On May 27, police arrested five people, including two journalists, after goons in the pay of big landowners violently attacked people gathering to demonstrate against the policies of Haitian Guacimal S.A., an orange-extract company based in the northern town of St. Raphaël.

In the ensuing melee, two local officials -- a CASEC and an ASEC (communal section administrators) -- were wounded by gunfire and transported to the Justinien Hospital in Cap Haïtien, where one is rumored to have died. It appears that the shots emanated from the armed band which attacked the would-be demonstrators.

Meanwhile, the Haitian workers group Batay Ouvriyè (Workers Struggle) reports that two people were killed by the landowners’ thugs, and that another, Urbenn Garçon, is in critical condition in the St. Raphael jail. Haïti Progrès was unable to confirm these reports at press time.

Three of those arrested were members of Batay Ouvriyè, which had sent a solidarity delegation of about a dozen people in a pick-up truck from Cap Haïtien to the demonstration.

The two journalists, Darwin St. Julien of Haïti Progrès newspaper and Allan Deshommes of Radio Atlantik, were both beaten by the hooligans and then arrested by police.

"On Tuesday, May 28, the journalists were in such bad shape that the police had to take them to the hospital," Maude Leblanc, co-director of Haïti Progrès, explained in a May 28 press release. "The doctor who cared for them found their condition to be so serious that he recommended they be seen by specialists, above all the Haïti Progrès journalist who had received a blow to his eye."

"Even more seriously," the note continues, "the authorities have not charged the journalists with anything and yet refuse to release them. Why? Because the mayor of St. Raphael, Adonija Sévère, has declared to the press that the journalists are ‘terrorists’!"

Back in the days of the Duvalier dictatorships, the government tried to justify its crackdowns by branding its victims "communists." Today, the brand is "terrorist." The mayor is a member of the Lavalas Family party (FL) of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

In 1987 near the northwestern town of Jean-Rabel, landowners paid goons to attack a similar peasant demonstration. Over 300 peasants were killed. One landowner at the time boasted and exaggerated on television: "Today we killed 1042 communists."

For the past year, Batay Ouvriyè has been working closely with Guacimal workers and peasants to form a union and press demands for higher wages, better conditions, and off-season land use (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 19, No. 9, 5/16/2001 and Vol. 20, No. 7, 5/1/2002). In an Apr. 24 statement, the organization warned "that the situation [in St. Raphael] is now so dire that there may be a repeat of the massacres seen in earlier times, such as those at Piatre and Gervais."

Since beginning to organize, Guacimal workers, who are largely peasants, have been prevented from farming the land between the orange tree groves as they used to do in the summer off-season. With rains now falling in the region, the workers were anxious to begin planting and had planned in their May 27 demonstration to march to the land in question and stake their claim to plots. Guacimal management, local big landowners, and local authorities organized the large band of armed thugs to break up this march.

"When the delegations from Cap Haïtien and St. Michel arrived, they met with the Guacimal workers to discuss in detail how the land would be divvied up for the off-season planting," Batay Ouvriyè explained in a May 28 press release. "There, they found a band of CASEC, ASEC, and a big crowd of armed men under orders of a local big landowner (Lavaud) along with his caretakers. When the workers approached them to explain to them what they planned to do, the armed gang attacked them with rocks, clubs, machetes, and guns. Here was the confrontation, but, rapidly the workers and the Batay Ouvriyè delegation had to run for their lives, since that had virtually nothing with which to defend themselves. Although they were fleeing, some were nonetheless fatally wounded, others very gravely wounded, and others arrested (on what charge?). They are in very serious condition in the St. Raphael prison."

The St. Raphael mayor is a fierce opponent of the Guacimal workers movement. He inherited the post from his brother, Fernand Sévère, who was shot dead in an inter-FL power struggle last December and who was also hostile to the Guacimal workers. The mayor said that the Batay Ouvriyè delegation from Cap Haïtien was part of a "terrorist movement," including the journalists.

Townspeople protected the journalists after they were attacked. The police arrested the Haïti Progrès journalist as he sat in the home of someone who was treating his wounds. The police said they were arresting him "for his own protection."

After the arrests, the police told Haïti Progrès that they were continuing to hold the journalists, again, "for their own protection." It is illegal for the authorities to hold a person more than 48 hours without charging them with a crime.

During the day May 28, a rumor circulated around St. Raphael and Cap Haïtien that a high-level delegation from Port-au-Prince was being dispatched "in a helicopter" to take the detained back to Port-au-Prince, but the delegation never materialized.

"The authorities cannot send the people they arrested before a judge," said Evariste Wilson, the representative of Haïti Progrès in Cap Haïtien, in an interview on May 28 "above all the journalists, who have no charges against them. They have no proof to charge anybody with anything. That is why they are hiding from our inquiries, giving double-talk, and beating around the bush. Tomorrow is the deadline to release them, after 48 hours. If there is a maneuver to remove them from the jurisdiction of St. Raphael and Grande Rivière, where the case is supposed to be heard, and send them to Port-au-Prince, that will once again show that this repression is purely political."