Testimony of a Haitian Pro-Democracy Activist, Monsieur Johnson Aristide.

TESTIMONY

Dear reader, I would be remiss if I did not inform you of the many human rights violations to which I was subjected during the three years of the coup d'etat regime.

I was at the funeral of George Izmery (a pro-democracy businessman murdered by paramilitaries) when paramilitary attaches from the Antigang station arrested me, beat me, kicked me with boots, slapped me, beat me with a baton, put me in a vehicle, and let me off at Antigang into the hands of other executioners.

In every cell through which I passed to go before the Sergeant, I was beaten with leather whips.

When I arrived before the First Sergeant, his name was Lefrane Pierre-Louis, the Sergeant ordered the soldiers to put a chain around my neck which had a plaque marked terrorist, they took my picture and my fingerprints; after that Sergeant Lifrane Pierre-Louis told me to lie down, he will give me 50 baton blows, and if I die after 30, my dead body will bear the rest. Thus I lay flat on the ground, and the soldiers began to beat me, and the First Sergeant came and beat me with his own hand, and he said that if I tried to scratch my behind he would break my arm.

Lifrane Pierre-Louis yanked my beard with his hand, he said I looked like Preval (at the time, current Haitian President Rene Preval was Prime Minister under Aristide, and was also in exile) and the reason I was not beaten even more was because the pain made me defecate on myself. The Sergeant then ordered me locked up, and the prison warden beat me because when he searched me he found no money, and because he smelled the feces on me.

There were a few things which attracted my attention while I was in the Antigang prison:

1) There was an old lady who was at the funeral, she was perhaps 50 or 60 years old; First Sergeant Lifrane Pierre-Louis gave her 25 strokes of the leather whip. At that time, the old woman began to say that her husband was a former Macoute, and she had voted for Bazin, and she said, sirs, a wooden door can not fight with an iron door. (In other words, the old woman, in her pain, said whatever she could think of to pacify her torturers.) Then, the soldiers gave her several slaps in the face to make her shut her mouth. When they did that, the old woman said, "Thank you, my child, thank you, thank you."

2) It was the First Sergeant who told me that he would give me 50 blows of the baton, and if I died after 30, my dead body would bear the rest.

3) A man who was in prison for robbery asked me why I was there, and I answered that I had attended the funeral of George Izmery; and the prison warden put his two hands on his head and said, better for me if I had been a thief, but since it is for Lavalas (pro-Aristide) business they will kill me for sure, because every night they take the political prisoners out of the cells, and put them in a separate cell, and around midnight they kill them.

4) There was one thing that made me smile inside the prison, that was another man who had been arrested for the same reason, who said this, It was time for him to pick up the children from school.

5) There was a prisoner who drank nail polish remover inside the prison and killed himself, and the warden said that they would beat everyone, and then he went and called a Sergeant, when the Sergeant came he said he had no problem with prisoners who want to die, they will make a big hole to put them in.