Emmanuel Marcéus, known as Manno, was a skinny 9-year-old boy with a big smile who loved to sing and dance.

On Tuesday, October 19, masked policemen shot him to death in the La Saline slum, as he sat next to his mother and a market woman selling candy, not far from his home.

Manno was just one of the victims of the police shooting spree that day. But his story, as much as the escalating death toll, reveals the arbitrary and brutal horror of the expanding police repression in Port-au-Prince's popular quarters.

According to witnesses, a pickup with heavily armed policemen, dressed all in black and masked like ninjas, roared up Rue St. Joseph in La Saline near the Tét Béf market around 2 p.m. where a crowd was gathered. Without warning, the cops began spraying people with automatic weapons. People dove for cover. A16-year-old boy took two bullets in his leg but managed to hobble away. Manno was not so lucky.

"The first bullet hit him in the foot and he fell," a neighbor who was too afraid to identify himself explained. "Then he gestured with his hand for someone to come pick him up. That was when the police shot him in the chest. His guts spilled out. Then they shot him twice more in the thigh and chest. He was a child. They riddled him with bullets."

As the boy lay dead or dying, a policeman walked over and shot him once again in the head for good measure. The police vehicle then sped off, as quickly as it had arrived, leaving the body in the street.

Manno's body lay there for the rest of the afternoon and evening. "We thought that those [police dressed in black] had a plan to kill us all in the St. Joseph neighborhood," the neighbor said. "That day was truly terrible for us, as we watched Manno's body lying in the street all evening." Finally, at about 10 p.m., Manno's family brought his body home.

Manno had lived in a one-room hovel with his mother, grandmother, two aunts, and a little brother. "You can imagine how difficult life was for him, with six or seven people living in one room," the neighbor said. One can also imagine the traumatic night the family spent with Manno's body in their cramped quarters.

Starting at 5 a.m. the next morning, the family and neighbors began trying to get an ambulance to take Manno's body to the central morgue at the General Hospital. When they went to the nearby police station at Portail St. Joseph, the policemen inside joked: "With all the yelling we heard last night in St. Joseph, we thought 50 people had died."

The staff at the central morgue refused to take the body, saying it was full. Only four days earlier, the Haitian Health Ministry had to arrange emergency vehicles to remove 600 bodies that had piled up there over the previous two weeks. The penniless family had to turn to neighbors to take the body to a private morgue in the Tokyo neighborhood of Cité Soleil.

Despite their poverty, Manno's family had still managed to send him to school at the Kindergarten Minoulu on Rue St. Martin. He was in Preparatory 2, the equivalent of fourth grade.

The police murder of the boy has the St. Joseph neighborhood seething. "We've been watching," the neighbor said. "When the masked policemen in black go through a neighborhood like Rue St. Martin, Rue Tiremasse, or Fbtouwon, three or four victims are shot. We have only to remember the recent case of two laborers. They were carrying stuff on Rue Tiremasse when the assailants [police] told them to put their hands up. But they already had loads on their head, and the police shot each of them twice. So we think that if there is such a thing as 'chimPres' [the bourgeoisie 's epithet for armed Lavalas partisans], we think it is the assailants and the de facto government who are 'chimPres.'"

The 16-year-old shot twice in the leg was operated on at the Canapé Vert hospital. One of the bullets shattered his knee.

Manno's killing has embittered the entire neighborhood of St. Joseph. The people's desire for a return to democracy, as well as justice for Manno, has deepened, neighbors say. "The police come and kill people and then try to blame it on the 'chimPres,'" a neighbor said.

"We all knew Manno," the neighbor continued. "He loved to sing and dance for people. His death has made all the kids in the neighborhood very sad."

In Manhattan this week, two demonstrations demanded an end to the brutal repression and foreign occupation in Haiti.

On Oct. 22 from 4 to 7 p.m., about 30 demonstrators turned out at Ralph Bunche park in front of the United Nations on First Avenue in response to a call by the Lavalas Family party. They condemned the continuing police repression, backed by U.N. troops, in the Haitian capital and Father Gérard Jean-Juste's arrest.

"The police come into people's homes and torture, beat and kill them," said Minouche, one of the organizers. "Latortue has even admitted that. And now he says that he's not responsible. We are here to say that [U.N. Secretary General] Kofi Annan is a lackey of the imperialists. We say that the only solution we Haitians have is a revolution to remove the occupation from Haiti."

Another demonstrator, Ti Flute, denounced the role of the U.S. and France. "George Bush and Jacques Chirac kidnapped President Aristide in February, and that is why people are dying today," he said. "[De facto Prime Minister Gérard] Latortue said that the arms embargo has been lifted [see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 22, No. 32, 10/20/2004]. But I want to know with what country Haiti is now going to war. Isn't it the Haitian people that Latortue is going to fight with those weapons?"

On Oct. 25, groups including the December 12th Movement, Patrice Lumumba Coalition, Africans Helping Africans, People's Organization for Progress, Black Telephone Workers for Justice, and Africa is Home Coalition called an emergency demonstration in front of the Haitian Consulate at 271 Madison Avenue between noon and 2 p.m. Most of the twenty demonstrators on hand were Africans or African Americans who wanted to show their solidarity with the Haitian people.

"We're out here because October 25th is the 21st anniversary of the invasion of Grenada," said Elombe Brathe of the Patrice Lumumba Coalition. "We felt it was the ideal day to come here because now there' s been another invasion in the Caribbean, this time in Haiti. Furthermore, Latortue has caused an international incident between African people. He has accused [South African President Thabo] Mbeki, along with Aristide, of being behind the current uprising of the Haitian people. This is fraudulent because the indigenous resistance movement will continue whether Aristide is there or not.

"The Haitian people fighting today are patriots," Brathe continued. "Latortue on the other hand is a puppet imposed by the U.S., just like the lackeys who took over after the New Jewel movement was overthrown in Grenada, just like Mobuto in Zaire."