the elections scheduled for 19 March 2000 was initially an issue following the publication of a full electoral calendar on 6 October. A small number of HNPs were present but did not intervene when a score of protestors shouting "Aristide ou la mort" disrupted a ceremony held by the CEP on 24 October in Port-au-Prince to launch its civic education campaign. The protesters reportedly knocked over chairs, threw plastic bottles of urine at CEP members and tried to assault opposition Espace de Concertation leader Evans Paul, who was rescued by bodyguards. MICIVIH issued a statement stressing the need for the police to perform its duties and calling for a greater display of responsibility from all political actors, including the party which the protestors had claimed to support. The Minister of Justice attributed the inadequate police presence to a lack of coordination between the CEP and the HNP. The incident was deplored by government officials and most political parties including Fanmi Lavalas, which argued it could not be held responsible simply because the protestors had shouted pro-Aristide slogans. Fanmi Lavalas also accused the Espace de Concertation of having staged the incident in order to discredit Fanmi Lavalas.

Thereafter, the Haitian National Police appeared to carry out its security responsibilities adequately at all election-linked public gatherings. Some 30 police, including a CIMO unit from Port-au-Prince, were present for an opposition rally which was held by the Espace de Concertation in Petit Goâve on 6 November and was monitored by MICIVIH. The police said tyres had been burned in the town on the eve of the rally in an apparent attempt to discourage participation, and news media reported that the podium had been smeared with human excrement during the night. There were about 300 active participants, most of whom arrived by bus, while some 700 Petit Goâve residents watched passively from the edge of the square where it took place. Contrary to news reports, the rally was interrupted by only one minor incident when two individuals shouted pro-Aristide slogans, giving rise to a scuffle that caused people on one side of the square to start running. The CIMO intervened immediately, taking aside one individual who was then released, and the rally quickly resumed. A CIMO detachment provided security for an activity organized by the Mobilisation pour le Développement National (MDN) on 9 November at its headquarters in central Port-au-Prince which was also observed by MICIVIH. No incidents occurred.

An impressive police presence comprising more than 100 police officers, including CIMO and SWAT units and several commissioners and other unit commanders, provided security for a second Espace de Concertation rally held on the Champ de Mars in Port-au-Prince on 29 November. Some 200 to 300 people took part with a sizable number of observers present including journalists and MICIVIH. In contrast to a demonstration organised by the Chamber of Commerce on the same spot on 28 May, the rally passed off without incident aside from two brief scuffles on the fringe between Espace supporters and a number of youths who intermittently shouted pro-Aristide slogans without causing any significant disruption. Police quickly intervened in these altercations and two persons were briefly detained. A sizable police presence was also reported at the West BED when a number of Fanmi Lavalas leaders arrived there together on 10 December to register as candidates.

Police-community relations

A crowd of residents ransacked and set fire to the police station of Chansolme (North West) on 19 November (but caused no personal injuries) in reaction to an incident in which a police officer shot and wounded a youth who was detonating firecrackers. The officer, who had been transferred to Chansolme from the SWAT for disciplinary reasons, returned briefly to the police station to inform his colleagues of the incident and then fled. The chef de poste rushed to the scene and drove the seriously injured youth to hospital in nearby Port-de-Paix. During his absence a large, agitated crowd reportedly gathered outside the police station, erected burning barricades, threw stones at the building and chanted anti-police slogans. The two HNPs inside, who had no radio communications, tried without success to reason with the crowd and then abandoned the police station. After letting them pass unhurt, the crowd reportedly surged into the building, ransacked it and set it on fire. When the police departmental director drove from Port-de-Paix to Chansolme the same night with an UDMO detachment to restore calm, both his and the UDMO vehicles were damaged by rock-throwing protestors. Responding effectively, the departmental director appealed for calm in a broadcast on local radio, met with relatives of the victim, ordered a search for the HNP responsible and arranged for repairs to the commissariat to begin immediately. He also requested that it be equipped with radios. The UDMO remained stationed in the town for several days while sporadic protests continued. However, MICIVIH found it to be quiet six days after the incident. This was the most destructive crowd attack on police property since the ransacking of the Limbé commissariat in January 1999 and the ransacking and torching of the Saint-Michel de l'Attalaye commissariat in November 1998 (see HRR October - December 1998). The Inspection Générale (General Inspectorate) opened an investigation and the HNP involved was subsequently detained in Port-au-Prince and placed in isolement.

Killings of police

Three more police officers were killed in the first two weeks of October (two of them in the capital), bringing the number killed in the three weeks from 24 September to six. Three were Anti-Gang officers, of whom two had been assigned to protect Dany Toussaint, the former Port-au-Prince police chief in the 1994-95 interim police force and now a Fanmi Lavalas spokesperson (see above). Several others were injured in shooting attacks. These deaths brought the total killed during 1999 to 20. Most were off duty at the time. There were no further killings of police officers after mid-October. According to figures provided to MICIVIH by the Inspection Générale on 12 November, 72 police officers have been murdered since the formation of the Haitian National Police in 1995 and another 79 have died of natural causes or in accidents.

One of the October victims was a member of the palace guard (Unité de Sécurité Générale du Palais Nationale) who was reportedly lynched together with a civilian in Mahot, a locality near Bainet (South-East) on 14 October. Police and other sources said they had gone with two other civilians to look for drugs in the Bainet area (reputedly one where cocaine shipments are often landed), and that they were stoned and hacked to death by about 30 peasants after searching a home. The other two civilians escaped.

Killings by police

There were eight fatal shootings by police during the last quarter of 1999. There was not enough information in most of the cases to determine whether or not a human rights violation had taken place, particularly, in three of the cases, when police claimed that they fired in self-defence. There were two other unconfirmed reports of police shooting robbers dead during or just after holdups in the metropolitan area. Allegations were also received of police complicity in the 14 November killing of a suspected robber by an armed group of civilians in Cité Soleil. See under "Popular" justice below for more detail.

The official police version that a demonstrator was killed and two others injured when hit by a single bullet discharged accidentally by an officer using his weapon to push back demonstrators in Tabarre on 11 October is of serious concern. The demonstrators were protesting the reported attempts of the National Palace transport chief to evict them from a piece of land. The protesters alleged that Delmas police led by the commissaire municipal fired shots into the crowd.

An off-duty police officer from L'Estère was placed in police custody and then transferred to prison after shooting a woman in Saint-Marc on 11 October, reportedly in a fit of rage during a fight with his cousin. The woman died of her injuries six weeks later. There were reports that police officers from both Saint-Marc and L'Estère behaved in an intimidatory manner towards members of the cousin's family and that of the victim, which declined offers of financial compensation from the HNP's lawyers. MICIVIH was concerned that the judicial inquiry (which was assigned to an examining magistrate on 20 October) was being pursued with little determination.

At the request of the victim's family, the Inspection Générale opened an investigation into a fatal shooting in the Carrefour-Feuilles district of Port-au-Prince on 21 November by an off-duty Anti-Gang officer who has been assigned since 1996 as a bodyguard to Dany Toussaint, the former chief of the interim police force. The officer allegedly fired on an unarmed individual who objected to the arrest of his brother by the officer. Police had to rescue the officer from an angry crowd who threatened to lynch him. Thereafter, residents staged a protest in the neighbourhood, blocking the streets with burning tyres and throwing rocks at passing vehicles. Police authorities said a wanted notice would be issued for the officer and his pay would be frozen.

MICIVIH's tally of fatal shootings by police during 1999 was 66, slightly more than double the total for 1998, which was 31 (see table). Most of the 1999 killings occurred in the first half of the year. These figures include killings believed to have been human rights violations, murders of a criminal nature, accidental killings, legitimate self-defence and fatal shootings whose nature could not be determined because of a lack of information.

Ill-treatment by police

During the period under review there were contradictory movements in the number of allegations received by MICIVIH of ill-treatment at the hands of the police. However, as MICIVIH's monitoring was not complete or systematic, especially in the areas where it no longer has a regional bureau, its figures may be regarded only as an indication of trends.

Allegations of beatings by the Cap Haïtien police fell from 30 during the previous quarter to just six during October-December. This improvement came after MICIVIH submitted two aide-mémoire on ill-treatment cases to the police departmental director, who passed them on to the commissaire municipal. The latter, however, accused observers of misquoting the police in its reports and instructed them henceforth to speak only with the inspector designated as the liaison with MICIVIH. In nearby Limonade (North), police acknowledged that two individuals were ill-treated at the time of arrest on 7 October, apparently in connection with demands for the redistribution of land in the area.

In the Artibonite, the improvement that followed the appointment of a new departmental director in July continued. MICIVIH received only one report of ill-treatment in the department in October and November, that of a detainee allegedly beaten in the Gonaïves commissariat on 30 November. It was investigated promptly by the commissaire municipal.

In the metropolitan area, however, MICIVIH received 79 allegations of ill-treatment at the time of arrest or while in police custody in October-December, more than twice the total for the previous three months. In most of these cases, detainees had visible injuries consistent with the alleged ill-treatment. One of the factors in this increase was a wave of arrests carried out in response to a number of killings of police in the Portail Léogâne area, which resulted in a total of 19 cases of alleged ill-treatment in the Port-au-Prince commissariat during one October visit. Two of the suspects were allegedly subjected to particularly violent beatings outside the cells in front of the other detainees, a practice that has been reported in the past at this police station. The Delmas and Pétionville stations were the source of most of the other metropolitan-area cases. Elsewhere in the country, beatings were attributed to police officers assigned to the following stations: Les Cayes (1), Jérémie (1), Saint-Louis du Sud (1) and Miragoâne (1).

