Istwa Nou

After fourteen months in power Prosper Avril still could not get foreign aid flowing again, so he played Haiti's China card. Earlier governments had worked the rivalry between Beijing and Taipei, each of which paid for recognition. Taiwan was rich in foreign exchange and generous to countries that kept its embassies open. By 1990 it had stopped losing partners to Beijing and had lost interest in buying them. Avril flew across the Pacific expecting about forty million dollars. He arrived in a cold Taipei to find that opposition leaders in Port-au-Prince had sent a telex while he was in the air, informing his hosts that the Haitian people would not consider any agreement he signed binding. The Taiwanese received him as a head of state, then offered him behind closed doors a vague promise of undefined assistance in exchange for his signature on a declaration pledging democratic elections in Haiti. He cancelled his press conference and flew home. A general strike called to keep him out failed on 12 January 1990.

General Prosper Avril, Haiti's military ruler, came home from a trip abroad in mid January 1990 to a rally at the airport whose participants had each been paid three dollars to attend. In a hungry capital the money found takers. The show of support did not hold. Haiti's ambassador in Washington, Benoit, resigned, saying that no election could be free while Avril governed, and pointed to the arrests and beatings of opposition figures the previous November. Two days after the general landed, gunmen killed a colonel of the presidential guard, Andre Neptune. On 22 January the government declared a state of siege, cut the electricity and imposed censorship on every radio and television station. Most stations outside government control stopped broadcasting altogether, so Haitians never heard Bishop Romelus denounce the siege from Jeremie. Two leading opponents, Louis Roy and Hubert de Ronceray, were flown to Miami and described their expulsion to reporters there. The merchant Antoine Izmery was taken in the same sweep. The siege was lifted by early February.