Haiti: Return of the Exiles

Since Dictator François Duvalier took power in Haiti seven years ago, thousands upon thousands of Haitians have fled into exile, most of them crossing into the Dominican Republic. The few who returned to fight Duvalier invariably met defeat—and often a grisly death—at the hands of the dictator's henchmen. Last week, a month after Duvalier proclaimed himself "President for life," another small exile band was back in Haiti, attempting to stir up a guerrilla war.

The invaders, possibly fewer than 50 men, landed by boat late last month on Haiti's southern coast, linked up with some two dozen sympathizers and disappeared into a rugged spine of mountains ten miles inland. When news of the landing reached Port-au-Prince, Duvalier rushed his militiamen to the area. Throughout Haiti the terror was on. Scores of suspected rebel sympathizers were rounded up and tortured; many were beaten to death. In Port-au-Prince, more than ten members of a single family—including an 18-month-old child—disappeared into Duvalier's notorious Fort Dimanche prison. At a crossroads near Port-au-Prince, two peasants were crucified and left to rot in the sun as a warning to political defectors.

In an angry telegram to the U.N., Duvalier's Foreign Minister accused the Dominican Republic of financing an "invasion" of Haiti by "Haitian and Dominican elements" bent on sabotage and assassination of the "closest collaborators of Haiti's head of state." For days, Haitian exile leaders in the Dominican Republic remained quiet. Then, Father Jean-Baptiste Georges, a Roman Catholic priest who once served as Haiti's Education Minister, and Pierre L. Rigaud, head of Haiti's old liberal National Democratic Union, called a press conference in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo. The exile force, they announced, was part of the Haitian Revolutionary Armed Forces, and was delivering arms to a resistance group already in Haiti. Where they were getting weapons and money, and where they were training, Rigaud and Father Georges would not say. But the Dominican government had nothing to do with it. "This is a Haitian fight, and only Haitians are involved in it," said Father Georges.

Last week Duvalier's government claimed that the rebels were cornered in their mountain hideout. But he had said much the same thing before.