Police custody conditions

Improvements were made to the holding cells in a number of commissariats. The cells at the Jérémie commissariat were repainted and were noticeably cleaner. At the HNP-run detention centre in Arcahaie (West), police repaired two of the cells at their own initiative, but for the most part the cells remained insecure, with crumbling brickwork and doors. The garde à vue area in the Pétionville commissariat was also repainted in October following the appointment of a new commissaire municipal.

Police custody conditions continued to be extremely poor in the Port-de-Paix commissariat, with men, women and minors all still held in the same, dirty cell, and police officers still failing to fetch food for the detainees from the prison (see HRR July - September 1999). The holding cells at the Les Cayes commissariat also remained filthy and malodorous. No medical care was available to detainees at the detention centre in Ouanaminthe, which was not secure and was not guarded by police at night.

In Gonaïves, MICIVIH was concerned by at least two cases in October in which the police failed to obtain prompt medical attention for detainees who had been beaten quite badly by the population prior to arrest. This concern was raised with the police departmental director.

Illegal/arbitrary detention, respect for the 48-hour rule

As has been the case in most of 1999, the right to see a judge within 48 hours of arrest was extensively violated in Port-au-Prince, especially in the central Port-au-Prince commissariat where at least 60 detainees were held beyond this limit in October including at least 20 who were held for three to four weeks in connection with the Portail Léogâne killings of police. At least six of the 20 held on 13 October were minors, while another five minors aged between 7 and 13 were detained on 27 October in connection with the non-fatal shooting of two HNPs the previous night, although minors of 13 or less cannot legally be detained as they are below the age of criminal responsibility. At the main Delmas commissariat on 26 October, 16 of the 21 detainees had been held beyond the limit, 13 of them for more than three weeks. Eleven of these 13 were being held on behalf of the judicial police, which has been responsible for many cases of illegally prolonged police detention in the past. Similar practices were noted at the Pétionville commissariat where, on 22 November, 16 of 18 detainees had been held for more than 48 hours without seeing a judge.

A Colombian citizen whose illegal detention since 20 February in the Pétionville commissariat had been brought to the attention of MICIVIH was taken from the station by a commissaire from the Judicial Police on 3 November and allowed to leave the country on a flight to Curaçao, police sources said. However, there was no written record of his removal from the commissariat just as there had never been any written record of his presence there or of the charges (if any) under which he was held. He appears never to have seen a judge.

The illegal and disturbing practice of obtaining judicial authorisations in order to hold detainees for prolonged periods in police custody while pursuing an investigation (pour enquête) continued to be observed in many parts of the country. During a meeting on 26 October, a Cap Haïtien judicial official acknowledged to MICIVIH that the practice was illegal but he maintained that investigations were much more likely to advance quickly if the suspect was kept in police custody instead of being transferred to prison. At the time of this meeting, a detainee had been held in police custody since 16 September on the orders of the state prosecutor.

Seven arrests made in Jacmel on 9 October as part of Operation Columbus, a US-backed international operation against drug trafficking, prompted accusations by regional representatives of Fanmi Lavalas that the police departmental director for the South had targeted its members for political reasons. The state prosecutor released all seven on 13 October on the grounds that the police had failed to find any incriminating evidence in its searches at the time of the arrests or to produce any other evidence against them. Only two had been formally charged. Regional representatives of Fanmi Lavalas had previously criticised the departmental director for the arrest of two civilians accused of complicity in the 25 July escape of a suspected drug trafficker from Jacmel prison (see below). Accusations of political bias were also made in connection with the brief arrests for questioning of two Fanmi Lavalas supporters ­ one of them a TV station director, the other the director of the local Téléco office ­ that were carried out in Les Cayes on the weekend of 2-3 October by the Bureau de Lutte contre le Trafic des Stupéfiants (BLTS). Both were released without being charged. The Téléco director told journalists that the purpose of his arrest was to undermine his chances of becoming the Fanmi Lavalas candidate for deputy in Les Cayes. MICIVIH was unable to evaluate the validity of these accusations of politically-motivated arrests in either case, Jacmel or Les Cayes.

Police detention register

The detention register which had filled up a year earlier at the Port-de-Paix commissariat was finally replaced on 26 November and MICIVIH found it was being well maintained during a visit three weeks later. The Mission had provided the station with photocopied register pages while there was no register, but they had been used only intermittently and on several occasions observers had found no written record of any of the detainees being held in the garde à vue (see HRR July - September 1999). An improvement was also noted in the upkeep of the register in the Jérémie commissariat in November.

Stations where the register was poorly kept included Môle Saint Nicolas (North-West), Quarter Morin (North) and Fort Liberté, while Ouanaminthe continued without a replacement for the register that was filled up in June. The register was also poorly maintained at the HNP-run detention centre in Arcahaie (West) and records for some of the detainees could not be located.

Detentions registers were not installed in either of the new Delmas sous-commissariats (Delmas 3 and Delmas 62) and detainees were being registered haphazardly in the day log (main courante). The Aquin commissariat did not obtain a replacement for the register which ran out in November, and there was no record of the six detainees being held at the time of a MICIVIH visit in November.

Internal investigations

MICIVIH had a series of meetings during this period with the Inspection Générale (General Inspectorate) in order to raise cases of abuses and to update its information on investigations already opened by the Inspection Générale. The Mission was concerned to note delays in concluding a number of investigations (some more than a year old) and hoped that, once completed, the results would be made public, something the Inspection Générale has not generally done in the past. In a positive development, representatives of a number of human rights NGOs began to meet with the Inspection Générale regularly to exchange information about cases and issues of concern.

MICIVIH learned that the internal police investigation into the 28 May killings of 11 individuals by police in Carrefour-Feuilles was completed in December and its final report was handed to the Minister of Justice. On 10 November, two HNPs were released from isolement and returned to duty after having been held since 3 June on suspicion of complicity in the escape of an inspector who is one of the suspects in the killings. However, the Mission was again concerned at the lack of progress in investigations into the human remains discovered in Titanyen in April and the reports of killings in the Bois Neuf area of Cité Soleil in May and June (see HRR April - June 1999).

Among the cases of concern to MICIVIH which the Inspection Générale has investigated were the alleged beating of a detainee in the Cabaret commissariat on 14 June which appears to have left his legs paralysed; a rape allegation made by a minor against a police officer in Hinche in March; a beating allegedly inflicted by a judicial police investigator on a detainee in Port-au-Prince in November 1998 resulting in the loss of an eye; and a series of ill-treatment cases in Petit-Goâve between mid-1998 and early 1999.

The Inspection Générale also investigated the death of a female supporter of the regional political movement KOREGA when police dispersed KOREGA protesters on 27 September in Jérémie (see HRR July - September 1998). MICIVIH's own inquiries supported the initial finding that the woman died as a result of having been hit by a truck and not from any beating or shooting by police, as alleged by KOREGA. According to the juge de paix, the victim told a doctor in the hospital where she was taken that she had been run over, while an autopsy carried out at the request of the Ministry of Justice found injuries consistent with what she had reported. However, the fact that she may have been fleeing from police at the time could have been a factor in the accident, and questions have been raised about the need for the police to pursue protesters with such zeal throughout the town.

According to figures provided by the Inspection Générale in early October, since the creation of the Haitian National Police in 1995, a total of 407 police officers have been dismissed as a result of an investigation by the Inspection Générale. Another 266 police officers have been dismissed on the decision of the Direction Générale, with "abandonment of post" being given as the reason for dismissal in at least 80 per cent of these cases. The number of officers directly dismissed on the decision of the Direction Générale had increased in 1999, but the number so far dismissed in 1999 on the recommendation of the Inspection Générale was only 20, all of them in the first three months of the year.

Police in isolement

Six police officers were being held in isolement in various stations in the capital in mid-December, one since August, one since early October and the others since November or early December. Two were being held in connection with shootings, two on drug charges, one on suspicion of theft and one on suspicion of fraud. This was less than half the total being held in isolement in the capital six months earlier ­ a welcome development as police in isolement are often held for weeks or months without being taken before a judge. There are still no regulations governing isolement. Proposed regulations were drafted in 1997 with MICIVIH assistance but have yet to be approved by the Ministry of Justice. This issue was discussed again with the Inspection Générale at a meeting in December.

A police inspector who was previously stationed in Port-de-Paix was placed in isolement at the Port-de-Paix commissariat on 21 October on charges of abandoning his subsequent post (in Jérémie) and "forming a paramilitary gang." Police sources said this measure had been ordered by the Inspection Générale in response to reports implicating the inspector in a gang that had allegedly been providing drug traffickers with protection. He was still in isolement there on 20 December and had been refused a visit from the juge de paix.

Judicial investigations

There were few visible signs of activity in the judicial investigation into the 28 May killings in Carrefour-Feuilles (see HRR July - September 1999), aside from the 16 November appearance of the police Director General before the commission of judges in charge of the inquiry. The final report of the Inspection Générale's investigation into the killings was reportedly sent to the commission in mid-December. Thereafter, judicial sources said the commission was just waiting for a ballistics report in order to complete its inquiry. The extremely long delay in making a public accounting of the killings led to demonstrations by family members of the victims and increasingly called into question the professed transparency of the authorities on the matter.

