The military coup d'état against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on September 30, 1991, plunged Haiti into a maelstrom of state-inflicted and state-sanctioned human rights abuses.50 These abuses included numerous political assassinations, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and the torture of prisoners. Following the coup d'état, military authorities suspended virtually all constitutionally guaranteed rights and procedures. By late 1993documented cases of politically motivated rape, massacres, forced disappearance, and violent assaults on entire neighborhoods had increased greatly.
Both women and men suffered abuse at the hands of the military and police forces, their armed civilian auxiliaries—commonly known as attachés—and bands of thugs called zenglendos.51 The Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (Front pour l'Avancement et le Progrès d'Haïti, FRAPH) also was implicated in gross abuses of human rights, including assassinations and forced disappearances, arson and a massacre.52 Like men, women were killed, arrested for their actual or imputed political views, beaten while in detention, forced into internal hiding (called marronage), disappeared, and denied the most basic civil and political rights to free expression, humane treatment, and due process.
Reports from women's rights groups in Haiti revealed that women were also targeted for abuse in ways and for reasons that men were not. Uniformed military personnel and their civilian allies threatened and attacked women's organizations for their work in defense of women's rights and subjected women to sex-specific abuse ranging from bludgeoning women's breasts to rape. Rape also was a part of apparently random violence committed by bands of zenglendos. Social unrest, which was both fosteredand exploited by the military authorities in order to repress opposition to their rule, contributed to increased levels of seemingly random violence.
In February 1994 Human Rights Watch conducted a joint fact-finding mission to Haiti with the National Coalition for Haitian Refugees to investigate reports that state agents were using rape as a political weapon against women. We interviewed women's rights activists, human rights monitors, officials of various governments, journalists, doctors and women victims of sexual assault.
The investigative efforts of the United Nations/Organization of American States' International Civilian Mission (MICIVIH) substantiated reports of state agents engaging in the rape of perceived political opponents. The mission's October 1993 report included several instances of rape. Further, between January 1994 and June 1994, MICIVIH collected evidence of another sixty-six rapes "of a political nature."53 In a separate investigation conducted from May 16 through 20, 1994, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights documented first-hand twenty instances of rape by the military and its auxiliaries. We documented first-hand nearly a dozen additional rape and attempted rape cases in the period between August 1992 and February 1994, including instances of vaginal and anal rape, one case of a woman who became pregnant as a result of her assault, and one case of a woman who died as a result of vaginal hemorrhaging following rape.
Human Rights Watch and the National Coalition for Haitian Refugees found that military forces and attachés used rape and sexual assault to punish and intimidate women for their actual and imputed political beliefs, or to terrorize them during violent sweeps of pro-Aristide neighborhoods. Rape also functioned as punishment for the political beliefs and activities of the victims' male relatives. In one instance, a woman was raped not only because of her suspected political affiliation and her gender, but also seemingly because of the fact that she was light brown-skinned.
To our knowledge, the military authorities never publicly denounced these practices or fully disciplined state agents known to have engaged in them. The military authorities' use and tolerance of rape made rape victims reluctant to report such abuse; victims feared that lodging a complaint would only further endanger their own and their family's lives, as they did not expect to see their attackers caught or disciplined. According to former President of the Haitian Supreme Court André Cherilus, it was "not worthwhile for thevictim of rape to go to the police to report the crime in the current situation. It would be even worse for the woman, given the extremely high probability of retaliation."54
The participation of state agents and their armed civilian auxiliaries in the rape of women violated Haiti's international obligations to refrain from persecuting its citizens for their political beliefs and from subjecting them to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.55 Further, the military authorities' failure to investigate and prosecute rape and other violence against women, especially where state or state-supported actors were involved, violated domestic and international guarantees of due process and equal protection under law for all citizens.56
In the early morning hours of September 18, 1994, U.S. President Bill Clinton deployed U.S. troops to begin an occupation of Haiti, after former President Jimmy Carter, U.S. Senator Sam Nunn and Gen. (Ret.) Colin Powell had flown to the island and secured Lt. Gen. Raoul Cédras's promise to renounce power. On October 15, 1994, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned to Haiti after a three-year exile. American troops had forced all members of the ruling triumvirate—Cédras, Brig. Gen. Philippe Biambi, and Lt. Gen. Michel François—to renounce power and leave the country, and had secured all military installations and disarmed many of the military and paramilitary forces in the country, in preparation for Aristide's return and a peaceful return to democracy. The Haitian triumvirate was allowed to retire from the army with full military honors; economic sanctions against Haiti were lifted; participants in the coup that had deposed Aristide in 1991 were given a general amnesty. In April 1995 U.N. international troops took over responsibility for maintaining security in the country.
Efforts to investigate the human rights violations that took place in Aristide's absence are just beginning. Prior to his return to Haiti, Aristide characterized the rapes against Haitian women during the coup years as ". . .a crime against humanity as serious as any other."57 Nevertheless, nine months after Aristide's return from exile, not one rape committed during the coup has been investigated and tried.58 A National Commission for Truth and Justice began its work on April 1, with a six-month mandate, renewable for three additional months. The commission, created by presidential decree, is to investigate violations of human rights committed between September 29, 1991 and October 15, 1994. Article 3 of the commission's charter reiterates its commitment to investigate politically motivated, gender-based crimes against women. Nevertheless, substantive investigations into allegations of human rights abuses have yet to begin because of poor funding and lack of a clear mandate. Ultimately, the commission's effectiveness may be minimal because it has no judicial authority and is limited to making public recommendations.
