As Prosper Avril stepped out of the National Penitentiary a free man on Apr. 15, he was immediately rearrested by heavily armed policemen and charged with involvement in a 1990 peasant massacre.

Gen. Avril is a former military dictator who took power in a 1988 coup but was driven from power in Mar. 1990 by a popular uprising.

He was first arrested on May 26, 2001 at a book- signing for his work entitled "The Black Book on Insecurity in Haiti," in which he accused President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of being responsible for political violence in Haiti over the past decade. Avril was charged with the 1989 beating and torture of democracy activists and for plotting to overthrow Aristide’s current government.

But the Haitian Appeals Court ruled for his release on Apr. 11, outraging two of the torture victims, Marino Etienne and Jean Auguste Mesyeux.

Meanwhile in St. Marc, Judge Henri Kesner Noel issued a warrant charging Avril as an accomplice in the Mar. 13, 1990 assault by soldiers on the town of Piatre in the Artibonite Valley, in which 11 peasants were killed, dozens of farm animals shot , and over three hundred peasant huts burned or destroyed (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 7, Nos. 51 & 52, 3/21/90 & 3/28/90).

The assault stemmed from a land dispute the peasants had with Olivier Nadal, a prominent Haitian opposition businessman who has fled to Miami to escape warrants charging him in the massacre.

Avril’s lawyers argue that the Piatre massacre took place three days after the dictator fled the country on Mar. 10, 1990, and therefore he cannot be held responsible. Haitian authorities took Avril to St. Marc to be indicted, but the hearing was postponed until next week.

Avril was the "eminence grise" of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier’s regime and was briefly part of the neo-Duvalierist junta which took power after Duvalier’s fall.

Members of a special Organization of American States mission in Haiti investigating the Dec. 17, 2001 attempted assassination of Aristide and ensuing mob violence met with Avril on Apr. 20 in the National Penitentiary. It is not clear what bearing Avril’s incarceration has on those events.

Alarms Sound Over Haiti’s Environment

Haiti is in ecological crisis. Eighty years ago, forests cloaked 60% of the country, the United Nations estimates. Today, only about 18% is covered with forest or other dense vegetation.

As a result, mountains are eroding, soil depleting, the landmass heating, aquifers emptying, marine life dying , and rivers and lakes silting. The consequences are particularly harsh in this mountainous country where 60% of the topography is steep slopes.

On Apr. 17, Pierre Chauvet of the Federation of Friends of Nature (FAN-Haiti) called for heightened consciousness of Haiti’s environmental degradation. "In addition to laws and political will, the will of the citizenry is now needed," he said during an economic forum held at Haitian Press Center in Port-au-Prince. "Individuals who live in a given region or nation... must realize that we are above all citizens of the earth since the environment has no borders." He called for environmental consciousness-raising in schools and through the media.

On Apr. 13, about 300 people gathered for a forum on Haiti’s environment in Léogane, sponsored by the America’s Development Foundation (ADF), a non-governmental organization supported by and linked to the U.S. State Department’s Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). "Of course, there is unemployment and a series of other problems which make people have to cut down trees," said the ADF’s Pierre Gourraige. "We are trying to sensitize and educate them so that they are aware that when they cut down a tree, they should plant five or six new trees so that tomorrow they can cut down trees again."

While such crusaders argue that Haiti’s environmental problems stem from a lack consciousness among Haiti’s peasants, Haitian progressives argue that the degradation has economic and political roots. "Haiti’s environmental crisis is a direct result of the miserable conditions to which our ruling classes have condemned the masses," said Ben Dupuy, secretary general of the National Popular Party (PPN), during a recent forum in Miami. "Big landowners let large tracts lay fallow while peasants are driven to farm on mountainsides. Washington demands that Haiti lower its tariff walls, while U.S. agribusiness dumps on us cheap rice and other crops we produce. Ruined peasants flood into the slums, where there is no gas or electricity. They must rely on charcoal (charbon), which consumes a lot of wood, greatly accelerating deforestation. State funds which could protect the environment, raise literacy, and build healthcare centers are diverted to pay the debt rung up by Duvalier, that is to pay interest to super-rich banks in New York and Paris." Dupuy went on to note the hypocrisy of Washington’s officials, who lecture Haitian peasants about environmental consciousness while remaining mum when the U.S. "dumps toxic waste in our independence city [Gonaïves]," "embargos foreign aid aimed at improving the water system,’ and "pays death-squads to massacre the same people they propose to educate." In short, he concluded, Haiti’s ecological crisis can only be solved by fundamental political change, including a "true land reform" and development policies by and for the people, not dictated by Washington.