CAMBRIDGE, MA, Sept. 23 - Before there was Jean-Bertrand Aristide, before there was Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, there was François "Papa Doc" Duvalier as though the presidency of Haiti were a tribal chieftancy naturally shifting to very bad men in ascendancy. What is, too, certain is that they all were examples of the previous most bloodthirsty dictators - "History always repeats itself," said Marx - that Haiti had known in the 153 years of its history that preceded their ascendancies to the presidency of the Caribbean nation.

Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, one of the bloodthirsty tyrants named president-for-life by his father, François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, in 1971  in an undated photograph. Baby Doc was only 19. (Kathy Williams/AP)

What were exactly the totalitarian, barbarian dictators' atrocities, despite they were never inclined to, in part or in full, record their odious crimes, forget about being punctilious, at the very last? Not only even assumed political opponents' toenails and fingernails were ripped out their teeth were kicked in. Many of those same assumed political opponents were shocked with electricity, subject to the practice of head-hitting-wall, the soles of their feet beaten or cigarettes stubbed out into their eyes and much else besides before they were finally savagely executed or succumb after an organ or organs failed. Most of the time that was also the fate of their brothers, uncles and fathers, in addition to their daughters, sisters, mothers and aunts who were first repeatedly gang-raped on suspicion of participating, directly or indirectly, in imagined subversive activities against their ferocious governments, their illegitimate governments.

In the case of Aristide, his many "sois-disant" political opponents who were necklaced in broad daylight further confirmed that dictators should go to any lengths. By way of explanation, they should not simply be average dictators, filling even their supposed enemies with bullets, but extremely cruel, inhuman ones at that.

Readers of this article will later be communicated of the reasons why current extreme violence-issued President René Préval also believed some years ago that even his assumed political opponents had no right to life.

The monstrous dictators violated even the basic tenets of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which Haiti has, too, ratified. 

Considering also their economic crimes, the primitive-type tyrants combinely looted the public purse of a sum that was in the vicinity of $1.6 billion (grand-scale thieving), subsequently causing the vast majority of their fellow citizens to, even today, continue to increasingly endure unparalleled crushing poverty.

Those bestial, retrograde dictators barely stood for the most basic public services, which were not limited to the removal of detritus-infested (see An extremely painful comparative analysis of lives), causing an innumerable number of Haitians to suffer a multitude of health problems and prematurely succumb to them.

NOTORIOUS TOTALITARIAN DICTATORS René Préval, left,                Jean-Bertrand Aristide under a portrait of the precursor, Pierre Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture, of Haiti's independence, in an undated wehaitians.com black and white photo, left; above, a woman, one of their many million victims, searches for edible lettuce as a pig does the same in Port-au-Prince's sprawling market known as Croix-des-Bossales, September 3, 2003. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

The estimated 85 percent illiteracy rate or more, the superbly high infant mortality rate, the near complete lack of electricity, twenty four hours a day, the ruined environment (today, less than 2 percent of the nation's land is covered with trees) and other unfavorable social and economic indicators, if not, too, the worldwide perception that Haiti was a perpetual mendicant state (today, it relies on foreign aid to pay for 70 percent of the items of its next to nothing budget), a narco-state, were also the full measures of the tragedies the dictators, who approximately ruled in an equally harsh fashion, had permitted to visit upon the Haitian family. Unfortunately, those same tragedies continue to be so today, and it is because extreme violence-issued President Préval does not have a long-term political and economic plan to, hopefully, consign, even in part, them to the archives of history.

Préval, who during his first five years of experience as so-called president, too, brutally murdered an incalculable number of Haitians, including pastor Antoine Leroy and engineer Jacques Florival, after they were forced to kneel down while in tight handcuffs, in broad daylight, as the latter victim's little girl watched and incessantly cried, years before personally shocked with electricity a colonel's wife of the long nonstanding Haitian army, in her vagina, detonated a bomb (December 1990) that killed and badly injured many, as would Osama bin Laden, in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petion-Ville (Place Saint-Pierre), during a public political gathering, first owned and managed a small neighborhood bakery that became insolvent a few months after its opening.