A judicial investigation into a non-fatal shooting on 19 September in Saint-Michel de l'Attalaye (Artibonite) by an off-duty police officer from Saint-Marc was closed without determining criminal responsibility after the victim and the officer came to an out-of-court financial settlement. The incident arose when the police officer intervened in a dispute between two drivers near his family's home. Neighbours said his firearm discharged when a friend of one of the drivers tried to disarm him. The victim, who was hit in the legs, denied having in any way attacked or provoked the HNP. Police sources said that an internal administrative inquiry had been carried out locally and that recommendations had been made for administrative sanctions against the officer concerned.

A police officer who had been assigned to Cap Haïtien police station and who had been repeatedly implicated in cases of beatings since 1998, some of them serious, was finally arrested on 13 December along with four others on charges of car theft and illegal possession of a firearm. MICIVIH had drawn the attention of the authorities to these cases on many occasions. The police officer had failed to respond to two summonses to appear in court ­ the second on 23 November ­ in connection with the most recent case in which two brothers were allegedly assaulted. Another Cap Haïtien police officer did appear in court in November, in response to a summons from an examining magistrate investigating the alleged beating of a detainee by eight HNPs in October 1998. The officer testified that the detainee was struck while resisting arrest by an officer who has since abandoned his post.

During a 25 November visit to the Les Cayes commissariat, MICIVIH noted that a detained police officer who was supposed to be in the custody of the Les Cayes police was nowhere to be found in the building. The HNP, whose arrest was ordered in April on charges of causing the death of a detainee in Camp Perrin by ill-treatment, was originally detained in Les Cayes prison. From there, he had been transferred to the commissariat on security grounds after allegedly receiving threats from other inmates. He was never placed in the cells, however, and had previously been seen circulating freely inside the commissariat. Informed of this irregular situation by MICIVIH, judicial authorities said they would raise the matter with the police departmental director. MICIVIH also informed the Inspection Générale of the failure to confine the officer within the holding cells.

An HNP was suspended from duty pending the outcome of a judicial inquiry after he fired a shot at around 4:00 a.m. on 14 October in Jacmel in the direction of the Délégué Départemental, supposedly mistaking him for a thief. This occurred outside the home of the Délégué as he was about to set off in his vehicle for Port-au-Prince. In a complaint filed the same day, the Délégué claimed that there had been an attempt on his life by the police. The HNP was briefly detained, until the examining magistrate in charge of the inquiry issued a provisional release order.

Training

Eleven HNPs from Grande Rivière du Nord and Bahon (North), including the police commissioner of Grande Rivière du Nord, attended a six-day seminar held jointly by MICIVIH and the UNCIVPOL between 5 and 17 November. A member of the Cap Haïtien CIVPOL gave two days of training in community policing while a staff member from MICIVIH's Cap Haïtien office led four days of training on human rights, conflict resolution and communication. The course was to be followed up by supervised field work. At the conclusion, the police who had taken part requested further seminars and suggested that their superiors be included in the participants. Human rights, conflict resolution and communication were also the themes of a seminar held by the MICIVIH office in Gonaïves on 13-15 December for 20 police officers from six commissariats in the Upper Artibonite.

Two MICIVIH consultants gave a series of presentations on human rights to trainees at the Police Academy in December. Also in December, the Director General of the police requested that MICIVIH prepare a training video and train police trainers with regards to respect for the law during elections.

JUSTICE

Administration of justice ­ Port-au-Prince

The possibility of progress in the problems of prolonged pre-trial detention and non-respect for judicial release orders in Port-au-Prince was raised by the transfer on 1 October of Jean Auguste Brutus from the post of state prosecutor, which he had held since the return to constitutional rule in 1994. His transfer to a Ministry of Justice position was accompanied by the removal of five of the Port-au-Prince deputy state prosecutors. The many arrests he had ordered over the years on charges of conspiracy against state security or on related charges that were never developed in judicial investigations or brought to trial, the many instances in which he failed to execute judicial release orders, and a general lack of rigour in the handling of detainee dossiers had long been the subject of MICIVIH representations to Mr. Brutus himself and to the Minister of Justice and of public statements of MICIVIH concern. They had also given rise to calls for his dismissal by members of the legal and human rights communities and legislators.

Following her promotion from the position of deputy state prosecutor to that of acting state prosecutor, replacing Mr. Brutus, Florence Mathieu promised, in press interviews, to speed up the processing of cases of those in pre-trial detention and to execute pending judicial release orders. She also took steps to improve organisation and discipline in the parquet and the administration of justice in general. This included monitoring the attendance of deputy prosecutors at hearings, drawing their attention to absences, and taking steps to ensure that the transport of detainees from prison to appear before judges was more punctual. MICIVIH welcomed the promptness of her reaction on 7 December when her attention was drawn to the case of a woman still being held in Fort National prison 12 months after having completed a two-year sentence for assault. After verifying the facts, she issued an immediate release order and the woman was released three hours later.

Pre-trial detention ­ Port-au-Prince

On 23 November, the new Port-au-Prince state prosecutor visited the National Penitentiary and released a total of 21 individuals in pre-trial detention, including six of the group that had been maintaining an intermittent hunger strike since late September. Three of the 21 had been held for more than 1,500 days without trial, another seven had been held for more than 1,000 days, and another five had been held for more than 500 days. In some case, these periods exceeded the potential sentence for the crime with which they were charged. Four were being held despite judicial orders for their release. However, the prosecutor did not cite excessively long pretrial detention or unexecuted release orders as the reason for the releases. She said they were released on "humanitarian" grounds, because they were seriously ill, and that she had taken this decision after consulting with the prison doctor and after personally verifying their state of health.

Press reports followed of unhappiness in government circles about the releases, especially the releases of individuals with alleged links to the 1991 coup d'état such as Evans François (a brother of one of the coup's main actors, former police chief Michel François), who was one of those being held despite a release order. The press reports noted that the Prime Minister had said publicly on 17 November that such persons should not be released until the U.S. government returned the FAd'H and FRAPH documents (seized in 1994) because, he had said, it was these documents that would enable the Haitian authorities to determine the detainees' culpability with regard to the coup.

Thereafter, in a series of press interviews in early December, the Minister of Justice announced that an investigation was being carried out into the state prosecutor's releases. He stated that only one of the detainees (Evans François) had a medical certificate attesting to a poor state of health and argued that seriously ill detainees could anyway have been hospitalised under police guard. He suggested that the prosecutor might have exceeded her authority in some of the cases by releasing detainees whose dossiers were still with an examining magistrate, and he did not rule out the possibility that some might be re-arrested.

In an interview published on 7 December in Le Nouvelliste, MICIVIH's Deputy Executive Director said he regarded the releases as an attempt to deal with a situation of prolonged pre-trial detention that was bordering on the arbitrary. He said those released included individuals who had been held in violation of Haitian law and international treaties signed by Haiti requiring that detainees be tried within a reasonable period of time, or released. He also stressed that persons cannot legally be kept in detention if their judicial dossiers are empty or non-existent or if judicial release orders have been issued. This position was also articulated by the Executive Director in radio and television interviews as well as in meetings with the authorities.

A number of releases were previously carried out in the National Penitentiary by an examining magistrate, who reported to MICIVIH that he freed 12 detainees on provisional release orders on 8 October on the grounds that their dossiers were empty. They had been held on a variety of charges including murder. Six of them had been held since 1996. He subsequently released 12 other detainees in an irregular fashion by means of three collective main levée d'écrou (definitive release orders) although the cases were unrelated. The orders did not list either the charge or date of arrest. He also reported to MICIVIH that in the course of trying to interview detainees whose cases were assigned to him, he discovered that a total of 15 of such detainees had already been released without his knowledge by the previous state prosecutor.

Hunger strikes in the National Penitentiary

The hunger strike which a group of 20-25 detainees in the National Penitentiary had begun in late September to protest their prolonged pre-trial detention (see HRR July - September 1999) continued, with one interruption, throughout most of October and November, albeit with many of the participants receiving glucose through intravenous drips.

On 6 October, MICIVIH wrote to the Minister of Justice and issued a simultaneous press release expressing concern for their health and stating that the Mission considered the protestors to be victims of a violation of the right to be judged within a reasonable period of time. It was noted that nine of the hunger strikers, former soldiers, had been held for 440 days without any trace of a judicial dossier, and two had been held for more than 1,000 days despite the existence of judicial release orders. The letter was accompanied by copies of the two release orders and a detailed analysis of the status of the legal dossiers of each of the hunger strikers. To discourage the hunger strike from spreading, the Minister was urged to state publicly that priority in the treatment of dossiers would be given to detainees in prolonged pre-trial detention. He was also urged to put in place mechanisms to ensure that the dossiers of detainees were processed within the periods set by the Code d'Instruction Criminelle and the Constitution.

The nine former soldiers were released by the new Port-au-Prince state prosecutor between 12 and 14 October. All nine had been arrested in July 1998 while holding a peaceful demonstration outside the Ministry of Finance. No reason was given for their release but it seems to have been because that there was no trace of a judicial dossier for any of them. The prosecutor released a tenth hunger striker, a former FAd'H officer held on a different charge, a few days later.

Ten detainees continued the hunger strike and on 21 October, MICIVIH addressed another letter to the Minister of Justice voicing concern about their deteriorating health and recommending that they be quickly informed of the steps that were being taken to address their grievances. All of the remaining hunger strikers had abandoned the protest by 29 October, believing that a decision by the Ministry was imminent. But nine resumed it on 4 November after no action was taken. On 16 November, six of the remaining hunger strikers spent the day lying on the ground in the prison's central courtyard, covered by sheets, in an attempt to draw further attention to their protest. When guards removed them from the courtyard in the evening, one of them, Evans François, suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak and partially paralysed, according to his personal physician.

