Istwa Nou

The good feeling after the constitutional vote lasted about eight weeks. On 22 June 1987 General Henri Namphy announced that the army would run the coming elections after all. People filled the streets to defend the charter, the council shot at them, and scores died before Namphy went on television on 30 June and promised that the vote would go ahead as written. The State Department had said the day before that American aid depended on it. The crowds kept marching, using a line from a bishop's sermon: rache manyok, bay te a blanchi. Pull up the cassava and clear the ground. On 23 July, near Jean-Rabel in the northwest, a march by the peasant cooperative Tet Ansanm was attacked by other peasants and by militiamen carrying machetes. More than three hundred were killed. Many of the wounded who reached clinics were taken away and never seen again. The roads were closed for days while the evidence was dealt with. The bishops warned of civil war.