In January , the Reagan administration began to pressure Duvalier to renounce his rule and to leave Haiti. Representatives appointed by Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga served as intermediaries who carried out the negotiations. At this point a number of Duvalierists, and business leaders, met with the Duvaliers and pressed for their departure. Air Force aircraft. The Duvaliers settled in France.
For a time they lived a luxurious life. Although he formally applied for political asylum, his request was denied by French authorities. A private citizen, Jacques Samyn, unsuccessfully sued to expel Duvalier as an illegal immigrant the Duvaliers were never officially granted asylum in France. Then, in , a Haitian-born photographer, Gerard Bloncourt, formed a committee in Paris to bring Duvalier to trial. At the time, the French Ministry of the Interior said that it could not verify whether Duvalier still remained in the country due to the recently enacted Schengen Agreement which had abolished systematic border controls between the participating countries.
Following the ousting of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February , Duvalier announced his intention to return to Haiti. In , he announced his intentions to run for president of Haiti in the elections for the Party of National Unity; however, he did not become a candidate.
On 22 - 23 September , an address by Duvalier to Haitians was broadcast by radio. On 16 January , a quarter-century after he fled Haiti as a deposed dictator, Duvalier did make a surprise return. His passport had expired so he travelled to Haiti using temporary documentation issued by Haiti's Consulate General in Paris.
He was promptly arrested and charged with embezzlement and other crimes, but remained living in a high-end hotel in the mountains of Port-au-Prince. A Haitian court ruled in February that Duvalier could be charged with crimes against humanity under international law, and that he could also be held responsible for abuses committed by the army and paramilitary forces under his rule.
Duvlier consistently denied any responsibility for abuses committed while he was in office. Jean-Claude Duvalier died in his home of a heart attack on Saturday, 4 October He was Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Aid from the United States and from multilateral agencies began again. But there was no real attention, as many had hoped there would be, to the real ills of Haiti, long the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere and the most ravaged by its rulers.
The new President Duvalier—a pampered, portly playboy with a penchant for fast sports cars—had hardly been trained to succeed his enigmatic, ruthless father. Moreover, Haiti's limited arable land area was shrinking dramatically every year due to deforestation, overgrazing, and violent erosion.
Nevertheless, Duvalier's first years in office offered hope. Soon more than U. The sewing of baseballs, long a staple of low-wage Haiti, was expanded.
New electronic assembly plants were developed. During the early years of the elder Duvalier presidency, exiled Haitians—some supported clandestinely by the United States—invaded their homeland in attempts to oust him, but all were repulsed.
In late Baby Doc Duvalier's government was also threatened by an invasion in the northeast, at Cape St. Several dozen exiles came ashore from small boats. They proved no match for the Haitian army. A second invasion took place in , when a small group of exiles led by a Miami garage owner landed on Tortuga, a small island off Haiti's northwest coast All of those who landed were imprisoned and shot. A political crackdown on dissidents followed as a result of these two attempted coups. Senior United Nations officials complained about the all-pervasive atmosphere of family corruption.
Caribbean political analysts asserted that Haiti's tobacco monopoly, among other enterprises, continued to be used as a family slush fund. The renewed authoritarianism deterred tourism and curtailed aid levels. When President Duvalier shortly thereafter permitted the formation of two opposition parties and publicly inaugurated a period of "liberalization," the United States and long-time opponents took cheer. The tame press was allowed to publish critical articles.
By late , however, the honeymoon was over. Men armed with clubs broke up Haiti's first human rights rally in Port-au-Prince. Diplomats were beaten, and hundreds were hurt.
Duvalier hastily offered political reforms, but had already lost control of the provinces. Duvalier declared himself in a broadcast "still as strong as a monkey's tail" and a government statement maintained that "peace reigns throughout the country". I watched as the couple fled before dawn on 7 February after a last defiant champagne party at the palace.
Duvalier drove their Mercedes to the airport and a pre-arranged US government flight took them to Paris, where the French government had been persuaded by Washington to accept them. Duvalier's mother died, and, in his darkest days, relieved of most of his money, he lived for a time in a shed at the bottom of his father-in-law's suburban Paris garden. He found a new companion, again an upper-class Haitian, and she and Duvalierist remnants in Haiti encouraged him to try for a political comeback.
But despite some hankering for Duvalier-era "peace" amid the years-long chaos and killings that had followed his overthrow, his half-hearted statements came to nothing. And then he got lucky, with the US-arranged election of the singer Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly, long a quiet Duvalier supporter, as president in After years of threats that he would be arrested if he tried to return, Duvalier was now able to go back to Haiti without any real risk.
He made no attempt to return to power and lamely apologised for any hurt he said he might have caused his compatriots. He joined Martelly on the platform on several public occasions. Formal legal procedures against him were begun, but a deeply corrupt judiciary ensured that he rarely appeared in court and never went to prison for the killings and theft he presided over.
Almost to the end, he enjoyed the capital's luxury restaurants and night-life.
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