Six of the nine remaining hunger strikers, including Evans François, were among the group of 21 detainees who were finally released on humanitarian grounds on 23 November (see preceding section). Two of the remaining three continued the hunger strike. Thereafter, a letter was sent to the state prosecutor by 35 detainees in the National Penitentiary announcing a new hunger strike that would start on 6 December and continue "until our release or trial." When MICIVIH checked the National Penitentiary on 13 December, a total of 12 of the letter's signatories claimed that they were actually pursuing the hunger strike. By the end of December, however, the protest appeared to have tailed off.

Habeas Corpus, non-respect for release orders

On 8 December, MICIVIH's Deputy Executive Director gave a presentation to more than 80 judges, prosecutors and magistrates in training who took part in a two-day conference on habeas corpus guarantees in the Haitian Constitution. The conference was organised jointly by the Ministry of Justice and the French government's international aid programme, with the participation of the Haitian human rights organisation Haïti Solidarité Internationale, as a follow-up to a round-table debate on the subject held by MICIVIH at the Ecole de la Magistrature in April (see HRR April - June 1999). MICIVIH distributed its booklet Le Recours pour la protection de la liberté individuelle dans la Constitution de 1987 at the conference, during which the Minister of Justice announced that a commission would be formed in the coming months to draft a circular clarifying implementation of the Constitution's provisions for habeas corpus petitions. Participants in the conference informally voted a resolution welcoming the creation of such a commission and echoing some of the recommendations in MICIVIH's booklet.

A commission consisting of the Port-au-Prince state prosecutor, the doyen and a judge from the Cour de Cassation, which was formed by the Minister of Justice in September to look into cases of individuals remaining in detention despite the existence of release orders, submitted its findings to the Ministry of Justice on 21 October. The cases before the commission included a provisional list of 22 names which MICIVIH had submitted to the Minister, consisting of former FAd'H members and others whose cases have a political or security dimension (see HRR July - September 1999). It would seem that none of the defence lawyers appeared before the commission despite invitations to do so. The conclusions of the commission were not made public and did not appear to have resulted in any decisions regarding the execution of the release orders. Although none was released as a result of the commission's deliberations, three were among those released from the National Penitentiary by the new state prosecutor for humanitarian reasons on 23 November (see above). The three were Patrick Moïse, Eric Thertulien and Jean Michel Touvenaux, all detained without trial since 1996.

By mid-December, the new Port-au-Prince state prosecutor had still not executed release orders issued by an examining magistrate on 13 October in response to a habeas corpus petition on behalf of the former commissaire municipal of Carrefour and four other HNPs who had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in drug trafficking.

The new Jacmel state prosecutor declined to get involved in the non-execution of provisional release orders which had been issued for a prison supervisor and two civilians accused of complicity in an escape from Jacmel prison on 25 July (see HRR July - September 1999). He took the position that the parquet had fulfilled its duty by issuing the examining magistrate's release orders on 20 August, and that it was up to the detainees' lawyers to file a petition about the prison authorities' failure to execute the orders, which in the meantime appeared to have been mislaid. The police departmental director denied any role in the non-execution, claiming that responsibility lay solely with the prison administration authorities.

Judicial irregularities and pre-trial detention - provinces

MICIVIH observers continued to follow cases of judicial irregularities and prolonged pretrial detention throughout the country. Among its ad hoc initiatives, MICIVIH raised the case of a 13-year-old girl who had been held more than a month on assault charges on 27 October with the state prosecutor in Saint-Marc, who had her freed immediately on a provisional release order. A minor whose detention in Jérémie prison since mid-February on a charge of theft had been raised several times by MICIVIH with the judicial authorities was finally released by the state prosecutor on 8 October. The minor had been detained on an order issued by a deputy prosecutor who was later retired, since when the dossier was mislaid and no judicial action was taken prior to his release. A woman whose (illegal) arrest in Arniquet (South) on 25 September for alleged sorcery had been raised with judicial authorities by MICIVIH was finally released on 7 October on the orders of the Les Cayes deputy state prosecutor. After MICIVIH pointed out serious irregularities in the dossiers of detainees to judicial officials in Les Cayes, five persons were released from pre-trial detention in early November and another 12 in the second half of December. Additionally, after the matter had repeatedly been raised by MICIVIH, the Les Cayes state prosecutor ordered the release in November of a coffee vendor who had been held for 11 months on a charge of murdering a client by poisoning his coffee although no connection was ever established between the client's death and the coffee he bought from her.

Five detainees who had been held without trial in Cap Haïtien since 1997 were released on 25 October by the examining magistrate in charge of their judicial dossiers, who had taken virtually no steps since their arrests to investigate the charges against them. Two of the five were accused of cattle theft, two of attempted murder and one of fraud. The magistrate's sole initiative in any of these cases seems to have taken place on 21 October, when a MICIVIH observer accompanied him to Quartier Morin in order to help get his investigation under way. This magistrate is currently responsible for 28 other dossiers, seven of which he has held since 1997. Although he had not begun any investigation in most of these cases, MICIVIH intended to continue to encourage him to do so and to help him pursue the investigations that he has begun.

Previously, the same examining magistrate released two of the four men who were accused of involvement in the death of a police officer in Cap Haïtien in June 1997. At the time of their release, on 13 September, he had seen them only once since their incarceration on questionable grounds in September 1997. For a long time prior to their release, MICIVIH had been trying to arrange the hospitalisation of one of the two who was seriously ill. He died 23 days after his release but the causes of death were not immediately established.

MICIVIH's regional office in Gonaïves collected or updated information on the judicial status of all 353 inmates in Gonaïves and Saint-Marc prisons in the course of meetings with judicial and prison officials in November, finding delays and bottlenecks in virtually all stages of the judicial process in the Artibonite to be prolonging pre-trial detention. The irregularities discovered by MICIVIH in the course of its investigations were raised with the appropriate authorities, as a result of which at least 15 individuals being held in an irregular or illegal fashion were released from Gonaïves and Saint-Marc prisons in late November. A significant step to eliminate one of the bottlenecks was taken during this reporting period in Saint-Marc, where the number of sittings of the tribunal correctionnel (court for lesser crimes) was increased from two to six a week. Gonaïves, however, continued to hold only three such hearings a week. MICIVIH noted that the Saint-Marc state prosecutor was especially prompt in dealing with the irregularities that were brought to his attention.

Criminal assizes

The first jury assizes to be held in Port-au-Prince since July 1998 finally took place on 13-17 December. Problems in forming juries were avoided by means of the irregular procedure of fetching employees from various government ministries, and a total of 12 cases were heard. An attempt to hold the assizes had been made in early October but they were cancelled after only two of the 15 scheduled trials had taken place because of a lack of jurors. Of the 152 jury pool members summoned for the first trial, only 14 turned up, while just one jury member turned up for the second trial. The failure to hold the assizes at that time had been condemned by human rights NGOs, and MICIVIH issued a press release noting that this was the sixth time since December 1998 that the assizes had been postponed despite a stipulation in the Code d'Instruction Criminelle that sessions be held at least twice a year. The Mission said the failure to told assizes was a violation of international human rights treaties ratified by Haiti under which detainees must be tried within a reasonable period or released.

Jury assizes were also held in December in Les Cayes, Cap-Haïtien, Saint-Marc and Mirebalais, while assizes without jury were held in Les Cayes and Aquin in November. The Aquin assizes, held from 8 to 19 November, went ahead despite claims by the state prosecutor in an interview with news media that he was the intended target of an assassination plot prompted by an arrest warrant for murder which he had issued against a suspected drug-trafficker who had fled the country. MICIVIH noted that the courthouse was very tense on the first day of the assizes, despite a sizable police presence. In a confused trial held on 15 November in which no witnesses were called and little evidence was produced, six defendants including two HNPs were sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. A number of crimes appear to have been involved, including armed robbery, but it was not clear which defendant was supposed to have done what. An appeal against the verdict was filed by defence lawyers.

In a special hearing on 19 November in Saint-Marc, a judge overturned the life sentence that was imposed in an entirely irregular fashion at assizes without jury in July 1998 on a youth who had allegedly been found in possession of forged banknotes. Accused under Article 99 of the Criminal Code governing the use of forged banknotes, which carries a maximum sentence of a fine, the youth had nonetheless been sentenced to life imprisonment under Article 97 of the Code governing the production of forged banknotes or their introduction into the country. No evidence to support either charge nor any other evidence (not even the allegedly forged banknotes) was produced at the trial, which was observed by MICIVIH. Observers had repeatedly raised this miscarriage of justice with the Saint-Marc judicial authorities and had helped the youth obtain legal aid. In the hearing on 19 November, the judge ruled in favour of the petition filed by the youth's lawyer, and ordered that he could be released after payment of a Gdes 1,200 fine.

Appeal Court

In a look at the work of the Port-au-Prince Appeal Court, MICIVIH found that it issued only 24 rulings in criminal cases in the first 10 months of 1999. Although nearly twice the number of 1994's rulings, and much more than what was customary under Jean-Claude Duvalier (two in 1985, for example), the figure remained low for a number of reasons. Most defendants, especially the less educated, were either unaware of the existence of an appeal procedure, or did not know how an appeal should be made (or what deadlines apply), while others had no confidence in the effectiveness of the procedure. An underlying factor was the limited availability to defendants of free legal advice and aid. MICIVIH also found that defence lawyers are reluctant to use the Appeal Court because they must pay to lodge an appeal and fear their clients will not reimburse them. Observers investigating the work of the Gonaïves Appeal Court found it to be very slow and that in November detainees in three cases were still awaiting decisions on appeals they had filed between 15 and 18 months earlier against trial orders (ordonnances de renvoi).

