bcholmes | Disaster Tourism (Reply)

It occurred to me that this year is an important anniversary of 9/11. And I'm thinking of doing a bit of travel, to mark the event.

On September 11th, 1988, Franck Romain (Mayor of Pòtoprenz, a key figure in the Tontons Macoutes and graduate of the School of the Americas) orchestrated a siege of Saint Jean Bosco, the parish church of Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide. 50 people died and another 70 were injured. It was a significant event in recent Haitian history. Here's one account:

As Fr. Aristide was saying Mass, armed thugs broke down the doors of the church, shooting and slashing their way to the altar, and torching the building, leaving 50 people dead and 77 wounded. "People were clawing at the doors, hiding behind the altar, diving under the pews, anywhere," a survivor told journalist Mark Danner. Those who tried to flee were stoned or clubbed, and Fr. Aristide narrowly escaped with his life. Afterwards [...] the killers bragged about their deeds. On TV, they vowed to finish off Aristide, promising that if he celebrated Mass again in Haiti, only corpses would be present in the church.

Five years later, in 1993, a ceremony was organized to commemorate the anniversary of the St. Jean Bosco massacre. In those five years, Aristide had been elected president, and had been overthrown in a coup in 1991. Aristide was in exile in the United States.

One of the organizers was a man named Antoine Izméry, who defied warnings to stay away from the service. Wikipedia writes:

At around 6am, the church was surrounded by armed men in civilian clothing. Numerous journalists were beaten and detained, and placed under the charge of Jackson Joanis, who headed the Port-au-Prince police's feared "Anti-Gang Unit". While this was ongoing, a group of 10 men forced Izméry outside, and made him kneel before shooting him dead with a single bullet to the head.

Members of the Haitian paramilitary group, FRAPH, are generally viewed as having orchestrated the attack. (FRAPH was founded by a guy named Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, who was being paid $700 a month by the CIA, and meeting with his CIA handler often as much as once a day.)

The man eventually convicted in absentia for Izméry's murder, Louis-Jodel Chamblain, was a member of FRAPH in 1993, and took part in the 2004 coup with Guy Philippe. During the interim government (the one installed by Canada, the US and France), Chamblain was retried, and acquitted.

As I've mentioned, before, the guest house I stay at in Pètoprenz is the former home of Antoine Izméry, and a man that I met there was a friend of Izméry's (and was present at the attack).

(Sorry. Did you think I was talking about that other 9/11?)