His gross incompetence, which in a January 17, 2006 news article he told The Associated Press Michael Norton he had an obsession for, is further informed by his devastating tenure as Aristide's prime minister, first failed presidency - "My first five-year government was a total failure" - also when an increased number of Haitians first joined the rank of those who endured grinding poverty, and rooted in his natural cretinism. He was forced to withdraw from college (see Preval's education) in Belgium for earning or being assigned mostly the equivalent grade of F during his first year of study.

Last year, immediately after again assuming the presidency Préval, who dissolved parliament during his first term, in January 1999, and then governed by decree, rejected the notion that dictator Aristide could have pillaged the public treasury, despite mounting and credible evidence (see Aristide's offshore "Mount Salem" account), and withdrew a civil lawsuit filed in November 2006 in a Florida federal court by the interim government of Alexandre-Latortue (March 2004 - May 2006) that  ceded power to him.

Ironically, the alleged corrupt dictator (see He is said to possess at least $81 million), also by association, who Tuesday, before departing Haiti to deliver a speech at the United Nations (U.N.), where Wednesday he permitted those in attendance for the circumstance to be under the impression that they were rather listening to a 3-year-old boy as he was attempting to learn to speak or display the mental agility of an adult, instead of that of a well spoken head of state, rejected Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier's apology for 'wrongs,' including 'grand-scale corruption,' and further said that he was inclined to see him face the bar justice - his kangaroo-type of justice, commonly known as Prevality-Justice, that is.

Was Préval under the influence? He is said to drink vodka for breakfast and in the wee hours of the night. This is more than worrying - not because "Baby Doc" should not face the bar of justice for his alleged crimes. Usually, this type of folly or sentiment is not reserved for the president, particularly an extreme violence-issued one, of a nation, which, according to  International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based organization, can barely conduct approximately 321 jury trials annually. Most the time, many of those trials, by way of which defendants should truly demonstrate that their alleged actions did not violate an existing criminal statute, are instead extremely questionable (bogus) because most members of the jury, if not all, are relatives, friends or partners in crime who have yet to be deprived of their liberty selected by the alleged criminal offenders, often notorious druglords, after paying bribes to judges or senior government officials.

What's more? The poor will always be with us and suffer a great deal until they succumb to even curable diseases, to paraphrase Christ, more than 2,000 years ago. To the contrary, liberty is not a pressing issue at all, apparently in the words of so-called government officials, for 96 percent or more of the detainees who are unofficially classified as dirt-poor - that means they have no money, not even a few dollars, and as a result cannot pay bribes in return for their liberty. Thousands - though a reduced number of them are perceived to be culpable of having committed crimes, serious and non-serious - languish in jail on flimsy charges for years in horrible conditions without ever being afforded the opportunity, as they are entitled under the 1987 constitution, to appear before a judge to otherwise prove beyond reasonable doubt that they did not in fact commit the actions charged against them.

Only human rights groups are wondering how this is permitted to occur. The Port-au-Prince national penitentiary, constructed by the 1915-34 U.S. occupation forces, can nominally accommodate no more than 432 prisoners, but today its population surpasses more than 3,000, nearly all detainees, rather. Not only more than 25 of the detainees die annually but a greater number of them never fully recover their health after they become gravely sick. Still, they are deprived of even the most basic medical care, but insults, if not repeated severe beatings (torture), too - Like Aristide, Preval's notion of respect for human rights.

At the Port-au-Prince national penitentiary, where regular beds are few, if not at all, but detainees-made hammocks. At night, those deprive of their liberty take turns to sleep just for a few hours in the suffocating heat of their squalid-type cells. (Le Nouvelliste Photo)

"Citizens must be criminally prosecuted for offenses, such as corruption, committed within and not within the scope of their government employment, private business employment and for the benefit of themselves or others." Those have been the repeated words of dictator, alleged corrupt Préval since he first famously said in a May 18th speech that "effective today Haiti was no place to be corrupt" - quelle hypocrisie (what an hypocrisy.) 