Problems in the Jérémie judicial system

In an attempt to end eight months of paralysis in the Jérémie judicial system, a new state prosecutor was installed in mid-December and efforts were reportedly under way to speed up the installation of a new doyen. The former state prosecutor was transferred to the position of examining magistrate in Port-au-Prince. These measures followed visits to Jérémie by the Prime Minister and Minister of Justice on 6 November and by a team of Ministry of Justice officials a few days later. The town's judicial system had been paralysed since April by the absence of a doyen, disputes within the parquet and a dispute between the state prosecutor and the Bar Association, which was demanding his dismissal (see HRR July - September 1999). The crisis intensified when, on 22 October, three of the Bar's most prominent members were placed in police custody on a warrant accusing them of insulting a judicial official (outrage à la magistrature). They were released some four hours later after the authorities in Port-au-Prince were notified. It seems that the prosecutor issued the warrant after receiving a copy of a letter from the three lawyers to an examining magistrate in which they referred to the prosecutor as a "delinquent"and requested his arrest on the grounds of alleged complicity in an attempt by his driver to fraudulently cash a judge's pay cheque in July. MICIVIH was also concerned about the continuing detention since August, reportedly at the state prosecutor's behest, of five individuals charged with criminal association and conspiring against state security, as judicial sources said that there was no evidence in their dossiers to support such charges. Three of the five were released in November.

Impunity

On 19 November, the acting Executive Director wrote to the Minister of Justice expressing concern over the failure of the judicial authorities to release eight detainees in the case of the 1994 massacre in the Gonaïves neighbourhood of Raboteau, against whom charges were dropped for lack of evidence. The decisions to drop charges against the eight (ordonnance de non-lieu) were contained in the ruling issued by the examining magistrate in charge of the dossier at the end of September whereby he committed the 22 other detainees to trial (ordonnance de renvoi). Pointing out that neither the parquet nor the victims or their families had filed any appeal against the decision to drop charges, and referring to relevant articles in the Code d'Instruction Criminelle, the letter concluded that it was completely illegal for the authorities to continue to keep the eight in detention.

Appeals which 19 of the 22 detainees had filed against their committal for trial were heard by the Gonaïves Appeal Court from 7 to 17 December. The detainees, witnesses and surviving victims testified during the hearings, for which a large number of police, including members of the UDMO, provided security. No incidents were reported. The Appeal Court's commissaire du gouvernement recommended dropping charges (non-lieu) against seven of the 19.

Several weeks prior to the start of these hearings, news reports quoted a Gonaïves judicial official as calling for meetings to be held for family members of the victims of the massacre to help them understand that the trial could be much delayed by these appeals, which could then be submitted to the Cour de Cassation if rejected by the Appeals Court. He indicated that he regretted that the expectations of family members had been raised by the statements by government officials that the trial would be held before the end of the year.

MICIVIH's Deputy Executive Director led a training session held at the Ecole de la Magistrature on 19 October for the judicial officials who will participate in the trial of those accused in the Raboteau massacre.

A Mirebalais examining magistrate issued an ordonnance de renvoi on 13 October ordering that seven individuals including a former section chief be tried in assizes without jury on charges of torture, kidnapping and illegal arrest during the coup era. It was reported that the judge did not order the arrest of the defendants because they were all well-known members of the community and he believed they would respond to summonses to appear at the trial. He said he was more concerned that plaintiffs would not appear to testify for fear of reprisals.

Judicial reform

MICIVIH continued to participate in the meetings of the working groups, made up of Haitian and international experts, which were set up in late September by the Ministry of Justice with the aim of getting the judicial reform process under way (see HRR July - September 1999). In a joint meeting of the working groups on 28 October, the Minister of Justice said they should prepare their reports by 15 March at the latest. A second joint meeting took place on 17 December at which each group gave a progress report.

In a number of press interviews in early December, the Minister of Justice expressed dissatisfaction with USAID's cooperation in the area of judicial reform since 1995, which he said had not resulted in any progress.

Training

The Deputy Executive Director presented a paper on international human rights instruments and the procedures for monitoring compliance with these instruments at a three-day training workshop on 15-17 December in Port-au-Prince on the reports that must be made by countries which have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Another MICIVIH staff member discussed the situation of minors in the Haitian judicial system and presentations were also made by representatives from the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which sponsored the workshop. Haiti has yet to present its first report to the Committee, which monitors compliance with the Convention. During this period, the Deputy Executive Director also gave a presentation on MICIVIH's work to a group of jurists who have been recruited as consultants by the U.S. Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and Training (OPDAT).

Around 40 people including doctors, judicial officials and police officers attended a seminar on how to deal with rape victims that was organized by MICIVIH's Cap Haïtien office on 9 November. Entitled "Prise en charge médico-légale d'une victime de violences sexuelles," it consisted of presentations by an examining magistrate, a doctor and a UNCIVPOL officer on the correct legal, medical and police responses to allegations of sexual violence, followed by working groups which analysed the ways in which sexual violence could be prevented and its victims helped.

On 26 November, a member of MICIVIH's Cap Haïtien office gave a presentation on how to conduct prison visits to 11 young lawyers who work with the Cap Haïtien Bureau d'Assistance Juridique (BAJ) providing free legal aid to detainees in the prisons of Cap Haïtien and Grande Rivière du Nord. On 10 December, they were given a presentation on the application of international human rights treaties in Haitian law, which was also the subject of a MICIVIH presentation on 8 December to judges in training at the Ecole de la Magistrature in Port-au-Prince.

OMBUDSMAN

MICIVIH continued to support the work of the Protecteur du Citoyen (Ombudsman). On 10 November, the Ombudsman held a meeting with President Préval during which he presented the President with his Office's annual report. It contained several pages of recommendations as to how to improve respect for human rights in Haiti. With MICIVIH's directors in attendance, the Ombudsman had given an earlier presentation of this report on 21 October to members of the diplomatic corps.

The Ombudsman's first regional office was inaugurated on 5 November in Gonaïves at a ceremony attended by members of MICIVIH's regional bureau, who provided logistical assistance in setting up the office. Thereafter, the representative of the Ombudsman's regional office attended some of the weekly training sessions on prison monitoring which MICIVIH provides to local human rights NGOs. In the weeks following the office's opening, it received many visits from local organisations requesting seminars, and from individuals with complaints against the public administration and state agencies. The Ombudsman intends to establish similar offices in all the departmental capitals.

The Ombudsman's Office held a meeting with representatives of human rights NGOs on 16 December which was also attended by MICIVIH and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The participants, which included the National Coalition for Haitian Rights, the Centre Oecuménique des Droits de l'Homme, the Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organisations and Haïti Solidarité Internationale, gave presentations on their activities and the obstacles they have encountered in their work, and proposed ways for working with the Ombudsman's Office and improving cooperation among themselves. The Ombudsman's Office also met with representatives of state enterprises the same day with the aim of establishing channels of communication, particularly with regard to processing complaints against state enterprises.

PRISONS

Prison administration and inspectorate

The long-awaited appointment of a Chief of Operations for the Prison Administration (Direction de l'Administration Pénitentiaire ­ DAP) was finally made in December. The person selected was a police commissioner who had previously worked in the Central Directorate for Administration and General Services of the HNP. His appointment was intended to strengthen management and coordination between the DAP's various divisions.

MICIVIH met in December with the three-member Commission des Affaires Pénitentiaires, the section of the HNP Inspection Générale that specialises in prison matters, for an exchange of information. The commission, which began working in March, reported that it had just completed a survey of all DAP's personnel in order to determine whether job descriptions corresponded to the tasks actually being performed. It established that the DAP has 525 surveillance personnel (guards, inspectors and supervisors) and 282 administrative personnel (including nurses, cooks and drivers). MICIVIH also raised several cases of alleged ill-treatment of prison detainees which have been investigated by the commission.

PRISON POPULATION
Prison	Date visited	Total pop	No. in pre-trial detention	No. awaiting trial 1 year +
Anse à Veau	*n/a	*n/a	*n/a	*n/a
Aquin	21/10/99	70	62 (89%)	3
Cap-Haïtien	22/11/99	242	191 (79%)	58
Carrefour	10/12/99	54	45 (83%)	8
Delmas	25/11/99	59	58 (98%)	0
Fort-Liberté	14/12/99	106	85 (80%)	16
Fort National (PauP)	25/11/99	143	134 (94%)	23
Gonaïves	30/11/99	256	194 (76%)	97
Gde-Rivière du Nord	25/11/99	33	24 (73%)	*n/a
Hinche	7/10/99	117	84 (72%)	11
Jacmel	9/12/99	129	96 (74%)	*n/a
Jérémie	19/11/99	116	89 (77%)	*n/a
Les Cayes	16/12/99	104	81 (78%)	2
Mirebalais	20/10/99	99	46 (47%)	0
Penitencier National	8/12/99	1839	1611 (88%)	*n/a
Pétionville	2/12/99	111	94 (85%)	*n/a
Petit-Goâve	15/12/99	95	53(55%)	0
Port-de-Paix	15/11/99	115	78 (67%)	5
Saint Marc	25/11/99	97	79 (81%)	9
TOTAL		3,785	3,104 (82%)

* data not available

Observers noted that the prolonged and repeated absences on trips to the capital of provincial prison staff, particularly key ones such as inspectors and nurses, continued to affect prison management and the provision of medical care. In some cases, the trips to the capital had a justification such as the need to fetch food or medical supplies or collect monthly pay cheques, but many key staff appeared to spend as much as half their time away from their post.

