A campaign against the misuse of public force is a political and ethical necessity of the moment
On Sunday, April 7, a group of young people went to a family party. Their vehicle was hit by a car with “state service” license plates.
The driver gets out, armed and in uniform, points an automatic rifle at them. He is some kind of “leader”. He could have shot. Since he is a “leader”, the Highway Code does not apply to him and he believes he has the right of life and death over others.
This anecdote is not exceptional. It is every day that exactions and abuses of power of a thousand kinds take place.
Beatings, seizure and illegal appropriation of other people’s property, disturbances of public life, violation of private spaces, extortion, illegal arrest or more precisely sequestration of people, all this is common practice, a legacy of Duvalierism brought back into the spotlight by the PHTK.
And one of the strongest signs of emerging from this collapse of democratic practices that has led the country to its current reality would be to take the appropriate measures to put an end to all these abuses.
This anecdote is not exceptional. It is every day that exactions and abuses of power of a thousand kinds take place.
It is therefore appropriate to call upon the seven-piece presidency and the government of Doctor Gary Conille to make public measures, communiqués, directives to the police and civil servants so that they do not make any illegal use of their authority.
It is also appropriate that the CPT and the government strengthen the protection bodies against such acts, take sanctions against such behaviour and make these sanctions public.
It is not just about fighting gangs. How can we believe that political power is fighting gangs when many of these agents operate as members of a kind of diffuse gang?
A driver of a minister or general manager who attacks a motorist, a police officer who pulls out his weapon at the slightest personal conflict, groups of police officers who evict legitimate owners… Multiplication without sanction of abuses against the civilian population, how in such a climate could this population believe in the establishment of democratic practices and the imminent holding of elections worthy of the name!
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The CPT and the government must provide us with proof that they neither encourage nor tolerate such practices. They have yet done nothing to deserve our trust.
This evidence should be part of the beginning of earning our trust. And no one should hide behind the horror of gang violence to justify tolerating the abuse we suffer.
On one side, gangs who kidnap, rape, kill. And on the other, “leaders” who beat up whoever they want whenever they want, seize other people’s property.
In reality, what gangs do collectively, too many “leaders” do individually. And civil society must collectively formulate this demand.
A campaign against the misuse of public force and for the demand for democratic behaviour on the part of all persons exercising part of public authority is a political and ethical necessity of the moment.
Par Lyonel Trouillot
Cover image: Tense exchange between a police officer and members of the population who gather in the vicinity of the Prime Minister’s office in Musseau, in May 2024. | © Jean Feguens Regala/AyiboPost
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Poet, novelist, literary critic and screenwriter, Lyonel Trouillot studied law.
