October 17, 2004 in Nation/World

Hundreds mourn Aristide opponent

• Print
• Email
• Share

Associated Press photo

United Nations peacekeepers from Brazil and Haitian police patrol a street in an armored vehicle in Port-au-Prince on Friday.
(Full-size photo)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Hundreds of Haitians mourned the loss of a leading opposition politician at a funeral Saturday, saying his guidance is needed in such troubled times, even as gunshots crackled in parts of the capital and claimed one more victim.

Funerals often are a flashpoint for violence in the Caribbean nation of 8 million. But that of Gerard Pierre-Charles, 68, who died of heart failure in Cuba a week ago, went off peacefully under the guard of Brazilian U.N. peacekeepers.

“We thought that there might be some problems but everything went perfect. So I think the situation is getting slowly to normality,” U.N. mission spokesman Damian Carmona told Associated Press Television News.

Considered one of Haiti’s greatest intellectuals, Pierre-Charles was a longtime ally who broke with Haiti’s ousted leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide years go, accusing him of betraying the poor and drifting toward dictatorship.

Elsewhere in the capital, gunshots killed Wisner Tabuteau, director of the Etincelle lottery chain, Radio Megastar reported. He died on the way to the private Canape Vert Hospital, a nurse confirmed.

Another man was wounded in that shootout, apparently between gunmen and Tabuteau’s security guards, according to doctors at the main General Hospital. They said they treated one other gunshot victim Saturday morning.

At least 55 people have been killed by gunfire in Port-au-Prince since Sept. 30, when Aristide supporters took to the streets to demand his return from exile in South Africa. Police reportedly killed two protesters and the bodies of three beheaded police were found the next day.

Sporadic gunbattles and several beheadings followed, prompting most businesses and schools to stay shut since then.

But traffic returned to the city’s streets on Saturday and doctors who had not shown up at the main hospital on Friday returned to work.

Military trucks began towing away hulks of torched vehicles that had been used to barricade roads against police.

Hundreds lined up to pay last respects to the body of the mustachioed Pierre-Charles, which lay in an open coffin at the party headquarters of his Struggling People’s Organization.

That building was torched by Aristide supporters in 2001, when Aristide accused his opponents of plotting a coup.

“He left us at the worst time,” Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue told mourners. , “because it’s now that we want people who have the analytical capacity of Gerard, people who can analyze the situation without passion.”

No comments on this story so far. Add yours!