That is the combined unwanted public servant resume of those dictators against the idea of finding great contentment, principally in the few inaudible and measured words of former tyrant Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who for the first time, since he was forced into exile in France, but not before he was deposed, on February 7th, 1986, apparently after he suddenly emerged from the rock, and a gigantic one, too, under which he had long resided, addressed the Haitian people Saturday, by way of a Port-au-Prince private radio station, Caraïbe FM.

Totalitarian dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier in his office, thinking very hard, apparently about his next victims or taking his dictatorship to a new level of cruelty, in an undated photograph. (wehaitians.com Photo)

"I'm extremely troubled by the problems of Haiti; those problems are rooted in social divisions; I urge you all Haitians to forget about the social divisions that continue to destroy us as a people and unite for the benefit of all," said the former dictator, apparently with a voice of political and moral rectitude, though he is known to lack the charisma of political skill and rhetorical brilliance, who without referring directly to extreme violence-issued President Préval, had a few pleasant words for him for his perceived attempt to transform Haiti into a democratic state and fight corruption - certainly a threat to democracy.

A few hours later, in a speech recorded from Paris he addressed members of his minuscule political party, National Unity Party (NUP) and a reduced number of invited guests, including prominent professor, attorney and unquestionable human rights defender Gerard Gourge - all assembled for the unprecedented circumstance.

Jean-Claude "Baby Doc"Duvalier, who is now of the age of 56, spoke in the language of Voltaire, the language of the Haitian middle-class and bourgeoisie, that is French, not Creole, the language of the Haitian masses, apologized for the odious political crimes committed by his quasi-15-year-old dictatorial regime, the pillaging of the public treasury and their painful multiplying effects. "History will be the judge of my 15-years tenure as president of Haiti," also said the former tyrant, who in an irony of history is reported to be living a life that quasily borders on penury rather than the opulent one he knew for nearly the first 45 years of his life. Sure he has plenty of reasons to be unhappy about his continued forced exile.

Both his regime and that of his father brutally murdered at least 50,000 Haitians, and untold number of citizens, including Baby Doc's own sister, Marie Denise Duvalier-Dominique and her husband Max Dominique who figured on a list of 20 army officers to be executed by "Papa Doc," but his life was spared at the very last minute only after his wife pulled a loaded gun on her father. Mr. and Mrs. Dominique were ultimately forced into exile.

Not for the first time, "Papa Doc," did force into exile immediate family members. Years earlier, this was the fate of Max's former wife after the dictator famously ordered him to divorce her so he could rightly contract marriage with Marie.

Today, even former members of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier's notorious secret police, better known as the "caravan of death," his militia, commonly known as the "Tontons Macoutes," must not honestly permit themselves to be sidelined by reality that even briefly listening to the words of a man who possesses only a fraudulent high school diplomat, who for nearly 15 years presided over the continuing near evisceration of the Haitian family, as the many examples of his crimes, both political and economic in nature, and their multiplying effects show, is not extremely painful.

To paraphrase Vladimir Lenin, only useful idiot Haitians or those who require an exquisite kind of lunacy will continue, adroitly or unadroitly, to prevent the dictators' odious crimes, their brutal kleptocracies from triggering a particular movement, that is writing the obituary of dictatorship, including this time Préval-fast-in-the-making,' in the minuscule Caribbean piece of land that today is often, easily, and sadly undisputedly, equated to kidnapping and dirt-poor, to name only these two.

Haiti will, hopefully, in the long-run, begin to journey to democratic rule, and bumps along the way, as its citizens' material conditions, which may be expressed in terms of a rise in the per capita income, also improves, first suggesting that most of its reduced number of never-healthy markets are gaining in economic importance, by Third World standards, will not be inevitable.

Yves A. Isidor who teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth is the executive editor of wehaitians.com and spokesperson for We Haitians United We Stand For Democracy.

THE TYRANTS' CRIMES A large number of Papa Doc and Baby Doc's odious crimes /An Aristide's odious crime      

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