1957 (June 15-16): The Haitian army killed between several hundred (Leconte, 1999) and three thousand (Pierre-Charles, 1973) supporters of President Fignol? — who was popular among the disenfranchised sectors of the capital city — after having overthrown him and forced him into exile. Most of the victims had lived in the poor neighborhoods of Bel-Air, La Saline and Saint-Martin. General Kebreau, who was responsible for the killings, was nicknamed General Thompson, in reference to the automatic weapons used by his soldiers. Backed by politician Fran?ois Duvalier, Kebreau proclaimed himself head of the executive branch of government and organized the September 22 elections, later won by Duvalier. It was during this period that the army established the basis for a totalitarian order (Trouillot, 1990: 152).
* (Pierre-Charles, 1973: 38 and 44; Leconte, 1999: 38)
1957-1986: Fran?ois Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, was elected president with the army’s support in 1957 and ruled Haiti until his death in 1971. His son, Baby Doc, then replaced him and ruled until 1986. Papa Doc’s regime, the more brutal of the two, is said to be responsible for 30,000 to 50,000 assassinations and executions.
1963 (April 26): In Port-au-Prince, macoutes carried out a series of assassinations of the families of alleged opponents to the government after a failed attempt to kidnap Papa Doc’s son Jean-Claude. macoutes typically raided a house of alleged opponents, killed its inhabitants, including elderly people, children and servants, with guns and machetes, before moving to another house of an alleged opponent of the regime. The Beno?t, Edelyn and Paris families were exterminated and their bodies left in full view in front of their houses. The Vieux family lost four of its members. Other individuals were killed in the street or while driving their car. The total number of victims was close to a hundred. Several dozens of people were also taken to the Fort-Dimanche prison in Port-au-Prince and were later “disappeared”, a method used afterward by the military regimes in Chile (1973-1989), Argentina (1976-1983) and Brazil (1964-1985). Most of the victims were from the military, social and intellectual elites of the country. The attempted kidnapping had been orchestrated by Cl?ment Barbot, a macoute and former head of the secret services of Papa Doc, to whom he was close.
*** (Pierre-Charles, 2000: 85-86; Avril, 1999: 146-149; Interviews with witnesses)
1964 (August): Event known as the “massacre des V?pres j?r?miennes.” In the locality of J?r?mie (in the Southwest of the country), army soldiers led by Lt. Abel Jerome, Lt. Sony Borge, Col. Regala and by macoutes Sanette Balmir and St. Ange Bomtemps killed 27 individuals (men, women and children); almost all of them belonged to educated mulatto families. All the perpetrators knew the executed families well. Several families from J?r?mie (the Sansericq, Drouin and Villedrouin families) were entirely wiped out. A four-year child, St?phane Sansericq, was tortured in front of his relatives before being killed. Macoutes Sony Borges and G?rard Brunache extinguished their cigarettes in the eyes of crying children.
1969 (July 22): Massive execution of left-wing political prisoners, who had been arrested during the previous days and weeks. They were taken from Fort-Dimanche and executed, at night, in Ganthier, a village Northeast of Port-au-Prince, and then thrown into a mass grave.
* (Pierre-Charles, 2000: 125-129)
1986 (January 31): Army soldiers led by Colonel Samuel J?r?mie killed nearly one hundred people in L?ogane (Southwest of Port-au-Prince) during a demonstration of peasants who were (prematurely) celebrating the departure into exile of Jean-Claude Duvalier. (No subsequent reports from international human rights organizations mention this killing).
* (NCRH, 1986: 27-28)
1986-1991: According to Pierre-Charles (2000: 208), more than 1,500 people disappeared between 1986 and 1990, most of them under the rule of General Henri Namphy, between March and October 1987.
1991-1994: The military ruled until September 19, 1994, when US President Clinton ordered the US marines to intervene and reinstall democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The de-facto regime relied on paramilitary death squads known as FRAPH, which carried out most of the executions and persecution of opponents and alleged opponents. The total number of victims of this 3-year regime varies from 10,000 to 30,000 people according to different sources. Observers note that the poor were the main target of repression, although many well-known figures from the middle class, such as Aristide’s Minister of Justice, Guy Malary, and businessman Antoine Izm?ry, were also murdered by paramilitary groups.