Pro-government demonstrators were fired on and stoned by unidentified attackers in the Carrenage section of the northern city of Cap Haïtien on Apr. 6. Donald Julmiste died at the scene, and another demonstrator died later at the city's Justinien Hospital.

The next day, the body of a third demonstrator was fished out of the ocean nearby. The cause of death has not yet been determined.

About 10 people were injured in the attack, which popular organizations and government delegate Myrtho Julien say was carried out by partisans of the Democratic Convergence opposition front. Opposition representatives deny the charge.

The demonstrators had marched through town to voice their support for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and for planned elections, in which the opposition is presently refusing to take part. The marchers were attacked when entering the well-to-do Carrenage neighborhood, situated on a sliver of land between the mountains and ocean at the northern end of the city.

"They were carrying signs and when they arrived in front of the Carrenage Square, this guy fired at them with a 9 millimeter pistol and one guy went down right there," a witness explained to Radio Ginen. "He died on the spot." Other unidentified attackers threw rocks and bottles at the demonstrators. A car was also burned in the melee.

Demonstrators blame the police for not offering them protection, but the police say that they were not informed about the demonstration.

Haitian opposition leaders brought their traveling road-show known as the "Caravan of Hope" to the city of Gonaïves this past weekend. Neither supporters nor opponents massed around the convoy, undermining opposition assertions that dissent is not tolerated, that elections are not possible, and that upheaval is imminent.

The "Caravan" is a concoction of the "Group of 184" so-called "civil society" organizations, which formed last December after Haitian opposition leaders met with the International Republican Institute (IRI) strategists in the Dominican Republic (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 20, No. 45, 1/22/03). For the past month, the "Caravan" has been touring Haiti, trying to drum up support for the flaccid, unpopular opposition to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government. The "Caravan" holds public and private meetings with different groups, seeking signers to a proposed "new social contract," code for an anti-Lavalas front.

The "Caravan" met at Gonaïves‚ Family Hotel on Apr. 13, attracting about a hundred people, most of whom seemed mainly interested in the free soda and T-shirts being distributed.

Prominent at the meeting was Pierre-Robert Auguste, who was a government official during the 1991-94 coup d'état and today is a member of Mochrena, a hard right-wing party in the Democratic Convergence opposition front.

Auguste is one of the heads of the Association of Entrepreneurs of the Artibonite (AEA), a "Group of 184" affiliate. In a short speech, he accused the Lavalas regime of repression and corruption.

The 184 Group and the Caravan are headed by Andy Apaid, a leading light of Haiti's assembly industry bourgeoisie. He led a delegation which met for several hours with Gonaïves‚ two Catholic bishops, Emmanuel Constant and Yves-Marie Péan, giving each a copy of the "new social contract" proposal. Apaid said he was satisfied with the response of people to the Caravan, venturing that people were eagerly waiting for just such a "contract."

"The Haitian people don't want and don't need a new social contract," said Ben Dupuy during a Mar. 28-30 Congress of the National Popular Party (PPN) (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 21, No. 4, 4/9/03). "They already have a social contract: the 1987 Haitian Constitution." During a PPN mass march through Port-au-Prince on Mar. 27, demonstrators chanted: "No to the Caravan of Despair."

Popular organizations in Gonaïves complimented the police on the way they handled the Caravan, which presented its "contract" to various sectors around the Artibonite region. Since the Caravan has been able to circulate freely in Haiti without violence, this proves that elections could be held, Gonaïves' popular organizations said. They called on the Group of 184 to encourage the Democratic Convergence and civil society sectors which still have not sent their representatives to the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) to do so immediately.

"It is a lie when they say there is no security in Gonaïves," said Gracia Joseph, spokesman for the Popular Democratic Organization of Raboteau (OPDR). "The opposition and their foreign backers want to give the city a bad image and find an excuse not to support new elections."

Meanwhile, Peter Métayer, a member of the Solidarity and Peace Commission (KPS) and younger brother of popular organization leader Amiot "Cubain" Métayer, warned the population of Gonaïves to stay alert to intrigues. "Keep your eyes wide open so that neither Amiot Métayer nor Jean-Bertrand Aristide are arrested and carried away to a dungeon the way they did to Toussaint Louverture," he warned, saying that he is a partisan of neither the Convergence nor Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party.

Louverture led the war to abolish slavery in the French colony of St. Domingue, a struggle which culminated in Haiti's 1804 independence. He was captured in 1802 and died in a French prison in the Pyrenees on Apr. 7, 1803.

In sharp counterpoint to the Caravan's tepid reception, tens of thousands of Haitians flooded the capital's central square of Champ de Mars for a government-sponsored rally to mark the bicentennial of Louverture's death. In his speech for the occasion, Aristide called for "restitution and reparations" from France on the order of $21.685 billion.