Inadequate medical attention

Inadequate medical attention for the inmates of Haiti's prisons has long been a MICIVIH concern. During this reporting period, the inaction of prison staff or poor organisation appeared to be a factor in the deaths of at least two detainees, one in Fort Liberté on 26 October and one in the National Penitentiary on 5 November, and as such would constitute incidents of negligence and even cruel or inhuman treatment.

The Fort Liberté detainee had reportedly been sick for three weeks but had received no medical attention aside from some pills to reduce his fever. Despite requests by both MICIVIH and the DAP regional coordinator that the detainee be transferred to hospital, he died in his cell. He had been vomiting and was clearly in need of medical attention when seen on the day of his death by MICIVIH observers, who found him lying on the concrete floor of the prison courtyard. However, the prison nurse (who was never present in the prison during MICIVIH's visits) had been in Port-au-Prince for the previous three days, the infirmary was locked, and the two prison guards on duty said they were unable to take the detainee to hospital. MICIVIH wrote to the Minister of Justice on 22 November to express concern that the detainee's death may have been due to inadequate medical attention. The letter recommended that prison staff be reminded of their duty to respect the rights of detainees, in particular their right to medical attention.

The detainee who died in the National Penitentiary was a Guyanese citizen aged 58 who had reportedly been transferred to the prison infirmary two days earlier with constipation and who had also reportedly run out of the pills he took daily for his diabetes. A prison doctor was summoned after he went into a coma on the afternoon of 5 November but no transport was arranged to take the detainee to hospital. He died at around 8:30 p.m. The infirmary had no insulin.

Prison officials in Saint-Marc were also remiss in failing to ensure the timely hospitalisation of an inmate with tuberculosis who died on 19 October. The prison nurse told MICIVIH that the inmate had first been suspected of having tuberculosis on 1 October but had not been hospitalised until 13 October. He blamed this on a lack of transport, although the hospital is only 500 metres away and has two ambulances. MICIVIH observers had noticed that the inmate appeared to be extremely ill during a visit to the prison on 6 October and had urged prison staff to have him hospitalised immediately. However, the nurse had not been present that day and the other staff present appear to have paid no heed. On 25 November, MICIVIH found that another detainee with suspected tuberculosis had yet to be taken to hospital although his ailment had reportedly been the subject of a written report by the prison nurse 17 days earlier. On a visit to the prison on 16 December, observers found that the nurse had been on leave for more than two weeks and that no inmate had received treatment for any ailment in his absence.

WOMEN AND MINORS IN PRISON
Prison	Date visited	Women		Minors
		Total No.	Convicted	Total No.	Convicted
Anse-à-Veau	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Aquin	16/12/99	2	0	1	0
Cap-Haïtien	15/10/99	9	1	4	1
Carrefour	10/12/99	6	0	0	0
Fort-Liberté	1/12/99	1	0	4	0
Fort National (PauP)	25/11/99	92	8	52	1
Gonaïves	30/11/99	9	1	7	1
Gde-Rivière du Nd	25/11/99	0	0	0	0
Hinche	6/12/99	7	3	4	0
Jacmel	9/11/99	6	1	3	2
Jérémie	19/11/99	6	1	3	0
Les Cayes	16/12/99	7	2	0	0
Mirebalais	20/10/99	2	1	1	0
Pétionville	15/12/99	3	0	5	1
Petit-Goâve	15/12/99	5	2	0	0
Port-de-Paix	15/11/99	10	4	5	0
Saint Marc	25/11/99	5	0	2	0
TOTAL		170	24	91	6

Serious shortages of medical supplies were noted during this period in Carrefour, Delmas, Aquin and Cap Haïtien prisons. However, an improvement was noted during this period in the attitude of the Cap Haïtien prison nurse, who in the past had seemed to be poorly motivated and kept no medical records.

The DAP's chief medical officer, who had begun working in April, continued to hold monthly meetings in Port-au-Prince with all the prison nurses but otherwise seemed to be having a limited impact on medical care problems, in part because he has no staff or vehicle permanently at his disposal.

Allegations of beatings, other forms of ill-treatment by DAP staff

Eight cases of ill-treatment in prisons were reported during the period under review in which a total of 35 detainees were allegedly slapped or beaten by guards. This brought the total of alleged victims of ill-treatment in prisons during the second half of 1999 to 57, compared with 17 in the first half of the year.

There were two serious cases in Saint-Marc prison in early October, both of which were the subject of internal investigations. In the first case, guards allegedly beat five inmates severely (one of them a 16-year-old minor) on 2 October because of an attempted escape. The victims said some seven or eight guards made them roll in mud and beat them with a baton and a baseball bat. Four of the five had wounds or marks on the legs and buttocks, which they said had been treated by the prison nurse. One of them, who appeared to have difficulty walking, claimed that he had been fainting and urinating blood since the beating, and that his vision was affected. An investigation was opened against the prison inspector and several guards, two of whom were placed in isolement in the National Penitentiary for several weeks. In the second case, two guards (one of them female) allegedly beat three female detainees on 3 October in a dispute prompted by the prison's chronic shortage of water for bathing. One of the detainees, allegedly handcuffed during part of the ill-treatment, appears to have been especially severely beaten on her buttocks and shoulder. After the allegations were made public by the juge de paix, investigations were carried out by the section of the HNP Inspection Générale that specialises in prison matters and the DAP coordinator for the Artibonite, who confirmed the allegations to MICIVIH. The two guards were taken to Port-au-Prince for questioning, but were later returned to their posts because of a staff shortage, although they remained under investigation.

DAP authorities reported that 17 inmates of Port-de-Paix prison were severely beaten on 1 October for bathing inside their cells. The guard responsible, who was alone at the time, had been transferred to Port-de-Paix from the National Penitentiary a week earlier for disciplinary reasons. Prison officials reported the incident to DAP headquarters in Port-au-Prince, following which an investigation was opened by the Inspection Générale and the guard was placed in isolement in the National Penitentiary. MICIVIH subsequently interviewed 11 of the 17 detainees, who said they had been struck several times on the legs with a baton. They still had marks on their legs several weeks after the incident.

In the National Penitentiary, three detainees alleged that they were beaten by prison guards on 3 November because they themselves had beaten a fellow detainee (a former HNP), reportedly at the behest of a former police commissioner held on drugs-trafficking charges. Prison officials denied beating the three, but said guards had been obliged to use force when they resisted their transfer to punishment cells. Four Colombian detainees alleged that they were beaten with batons on 6 November when they and around 25 other foreign inmates staged a peaceful protest in the courtyard to demand a commemoration ceremony for the Guyanese inmate who had died the previous evening (see above). One of the Colombians was treated in the prison infirmary for an injury allegedly sustained during the beating. Prison officials said the detainees had jostled a guard in order to get into the courtyard, and that any injuries would have occurred when guards restored order.

Two adult female detainees of Fort National prison separately alleged that they were slapped or kicked by a male HNP assigned to the prison at the time of their transfers to Carrefour prison on 8 November following conflicts with the prison authorities. A third female detainee alleged that she was severely beaten by the same HNP and a female colleague during her transfer to Carrefour prison the same day. This was denied by both of the HNPs, but the male HNP admitted having given this detainee about 10 baton blows on the buttocks in an incident a month earlier when she spat in his face. At the same time, a female guard acknowledged having struck this detainee five or six times with a baton the day before her transfer after the detainee slapped her in the face. The victim appeared to have difficulty walking when seen by MICIVIH in Carrefour prison.

MICIVIH again found inmates being confined almost naked in punishment cells in Port-de-Paix prison, as was the case on a previous visit in September (see HRR July - September 1999). On a visit to the prison on 25 October, observers found five detainees were being held in the punishment cells wearing only underpants and with just one mattress between them. One was handcuffed to a door at the time of the visit because, guards said, he kept trying to climb up the wall. In the case of two of the five, punishments of 30 days in the special cells without family visits had been ordered by the inspector because they had allegedly been caught in possession of marijuana. Prison officials said they have no other means at their disposal to discipline inmates. MICIVIH noticed an improvement on its next visit four days later, insofar as only two inmates were held in the punishment cells, and both were fully dressed.

Prison conditions

During this period, much-needed repairs were carried out in a number of prisons with the support of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In Aquin prison, showers and latrines were refurbished and a water tower was built. In Hinche prison, the construction of showers and latrines were completed in late November. When MICIVIH visited Hinche on 7 December, it found the prison courtyard partially paved, the kitchen being renovated, and the cells being cleaned with disinfectant every day. The repair of the plumbing and latrines in Port-de-Paix prison was completed in December. The construction of showers, latrines and sewers began in late October in Les Cayes prison, where the absence of these facilities has long been a MICIVIH and ICRC concern. A broken water pump was repaired in Cap Haïtien prison.

However, observers were disturbed to note that, by the end of November, the prison authorities had still not taken any steps to empty the sceptic tanks at the National Penitentiary, which had overflowed more than two months earlier causing a foul odour and health risk ever since. There was also a failure to take prompt action in the case of the sceptic tanks of Delmas prison, which overflowed in October and had still not been emptied in mid-December.