Upon returning to Haiti, Aristide created a Ministry on the Status and Rights of Women. The ministry is responsible for, among other things, the coordination and implementation of policies aimed at promoting the rights of women; the facilitation of women's access to education, health, economic opportunity, and professional training; and coordinating of policies aimed at preventing violence against women. We hope that the ministry, headed by Dr. Lise Marie Dejean, will be able to address and remedy the concerns we delineate in this report regarding the bias inherent in the criminal code regarding rape and the general inadequacy of the judicial system to respond fairly to rape claims. We urge Minister Dejean to demand accountability for rapes committed during the coup years and to ensure that obstacles to reporting rape are eliminated.
The military officers who ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide in September 1991 withstood international efforts to unseat them for over three years, skirting a U.N.-mandated oil and arms embargo and reneging on the U.S.-brokered Governors Island Accord of July 3, 1993, which was designed to induce the military high command to step down and to restore Aristide to power by October 30, 1993.59
After the unraveling of the Governors Island Accord, repression escalated unchecked, most notoriously with the high-profile political assassinations of Aristide's Justice Minister Guy Malary on October 14, 1993, and political supporter Antoine Izméry on September 11, 1993.60 The military provided Haiti's only police, even though the 1987 Haitian Constitution mandates the separation of civilian police and the military.61
The onslaught after the failure of the Governors Island Accord created increasing numbers of internally displaced people, described as "in hiding" or "en marronage." The forced displacement of tens if not hundreds of thousands of Haitians was part of the military's strategy to destroy all forms of social and political organization. Men were the majority of those driven into hiding, and women often were kept from taking this drastic, but often life-saving, measure by their responsibility for their children. Thus women became de facto single parents, forced to shoulder the economic burden that marronage created and to live with the uncertainty of not knowing whether their husbands or partners were alive or dead.
In late August 1994 the situation further deteriorated, including the August 28 assassination of the Rev. Jean-Marie Vincent, a close adviser to Aristide. The perpetrators of the attack have not been identified, although the assassination was thought to have been politically motivated. In a last-ditch effort to persuade Haiti's military leaders to leave peacefully, a U.S. delegation led by former President Jimmy Carter flew to Haiti on September 17 to deliver an ultimatum. Finally, on September 18, 1994, after the delegation had secured Cédras's promise to step down, President Clinton authorized the deployment of U.S. troops to occupy Haiti, precipitating the end of the three-year military dictatorship. President Aristide returned to office on October 15,1994, to reorganize his cabinet and plan for local and parliamentary elections in June 1995.
50 The following material was adapted from Human Rights Watch and National Coalition for Haitian Refugees, "Rape in Haiti: A Weapon of Terror," A Human Rights Watch Short Report, vol. 6, no. 8 (July 1994).
51 According to the UN/OAS International Civilian Mission, the word zenglendo "denotes criminals who are recruited from groups ranging from the marginal societal strata found in working-class districts to police officers themselves usually acting at night, in civilian clothes and with official weapons." Interim Report by the International Civilian Mission to Haiti for the period of 9 February - 31 May 1993, A/47/960, p. 8.
52 In the second half of 1993, bands of civilian thugs armed by the Haitian military were fashioned into the quasi-political organization known as the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH). FRAPH's membership includes long-time Duvalierists, as well as Tontons Macoutes, attachés, and other army supporters. The organization's co-founders were Jodel Chamblain, a former Tonton Macoute, and Emmanuel Constant, the son of an army commander under François Duvalier (Papa Doc). From early 1992 to early 1994, Emmanuel Constant was a paid CIA informant. FRAPH was nurtured by the military from its emergence in September 1993. For details on FRAPH's involvement in human rights abuses, see Human Rights Watch/Americas and National Coalition for Haitian Refugees, "Terror Prevails in Haiti: Human Rights Violations and Failed Diplomacy," A Human Rights Watch Short Report, vol. 6, no. 5 (April 1994).
53 See UN/OAS International Civilian Mission in Haiti, Press Release, Ref. CP/94/28, June 17, 1994; Press Release, Ref. CP/94/20, May 19, 1994; Press Release, Ref. CP/94/8, March 21, 1994.
54 Telephone interview, May 25, 1994.
55 These rights are protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
56 The 1987 Haitian Constitution, Chapter II, Section A, Article 19 obliges the state to "guarantee the right to life, health, and respect of the human person for all citizens without distinction in conformity with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
57 Radio speech by exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from the U.S., recorded in Washington, D.C. on July 23, 1994.
58 Telephone interview, Haitian women's rights activist, May 19, 1995. All names withheld by Human Rights Watch unless otherwise indicated.
59 The Governors Island Accord called for Aristide to propose a new prime minister; the Haitian Parliament to approve the nominated prime minister; sanctions to be lifted,after the approval of the new prime minister; foreign aid to be resumed to Haiti; a presidential amnesty to be granted for those military figures involved in the coup d'état against Aristide, within the parameters of the 1987 constitution; the military high command to resign, allowing Aristide to name a replacement who would then go on to restaff the high command; and President Aristide to return to power on October 30, 1993.
60 See Human Rights Watch/Americas and National Coalition for Haitian Refugees, Terror Prevails in Haiti.
61 The Governors Island Accord also required that a separate civilian police force be trained and operate independent of the military.
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