Ousted Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier has apologized to the victims of his 15-year regime and said he had ended two decades in exile to work for national reconciliation.
“I have come back as a sign of my solidarity during this extremely difficult period in national life,” he said on Friday in his first full public statement since his sudden return late on Sunday to the nation he once ruled with an iron fist.
“Baby Doc” Duvalier said he also wanted to “voice my deep sorrow to my fellow countrymen who say, rightly, that they were victims under my government.”
Photo: Reuters
Speaking in a weak voice to a room packed full of journalists, the 59-year-old called for “national reconciliation” in Haiti and said he hoped for a “rapid resolution to the political crisis.”
However, he did not outline what had happened to those who suffered under his 1971 to 1986 regime.
Instead, speaking mainly in French with a few words of Creole, he offered “sympathies to my millions of supporters who, after my voluntary departure from Haiti in 1986 to avoid a bloodbath and to allow a swift resolution to the political crisis, were left to themselves.”
The former dictator said thousands of his supporters were “assassinated, suffocated, interrogated, subjected to tire-necklaces burnings; their houses, their possessions were pillaged, uprooted and torched.”
With so many unanswered questions, his words are only likely to stoke further tensions among people with long memories of his brutal rule.
Many fear he is seeking a return to power by capitalizing on the current political chaos stalking the quake-ravaged Caribbean country. Duvalier, who fled amid a popular uprising, did not explicitly rule out taking on a political role.
Haiti, already struggling to recover from a devastating earthquake in January last year and a cholera outbreak, is caught up in deepening political turmoil because of disputed presidential elections.
Memories of Duvalier’s repressive regime remain vivid, and human rights groups have accused him and his late father, Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, of presiding over decades of unparalleled oppression and abuse.
Amnesty International said Haitian officials were opening a probe into alleged torture and killings.
One theory to explain Duvalier’s return is that he is hoping to win back some of the US$5.7 million frozen in Swiss bank accounts.
Under a Swiss law that goes into effect on Feb. 1, the last of Duvalier’s frozen assets could be confiscated and returned to Haiti even if the Port-au-Prince government has not taken legal action to get them, but his return to Haiti may thwart that process.
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