Many prisons continued to suffer serious water shortages, especially, Saint-Marc and Jérémie. As in the past, the inmates of Port-de-Paix and Saint-Marc prisons were not allowed into the courtyard for exercise because the perimeter is not secure. The Port-de-Paix prison inspector said he was preparing a report on the prison's conditions for DAP headquarters.

MICIVIH continued to note severe overcrowding and poor conditions in Aquin prison. On 21 October, the prison had four female inmates who had one cell to themselves, and 66 male inmates who were crammed into three small, very hot cells from which they were let out only once a day in order to bathe.

At a meeting on 11 November with the deputy director of the National Penitentiary, MICIVIH raised its concerns about the absence of control over the use of punishment cells by prison guards, as a result of which some detainees had been left in them for more than a month. MICIVIH proposed that a provisional punishment cell register be used until the official disciplinary register envisaged by the DAP's new internal regulations is introduced. A draft register was submitted for the DAP's consideration. It would require guards to record the name of the detainee punished, the reason for the punishment, its length, the date it started and the name of the prison official who authorised it.

Provision of food

In an attempt to find a lasting solution to the problem of food supply in the prisons, the DAP sought bids in December from the private sector for the supply and delivery of foodstuffs to the 19 prisons and detention centres on a monthly basis. A notice requesting such bids was placed in newspapers by the Central Directorate for Administration and General Services of the HNP on behalf of the DAP. As well as improving food supplies, it was hoped that such an arrangement would mean that prison staff no longer spend a lot of time fetching food from Port-au-Prince.

In the meantime, the provision of food continued to be a serious concern. During October and November, Les Cayes, Aquin, Saint-Marc, Port-de-Paix and Mirebalais prisons provided only one meal a day, often consisting only of rice and beans. Inmates in Port-de-Paix reported receiving more food in December, possibly due in part to a fall in the prison's population. In Mirebalais, malnutrition was a contributory factor in the death of a prison inmate in hospital on 2 December, according to the death certificate. Officials at the prison said the food being provided to the detainees was inadequate and blamed this on difficulties in obtaining sufficient and appropriate food stocks from the DAP administration in Port-au-Prince. They reported that another detainee appeared to be suffering from a similar malnutrition-related illness and they voiced concern that there could be more cases, especially among detainees whose families lived too far away to bring food.

Cap-Haïtien prison provided one meal a day in October, then two meals a day alternating with one meal a day in November. The inmates of Carrefour prison sometimes received only one meal a day, but two meals a day were provided in the other metropolitan-area prisons although those at the National Penitentiary consisted largely of rice.

All inmates of Gonaïves prison received two meals a day during this reporting period. In addition, the International Committee of the Red Cross continued a programme in Gonaïves that began in June in which inmates suffering from malnutrition (about a quarter of the total) were given an additional daily meal of enriched porridge. Initially planned to last two months, this programme was extended as a result of donations from the World Food Programme and the Bureau de Nutrition et Développement. The ICRC also organized a separate one-month programme for the malnourished detainees, from mid-October to mid-November, in which it provided funds for the purchase of fresh foodstuffs and sent three culinary instructors from Port-au-Prince on four weekly visits to the prison to show staff what produce to buy and how to prepare it. The programme was aimed at tiding the prison over until the DAP had a durable solution to the problem.

International Day of the Detainee

With support from MICIVIH, a five-hour programme of activities was organised for the detainees of Les Cayes prison on 24 October by two local NGOs to mark the International Day of the Detainee. The mayor, the délégué and a number of detainees made speeches. There was also a screening of the Creole version of MICIVIH's 56-minute video documentary, A Work in Progress: Human Rights in Haiti, which includes interviews with detainees in prison. Although invited, police and judicial authorities did not attend, except the state prosecutor. Repainting of the cells had begun on the eve of the event with paint supplied by MICIVIH.

The MICIVIH documentary was also shown to 73 detainees in Cap Haïtien prison on 27 October and to all the detainees in Fort Liberté prison in a series of screenings between 28 October and 3 November to mark International Day of the Detainee. In each case, the screening was followed by discussions.

Training/support for DAP officials

A MICIVIH observer who has been seconded almost full-time since September to give technical assistance to the 10 legal assistants who staff the DAP's Service de l'Application des Peines et Grâces drew up a 16-page document proposing a definition of their responsibilities. Intended to serve as a tool for the legal assistants and to inform judicial authorities about their role, it was submitted as a draft at a meeting with DAP officials and legal assistants in early November. Subsequently it was accepted and put into use.

"POPULAR" JUSTICE

This period saw a disturbing increase in brigade de vigilance activity in the Port-au-Prince district of Carrefour and in summary killings and other punitive operations against crime suspects carried out by armed groups of civilians in Cité Soleil, in one case at least with the apparent complicity of the police.

In Carrefour, a brigade de vigilance assisted by local residents killed and then burned the bodies of six suspected gang members and seriously injured two others on 20 October. Residents reported that this had been done because of police inaction in the face of the high rate of crime in the neighbourhood. The incident was widely commented in the news media, including Le Nouvelliste which attributed it to the irresponsibility of the State and the accelerating erosion of its authority. It was also deplored by MICIVIH's Executive Director in the course of an interview for several journalists. Nonetheless, the local population continued to beat individuals suspected of crimes, and MICIVIH found that six of the 12 detainees in the Carrefour garde à vue on 26 October had been beaten by the population.

In Cité Soleil, several punitive operations against suspected criminals were reportedly carried out by armed civilians led by a former army sergeant and a former gang leader. A number of residents told MICIVIH they welcomed the activities of this new armed group, which they said was stationed at the main Cité Soleil market and which they credited with having brought about a fall in rapes and thefts by teenage gang members. In one case, a judicial source and several residents reported that the ex-sergeant disarmed a teenage thief named "Ricot" and shot him dead with his own weapon on 1 October. The body was left lying in the street for several days. On 3 October, around 40 individuals armed with guns and machetes reportedly removed five men from their homes in the Cité Soleil district of Ti Ayiti, beat them severely, shot one of them non-fatally and stabbed another, tied them up and handed them over to the police, alleging that they had harboured a group of thieves from outside Cité Soleil who had broken into homes in Ti Ayiti the previous night. Judicial officials had them released the next day on the grounds of the seriousness of their injuries. According to various sources, the former gang leader accidentally shot dead a young man named "Ernso" while aiming at someone else in an incident in mid-October and, in a separate incident the same month, inflicted a head wound with a machete on a youth named "Lyonel" who begged in front of the Cité Soleil courthouse.

An apparently different group of armed men carried out the "arrest" on the evening of 14 November in Cité Soleil of a suspected armed robber named Samuel Taillefer, whose headless body was found the next day on the "Batimat" road. Different sources claimed that this group acted with the knowledge and possible support of the police. Its leader was reported to be an individual who had been an informant and collaborator of former Cité Soleil police inspector Berthony Bazile, killed in June. The possibility of police complicity seemed to be reinforced by the fact that, while maintaining that Taillefer appeared to have been killed by unidentified members of the population in retaliation for his crimes, the police said he had been in possession of a police firearm when he was taken by the population. Furthermore, the police went on to arrest Taillefer's brother (a former prison guard) on the reported grounds that Taillefer had said he got the gun from his brother.

Elsewhere in the Port-au-Prince area, a man was reportedly lynched on Delmas 75 on 10 November after shooting at a motorcyclist and attempting to steal the motorcycle, while a suspected thief was lynched on the Boulevard 15 Octobre on 11 November. In another incident the same week, a man who shot and wounded two mechanics in central Port-au-Prince after an argument over payment for the repair of his vehicle was pursued and lynched and his vehicle was burned.

A man who had allegedly tried to rape a young girl was lynched on 21 October in Quartier Morin (North) by residents who then mutilated his body. The girl's mother and another individual were arrested in connection with the killing and police said they were looking for six others. A total of four suspected robbers or thieves were reportedly lynched in the North-East in November: two in the Fort Liberté area (at Destouches and Malféty) on 19 November; one in the Dumas section of Fort Liberté on 29 November; and one in Ouanaminthe on 29 November. One lynching was reported in the Central Plateau, that of a gunman in Thomassique in late November who had allegedly wounded two people.

The lynching of a suspected thief in Marmelade (Artibonite) on 22 November was preceded by a confrontation between a large crowd and police accompanied by the mayor, who tried to protect the victim. Unidentified persons fired shots into the crowd, killing a man and wounding a girl, and in the ensuing confusion the crowd killed the suspected thief with machetes. The Gonaïves UDMO went to the town the same night to restore calm. Thereafter, the home of the juge de paix was reportedly stoned while the mayor was summoned by judicial authorities in Gonaïves for questioning in connection with the shooting.

CIVIL SOCIETY

Human rights NGOs

As it approached the end of its mandate, the Mission continued to give priority to efforts to develop local capacity in the promotion and protection of human rights, above all by providing technical assistance and training to local human rights NGOs.

Thirty-six representatives of some 30 human rights NGOs from throughout Haiti took part in a six-day human rights seminar which MICIVIH held in Port-au-Prince from 8 to13 November, acting on behalf of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, which has an agreement with the government of Haiti for technical cooperation. The seminar's aim was to help make the NGOs more effective by means of presentations and an exchange of ideas and practical experiences in the use of international human rights mechanisms, investigations into human rights violations, the running of a human rights organisation, and the planning of a campaign of consciousness-raising and lobbying. Speakers included some 30 national and international human rights experts, while the Protecteur du Citoyen and members of his office, and a number of DAP legal assistants attended as observers. One of the agenda's highlights was a round-table discussion on the "Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Rights of Haitians" to which a wide variety of participants were invited, including representatives of the Haitian government, Haitian human rights organizations, public figures and journalists. In a press statement about the seminar and the round-table, released on 10 November, MICIVIH congratulated Haiti's human rights defenders for their courage in carrying out their work despite difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions.

The first general assembly took place of a nationwide network of local committees that have been formed with MICIVIH's encouragement to monitor detention in prisons and police stations. MICIVIH provided technical and logistical support for the three-day meeting, held on 13-15 October in Port-au-Prince. It was attended by 17 delegates from committees that have been set up in Port-au-Prince, Cap-Haïtien, Les Cayes, Gonaïves, Jacmel, Port-de-Paix, Fort-Liberté and Arcahaie. The aim of the meeting was to consolidate the network into a national structure called the Observatoire des Droits Humains en Milieu de Détention with the ultimate goal of having a local committee formed by human rights NGOs in each of the Haitian towns with a prison. A coordinating committee for the Observatoire was elected on the general assembly's last day.

On 15-19 November, MICIVIH held a five-day seminar on the monitoring of detainees' rights for 14 members of the newly-formed Observatoire and four members of the Ombudsman's Office (Office de la Protection du Citoyen). Participants were given training in how to observe conditions in prisons, interview detainees, obtain information from registers, identify and classify human rights violations and prepare reports. Speakers included the HNP Inspecteur Général en Chef, DAP representatives, UNDP advisors and NGO members working in the field of human rights. The seminar also included an extensive MICIVIH-supervised visit to the National Penitentiary and Fort National prisons. Meanwhile, the MICIVIH regional office in Gonaïves continued to hold weekly training sessions for the Observatoire's Gonaïves committee, which is one of the most organised. Members of the Catholic Church human rights organisation Justice et Paix and the representative of the Ombudsman's regional office began attending these sessions. Observers also helped this committee finalise a project proposal in order to seek funding, and began giving it training in basic computer skills.

In Gonaïves, the MICIVIH regional office gave a presentation on 29 October to some 40 representatives of Justice et Paix from throughout the Artibonite and North-West who were meeting in Gonaïves. MICIVIH's presentation focussed on the rights and responsibilities of citizens in elections, and on electoral observation. In Les Cayes, the MICIVIH trainer began a new cycle of seminars on human rights and civic education for trainers from some 15 local NGOs in October and presented a special one-day seminar to 50 members of the local Mouvement Humaniste Haïtien on 24 November

MICIVIH staff members conducted two half-day workshops in Port-au-Prince on the methodology of investigating human rights violations for the National Coalition for Haitian Rights, on 29 October and 9 December. The workshop's participants were members of popular organizations from throughout Haiti who were attending week-long seminars on human rights monitoring organised by the NCHR. This brought the number of such workshops conducted by MICIVIH for the NCHR this year to six.

Two Haitian NGOs, the Mouvement d'Appui aux Victimes de Violence (MAP-VIV) and Haïti Solidarité Internationale, were among this year's recipients of the human rights awards which the French National Assembly makes every December. One of the two, MAP-VIV, has received technical and logistical support from MICIVIH since its inauguration. In November, the Plate-forme des Organisations Haïtiennes des Droits de l'Homme published the third of its new, regular reports on the human rights situation.

Human rights promotion

MICIVIH's Deputy Executive Director gave a presentation entitled "Quels droits de l'homme pour Haïti" at the French Institute in Port-au-Prince on 23 November to an audience that included members of the diplomatic corps, jurists, teachers and students. His presentation was followed by a screening of MICIVIH's new documentary, A Work in Progress: Human Rights in Haiti, which in turn was followed by a debate. MICIVIH's Cap Haïtien office organized two theatre and dance performances on 25 November on the theme of preventing violence against women, to mark the International Day Against Violence Against Women. One was staged in a school and the other was in one of the city's main squares, where it drew a large crowd. MICIVIH was interviewed about the performances by local radio.

MICIVIH's office in Gonaïves held three two-day human rights seminars in November, each with about 40 participants from local development NGOs. A presentation on children's rights was also given to a group of students in Gonaïves on 20 November as part of a human rights education programme organized by the Alliance Française. The Coordinator of MICIVIH's Cap Haïtien office spoke about MICIVIH's work and the rights of children at a meeting organized by the World Food Programme (PAM) in Fort Liberté on 28 October that was attended by school directors, teachers and parents from 14 schools in the Fort Liberté area. A similar presentation was made at a second PAM-organised meeting for school directors, parents and students at a school in Acul du Nord on 9 November.

Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The centrepoint of MICIVIH's activities for the 51^st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a conference on "The Human Rights Legal Framework, Nationally and Internationally," held jointly with the State University law faculty at a cinema in Port-au-Prince on 10 December before an audience of more than 300 law students and professors. MICIVIH's Deputy Executive Director gave a presentation on international human rights law, while a law faculty professor spoke on human rights in the context of Haitian law. These presentations were followed by a screening of the MICIVIH documentary Chemen an long and a debate chaired by a MICIVIH consultant. Also in Port-au-Prince, two MICIVIH consultants conducted a seminar on the Declaration for some 80 high-school students at the Collège Métropolitain d'Haïti on 7 December.

MICIVIH's directors were interviewed about the human rights situation in Haiti by the private television station Télémax and the state-owned Télé Nationale d'Haïti for programmes broadcast on 9 and 10 December respectively to commemorate the anniversary. At the same time, a MICIVIH press release for the anniversary focussed on the renewed vitality of Haitian human rights organizations, the efforts of the authorities to bring about meaningful changes and the coming elections. While stressing the progress made in respect for human rights in Haiti since the return to constitutional rule, the release warned of the need to overcome the pernicious practices of the past that persist.

Other activities were held in four provincial towns. In Gonaïves, the MICIVIH documentary was shown to an audience that included 40 police officers from various parts of the Artibonite, human rights material was distributed to some 10 schools, and a theatre troupe performed for inmates and guards in Gonaïves prison. MICIVIH's office in Gonaïves additionally recorded two programmes on the Declaration which were broadcast by Radio Gonaïves, Vision 2000 and Radio Saint Marc. In Cap Haïtien, MICIVIH organised two performances on human rights themes by theatre and dance troupes, one in the city's main square before a large audience including the mayor, the other in the prison, where MICIVIH's regional coordinator also gave a presentation on the Declaration and inmates received a visit from the state prosecutor and the doyen. In Fort Liberté, some 400 people viewed an exhibition of posters on human rights issues at the library which was accompanied by a day of activities that included a presentation on the Declaration and theatre and dance performances on human rights themes. In Les Cayes, MICIVIH's regional office organized a programme at a cultural centre that included a theatre piece on women's rights and the screening of the film The Killing Fields.

Media activity/ MICIVIH documentary

The English-language version of MICIVIH's 56-minute video documentary, A Work in Progress: Human Rights in Haiti, was premiered at the Dag Hammersjkold Auditorium in the UN Secretariat Building in New York on 22 November before an audience of 180 including representatives of diplomatic missions, members of the international press, representatives of NGOs and film distributors. As reported in HRR July - September 1999, which summarizes the documentary's content, the Creole version, Chemen an long, had been premiered in Port-au-Prince, Cap Haïtien, Gonaïves, Port-de-Paix, Les Cayes, Jacmel and Mirebalais on 30 September. Distribution of the documentary in 122 countries in French, English and Creole began in December. It was also requested by private U.S. distributors for schools and libraries, and copies were given to the diplomatic missions of the Friends of Haiti at their request. The Department of Press and Information of the Organisation of American States began preparing a Spanish version. The documentary is available in French, English and Creole from the United Nations, Distribution of Audiovisual Productions, Office S-805 A, New York, NY 10017. Telephone: 1-212-963-6982 and e-mail: audiovisual@un.org.

In Haiti, the Creole version of the documentary was shown extensively throughout the country during this reporting period to audiences of school and university students, NGO representatives, human rights activists, lawyers, journalists, prison guards and prison inmates, judicial officials and trainee judges, police officers and local authorities. MICIVIH found the documentary to be a useful tool for informing people about the work of the Mission and for stimulating discussion of human rights issues. In most cases, screenings of the documentary were followed by animated debates on the issues raised. The places where screenings were held during this reporting period included Port-au-Prince (eight screenings), Gonaïves (3), Saint-Marc (3), Fort Liberté, Port-de-Paix and Hinche. The documentary was also screened in Cap-Haïtien, Les Cayes and Fort Liberté prisons.

MICIVIH's Port-au-Prince bureau facilitated visits to the National Penitentiary and the Pétionville commissariat by a US television current affairs team from the PBS programme Newshour on 6 December. A staff member was interviewed during the visits, while MICIVIH's Executive Director separately gave the team an extensive interview on the situation of human rights and democracy in Haiti. The Executive Director was also interviewed during this reporting period by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald, the Economist and the Finnish Broadcasting Company, as well as by Haitian radio and television stations.

Prepared by the Coordination, Analysis and Reports Unit (CARU)

OAS/UN International Civilian Mission in Haiti

Misyon Sivil Entènasyonal ann Ayiti OEA/ONU

Boîte Postale 1602, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

(509) 246-2025, 246-4326, 246-5575 or (1) 212-963-9921